Living Life Backwards

[0:00] Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Psalms. We're going to read Psalm 90. Psalm 90. Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.

[0:17] ! Before the mountains were born,! Where you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, Return to dust, O sons of men.

[0:33] For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death.

[0:46] They are like the new grass of the morning, though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation.

[1:00] You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. all our days pass away under your wrath. We finish our years with a moan.

[1:13] The length of our days is 70 years or 80, if we have the strength. Yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass and we fly away.

[1:24] who knows the power of your anger. For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

[1:38] Relent, O Lord. How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

[1:52] Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble. May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.

[2:04] May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

[2:20] Are you ready for a dose of reality? We step out of a world that presents lies as truth, that presents dry, dusty, desert mirages in the sand, as if they were pools of water.

[2:38] And we come into this place where none other than he who is the truth, who speaks nothing but the truth, meets us with reality.

[2:50] And it's here we meet with our God and with what is. And what is is this. Death is the destiny of every man.

[3:04] The living should take this to heart. So teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. We're leaving behind our studies on the Ten Commandments, and my sermon title this morning is Living Life Backwards.

[3:22] I borrowed this from the title of a book by that name, Living Life Backwards by David Gibson. I've not read the book, just one chapter that was posted online. But the basic idea is this.

[3:35] Death is preaching to us all. And if we will but listen, we will come away the wiser for it. It will teach us valuable lessons about how to live.

[3:48] Death is preaching that life here is limited. So use it well. Life here will end. So don't waste it. Make the most of it.

[4:00] Be prepared for it to end. Death has a way of separating the wheat from the chaff, the important from the trivial.

[4:12] It's the great prioritizer that reveals very clearly the main things. It clarifies what really matters in life and is worth living for.

[4:24] I've seen men into sport all their lives nearly lose all interest in sport as death drew near and eternal things became all important.

[4:37] Others are all about politics, but that also fades when you are going to meet the king of kings and the lord of lords. Men of business and investment lose interest in such things as they're going to give a different kind of accounting.

[4:56] You see, things just don't look the same from death's door. The older I get, the poorer my eyesight becomes. But one thing I have seen, a strange phenomena that the closer some men get to death, the better their vision becomes.

[5:15] And they see more clearly, more precisely, the things that really count in life. So death has a lot to teach us.

[5:27] But death comes at the end of our lives. When there's no more life to live, we can't die and come back and live over again with the wisdom that death has taught us.

[5:38] There's no reincarnation into this world. No do-overs with life. So we need to do some serious thinking about death. Now, fast forward to our death to gain its wisdom for life, to visit our own deathbed and ask, how will I want to have lived in that day?

[6:02] And then to back up from our end, to live today in the light of our death. That's living life backwards.

[6:13] Letting your death help shape your life. Now, that was like a seed thought that was planted early in the week and just kept germinating and sending me to the scriptures and ringing bells with me and coming home to me.

[6:27] So let's consider together. Living life backwards from death. And this doesn't need to be something morbid, but rather should be something to motivate us to lay hold of each day and to live it to the glory of God, recognizing the gift that it is.

[6:48] Death is something that God talks a lot about in the Bible. My program said that the word death is used 450 times and the word die some 600 times.

[7:00] So over a thousand times, God is speaking to us in his word about death. We have much to learn from it. Do you remember last week or the last couple of weeks how we saw that death saved Asaph's sanity and his spiritual life in Psalm 73?

[7:19] He's working hard to live a holy life and all he got for it was to be plagued every day with troubles. And as he looked over at the wicked, he saw them prospering.

[7:30] These who were dismissing God and abusing men didn't have the normal troubles of life and it was driving Asaph crazy. He was bitter and envious, he tells us.

[7:46] And it almost drove him to give up altogether this business of holy living and seeking God and to join the wicked in pleasure seeking. And he tells us that this bitter envy continued until I entered the sanctuary of God.

[8:02] And what did he see in there? Well, then I understood their final destiny, their end. There's an end for the wicked.

[8:15] There's an end to this life. And for them, it's sudden and complete destruction under the terror of God. That's what's waiting for them at death. But at my death, the Lord will be welcoming me into glory, he says.

[8:33] And so death will change everything in a moment. And that fact brought in power to Asaph's heart in the sanctuary was a life changer to him. He came and lived after that moment in a way that was different than before that moment.

[8:49] Before that truth dawned in his heart and it moved him from envying the wicked to seeing that he's the one to be envied, not them. And it saved him from his insanity and from, yes, apostasy.

[9:03] It made him once again treasure God as his portion in life and eternity. And so he kept on living a holy life, keeping his heart and hands pure.

[9:16] That's living life backwards from death. Yes, there's a death. And now, how should we then live in light of that reality?

[9:29] It powerfully shaped his life. Luke chapter 16 is kind of like an Old Testament Psalm 73. Just think of some of the similarities.

[9:42] Jesus was preaching and the Pharisees who loved money heard Jesus say, you cannot serve God and money. And they sneered at Jesus.

[9:55] So he told them, a rich man was living every day in self-indulgence and selfish luxury. While at his gate laid a godly beggar, Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table.

[10:08] Dogs were licking his sores, showing greater mercy than the rich man. Well, that's the very thing that tempted Asaph to lose his religion. The wicked prospering, selfishly living to himself, the righteous suffering, right at his very door.

[10:27] But Jesus goes on to say, then death came to both men. And at death, angels carried the believing beggar to paradise where he was comforted.

[10:40] But the rich man also died and woke up in hell where he was in torment. Once again, death was the great reversal that reversed the whole destiny and situation for these two men.

