Transcription
What does a father say to his son before he gets up to preach in his pulpit? "I just found out. Don't be weird." So I got that going for me. Uh, the advice of a father: "Don't be weird, John. Come on, man. Don't be weird."
Well, I am thankful to be here. I consider Grace Church of the Valley to be my home church and my favorite church in the world. I'm grateful, just so grateful, for the influence of many of the men here and on my own life. I'm thankful just even for the memories that I have with people from this church. I was just even thinking yesterday, I don't know, eight, nine years ago, of doing Camp Seven Oaks with Andy and Becky, and uh, going to Israel with Don and Marianne, and even seeing, seeing Ty sing up here. We went to Israel together years ago, and I'm just so thankful for this church.
I now work as the Dean of Campus Life and Student Advancement at The Master's University, and then also as a camp director at Hume Lake Christian Camps. My wife's name is Katie. Uh, I hired her to be a part of the band at Hume Lake a couple years ago, and then I made her date me. Wisdom, wisdom.
Now, I've always had a thing for numbers. I've always kind of been a unique guy. When I was in first grade, I used to take the church directory, you know, when they used to have those with the, you know, everyone was wearing their Old Navy t-shirts and like smiling like a family. I used to just take those church directories and memorize the phone numbers of every single family. When I was in, I don't know, kindergarten, first grade, I didn't really go to kindergarten. I was homeschooled sometimes. I greet people not by their name, but by their phone number. "Ah, 559-57," you know, and I'll just, I'll just go off it. Normally freaks people out rather than endears them to me. In third grade, I won the DuPage County multiplication championship. I know, big deal. And it's not because I'm particularly good at math. It's just because I would memorize the multiples of every single number. I used to recycle cans so that I could buy basketball cards or baseball cards, not because I really wanted to look at them, just so that I could memorize the stats of all the athletes or their birthdays. I, uh, oh, weird guy. I still wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to go back to sleep because I've forgotten the amount of career rebounds that Hakeem Olajuwon had, and it'll mess me up, and I'll have to look and, you know, find out. Today, I relax by making depreciation schedules of used vehicles.
But the number I have thought about more in the last week than any other number is the number 17,112. 17,112. No, that's not the amount of years left till the Raiders win the Super Bowl. That is the amount of days, if I live to be 75, that I have left on Earth. 17,112. It might sound like a lot, but even tomorrow is not promised to me.
Now, I suppose for, for many of you guys today, and even from my own life, the thought of dying is so morbid or so gloomy and so fraught with grief and pain that we do our best to keep it out of our minds, especially during the holidays. But I have found in my own life that there are a few things more revolutionizing than a periodic pondering of my own death. And the Bible asks us this morning, and we read it already, "Do you want a life of wisdom? Do you want a life that matters? A life of urgency and mission and resolve?" Then we are going to see how that plays out. And the Bible tells us that we have to ask God to teach us to number our days in Psalm 90:12. And you can open up there if you're not already, so that we might present to God a heart of wisdom.
In the last year, I've become fascinated with the life of Jonathan Edwards, the well-known preacher of the 18th century. He was saved at 17 years old, and then a year later, he wrote what we know to be called his resolutions. There are 70 of them, and the first one of those is to make much of the glory of God. His first resolution. He's writing this when he's a teenager. This is remarkable. He says, "Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory." The second, third, and fourth resolutions speak in a similar sentiment. They all have to do with making much of the glory of God. This is a biblical idea. This is not new to you if you are in the church, but Jonathan Edwards was enthralled with this idea. His 70 resolutions for his life. I want these things to matter. One, two, three, and four all have to do with the glory of God. And interestingly, five, six, and seven all have to do with one particular element of his life. If Jonathan Edwards was going to live a life all to the glory of God, five, six, and seven all have to do with the use of his time, with the number of his days. Jonathan Edwards understood that he cannot live for the glory of God if he wastes his time. Resolution 7 says, "Never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life."
