back to index2018-01-06 Look Up, Look In, Look Out Part 2
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If you can turn your Bibles to Psalm chapter 90, we're going to be reading from verse 1-12. 00:00:11.280 |
Our focus is on the second part of the sermon series in chapter 90. 00:00:17.400 |
I'm going to be focusing on the second part, verses 7-12. 00:00:25.880 |
This week it's going to be "Looking in" and next week it's going to be "Looking out." 00:00:36.000 |
Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations. 00:00:39.160 |
Before the mountains were born, you gave birth to the earth and the world. 00:00:43.520 |
Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. 00:00:46.240 |
You turn man back into dust and say, "Return, O children of men." 00:00:51.040 |
For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by. 00:00:59.360 |
In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. 00:01:02.240 |
In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew. 00:01:07.760 |
For we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath we have been dismayed. 00:01:11.920 |
You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. 00:01:21.720 |
As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years or of due strength, eighty years. 00:01:32.460 |
Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due 00:01:37.680 |
So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. 00:01:44.680 |
Heavenly Father, we pray that as we face the new year in 2019, we ask Lord God as the 00:01:53.280 |
psalmist asks that we would number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 00:02:00.200 |
That we may live Lord God not to spend our days but to invest it for the things that 00:02:07.760 |
We ask Lord you give us soberness, a deeper understanding of who you are, where we stand 00:02:13.480 |
before you, that we may not drift Lord God from year to year, from month to month. 00:02:20.280 |
Help us Lord to run with a clear purpose and clear aim. 00:02:25.980 |
So we ask for your direction and your Holy Spirit to speak to us through your word. 00:02:32.760 |
Again, as a quick review, the reason why we're taking some time in Psalm 90 before we jump 00:02:38.560 |
into the book of Hebrews is because again as we concluded 2018 and we're facing new 00:02:43.780 |
year in 2019, Psalm 90 was an appropriate text for us to spend some time in. 00:02:51.520 |
Moses is about to lead the nation of Israel into the promised land. 00:02:55.540 |
They spent 40 years wandering in the desert and now they're finally going to go. 00:03:00.400 |
And obviously Moses himself doesn't make it because of a sin that he commits, but he's 00:03:07.160 |
So this is kind of like a pep talk before they get into the promised land. 00:03:10.960 |
So they're looking over the mountains and saying like if we just cross over this mountain 00:03:16.240 |
on the other side is where God was leading them and they should have been there 40 years 00:03:20.760 |
earlier but because of their unbelief God caused them to wander out in the desert for 00:03:26.680 |
But before they enter he's trying to warn them and encourage them that entering into 00:03:31.800 |
the promised land doesn't mean that you're finally home. 00:03:35.680 |
And so he begins chapter 90 by reminding them God is your refuge. 00:03:40.760 |
He is your dwelling place, not your promised land. 00:03:50.740 |
Just because you go there and then you're surrounded by mountains and you're fortified 00:03:54.120 |
and finally you can have a stable nation doesn't mean that you have arrived. 00:04:00.980 |
Before we get there don't forget that your refuge, your strength has always been with 00:04:07.740 |
Before the mountains were ever created God was. 00:04:10.180 |
And so that was the first part that he was talking about in the first section verses 00:04:16.620 |
To look up before we enter the promised land. 00:04:20.700 |
But in light of who he is, if he is our dwelling place, if he is our God, if he is our life, 00:04:28.260 |
the most important question that any human being has to ask and repeatedly ask is where 00:04:35.500 |
do you stand in your relationship with this God? 00:04:40.140 |
It's not a question about whether you go to church, whether you grew up in a Christian 00:04:44.660 |
home, how well you can recite the gospel, or how well did you serve the church. 00:04:52.140 |
In your relationship with this God where do you stand? 00:04:58.620 |
