We are to live in light of eternity, because today could be our last day on earth. Yet we are also called to make plans for the future. What does Jesus have to say about this?
You’ve heard it said, live your life like there’s no tomorrow? Even if you can’t afford it, should you buy tickets to the Stanley Cup finals? Should you just live life as a party today, for tomorrow you die?
Swell
Hi, I’m Charles Morris and this is Haven Today where we tell the great story that’s all about Jesus and today’s edition is called, “Don’t Waste Your Life – Living Like There’s No Tomorrow”.
“The picture was me and I sent it.” Congressman Anthony Weiner, New York, finally admitting it was his picture sent to a 21-year-old female college student in Seattle. The picture was released last week by a conservative news-site. The photo was more on the side of X-rated and last week’s never answering the question – was it you – is finally over. The congressman’s chances for mayor of New York City are probably over as well. He fessed up at a news conference that he’s had a problem with inappropriate relationships for the past few years and he apologized. The woman in question has since made her Twitter account private, which is where the picture first showed up. We’ve all heard that sex and power are a dangerous mix but the proud always fall and all of us suffer from cases of pride, whether we like to admit it or not. Confession, repentance, forgiveness in Christ. That’s the only answer.
Israel Trip
Yesterday we talked about gen-xyz-ers and the call of Christ not to waste their lives. Today I want to ask boomers like me a question. How can we keep from wasting the rest of our lives? What dangers do we face – dangers that could lead us into wasted futures? John Piper addressed that very question speaking to a group of college students.
(John Piper begin at 18: 38 “I’m 58 almost in a couple. . .” to 21:36 “ . . . on the way to being set free.”)
OPEN SONG
How do we get set free? Whatever age-group we may be in, how do we get set free from the billion dollar industry that’s constantly saying to us “we have a wonderful plan for the rest of your life.” When I was in China earlier this month I saw so many people in a headlong stampede for the good life – the life money seems able to buy. How do we shake free from it and live lives that aren’t wasted on things that don’t matter and don’t deliver on their promises?
This is an urgent question. You could feel the urgency of it in Piper’s voice. The Apostle Paul has an answer and it goes like this,
“Believe in the resurrection. Believe in the resurrection and then live a life that makes no sense at all unless there is a resurrection.”
In Corinth there were some people saying there wasn’t going to be a resurrection. We die and that’s it. Paul writes and tells them that not only is there going to be a resurrection but that his whole life is lived with that day in mind so much so that if there is no resurrection then his life makes no sense at all. If there’s no resurrection, he says, then . . .
1Cor. 15:30-31 “why do we endanger ourselves every hour?
I die every day — I mean that, brothers — just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God — I say this to your shame.”
Did you get the impact of what Paul is saying? You can live two ways:
Tomorrow we die or . . .
Tomorrow we live.
Tomorrow we die means we see life as short. Everything has to be crammed into a finite number of years. When you pass fifty, the years start to slip through your fingers faster and faster and a little quiet panic starts to set in. All your life you’ve been working towards some future time when you can relax and do the things you want to do. It’s like life is one long work week with a weekend to look forward to at the end when you can finally kick back and do some things you want to do. When you pass fifty it’s like “Here it is, coming up on Friday, and it looks like I’m going to end up working right through Sunday. I better start enjoying myself. Life isn’t going to last forever.”
That billion dollar industry Piper was talking about is right there, pandering to our desires, presenting us with images of alluring leisure lifestyles and telling us, “This is what you’ve been working for. You deserve it.” That’s “tomorrow we die” thinking and it corrupts us.
“Bad company corrupts good character,” Paul says. I don’t think by “bad company” he’s just talking about hanging out with people who party all the time. I think he’s talking about buying into the pervasive “tomorrow you die” mentality that presses in on us from the world. When we buy into it we take leave of our senses according to Paul and he’s calling for us to “come back to your senses.”
Bad company corrupts good character. I don’t think by “good character” he means just being a straight arrow, early to bed early to rise. He’s talking about the character that’s built into us when we really believe in the cross and the resurrection. It changes who we are and how we live our lives. Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow you die is a corrupting way of seeing things. It corrupts the way we live. It lures us in and tricks us into wasting our lives.