Edwards prayed, and I love this because I want to be like this. Edwards prayed that Jesus himself would "stamp eternity on my eyeballs," is what he would say. I want to see everyone through an eternal perspective. He wanted to see everyone with an eternal soul. I've grown up knowing all of the truth, and yet I ask myself constantly, and I ask you today, "Do you believe the things you say you believe?" Because Jonathan Edwards would pray, "God, help me if these things are true. Help me not to waste one hour or one day of my life." He wanted to major in his life the things that would matter in a thousand years from now. He wanted the matters of monumental and massive significance to be on the forefront of his mind and heart.
Church, or the truth of God's Word was not something merely to be theologically affirmed. It was something that was to affect how he lived every single day. And he didn't have some sort of a filibuster placed on that and say, "Well, I'll start later on at 35, at 37, at 55, at 18." He says, "God, stamp eternity on my eyeballs." And as we'll see in the words of the Psalmist today in Psalm 90, we, as a 15-year-old or as a 75-year-old, must teach and ask God and plead with Him to teach us to number our days. Psalm 90.
I love the Psalms. I love them. We live in a world of facades and posturing and pretend. But in the Psalms, there is no stoic denial of emotion. The Bible is full of people who pour out their heart to God, and they tell us, and it just shows us who real people are. The Bible, and the Psalms in particular, show us how to respond to misery, to heartache, to pain, to loss and sorrow, how to respond to delayed answers to prayer, how to respond to "no"s when we pray something, how to deal with our own sin, how to deal with when other people sin against us. They address the Psalms, many of the most pressing questions of our own lives. And the Psalms are our own articulation of Christian experience.
My dad said it already. This is the prayer of Moses. In verse 1, it says, "A man who is used by God." And this is the proper title for the lawgiver and the preacher, the prophet of Israel. Now, the context of the Psalm, I think, is important because if you remember, Moses wrote this Psalm during the wilderness wanderings of Israel as they traveled to the promised land of, or of Canaan. When Israel arrived, and if you've been to Israel, you know this area, which is so cool. It's a real place. This isn't Gilgamesh or Beowulf. This isn't a storybook or a fable or a fairy tale. It's a real place. When they arrived at Kadesh Barnea after coming out of Egypt, the Lord commanded them to take the land, right? But the people, they refused. And their lack of faith angered God, and God sent them back into the wilderness for 40 years. And think about this with me. Then for 40 years, Moses led the children of Israel in circles in the wilderness until an entire generation died, not leagues from the promised land, but yards, a quarter mile. Moses, the pastor of two million people, did more funerals than anybody else in human history. An entire wilderness full of bones. And all those deaths, all those bones, all those funerals served as a perpetual reminder of the transitory nature of human life. You are going to die. You are going to die. We live the moment we are intoxicated by the temporary, and in such a way that we quickly lose sight of what's going to matter in a thousand or 10 million years from now. This Psalm flies in the face of human progress, of vaccines, Twitter, news, shared Facebook posts. You are mortal.
I like what James Boyce says. He says, "This Psalm is probably the greatest passage in the Bible contrasting the grandeur of God with man's frailty." You and I, we need a teacher. We don't think this way. We all know we're going to die, but we don't think about it. We need a teacher. And the only teacher who can rescue us from ourselves is God. Is God.
In order that the Lord would teach us to number our days, we're going to see this Psalm break down four of the attributes of God that will compel you to live wisely with your remaining days on Earth. First, we're going to see in verse 1, the eternality of God. Verse 1: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." Moses understood that in order for you to understand, and for me to understand, how short and limited and finite our life is, we must understand the eternality of God. He says, "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." Think about this. Moses declared that as generations come and as generations go, one thing remains, one thing remains the same: God is the dwelling place of His children. No matter where their body had gone, or no matter where they had wandered, God had been the home for their soul. God is their dwelling place. We too can look at this and claim this testimony as our own. If you are a believer, your dwelling place is not a place; He's a person, and your dwelling place is God Himself.