He started by reminding them about who God is. 00:05:02.520 |
And then the section that we're looking at this morning verses 7 through 12 he teaches 00:05:06.700 |
us to see where they stand before this holy God. 00:05:11.180 |
Now on the surface I'm just going to tell you ahead of time, you know, it doesn't sound 00:05:18.300 |
If you have a group of people that you're going to lead into the promised land and you're 00:05:21.180 |
trying to encourage them to be focused and to rely on God, verse 7 through 12 really 00:05:28.940 |
at least in and of itself is going to sound like, "Wow, that's his pep talk? 00:05:33.380 |
God is angry with you and we're going to die? 00:05:41.460 |
I mean he's not a great motivational speaker if you see it in that context. 00:05:45.220 |
But you're going to see why this is so crucial to their life and success in the promised 00:05:50.660 |
land because if you don't understand where you stand before God, you can be mistaken 00:05:56.860 |
all your life thinking that somehow you have made it and then when you are in the presence 00:06:03.180 |
of this holy God and God says, "I never knew you." 00:06:06.900 |
So the most important question that any individual must ask is, "Where do I stand before this 00:06:16.440 |
Who is God to the nation of Israel, to God's people? 00:06:18.900 |
And this week Moses is reminding them where the Israelites were because of their sins. 00:06:25.140 |
So first he says, "The reason why we die, the reason why the nation of Israel has passed 00:06:30.760 |
away in verse 7, we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath we have been 00:06:37.060 |
Now you have to understand Moses has led 600,000 fighting men into the desert, meaning including 00:06:45.900 |
women and children there's probably well over 1.5 million people. 00:06:50.780 |
According to scripture, every single one of those people died out into the desert except 00:06:58.180 |
The two spies, Joshua and Caleb, outside of those two, that means 1.5 million people perished 00:07:05.020 |
So Moses is looking at them, reminding them, "Don't forget the reason why you and I perished 00:07:12.780 |
In other words, he's telling them, "Don't repeat this when you get into the promised 00:07:18.180 |
The reason why we're in the condition that we are is because we have been consumed by 00:07:25.300 |
Obviously when he says consumed, he's talking about their death, their perishing. 00:07:29.340 |
And when he says the word anger, the word anger in Hebrew literally means nostrils. 00:07:35.900 |
When I think about the imagery that's given here is, you know when you see a cartoon and 00:07:40.020 |
the bull is angry and he begins to flare his nostrils before he begins to rush, right? 00:07:45.860 |
And that's the picture of God and his anger burning against Israel because of their sin. 00:07:53.860 |
In the King James Version it says we are terrified. 00:08:02.780 |
He's reminding the nation of Israel that this is not, first and foremost, a friendly God. 00:08:08.140 |
In fact, all throughout the book of Leviticus, God was teaching the nation of Israel, "You 00:08:14.780 |
cannot, you cannot just nonchalantly come into my presence. 00:08:20.740 |
All of everything that we studied in the book of Leviticus taught Israel, you are a sinner 00:08:25.420 |
until you are atoned for, until you are covered by the blood of the animal, you cannot enter 00:08:33.540 |
Remember when we were studying the book of Leviticus chapter 10, the first priests that 00:08:38.540 |
bring an offering to God, they are consumed by God's holy fire because they didn't follow 00:08:47.420 |
Imagine what the nation of Israel felt as they were practicing the book of Leviticus, 00:08:52.540 |
as they were practicing the laws of Leviticus. 00:08:54.700 |
Because every single day they are reminded, without the shedding of blood there is no 00:09:03.380 |
Literally over and over again, even out in the desert, God becomes so angry. 00:09:08.060 |
He wanted to literally just open up the ground and just take them all out. 00:09:12.860 |
And there are times when Moses is the one who's pleading on his behalf, "Lord, what 00:09:17.100 |
will the nation say that you brought us out here and if you consumed all of us?" 00:09:22.220 |
And so God remains patient because of his interceding. 00:09:25.700 |
But he reminds the nation of Israel, first and foremost, that the God who is our refuge 00:09:35.580 |
