This is not only a “young person thing.” It applies to all
ages—all stages of life. This is what we will do this morning. I invite each of
you to take these lessons to heart.
I begin with some verses that many of you have no doubt read in the past or have heard quoted. Even though these words are from the Bible, they are actually quite cheerless ones to read. They are especially so for those of us who have reached a certain time in our lives. Here are the verses:
We finish our life with a sigh. 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. (Psalm 90: 9-10).
This is a depressing thought, isn’t it? At least it is on
the face of it ... After seventy or eighty years, we finish our lives with a
sigh? And then we are gone?
We do not sigh when we feel our lives have been fulfilled.
We sigh when we know that despite all of our effort, little has turned out
right.
“Oh well, I tried…Sigh.”
Actually, the true meaning of the word in the Bible is to let out a moan,[1] “We finish our lives with a moan,”—even more disheartening. These verses are from the ninetieth Psalm. The Psalm is prefaced by the words, “A prayer of Moses the man of God.”
Moses lived a long life—120 years. Even though we know that it was Moses who wrote these words about ending one’s life with a sigh, we don’t know at what time in those 120 years that he wrote them.
The life of Moses had three distinct divisions—this you
probably also know. For the first 40 years, he was raised as the son of the
daughter of Pharaoh of Egypt. Then, after his failed attempt to become the
leader of the Israelites, who were slaves in Egypt at that time, Moses fled to
the wilderness of Midian. He fled because in the process of defending the
Israelites, he had killed an Egyptian—one of Pharoah’s men.
Moses lived in Midian for another 40 years, where he became
married to the daughter of the priest of Midian. Other than that single fact,
we do know much about the life of Moses in Midian. About the only other detail
that we do know was that he passed his days tending the sheep and goats of his
father-in-law.
It was at the end of this 40-year period when Moses had an
encounter with God that propelled him into the final period of his life. This
was the incident at the burning bush, where God called him to this task of
leading the people—a role in which Moses had actually attempted himself and
failed forty years earlier.
This last phase of the life of Moses were the years of the
Exodus, when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. It was for this forty
year period that God had appointed Moses to lead this great multitude through
the many trials and tests, as well as seeing God’s hand work in the victories
of their experience in the wilds of the Arabian Peninsula.
“The cry of the Israelites has reached Me,” God said to Moses at the burning bush. “I have seen how severely the Egyptians are oppressing them. Therefore, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:9-10)
Consider for a few moments these three periods in the life
of Moses—each approximately forty years in length. We are not given much
insight into the private thoughts that Moses must have had during each of these
times, but it is clear by his actions and his words that Moses was a
contemplative man. He did not simply stumble along in life. He thought deeply
about things.
No doubt as Moses was tending the animals of his father-in-law in the wilds of Midian, he must have felt like a failure in some ways. As I mentioned, Moses actually had a sense of the calling forty years earlier to deliver the Hebrew people from slavery. Although he had grown up in the palace of the Pharaoh, Moses knew that his true family were actually the Hebrews. He saw the heavy burden of slavery that had been placed upon his people and in his own way tried to alleviate their suffering.
In Egypt, he had had a privileged upbringing. He had lacked
nothing in his childhood and youth, and he had received the best education in
the world at that time. He had access to the greatest wealth in the world. If
there should be anyone to deliver his people the Israelites out of their
slavery, certainly it should be him!
But early in his attempt to help his people, not only did he
kill an Egyptian, making him a man wanted for murder in Egypt, but it also
actually set his own people against him. The day after Moses had killed the
Egyptian, he returned to the Hebrews and attempted to intervene in a fight that
two of the men were having.
“Who made you ruler and judge over us?” one of them
responded to his attempted settlement. “Are you planning to kill me as you
killed the Egyptian?”
Moses’ single attempt at defending the Hebrews from the
Egyptians ended in disaster. Not only did it make him a man with a death
penalty in Egypt, but it also even turned his own people against him!
And now in Midian, his life had been reduced to tending
sheep in the almost barren wastelands. This was what had become of all his
dreams and all of his efforts!