Spurgeon asks, "Have you ever known what it is to have God for your dwelling place?" Not just to theologically affirm it. Have you ever felt that God is your dwelling place? I love the Psalms because it'll say, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Taste and sight is experiential. It's not just theological affirmation. Have you ever felt, Spurgeon asks, "Have you ever known what it is to have God for your dwelling place?" In the sense of true comfort? If you, he says, like the Israelites, feel like a tumbleweed bouncing around in the wilderness, God tells you, "I am your home." And then the text says, "In all generations." Moses understood that Yahweh's help did not begin in the wilderness wanderings, nor did it begin in the exodus from Egypt, but from the moment God breathed life into Adam, God had been the home of His children. And God has been our dwelling place to this very moment. If you feel out of place, if you feel nomadic, God is your home. And I love what the hymn writer says: "O God, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, in our eternal home."
Verse 2 says, "Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." Earth is a baby. God always was. God is eternal. If God were temporal like us, the Psalmist is saying, He could never be a refuge to temporal beings. If God were like us, He could not offer us refuge. He would be an uncertain dwelling place for His people. This is a theme throughout the Psalms and throughout the Bible. God is eternal. He isn't surprised. He doesn't check the news. He doesn't have Twitter. He doesn't need to check the weather. He knows the weather. He ordains the weather. He is never alarmed. He's never alarmed. If God had a beginning, God had a creator. If God has an ending, God cannot offer life to anyone. You cannot give what you do not have. We take the character of God for granted. We can entrust our lives to God and the remaining days that we have on Earth because God is eternal. Humanity is mortal, but humanity, in a sense, is immortal as well, because our souls will last forever. Every soul born will live forever. I ask you, even now, do you look at people like that? But only God is from everlasting to everlasting. Isaiah 46:9 says, "I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times." We just sang that, "things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.'" This is the God who teaches us to number our days because we are here for just a moment. And because we are here for just a moment, I want to grab everyone by the collars and tell you, we have no time to waste. God didn't save you to merely be a part of a Wednesday night Bible study. God saved you to accomplish a purpose. "I will accomplish my purpose." We just read, and God's purpose includes you.
Now, after verse 2, God's eternality is set up against the reality of man's brevity, and verse 3, and what we're going to see next is the sovereignty of God in verses 3 through 7. So, first, the eternality of God, and now the sovereignty of God in 3 through 7. It says, "To you," in verse 3, "turn man back into dust and say, 'Return, O children of men.' For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night. You have swept them away like a flood; they fall asleep. In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew; in the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; toward evening it fades and withers away." We are all dying. We're all dying. Genesis 2:7 says, "The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." What you and I are, humanity is a mixture of deity and dust. Sin has marred, perverted, and distorted the image of God in humanity, and as a result, you and I, we all have a date with death. We all have a date with death. Hebrews 9:22 says, "It is appointed once for man to die, and then comes judgment." We return to the dust.
I remember being at a funeral home for the first time when I was a boy. And all I knew when I was little is that when people died, they went to heaven. So I was so confused when we went to go see someone in an open casket, because I thought the, you know, eternal valley was heaven. And I remember, I remember being asked in Sunday school, "What was heaven like?" And I just remember there were a lot of peppermints because I'd been there. And I was really, really confused. But I remember, as we put a body into the ground, the first gravesite I'd ever been to, remember hearing, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." We all return to the dust. The Psalm says, and the question is, why? Why? And Moses says it's because, think about this, God turns us back to dust. God sends us there. From our human experience, someone might die prematurely, but overall, it was God who sent them there. You and I won't exceed past the number preordained by God by one moment. It has been allotted by God. Psalm 139, remember memorizing this as a kid with my parents: "All our days were written in your book before one of them came to be." All of our days are written by God. And we will return to the dust.