Don't forget what happened out in the desert. 00:09:40.460 |
Part of the reason why Christianity has become what it has become in our generation is because 00:09:51.820 |
When disaster happens in our generation, the natural, the question that comes up from the 00:09:57.980 |
secular world is, "If the God that you tell us is so good, why are these bad things happening? 00:10:09.460 |
Why would a loving God allow famine to happen? 00:10:12.180 |
Why would a loving God allow starvation to happen, sex trafficking to happen? 00:10:17.980 |
Why would a God that you say loves the world so much allow that to happen?" 00:10:25.060 |
Part of the reason why that's the first question that comes up whenever a disaster happens 00:10:29.580 |
is because they do not understand where man stands before God. 00:10:36.020 |
The gospel does not begin by saying that God loves you and his compassion, has a wonderful 00:10:46.420 |
If you read the book of Romans, it says the wrath of God remains and it is being revealed 00:10:54.980 |
So the gospel of God begins by telling us that a holy God is angry with the world. 00:11:04.980 |
Because until we recognize that a holy God is angry with the rebellious world, the natural 00:11:13.260 |
question when disaster happens is, "Why would that gentle, loving, caring God allow this 00:11:20.180 |
So when you understand the gospel in the way that it is presented in the scripture, the 00:11:25.140 |
natural question really should be is, "Why would a God who is that angry allow us to 00:11:36.380 |
If the God that you are telling us is so angry with the world because of our sins, why do 00:11:42.140 |
That's the question that the world should be asking if the gospel is presented correctly. 00:11:48.380 |
We have become so concerned with getting people through the door that we have compromised 00:11:57.020 |
And because of the compromise of the gospel, that the application of the gospel and the 00:12:02.900 |
living of the gospel doesn't look anything like what we see in scripture. 00:12:08.540 |
Some of you guys may have seen this advertisement this week. 00:12:12.660 |
I believe it was either this week or last week it came out. 00:12:16.060 |
The military has a new marketing strategy to get millennials to come into the military. 00:12:27.300 |
Basically the military has gotten now a poster saying, "We welcome snowflakes, selfie addicts, 00:12:43.540 |
Because they're having such a hard time getting millennials to volunteer for the military. 00:12:48.540 |
Well, we got to find a way to get them to recruit them into the military. 00:12:53.180 |
Now contrast that to the previous years of how they advertise military. 00:12:59.340 |
Some of you guys may remember, depending on what generation you grew up in, that Uncle 00:13:10.340 |
Or when I was younger, the thing was, "Be all that you can be." 00:13:43.140 |
And the reason why this made the news was because the moment that they become a soldier, 00:13:49.700 |
they're going to have to train that out of them. 00:13:53.220 |
No soldier who is a snowflake is going to be useful in the military. 00:13:57.580 |
No soldier who is self-absorbed and selfie addict is going to be useful in combat. 00:14:03.980 |
So they attract them to come in, but once they come in, I'm pretty sure the basic training 00:14:12.300 |
Once they get in, the basic training is going to be the same for everybody. 00:14:14.620 |
They're just trying to get them through the door. 00:14:18.740 |
We have preached the gospel in such a way to get them through the door once they get 00:14:21.900 |
in, what they hear and what they see in the scripture is so unlike what was promised. 00:14:29.220 |
And we've allowed it in the church where it no longer looks like what we see in scripture. 00:14:36.460 |
If we don't recognize first and foremost where we stand, where sinners stand before a holy 00:14:44.060 |
God didn't come to a sinful world to help us live a better life. 00:14:49.900 |
He didn't come to a sinful world because he saw the world and they were hungry, so he 00:14:56.980 |
He saved us from his own wrath, from his own anger because of our sins. 00:15:03.540 |
And he's reminded the nation of Israel, do not forget, the reason why we perish is because 00:15:10.020 |
Verse 8, you have placed our iniquities before you. 00:15:13.340 |
Now in the Bible, there's three separate degrees of sin. 00:15:16.180 |
