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The Next Fifteen Years

Sep 28, 2014


by: Jack Lash | Category: GPC | Scripture: 2 Kings 20:1–20:19

I. Introduction
A. I’m now 60.
B. I’m starting to get asked how long I am planning to keep pastoring. It’s hard to know what to say. I don’t want to stop, I want to keep going. Like Groucho Marx said: “I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
C. But one thing is clear. 32 years can make something seem permanent. But it obviously isn’t.
D. The story of this sermon
1. Many years ago, I was required to answer a PCA retirement question: At what age are you planning to retire? I didn’t know what to put, but had to put something, so I said 75.
2. Recently, as I’ve been contemplating turning 60, I remembered this number and I thought of Hezekiah and his 15 year extension, and of his selfish comment under his breath.
3. And then contemplating this story, I got thinking: What should Hezekiah have done?
II. Hezekiah
A. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s summarize the story of Hezekiah.
1. Sometime in the midst of the Assyrian threat (which I preached on in March and April), good King Hezekiah of Judah became very sick, to the point that God sent the prophet Isaiah to inform him that he was about to die.
2. But Hezekiah wept and pled with God and God sent Isaiah back to tell him that He’d heard his prayer and had granted him healing and 15 more years of life.
3. Soon after this, God sent Isaiah to tell Hezekiah that a day was coming when the royal treasury and all the royal family (Hezekiah’s descendants) would be taken to Babylon (referring, of course, to the coming Babylonian conquest/exile) to serve the king there.
4. To this dark prophecy, Hezekiah responded by saying, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.” But in his heart he thought, “Why not, as long as there will be peace and security in my days?”
B. So, contemplating this story, I got thinking: What should Hezekiah have done?
1. I don’t want to be unfair to Hezekiah — after all, I might be meeting him soon. But it doesn’t seem like he was thinking the right way when he made that comment.
2. What should Hezekiah have done? I suggest he should have spent his last 15 years doing everything he could to prepare those who would remain for the trying days ahead.
3. Like Joseph in the seven years of plenty (Gen.41:46-49): Joseph could have taken the same approach as Hezekiah, but he was a hero because he sacrificed some of the present in order to invest in the future.
III. There are storms coming.
A. Everybody’s worried about the future.
1. Global warming
2. Food supply for an exploding population
3. Disintegration of our culture, the loss of the culture wars.
4. The growing threat of Muslim extremism
5. There is a lot of fear and pessimism about the future.
6. The coming tribulation: the anti-Christ, release of the serpent (a brief time preceding the Lord’s return – Rev.20:7-10)
B. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the future. I’m just not that kind of person. But I have to admit that for a number of reasons I’ve recently had a sense of dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Let me mention three things which make me feel this way:
1. Backlash of 9-11: societal fear of devout religion
2. Same-sex marriage as a civil rights issue
a. I hate being called a bigot, because I hate bigotry.
b. But I’m afraid that what the Bible says about this is very unpopular in the context of our society.
c. Denominations supporting same sex marriage make the rest of us look like we’re clinging to old, outdated, prejudicial ways of thinking.
d. I think the pressure to conform will get stronger and stronger, and more and more will cave in.
e. Right now there are plenty of sound Christian churches in America to resist any coercion of these things upon us (though businesses are already being coerced). But what about when the sound church shrinks to the point where it CAN be coerced? That’s going to be a difficult day.
f. (I think we’re paying for past sins of racism.)
3. At the PCA General Assembly in June I learned about a disturbing trend: After decades of significant growth the number of students in Reformed seminaries and the number of men rising up to be pastors in the PCA have taken a dive in the last 5 years.
a. In my opinion, the number of denominations which are standing firm on Biblical teaching are few.
b. This generation, it seems to me, has an increasingly casual attitude toward the Bible.
c. A Korean pastor preached a marvelous sermon at General Assembly. In it, he tried to explain why so many Korean pastors are in the PCA. It’s not easy: there are vast language barriers and cultural differences. But they are in the PCA because of its commitment to stand firm on Biblical truth.
d. I am afraid that there is another famine of the word of God coming, like Amos 8:11: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.”
IV. Preparing for the famine
A. Survivalists stock up food, weapons, and gold.
B. I think we should be doing the same thing, spiritually-speaking. God’s word is our:
1. Food
a. The elementary things in the Bible are referred to as milk (1Pe 2:2; 1Co 3:1-2; Heb 5:11-14)
b. Psa 119:103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
c. Job 23:12 (“I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food”)
2. Weapon
a. Sword of the Spirit – Eph.6:17
3. Gold
a. Psalm 19:10–11 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
b. Imagine being set up financially for life, so that you’ll never need to worry about money again. God’s word is more valuable than that.
V. My ministry
A. I want to spend the rest of my days striving to equip those who will most likely survive me and my peers.
1. I am a Bible teacher. The thing I have to offer you, above all others, is this book: to help you understand it, to help you love it, to help you appreciate it, to help you feast on its encouragement and be challenged by its exhortations.
2. I am not the best Bible teacher, of course, but I believe that is my spiritual gift.
3. Obviously pastoring is bigger than just Bible teaching, but that may be the part I do best.
4. Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” This is my pastoral ambition & prayer.
5. Pastors come and go, people come and go, but the word of God remains forever — 1Peter 1:23–25 “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ ”
6. Remember Moses, after a lifetime of leading the people. Before he left them to cross into the promised land while he went up on the mountain to die, he gave them one last set of exhortations (the book of Deuteronomy). And at the end of it all, Moses said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.” (Deut.32:46–47)
7. Bible knowledge is inadequate, of course. And knowledge by itself just puffs up (1Cor.8:1).
a. But people who have met God in His word, people who have listened to sermons striving to hear God’s word to them, people whose hearts have been plowed by God’s word, who have experienced the healed touch of God’s grace in His word, those people are building their house upon the rock.
VI. Application
A. Build your house on the rock while the sun is shining. (Matt.7:24-27)
1. Even if you don’t have any expectation of hard storms ahead, this passage is enough to know that storms will come.
2. So many Christians in America today are soft, not ready for severe weather ahead.
3. We are just like everybody else: preoccupied with such trivial things.
B. E.g. Job (which I will be preaching on in 2016)
1. Most people go through a time or two when it just seems like everything is falling apart. And it keeps going on and on and getting worse and worse. And there’s no explanation, no answers. It just doesn’t make any sense. And you find a deep sense of bewilderment and betrayal and bitterness and abandonment begin to grow up in your heart toward God.
2. I’m speaking primarily to the young here. Many of my older hearers have already had Job-like experiences.
3. That’s the time you’ll need the message of the book of Job: that God has good reasons for allowing this kind of experience to occur in our lives, that God is very present even when we don’t feel it, that in the end He will restore and renew His child and all of our bitter words will be regretted.
4. As we go forward into the future, we need to be equipped with Job’s lessons, and with the abundant tools God has provided for us in His word.
C. Obviously this applies most to the young. But I’d like to exhort the people of my generation: What are you going to do with the rest of your life?
1. Rest? Enjoy the benefits you have earned? I would challenge you to not think that way.
2. There are, of course, many things God could call you do with your remaining time and strength.
3. But I would urge you to consider investing yourself in assisting the next generations to be spiritually ready for the days to come.
D. Matthew 7:24–27 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”