Verse 4 says, "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night." I was curious, and so I went to the source of all wisdom, Wikipedia. Here are the empires of the last thousand years: Holy Roman Empire, the Western, my butcher, this one, Chalukya Empire of South India, the Western Qi Dynasty of China, the Second Bulgarian Empire that lasted for 237 years, the Mongol Empire from 1206 to 1368 AD, the Ottoman Empire that lasted for 623 years, 623 years until 1922, the Aztec Empire, the British Empire, the German Empire, the American Empire. And verse 4 says, "A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday." God looks at the empires of history and says, "Yesterday." Four blinks, 30 blinks, a snap of my fingers. "Or as a watch in the night." The glory and obliteration of empires are forgotten. You will likely elude the pens of history. A thousand years are merely blips on the radar of God's eternality, tiny islands in the sea of all that He knows. And we are just a moment.
Verse 5 says, "You sweep them away like a flood; they fall asleep. In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew; in the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; toward evening it fades and withers away." There are three consecutive metaphors here for death, and it all comes quickly. It's like a flash flood in the Middle East. There are these dry climates, and then when it rains, it's like a wave of water that comes and bears everything in its path. And that's what the Psalmist is saying death is like for you and me. It's like a wave of water that bears away the generations of man. And it's like a blade of grass where, because it's cool in the summer, the dew will cause these little, little grass blades to rise up through the earth. But when the sun comes at noon, it scorches the grass away, and it's gone. One writer says, "Here is the history of the grass." I love this: "Sown, grown, blown, mown, gone." You are like grass. Isaiah 40, verse 6: "All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field; the grass withers, the flowers fail; we die." God is forever. God is forever. I don't want to take this too quick, because I want you to see, do you see how important it is that you use your life for the glory of God? And I know we say that, but have you ever done that?
Up next, we see the justice of God in the following verses. It says, "For we have been consumed," verse 7, "by your anger and by your wrath; we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence." The Psalmist is relating to us something so clear: that we die because we are sinners. The holy justice of God demands that sin be punished. Sin is what kills us. Sin is at the bottom of man's frailty, the brevity, the tragedy of life. Think about the context. Moses is wandering through the desert. They didn't trust God. They sinned against God, and as a result, an entire generation died and missed out on the blessing of God. Why do we die? Why do our days pass away? Why do we have such a relatively small amount of days on Earth? The answer is that we die because we are sinners. And the question for us is, if sin is so serious, why do we treat it so casually in our own life? We get angry for the wrong reasons, at the wrong things, and express it in the wrong way. God's anger is holy. The holiness of God cannot allow sinners to continue to live as if sin does not matter. Divine wrath. God's divine wrath. Think about this: is equal to all the obedience that is due to God. Divine wrath is God's righteousness responding to human unrighteousness. God is not a cosmic grandparent entertaining the high treason of His grand-kiddos. He hates sin. He hates sin.
Verse 8 says, "For you have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence." There are no secret sins before God. Everything, Hebrews 4, is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him who sees everything and to whom we will give an account. You may be able to hide your sin from people, but you cannot hide your sin from God. What is a secret on Earth is an open scandal in Heaven. The camera is always rolling. The microphone is always on. God always knows. Any secret sin that you're holding onto, number one, is utter foolishness, the Psalmist says, before a God who sees everything. And number two, robs you of the life, as we'll see in just a moment, that God has intended you to live. You might be asking, "Wait, doesn't God remove our sins as far as the east is from the west? Doesn't He move our sins and plunge them into the sea of His forgetfulness?" Yes, legally, eternally. But God knows your sin, even for a believer. And many people in the Bible forfeited blessing and usefulness to God because they hung onto it so tightly.