But Paul doesn’t live that way because he knows there IS a resurrection. He really believes in the resurrection. Listen to what he says later in the chapter:
1Cor. 15:52-54 “It will happen in a moment, in the blinking of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, the Christians who have died will be raised with transformed bodies. And then we who are living will be transformed so that we will never die. For our perishable earthly bodies must be transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die. When this happens—when our perishable earthly bodies have been transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die—then at last the Scriptures will come true: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’”
That’s not the consolation prize dear brothers and sisters – that’s the prize! The prize that Jesus Christ won for us on the cross. That’s not just what we say over our caskets as they’re lowered into the ground. That’s what we say over our lives. Tomorrow we live! Don’t waste your life living with a “Tomorrow you die” mentality. Don’t waste you rlife like there’s no tomorrow. Tomorrow you live! And all the tomorrows after that without end.
“Tomorrow you live”
How do we live like we really believe this resurrection is going to happen?
According to Paul, we live a life that makes no sense unless there is a resurrection.
In 1Cor. 15:30-34 he talks about his own life: “why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I die every day — I mean that, brothers — just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In other words, Paul is not protecting his life, he’s not protecting his own interests. He’s not thinking about himself. He’s giving himself away. He’s pouring himself out. He’s dying every day.
Paul’s actual physical danger is not the point – some of us may face that reality and some of us may not. Three Christian men in Turkey were tied up and tortured to death on April 18 by 10 young Muslim men who pretended to be interested in a Bible Study. Some of them had attended a resurrection service on Easter a few weeks earlier. On our weekday program on Tuesday, we’ll be talking to a pastor of the church in Smyrna about how these deaths are bringing Muslims to Christ all across Turkey. Some of us may face that kind of physical death for Christ and some of us may not but that’s not the point of what Paul’s saying here.
The point is whether the resurrection is a reality for us and if it is, then it’ll change the way we live.
We won’t be living for the weekend, we’ll be living for – and in -- the new creation.
We won’t have to protect our own interests – because we’ll know they’re already protected in Christ. We’re co-heirs with Christ – our future is secure. We belong to him and in him everything in all creation belongs to us. We don’t have to hoard, we don’t have to think about number one, we can pour ourselves out for other people. When the resurrection is a reality for us we’ll be set free to invest ourselves in seeing Jesus glorified.
We won’t have to hold on to our lives –because we’ll know Jesus has guaranteed them with his life – that he’s given us a new eternal life that we can begin living right here and now knowing it will never come to an end.
So much of what we do is really just a feeble attempt to grab hold of life, to create a life for ourselves. We don’t have to live that way – we HAVE life. Jesus said, “This is eternal life to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” We have that life as believers – right now -- and the life we have now will one day be fully realized – consummated. We’ll be step into our glorious true identities and live them forever, because when we see Jesus, John says, we’ll be like him. We’ll be fully alive. We’ll have bodies like his glorious body.
When the resurrection is a reality for us we won’t feel compelled to hold on for dear life to these few years of life we have in this world because we’ll know we have an infinite number of years and a whole new world to look forward to.
We’ll be set free. Tomorrow we live! Which means today and every day we can die.
Lord Jesus. You’ve died to take us through death into life -- your resurrection is our resurrection. Death has been swallowed up in victory. Deliver us from a tomorrow we die mentality. Set us free. Break the spell. Bring us back to our senses. Lord may we really believe that “tomorrow we live.” Empower us to live a life that makes no sense unless there’s a resurrection. May we pour ourselves out for you. May we rejoice over our brothers and sisters in Christ like Paul did and make their interests our interests. May we be set apart from a world lost in a “tomorrow we die” way of living. May we live so they might come to believe in your death and resurrection.
CLOSING SONG
One More Thing About the Great Story that’s all about Jesus:
Do something. I think the way we break into a “tomorrow we live” mentality is to simply do something. Paul closes this section on the resurrection with a call to action:
1Cor. 15:58 “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
Give yourself fully to something – some kingdom work – and invest yourself in it will confidence that it’s not in vain – because there will be a resurrection. Whatever we do for the kingdom is going to endure forever, so . . . don’t waste your life!
