We called that trade or process of exchange "redeeming the stamps." Redemption took place. We traded in one thing of value and got back something of greater or more significant value.

That's what God meant to do in time. With His Son on the cross, He redeemed mankind. God gave His Son in order to produce a risen Lord and a redeemed people. Redemption took place. When the time was right, God redeemed mankind for all of time. Jesus came in the fullness of time.

III. God Will Someday Call Time

Revelation 10:5-7 says:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

And sware by him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be TIME no longer:

But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

One of these days God is going to call time. "The trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more." All that we know of as time will cease to exist. God who created time and worked in time and sent His Son in the fullness of time is going to say, "Time's up, that's it, no more time."

We can throw away our watches, throw away our datebooks, throw away our calendars. We won't need them anymore. There won't be any such thing as time in heaven. It will be unending time, without beginning or end, eternal time. We won't have to worry about being on time or saving time or keeping time or wasting time. There won't be any more time. That which we know of as time will cease to exist when God says, "That's all the time there is."

IV. God Wants Us to Redeem the Time

Listen to what Paul says to us in Ephesians 5:15-17. In the meantime, "See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Wherefore be not unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is."

The will of the Lord in the meantime is for us to redeem the time. That word means the same thing that it meant in Galatians when God said, "in the fullness of time I sent my Son to redeem mankind." The will of God for you and me as believers is to make use of, to purchase the time, to trade in time for better time.

So it is that when we come to profess our faith in Christ, we're saying in that action and in that commitment, "I give up all rights to my time. I give up future time. I trade it in. I redeem the time in order to get back from God new time, new birth, new man, a fresh start, a new beginning, a new season, new time for a new start." We redeem the time, we buy it up, we purchase it from the Father.

That's what Esther did. In the Old Testament Queen Esther was told by Mordecai the Jew, "That's why you're here." Haman had built a scaffold on which to hang Mordecai as a disgrace to the Jewish people. Since Esther was the only one who could prevent the disgrace, Mordecai came to Esther the Queen to say to her, "Who knows but that you have come to the kingdom for just such a time as this."