Verse 9: "All our days have declined in your fury; we have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, or if due to strength, 80 years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due to you?" None of us understand how much God hates sin. God is not just concerned with our sin; He is angry at our sin. We say, "I hear it at camp all the time: God loves the sinner, hates the sin." No. Psalm 5, Psalm 8, Psalm 10. God hates sinners. Who understands the fury of God towards sin? None of us. It says, "Who, who fear you and your fury according to the fear that is due you?" None of us fear God too much. And one thing to note as we consider the fury of God is that we started off by talking about the eternality of God. But every single one of the attributes of God, think about this, is eternal. His love is eternal. He Himself is eternal. And if His wrath is a part of His character, then that means His wrath is also eternal. Hell is never described as a temporary place. It never ends. Jonathan Edwards used to speak with tears in his eyes, saying that in a thousand years or in a million years, the people in hell are no sooner to the end of their torment than when they first showed up. They only have eternity left. "Send Lazarus to dip water and put it on my tongue." And God says, "No, no." I don't think we live like this. I don't think we live like this. I don't think you view your neighbors like this. Who understands God, the wrath of your fury against sin? I don't know if we view unsaved family and friends at a Thanksgiving dinner like this, or people that come and hang out with us for Christmas, or the parents on our child's sports team. Who understands the wrath that is due an eternal God? He's eternally glorious, eternally merciful and loving, and He has eternal wrath.
And here comes the high note of the song. If this is true, if God, You are eternal, if You are a refuge for those who trust in You, if You are the home of nomads, if You don't need to check the news, if in a world of limbo, what's going to happen next with the election, with my job, with COVID, God already knows, and regardless of which, He is our home. If this is true, verse 12: "Teach me, God, to number my days, that I might present to You a heart of wisdom." Calvin says that even though we know we are going to die, we live each day like we are going to live forever because we are so tied to the transient. Imagine here, I flip over an hourglass, and sand is just running through it. That is our life. But we view that hourglass as if it just has a perpetual, endless amount of sand. You don't have another grain promised to you. And the Psalmist is saying, "God, I want to measure today in light of eternity." You are an absolute fool. The Bible says, if you live your life, even if you're a Christian, you're a fool. It says if you live your life like there is no end to it, you cannot present to God a heart of wisdom if you do not properly value the scarcity of your time.
A boxing legend won the Olympic gold in 1968, and then he went on to win the heavyweight championship in 1973, and then, however, just a few years later, this athlete filed for bankruptcy. No, this is not Rocky V. This is a true story. Should have never made the Rocky. Um, but after losing it all, he turned a corner late in his life and made it all back and then some, not by boxing, but by marketing portable, electronically heated grills called George Foreman's. George Foreman is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars for panini makers. Good dip, balsamic, I'll take them. Fortunes are lost and rebuilt, but no one can have back yesterday. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. Don't waste your life. Don't waste your neighbors, or the parents you're around, or the opportunities at work. Once they are gone, they are gone. You cannot have them back. It is not like money.
And as Moses led this procession through the wilderness, funeral after funeral after funeral, he taught them, "Remember this is a song. Sing about God's eternality. To sing about God's sovereignty. To sing about God's justice." And they sang, "God is sovereign. Life is short. Judgment's coming. Death is sure. Number your days." But the song is not merely sorrowful. It is filled with hope for you and for me. Judgment is in God's hand, but so is His own grace. The grace of God in verses 13-17. "Do return, O Lord, how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. Satisfy us." Actually, it says, "Oh, satisfy us." I love that. It seems more earnest to me. "Oh, God, I love that. Satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." This is the Hesed love of God. Maybe you've heard that before, or maybe it's new. This is God's loyal love. It means that God doesn't change His mind about us. It means that it is consistent and that it is faithful. Augustine said, "In loving us, God, that is, He made us lovable, not because we are lovable, but because of who loves us." And God's love for us is not dictated by anything we do. And I know that we know that, maybe you've grown up hearing that God loves us perfectly and unceasingly. And the Psalmist says, and really asks us the question, "Do you want satisfaction? Do you want to be filled in a way that no earthly possession or achievement or person can offer?" And Moses said, "Ask the Lord for that satisfaction."
