Transcribed by Beluga AI.
Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Well, you can add prophet to one of my titles because I knew I was gonna—this was gonna be a lot of testimonies, and my sermon had to be short, so thank, thankful for the Lord for telling me, “Just keep it short today.”
Thank you for all the testimonies. Just Jesus, at some point, maybe next year, will, will be coming to America, I believe. And so, excited for all of you to meet my pastor and many of our pastors here. He is a general in God’s army, and so I’m excited that one day you’ll get to hear him preach, and hopefully he’ll come here and visit.
Thank you for all the testimonies. Matthew pretty much took the message right off of my heart, so I want to just share a couple of verses and then we’ll close.
Psalm 90. Brother Ed and I faithfully have been going through the book of Psalms at 6:15 in the morning. I know it’s early, but you’re all invited. The Zoom link is on our church website, so if you need accountability and you want to read God’s Word together first thing, 6:15, Monday through Friday.
And we covered Psalm 90 not too long ago, and two verses stuck out to me and they were relevant. So, Psalm 90:10.
10 The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. (Psalms 90:10, ESV)
Verse 12.
12 So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalms 90:12, ESV)
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, we want to have this wisdom that you promise as we understand how short, how very short our life is and how long eternity is. So, Lord, help us to have the right sense of priorities in this one short life that you give to us.
Thank you, Lord. We pray that you would speak. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
Going out to Baltimore, Maryland and listening to the testimony of Emma’s dad. The gift that the Lord gave me was a countdown that began in my heart. That Ray, you only have 20 years left, 30 years left. That’s not a lot of time. The countdown is starting. When I was in my 20s, I don’t think that way. You just think you have all of life ahead of you, and so you plan out your life and you strive for things.
But after you get to the age I am, where, okay, the end is in sight, if I don’t take care of my body, it’s going to be 20 years. If I really struggle and strive and detox and do everything I can, maybe I stretch it to 30. That’s slightly older than my oldest son, who is 22, 23. I remember his birth as if it were yesterday. It will go by that quickly the rest of my days. It is a blink of an eye. And to work your way backward from the end of your life—how you want to end—if you work your way backward, you will live wisely today.
And so seeing Emma’s dad, just to be surrounded by his wife, his three daughters, his son-in-law, his two grandchildren, and all of them not forcing out, “I love you,” but genuinely from the bottom of the heart, you know that they loved their husband, the father, their grandfather, because he lived a certain way.
And at the end of your life, who you are will come out. And so, if you’re not sanctified and you’re in a lot of pain and you’re suffering dementia—I’ve done ministry in nursing homes before, and the sanctified ones, at the end, they are sanctified, and what comes out of their mouth is praise and thanksgiving.
And then there’s other grandmothers—I remember at the nursing home in Pasadena—and all that comes out is complaint and heckling and “Why are you here?” and “I don’t want to hear this. This is boring.” You hear these kinds of words coming out of these cute little grandmothers who are not sanctified.
And I heard about Emma’s dad, the kind of person he was, even while he’s suffering in such pain that he can’t even sit still for an MRI. He is so attentive to the nurses, and he wants them to… he’s telling his daughters, “Make sure you buy coffee for these nurses.” To think about somebody else in that moment of pain, when you could feel so justified to be irritable and selfish. He had that kind of faith at the end.
So think about how you want to end your life. Think about how you want to end your life. It’s going to come down to two things. Do you love Jesus? And did you love people?
You can’t fake it in the end. The people closest to you will force it. “Hey, I love you,” but it won’t really be sincere. Or it will be genuine because you have lived a life of love.
The other thing you can’t fake is: did you love Jesus? If you love Jesus, you’re at peace in these final moments. If you don’t love Jesus, if you don’t know him well, you’ll be frantic and fretting and stressed and trying to extend your life because you know you’re not at rest. You know your relationship with Jesus is not there.
And so why does God tell us that for these short 70, 80 year span of life, it is toil and trouble? It’s because from the beginning, the fall of man, the ground was cursed. And so as a farmer before, the tree just flourished, and Adam and Eve just picked all the fruit they wanted. They didn’t have to work for anything. The land was just fruitful. But when Adam and Eve fell, all of creation fell, and from that day forward, thorns and thistles came out of the ground, and Adam had to work the ground.