The “Sigh” of Old Age
“Sigh…this is what has become of my life! After
beginning my life full of promise and potential, my greatest responsibility now
is to care for these sheep. I have ended my life without actually accomplishing
anything!”
Although these are words that I have put in the mouth of
Moses, I can imagine him with these thoughts. Any hope of a meaningful life was
over. He had given up.
It is because of this that I think that it was sometime
during this period in Midian that he must have put his stylus to parchment and
wrote the words, “We finish our life with a sigh. 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.”
So distraught was he that even when God gave him a direct
command at the burning bush to go and lead the people, Moses argued with God. He
did not see this as the time to fulfill what he had tried to begin forty years
ago. At this point in his life in Midian, Moses was so lowly in spirit that he
felt that he had no more to give.
“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Psalm 90
With those thoughts in our minds, I want to again return to
our scripture of Psalm 90. Taken as a whole, the Psalm is a contrast between
the eternal nature of God, and the brevity of the life of man.
Of God, Moses writes, “Before the mountains were born or You
brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are
God.”
But of man he writes, “You return man to dust, saying,
‘Return, O sons of mortals…’ You whisk them away in their sleep; they are like
the new grass of the morning—in the morning it springs up new, but by evening
it fades and withers.”
For Moses at this time of his life while in Midian, God had
turned into an angry God. Even a cruel God. Moses writes, “We are consumed by
Your anger and terrified by Your wrath. You have set our iniquities before You,
our secret sins in the light of Your presence. For all our days decline in Your
fury, and we finish our years with a sigh.”
But near the end of the Psalm, he writes what are some of
its most important words. Having mentioned the seventy or eighty years of our
lives, Moses now writes, “Teach us to number our days, that we may present a
heart of wisdom.”
This thought and these words are an awakening. Although not
fully developed, it is a spark of hope in the heart of Moses that perhaps there
is more that God wants to accomplish in his life. When it comes to a meaningful
life, his need not be over—not yet.
Bu the time Moses comes to the end of the Psalm, his prayer has changed from one of despair to one of hope: “May Your work be shown to Your servants, and Your splendor to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish for us the work of our hands!”
The Forty Year Training Period
The introduction of Psalm 90 reads, “A prayer of Moses the
man of God,” and this was his prayer: “Establish for us the work of our hands—yes,
establish the work of our hands!”
I think that it was sometime after Moses prayed this prayer
that he was visited by the Lord God at the burning bush. Forty years earlier,
Moses saw his work as delivering his Hebrew people from the slavery of Egypt.
It was so long ago that he had almost forgotten, but that was the work for
which God had prepared him. For the past forty years that he had spent in
Midian, he was merely marking time—turning the pages on the calendar. However,
in ways that Moses himself did not know, God was continuing his preparation in
the life of Moses.
When Moses prayed, “Establish the work of our hands,” he
perhaps did not even have the calling of delivering the Hebrews in mind. Maybe
he did—there is no way to know. But whether he was thinking of that or not, he
did not want to end his life with a sigh.
“Teach us to number our days, that we may present a heart of
wisdom.”
No longer did Moses want his life to be merely one of marking time until his life was over. Moses wanted his life to have meaning.
There is Risk Involved
But the prospect of doing something of significance had its
risks. In fact, it was frightening. After all, he had become accustomed to the
tranquil life of a shepherd. There was security in having no responsibility
beyond taking care of some animals. The peaceful hills and valleys of Midian
held their own attraction to him.
Thus, when God brought to him the task of going to the
Pharaoh, Moses demurred. He objected.
“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the
Israelites out of Egypt?”
Moses may have prayed the prayer about establishing the work
of his hands, but when it came right down to it, he was afraid. He was afraid
of the Pharaoh, and he was afraid of his own people. He was afraid that the
Pharaoh would have him executed, and he was afraid that the Hebrew people would
again reject him. The words still rung in his ears, “Who made you ruler and
judge over us?”