For a moment, I just want to draw our attention to the reality and maybe just ask you, how many Christians do you know live in a dying world and exhibit that they are completely and totally enthralled in the satisfaction that God alone can bring them? I don't want to, I'm not asking how many of you theologically affirm it. How many Christians do you know exhibit that God alone is their satisfaction? I hope it's you. Blake prayed, "You are the light of the world." Jesus said in John, "I am the light of the world," and in Matthew, He says, "You are the light of the world." He doesn't command us to be the light of the world; He says, "You are." And one of the ways that you can be a light in a dying and dark world is by exhibiting that Jesus Christ is the satisfaction of wandering, nomadic souls on Earth as we wait for Heaven. Parents, do you exhibit? I am asking, do you exhibit that Jesus and your faith is not something that you merely attend, but to your children, that it is your greatest satisfaction? Well, I grew up hearing stats about why so many high school kids walk away from the church once they're 18. It's not because of youth group games. It's maybe because they've never seen anybody thrilled by what God was doing in their own life. They've rarely ever seen anybody so satisfied. You know, one of the things that became very, you know, one of the things I, I just, even the last year, um, there's a guy here that lives in Kingsburg. He was one of the first guys I ever remember just asking me every day, "What's gone done in your life? What's got done in your life today? Can I tell you what He's taught me today? Can I tell you how He's filled me today?" It's one of the most contagious and enthralling things I've just even been around.
Lord, we can pray. There are a lot of things in my heart that satisfy my soul this morning. I want us to pray like that. It says, um, that we can rejoice all our days. And then it says, "Make us glad," in verse 15, "according to the days that You have afflicted us, in the years that we have seen evil." Verse 16: "Let Your work appear to Your servants, and Your majesty to their children." I love this. "Let Your work appear to Your servants." He's saying, "God, I've been on the bench. I've been riding the pine. Put me in the game. I want to live for something that matters." God, if this is true, if You want to teach me to number my days, how does that happen? Well, first, Christianity can't just be something that I agree with. It can't be something that I nominally attend. It must be something that satisfies me. If I want my days on Earth to matter, teach me, God, then number one, God, satisfy me only in You. I don't want to just believe this. I don't want to just say yes. I don't want to check a box. I want to be personally thrilled by who You are. And then, God, after You answer that prayer, every single moment and every single day, the rest of my life, consequently and simultaneously, make me glad. Give me a heart of joy. Verse 16: "Then let Your work appear to Your servants." God, put my hand with Your hand on the plow, and let me get after it, and let me get after it. Let me live for that which matters.
One of the key components of being made in the image of God is that you have work to do. God is not a God of rest. He rested after He did a work. And as long as you and I are living and breathing, we have a work to do. You cannot value your days if you ignore the most precious and clear command of scripture. You are an ambassador of Jesus Christ. God didn't save you to bash the left on Twitter or to point out how lost everyone else is. God saved you so that you might tell them the gospel of Jesus Christ. And in bringing glory to His name, you would bring others who live valuing their days for the glory of God because of Jesus Christ.
Verse 17: "Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and confirm for us the work of Your hands; yes, confirm for us the work of our hands." Let me just remind you, this Psalm is taking the, the stony, bony fingers of mortality and leading us to Jesus Himself, and not to sorrow or despair. He's saying, "God, confirm for us." Only one life. God is soon going to be passed. "Only what's done for Christ will last." In a million years from now, we're going to be embarrassed, I think, by how little we valued our days. I think I will be. I know in Heaven there's no sin, but the thing I thought about more lately than anything is, will there be regret? It doesn't say there will be no tears in Heaven. It says that He will wipe away every tear, meaning that there will be. And I think part of the tears in my own life are going to be realizing that people I saw every single day are in an eternity in Hell. And the Psalm is saying, "God, please confirm for us." You've given me an allotted amount of time, and the way that I glorify You on Earth is not ambiguous. It's not obscure. It's by leveraging and maximizing the use of my time for the advancement of the gospel. I'm so glad Jonathan Edwards didn't have social media. I'm so glad that Calvin didn't have email because they did stuff. They did stuff. You know why we read missionary biographies? I grew up reading them. They didn't have other options. They looked at their time and said, "Man, what new ministries can I start? What churches can I plant? What businesses can I start for the glory of God?" For the glory of God. He says, "Confirm for us the work of our hands." Moses understands that only the endeavors that are blessed by God matter. Only the endeavors that are blessed by God and for Him last. It is a recognition of the frailty of your hands and my hands, which will turn back to dust. I don't know when, but the Bible says soon. This Psalm says to God, "Only that which God performs through me will matter. Will matter." It reminds me, I think it's Psalm 67: "The Lord bless us and be gracious to us and His face shine upon us." Okay, God, I want Your blessing. Be gracious to me. Shine upon me. Verse 2: "I think Psalm 67, so that Your name may be known in all the earth and Your salvation to all the nations." God, bless me so that I might promote, preach.