The first degree of sin is the general sin that covers all sins. 00:15:21.220 |
In the Greek, the word that is used is hamartion. 00:15:23.820 |
And it is a general term meaning whatever God wanted for you, you didn't hit it. 00:15:29.980 |
And it doesn't sound as bad when you explain it that way. 00:15:37.820 |
Willfully choosing what God told you not to do or not doing what God told you to do. 00:15:47.540 |
The word that is used here in Hebrew, iniquity, is a much deeper word than that. 00:15:54.360 |
It's not just simply talking about missing the mark. 00:15:56.140 |
It's not talking simply about willfully doing an act. 00:15:59.320 |
It's talking about the corrupt nature of man. 00:16:02.620 |
You know we talk about we are sinners because we sin. 00:16:05.780 |
Iniquity, the word iniquity teaches us we sin because we're sinners. 00:16:12.900 |
In Psalm 51 verse 5 it says, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother 00:16:20.620 |
We didn't become sinners when we reached the age of accountability and all of a sudden 00:16:32.700 |
Not only were we conceived and born in sin, Jeremiah 13, 23 says, "Can the Ethiopian change 00:16:40.460 |
Then you also can do good for accustomed to doing evil." 00:16:45.140 |
Not only were you conceived in sin, born into sin, there's nothing you can do to change 00:16:54.420 |
It's not something that you did and say, "Well, I'm not going to do that anymore." 00:16:58.100 |
Because the term iniquity means there is a corruption, a rotting, a spiritual cancer 00:17:06.380 |
And the scripture says we are consumed because our rebellion goes much deeper than what you 00:17:14.800 |
If there's any particular thing that stands out to me in sanctification, you know, oftentimes 00:17:19.740 |
we think of sanctification as, you know, here's some things that bad habits that I had and 00:17:24.500 |
things that I weren't disciplined in and then as I was sanctified, I got better. 00:17:30.180 |
I got better at purity and I got better doing this and that. 00:17:33.460 |
And all of these things are things that we need to work on as Christians. 00:17:38.260 |
But at the core of our sanctification is a deepening recognition of just how far we are 00:17:49.620 |
And until we recognize that, Christ becomes a want and not a need. 00:17:56.100 |
There is a huge difference between a Christian who wants Christ versus a Christian who needs 00:18:03.420 |
A person who wants Christ can want him one day and not want him the next day. 00:18:08.860 |
Can want him in the beginning of the year and at the end of the year not want him because 00:18:15.380 |
See, the beginning of the gospel teaches us our desperateness. 00:18:21.900 |
Where we stand before this holy God in our sins, we are consumed. 00:18:28.660 |
He says our secret sins are exposed in the light of his presence in verse 8. 00:18:36.740 |
Intimately standing before this holy God, the first thing that gets exposed is our secret 00:18:43.260 |
You know, there are sins that are pretty obvious. 00:18:45.660 |
The scripture says not to lay on hands hastily because some men's sins are obvious. 00:18:56.340 |
You walk into the door, there comes a sinner. 00:19:08.980 |
But no matter how good we are in hiding our sins, it says in the presence of God, it gets 00:19:16.140 |
You notice that in every instance where a man of God stands before this holy God, their 00:19:22.420 |
first reaction before they're even awed by God is terror. 00:19:31.580 |
He's being chosen to represent him to speak to the nation of Israel and he sees a vision 00:19:37.740 |
The first thing that happens, he falls to the ground in terror. 00:19:43.020 |
I am a man of unclean lips from the people of unclean lips. 00:19:49.060 |
He doesn't stand there and say, "Oh my gosh, you're so holy. 00:19:53.500 |
These Israelites, how can they live like that if you're like this?" 00:20:04.540 |
The first thing that happens is he recognizes his own sins and he falls to the ground in 00:20:13.300 |
That's the first thing that happens when somebody is confronted by his holy presence. 00:20:19.740 |
They're not preoccupied with what other people are doing. 00:20:23.140 |
They're not disgusted by other people's sins because the sin that is nearest to them is 00:20:32.260 |
Our secret sins that we did do such a great job hiding is exposed in the presence of this 00:20:43.500 |
You can fake it in front of other people, your closest friends, with church people, 00:20:48.140 |