I think Timothy and all of his friends who are graduating are beginning to realize, “I had it easy as a student. Really, life was easy as a student.” When you are a student, it didn’t seem easy, and it didn’t seem good. But the SAT, 70 years from now, 80 years from now, who cares? You went to a good school. Does anybody care when you’re dying in a hospital bed?
People are so stressed when you’re young because you’re trying to make something of your life. At the end of your life, you see, it doesn’t matter. Did I love well? Do I know Jesus? That’s all that matters.
So you start with that as your picture and you work your way backwards. So today, how should I live? Life is toil. Life is labor. Life is a struggle.
When you’re a student, you just have to think about school. It’s easy, it’s easy. But when you start working, you see how hard it is to live in this world. You are cheated. You do have bad co-workers. You do have unreasonable bosses. You are stressed. It is hard to save up money. It is toil and strain and struggle. It is difficult to provide for a family. It is tough work. To think I have to—you know, I’m listening to some testimonies of these graduates who, they just graduated not too long ago, and the kinds of job that they’re doing, it’s just tough. I have sympathy for them. They’re experiencing for the first time doing something they don’t want to do, but they have no choice because they have to earn some money.
One brother, he was saying, “I hate sales, but this is all I got. I gotta sell some insurance.” And he’s knocking—last week, he said he visited 225 businesses to sell insurance, and he got like 50 presentations out of the 225, and then he closed five, which is the bare minimum. And he’s doing this in a suit and trying to have a good attitude.
But he says, “I really can’t stand this job.” I hear other people doing grad school, and then they wake up early. They work at a cafe in the morning between classes. In the evening, they have a second job. So, full-time school, two part-time jobs, tired every evening just to try to start your career.
I’m just hearing stories of these postgraduates, and I, okay, reality is dawning. It is a difficult road ahead—much more difficult than I just show up to school, I just take tests… that’s all I think about. Now they got to think about so much more.
And why is it toil and trouble in this life? Why is it this way by design? It’s because Jesus is here and He’s saying, “Come to me. I know you’re burdened. I know you’re stressed. I know you’re frustrated, disappointed, depressed at times. I know life can be hard, but that’s why I’m here. Come to me and give me all of your burdens. Let me lighten it for you.”
Think of if life was easy. Would any of us ever turn to Jesus? I don’t think so. If everything you did, it was the Midas touch, everything was smooth sailing, you passed every test, everything was smooth… Would we ever fall in love with Jesus? Would we ever depend on Jesus?
It’s by design that there is struggle in this life. Because you’re supposed to turn that into prayer and say, “Jesus, I need your help. Jesus, can you lighten this load? This is hard to face my life as now a post-grad. How am I going to make sense of this life? Lord, can you help me?”
It’s toil and struggle for a reason. It is a curse. But the curse of sin reminds us that we need a Savior, and Jesus is here and He’s saying, “Come to me. Your life is short, 70, 80 years of life.” But Jesus is saying, “I’m right here. Come to me. Get to know me. At the end, all you have is your faith in me and the love that you share to people. That’s all that will be remembered of you in the end.”
And if we start with the end in mind, how should we live today?
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, we get a lot of wisdom at funerals and memorial services as we see that we will return to dust, literally. And for all the striving in this life, all the fretting, all the worrying, we all end up in the same place, dying in a hospital bed.
In these short span of seven, eight decades, teach us wisdom as we think about how we want to end our lives. We want to end our lives with faith in Jesus, love for Jesus, and a life poured out in love for people. That’s all that will be remembered in the end.
So today we want to bring all of our struggles, all of our toil, all of our confusion, all of our directionlessness. We bring it to you, Lord Jesus. We want to pass every test. We want to fall more in love with you. We want to see favor and we want to see your work being done all around us. We want to join you where you are working and we want to invest in eternal things.
In the end, Lord, faith in you and love for people is all that matters. So Lord, please help us. Help us to have wisdom for today. How should I live this day? How should I live out this season, Lord? We need your help, Lord Jesus.
The toil and the struggle is here by design so that we turn to you in prayer and give you, Lord Jesus, all of our burdens. So we start that today. As we close out this service, please meet us and minister to us.
As we remember Your Body that was broken for us and your blood that was shed, we unite. All churches unite under the lordship of Jesus Christ because you bought your church through your life. And so, Lord, now we want to unite under you. You are the senior pastor of this church. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.