You are in stadiums and on streets and around the dinner table. Two weeks ago, I received a call from my friend that I work with at The Master's University. He works in the same office as me. He brews really terrible coffee. He looks at you sideways when he talks like this, and I'm like, "Dude, turn around." Um, he's the father of six, a fun guy, and he also serves as a pastor in the San Fernando Valley. I've really grown up knowing him, uh, because he, yeah, he's been around most of my life. A few weeks ago, he called me on Friday night. He wasn't feeling super hot, and he asked me to preach for him on Sunday. And I knew he was desperate. So he calls me and says, "Hey, will you preach for me on Sunday? I'm not feeling too well." And he finished the call by just saying, "Preach hard. Preach hard." And two days later, Mark was in Heaven. Just wasn't feeling well. Went in on Sunday afternoon. I went to the parking lot with his friends and family, and then we were told over Zoom that he had died. And I've seen people die. One of my best friend's moms died of breast cancer when we were in college. I lived with them. She died young. It felt premature, but this was, uh, the most shocking death of my life. "Not feeling well." "Johnny, no worries." And two days later, he's with the Lord. At his funeral, there was a video tribute to Mark Rodriguez, and the song that played in the background was a familiar song, and then were these words: "I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow. A wave tossed in the ocean, a vapor in the wind." That was true for Mark's life, but Mark lived for that which lasted. "Only one life, I love it. Will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last."
In just a couple more minutes, someone else understood the transitory nature of human life and went before us as an example of what it looks like to leverage and maximize our time on Earth. Jesus says in John 9, "We must do the work of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work." Jesus's life was on a divine timetable to get after it. Why do we view our life any differently? There is a God-appointed work for a God-allotted amount of time. There must be in your life, in my life, a sense of urgency to carry out that work because night is coming. Jesus says, and that refers to death. Jesus couldn't procrastinate. He couldn't put it off. His life was on the clock. God has done the same with you. Jesus says, John 4, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me." There is an energy in doing what God had made Him to do. God was glorified through Jesus. That was Jesus's mission. Much like Jonathan Edwards, he wanted to glorify Jesus, or glorify God His Father. And how did He do that? John 17:4, "by accomplishing the work." Oh God, John 4, "that You have sent Me to do." God prescripted a work for Jesus to do, and the way that Jesus glorified God while He was on Earth was by doing that work. God has also prescripted a work for you and I to do, and the way that we glorify God is by doing the work that He has prescripted and preordained for us to do. Ephesians 2:10: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God created beforehand, that you would obey them, that you would walk in them." The key word in Jesus's life in the book of Mark is the word "immediately." Forty times the word "immediately." Jesus was doing stuff. He understood that His time was short. And Jesus Christ, in His incarnation, experienced what Moses experienced: the need to have God as His refuge. What it means to have your life cut short on a human level. Jesus experienced temptation and sorrow in every single part of what it means to be human. And Jesus, in His humanity, experienced the full measure of the wrath of God so that you would not have to, but rather so that through His nail-pierced hands, He could offer you not only the forgiveness of your sins, but the satisfaction you are searching for, and the purpose you are searching for, and the use of your time which God has given to you.
Perhaps no other year in my life and in yours has been as strong of a reminder of the fragility and frailty and brevity of human life. And Jesus is an example for us. God, only the days that are for You matter. And only by taking my hand with your hand and putting it to the plow will my life matter in a thousand years from now. I so desperately want that for you, and I so desperately pray that for me.