even with your wife and your husband at times. 00:21:03.540 |
He sees a holy God, falls to the ground in terror. 00:21:06.780 |
Disciples, when God's glory is revealed through Jesus, they fall to the ground. 00:21:13.860 |
They're not saying, "Oh, these Pharisees, how can they not believe you?" 00:21:17.420 |
That's not the first thing that comes out of their mouth. 00:21:25.940 |
Because their sins get exposed in the presence of his glory. 00:21:30.900 |
He says, "All our days have declined in your fury. 00:21:36.100 |
Because you are a holy God and you're angry with us, our life diminishes." 00:21:40.500 |
And then he says, "We have finished our years like a sigh." 00:21:45.660 |
They're not going into the promised land with a bang. 00:21:49.900 |
Majority of them have been washed out already and only Caleb and Joshua are walking into 00:21:56.020 |
And even Moses himself, because he makes a mistake, he doesn't get in. 00:21:59.540 |
He says, "We're ending this journey with a sigh." 00:22:11.220 |
And when it says our life ends with a sigh, sigh obviously is a metaphor. 00:22:16.420 |
They're talking about being deeply distraught, to regret, or to be weary. 00:22:29.700 |
You don't go to a birthday party and say, "Oh." 00:22:43.300 |
He says, "That's the life of man in the presence of a holy God." 00:22:48.420 |
And he's reminding the nation of Israel that you're not leaping into the promised land 00:22:56.500 |
The only reason why God has allowed you to enter that is because God's been gracious 00:23:03.920 |
The first and most important thing that any human being needs to recognize before this 00:23:16.780 |
Secondly, because of this sin, because of this holy God, the life of man, he says, "As 00:23:23.540 |
for the days of our life, they contain 70 years or of due strength, 80 years." 00:23:28.340 |
He's not describing that all human beings die at 70 or 80. 00:23:32.460 |
Moses is well over 100 when he's writing this. 00:23:36.460 |
Basically what he's saying is that yet your boast is only labor and sorrow. 00:23:39.660 |
If let's say an average person lives 70 and then if you work hard to stay in shape, right? 00:23:54.500 |
I mean you like worked your tail off and you added 10 more years to your life. 00:24:01.540 |
So if you live an average 70 years, if you work hard 80 years, he said, "Yet your boast 00:24:09.220 |
In other words, all you've done extended your hardship. 00:24:13.700 |
Instead of 70 years of hardship, you have 80 years of hardship. 00:24:20.660 |
And it is a reflection of what God said to Adam in Genesis chapter 3. 00:24:26.140 |
He says, "Cursed is the ground because of you," and talking about Adam, "because of 00:24:31.340 |
In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." 00:24:35.220 |
I mean, you know, so many of you guys are young. 00:24:56.300 |
I don't care how much they enjoyed it 10 years ago. 00:25:01.300 |
A lot of times it doesn't even take more than that, a couple of years. 00:25:16.340 |
Joe actually wanted to be a cop since he was like third grade or second grade. 00:25:22.300 |
Ask him if he feels like his dream came true. 00:25:33.620 |
He says, "Every man's experience with this life, no matter how long you live, no matter 00:25:39.300 |
how much you toil, no matter how much you try to lengthen it, in the end, our experience 00:25:48.140 |
Both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you and you will eat the plants of the field 00:25:53.460 |
You will eat bread till you return to the ground because from it you were taken for 00:26:00.060 |
And then he says, "For soon it is gone and we fly away." 00:26:04.740 |
And we think about it, Moses is watching everybody that he led basically die out in the desert 00:26:20.980 |
Who understands, verse 11, "The power of your anger and your fury according to fear that 00:26:30.620 |
It's more of a command to recognize the fury of God's anger. 00:26:38.180 |
First and foremost, the fear of the Lord, the scripture says, is the beginning of wisdom. 00:26:46.420 |
Once we recognize who he is, then we recognize what it is that we have in Christ. 00:26:54.060 |
Years ago, before my father passed, years before he passed, he had a bad heart attack. 00:27:02.300 |
And so we didn't know if he was going to live or not. 00:27:04.620 |
So we ended up taking him to a hospital way out in Corona. 00:27:08.260 |
He was there for 10 days and so obviously our family didn't know if he was going to 00:27:12.600 |