It was quite a long conversation that Moses had with God at
the bush. Despite the many excuses that Moses gave, and reasons that he thought
that he should just stay in Midian with the sheep and goats of his
father-in-law, in the end, he relented. Say what we might about his hesitancy,
when it came right to the critical decision, Moses obeyed the Lord.
Despite the fact that Moses thought that he was ill-equipped and not the man for the job, he listened to the voice of God. Despite the fact that Moses had all but given up on life, in the end, he did what God had told him to do. In the end, he obeyed.
There is Trepidation Involved
Obeying God can be the most frightening decision that we will
ever make. In fact, it usually is. If the calling is truly from God, it is not
usually an easy thing to do, and quite often, it is actually the very thing
that we do not want to do.
It has long been my grievance with Christian organizations
that in promoting God’s work, such as working in missions, that they emphasize
the “adventure” aspect. This is especially true in summer youth programs. The
literature is many times packaged much like a travel tourist promotion. This
type of promotion does not attract servants. It attracts adventure-seekers.
That is not how God packaged this forty-year daring camping adventure
to which he called Moses. In fact, as you read the Scriptures, it is not how
God called any of his servants.
This was God’s call to Abraham, when Abraham was seventy-five
years old. “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and
go to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
And about God calling the Apostle Paul: “This man is My
chosen instrument to carry My name before the Gentiles and their kings, and
before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for My
name” (Acts 9:15-16 BSB).
When Queen Esther hesitated about intervening to save the lives
of the Jews from her husband the King of Persia and the evil plot of the
official named Haman, Mordecai’s words to her were, “Do not imagine that
because you are in the king’s palace you alone will escape the fate of all the
Jews. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the
Jews will arise from another place…And who knows if perhaps you have come to
the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14).
God’s servant Jonah hated the Ninevites. Actually, he was a
racist. To whom do you think that God called him to go and rescue? It took
three days in the belly of a fish, but Jonah finally obeyed.
Gideon first responded to God’s calling by saying, “How can
I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the
youngest in my father’s house” (Judges 6:15).
Peter and his brother Andrew were occupied with their work
at the time that Jesus called them to follow him. What did they do? “Immediately
they left their nets and followed him” (Matthew 4:14). They did not first hold
a yard sale to try to sell off their equipment. They did not count the cost.
They followed Jesus.
And what about Mary, the mother of Jesus? When God sent the
angel to tell her that she had been chosen to bear the Holy Child, she became
“greatly troubled.” In fact, she questioned if it could even be possible.
“How can this be, since I am a virgin?” she asked the angel.
But although Mary was troubled in her spirit and did not
understand anything, in the end she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it
happen to me according to your word” (Luke 38).
There are many more examples in the Scripture that tell of
God calling individuals to a task. In none of these do we hear God saying, “I
have a great and exciting adventure in mind for you!”
No decision to respond to God’s calling was easy or
pleasurable to any servant that we find in the Bible. Some, like Peter, Andrew
and Mary, obeyed rather instantly, but most hesitated. In fact, many of them,
like Moses, actually first refused God’s calling.
What will it be for you?
Do you think that you are too old? I will send you to speak
with 80-year-old Moses or 75-year-old Abraham. Moses served the Lord for forty
years after his calling, and Abraham one hundred years!
Do you think that you are a nobody and you could not
possibly do what God is calling you to? Maybe look for some advice from Gideon,
or especially from Mary.
Or perhaps you are so secure in your life that you think
that you could never change? Queen Esther may have some words for you.
Too involved with your work? If God is calling you to
something else, your fishing nets and boats are just getting in the way of your
service to God. Leave them there on the beach and start walking.
The prophet Isaiah writes of his own calling: “Then I heard
the voice of the Lord saying: ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?’ And I
said: ‘Here am I. Send me!’”
What will your response be?
“Establish for us the work of our hands—yes, establish the
work of our hands!”
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life…I urge you to walk
in a manner worthy of the calling you have received. (Ephesians 2:10; 4:1)
So that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work. (Colossians 1:10)
[1]
Strong’s 1899: hegeh – a rumbling, growling, moaning
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