So we were all on high alert and by the grace of God, he made it through that. 00:27:17.780 |
And then obviously the doctor said, "He's not completely strong so make sure that he's 00:27:23.060 |
And so on the way back home, I think he was living in Tustin at that time, on the way 00:27:28.020 |
back home we stopped over at my house and I was living in Corona and we had a swimming 00:27:34.220 |
And so my dad, basically the doctor said, "Don't do anything strenuous because he's 00:27:39.340 |
And we had him sitting outside just relaxing and then the kids were going swimming. 00:27:45.540 |
And so my dad was sitting outside and all the kids, we ended up going back inside. 00:27:51.060 |
And so all the adults are inside and all of a sudden we hear this splash in the water. 00:27:59.540 |
And so something happened and you could tell by the noise. 00:28:02.660 |
So we all ran outside and we saw my dad in the pool. 00:28:06.740 |
And so my oldest son, Jeremy, he was probably no more than four or five at the time. 00:28:11.500 |
We saw my dad basically fishing him out of the water and at that he didn't know how to 00:28:16.820 |
So what happened was he had two older cousins, Nathan and Matthew, and they were a little 00:28:23.940 |
So they put the slide, you know, the little slide next to the pool. 00:28:28.940 |
And so they were getting up and sliding into the water back and forth and so Jeremy thought, 00:28:34.820 |
And so after they went inside, Jeremy decided to go in and he slid into the pool but he 00:28:41.260 |
So he was facing up, you know, upside down in the pool. 00:28:44.220 |
And obviously, I mean, those of you guys who've been around little kids around pools, it's 00:28:47.500 |
dangerous because they don't make any noise when they drown. 00:28:49.980 |
So my dad was sitting there just relaxing and saw Jeremy just floating on the pool like 00:29:00.060 |
He went in there, jumped in the water and fished him out. 00:29:03.180 |
And the reaction that Jeremy gave was classic because he pulled him out and literally saved 00:29:09.260 |
Jeremy walked out and he shook it off and he turned around and said, "Thanks, Harabuji," 00:29:23.380 |
My dad ended up spraining his ankle that he, you know, it took a long time for him to heal. 00:29:29.100 |
He was bruised, I think for years because he just wouldn't heal, you know. 00:29:35.940 |
We didn't know if he was going to make it that week. 00:29:39.780 |
Jeremy was just like, "Oh, thanks, Harabuji," and just walked right in. 00:29:43.660 |
And to this day, I don't think he understands what really happened. 00:29:53.240 |
The reason why Paul takes 11 chapters describing God's mercy and His grace is so that when 00:30:01.420 |
we get to chapter 12, he says, "In view of this mercy, present your body as a living 00:30:08.340 |
See, when we don't understand what it is that you and I have been saved from, that's 00:30:15.980 |
the kind of flippant response we give to this holy God. 00:30:22.220 |
We thank Him for the jobs that we get when we're sick. 00:30:26.820 |
We thank you for circumstances or maybe good investments that we made. 00:30:32.460 |
And these are all such trivial things in light of what we already have in Christ that no 00:30:36.740 |
one could take away from you, your eternal life. 00:30:41.060 |
The Son of God has been given to us to cover us of our iniquities that we could not hide 00:30:45.820 |
before this holy God, that He gave His most precious Son to us every single day, even 00:30:54.540 |
if we live the rest of our lives living in poverty and in sickness, we ought to be praising 00:31:04.540 |
It's because we don't recognize what sin does in the presence of this holy God that we become 00:31:14.700 |
See, on the surface, it's like, "Man, this guy, what kind of a pep talk is this?" 00:31:29.500 |
The reason why He preaches sin and why the gospel starts out by saying, "All have sinned 00:31:33.980 |
and fall short of the glory of God," until we recognize where we stand before God, without 00:31:40.500 |
the covering of His blood, the rest of our life won't be given as a reasonable response. 00:31:49.140 |
That's why He concludes in verse 12 by saying, "So teach us to number our days that we may 00:31:58.500 |
In other words, He's saying, "Remind me how short my life is." 00:32:03.900 |
2019, let me never forget how quickly 2018 went. 00:32:09.880 |
Let me never forget how quickly my 20s went, my 30s went, my 40s went, and how quickly 00:32:17.300 |
Let me always remember this, how short this life is, that I may live a life of wisdom, 00:32:25.380 |
that I would depend upon a holy, eternal God who is my refuge, that I would not set my 00:32:32.840 |
You know, in 2016, they did a study on the average lifespan of Americans. 00:32:41.660 |
Now, obviously, this is all averaging young children dying early, plus people who died 00:32:49.380 |
So if you live healthy lives, I'm sure you can live longer than that. 00:32:54.220 |
So rounding it off to 80 years, that means, if you do the math, 29,200 days. 00:33:04.260 |
It says to help me number our days, so I'm actually numbering it for you. 00:33:07.620 |
29,200 days, and I'm like me specifically, 50, 51 years, 18,250 days, 10,000. 00:33:17.580 |
So I got about 10,000 days left, if I live average. 00:33:23.460 |
Some of you guys may have more, some of you guys may have less. 00:33:34.700 |
Or are they being invested for eternity on the things that matter? 00:33:41.800 |
If you believe this is your home, make the most of it. 00:33:47.700 |
And if you don't experience it, if you don't taste it, if you don't go, you're going to 00:33:52.460 |
lose out for eternity, if that's what you believe. 00:33:56.580 |
But if you believe that we're sojourners just passing by, it makes no sense for somebody 00:34:02.540 |
who is traveling to Hawaii and investing all your money to buy a nice tent to go camping 00:34:09.500 |
Because it makes no sense, because you're going to have to go home. 00:34:17.520 |
No Christian in their right mind who believes what we profess to believe live as if we're 00:34:29.340 |
How many guys know the TV series Band of Brothers? 00:34:36.900 |
Okay, so some of this is going to make sense. 00:34:58.500 |
Basically it's a movie based upon someone's journal about what actually happened. 00:35:05.620 |
And in, I think it was about third or fourth episode, they jump into Normandy on D-Day. 00:35:14.860 |
So whenever the war breaks out, he freaks out. 00:35:21.860 |
And so he's in the foxhole and the enemy starts to drop bombs and shooting. 00:35:28.220 |
And all his fellow soldiers are out of the foxhole and they're shooting. 00:35:32.540 |
And he's about to jump out and then he falls back in fear. 00:35:35.580 |
And he's hiding out in the foxhole in terror. 00:35:40.140 |
Well, after all the shooting is done, and all of his friends are out, and he's ashamed 00:35:46.500 |
And so the sergeant comes and he wants to confess. 00:35:53.300 |
And he says, "Sergeant, you know, when that thing starts shelling, you know, I jumped 00:35:59.220 |
I was, I crouched in my foxhole and I didn't go out at all." 00:36:03.340 |
And he, again, he's ashamed of himself and he's confessing this to his sergeant. 00:36:07.340 |
And sergeant says, "You know what your problem is?" 00:36:12.340 |
And he says to the private, "Private, we're all afraid. 00:36:24.860 |
And so he's just kind of looking up and he says, "It's because you think you have hope." 00:36:31.060 |
He says, "You need to realize that we're already dead. 00:36:38.580 |
Until you realize you're already dead, you're not going to be a good soldier. 00:36:43.340 |
Your life depends on it and this war depends on it. 00:36:46.660 |
You have to fight as a man who's already dead." 00:37:01.060 |
It's because you have hope that somehow if you hide in that foxhole that you're going 00:37:08.140 |
In order for you to be a good soldier, you have to accept the fact. 00:37:12.460 |
You have to accept the fact that you're a dead man and fight. 00:37:17.680 |
So many of us hide out in our foxholes because we haven't given up hope in this world. 00:37:26.140 |
That somehow if I work harder, if I make the right investments, if I align myself with 00:37:32.100 |
the right company and the right people, that I'm going to make it in this world. 00:37:38.820 |
And that false hope in this fallen world is keeping us in our foxholes, being unproductive. 00:37:48.400 |
Until we recognize that we are crucified with Christ, it is no longer us who lives. 00:37:53.840 |
And Christ who lives in us, we become useless as soldiers in God's kingdom. 00:38:03.760 |
He who loses his life for Christ, he will find it. 00:38:07.960 |
So I pray that in 2019, that we would have that eternal perspective, that recognize that 00:38:28.800 |
As our worship team leads us, let's take some time to pray.