[10:54] Jesus is saying, learn to live life backwards from death. Let what happens at death shape your living now. Well, it was the same thing with that parable of the rich man who tore down his barns and built bigger ones.

[11:09] Remember that? We saw it in Luke 12. You fool, this night your very soul will be required of you. Then whose will all these things be? Again, it's death, you see, that brings before our eyes what's worth living for.

[11:24] Things that make us rich toward ourselves or things that make us rich toward God. He's teaching us that a visit to our coming deathbed should cure us of living for the things of time.

[11:40] What will you have the moment after you die? What will you enter eternal life with? In Jeremiah chapter 5, the Lord says, a horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land.

[11:55] The prophets prophesy lies. The priests rule by their own authority. And my people, they love it this way. But what will you do in the end?

[12:07] You see, the people love to have the prophets telling them lies, telling them that they could pursue their selfish and sinful lifestyle and yet everything would go well for them.

[12:17] Peace, peace. That's what the prophets were saying. And they love to hear that. And they love to have their priests tell them that as long as they offered their sacrifices regularly, they could live as they pleased and all would be well.

[12:32] But what will you do in the end? You see, it's a visit to death. That's the question. When death comes and it's game over, what then?

[12:45] Well, then all the lies will evaporate and reality will have you standing before the living God as your judge. For it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment.

[12:56] But it's not just that. There's also the positive lessons to learn from death. The Apostle Paul says, for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

[13:09] He was anticipating a death that is not lost but is rather gain. Better by far. We can learn from him how to live so that death will be gain.

[13:21] And he would tell us, well, if you would die well and have a death that is gain, well, then just have your life be all wrapped up in one thing.

[13:34] Jesus Christ. For to me, life is Christ. He's the center of my universe. Everything revolves around him. To me, to live is Christ.

[13:44] And that's why dying is such gain. I go to be with him. Well, it's the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, if you'd like to turn there, that speaks to us again about this very important theme.

[14:02] And while you're turning there, Ecclesiastes 7, it's Saturday night and you can spend your evening at the funeral home with mourners of a relative that has died or you can go with your friends to a party where everyone's laughing and carrying on as if there's no tomorrow.

[14:20] So which do you choose, the funeral home or the party? Well, here in Ecclesiastes 7 and verse 2, the wise man says, it's better to go to the house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.

[14:40] Why better? Well, he goes on to tell us, for death is the destiny of every man. The living should take this to heart. And you probably won't take that to heart at your party.

[14:53] Just a good chance that won't happen there, but it might happen at the funeral. So it's better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting.

[15:05] It's at funerals among the mourners that death stares you in the face and says to you, this is the destiny of every man, rich, poor, male, female, black, white, every man, ten out of ten people die.

[15:24] And death, you see, preaches that over and over in the house of mourning at funerals. Someday you will be the one in the box and it may be sooner than you realize.

[15:35] So funerals are as much for the living as they are for the dead because there's something in those funerals that the living need to take to heart.

[15:47] namely, their own mortality. Their own mortality. So he says it again, different words in verse 3.

[15:58] Sorrow is better than laughter because a sad face is good for the heart. Now there's a time to laugh.

[16:09] This same wise man tells us that in chapter 3. There is a time to laugh and a time to mourn. And laughter can do good like a medicine. Proverbs tells us. But as good as laughter is, sorrow is better.

[16:23] That's what he says. Sorrow is better than laughter. Why? Because of the good that it can do to our hearts and the important wisdom to be gained from it because sorrow at funerals reminds us of this important reality that we may be trying hard to forget.

[16:42] You, I, we, are going to die. And so again in verse 4, the heart of the wise, where will you find it? In the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.

[16:57] So where is your heart this morning? Where do you live? Where do you gain knowledge and wisdom for life? death? There was once a king who so despised thoughts of death that he banished all talk of it with this proclamation that anyone who mentions death in my presence shall immediately experience it.

[17:23] Well, he was a fool. He may have been a king over a kingdom, but God calls him a fool. Because the wise man knows that he needs to face his own death.

[17:36] Often, he needs to listen to death reminding him, I'm coming for you too, Mr. King on your throne. Death is the destiny of every man.

[17:48] The living should take this to heart, should live in the light of it, should live like we were dying, should live life backwards, letting your death shape your life.

[18:03] So, although death is preaching a most important message, the reality is that though it comes and interrupts us and interrupts our lives with funerals and visitations and missing co-workers and missing relatives and friends, not everyone in the house of mourning is taking it to heart.

[18:28] Most are hurrying out of the place of mourning to get back to the old usual lifestyle, unchanged and hardly a thought that death had something important to say to them in that funeral home.

[18:44] And we might think that, well, those that have the most death in their lives will be the most sensitive to this reality, but it's not so, is it? Morticians, funeral directors, pastors who preach at funerals can be the last to heed death's message.

[19:03] They hear it so often that they become death proof, numb to its reality as far as they're concerned.

[19:15] It's always these people out here. I had a friend and he bought a house with a lot that backed up to a railroad track and the first night he thought the train was coming through his bedroom.

[19:28] It shook the room and it roared and scared him to death, couldn't sleep. But his days turned into weeks and weeks followed weeks.

[19:40] He finally came to the point where he could sleep through the whole night and the train didn't bother him anymore. And in the same way, people can live so close to death without being personally affected by it, without taking it to heart, without having it change their lives.

[20:01] They just get used to it. Some time ago there was a country song, Live Like You Were Dying. And it tells us about a 40-year-old man getting news from his doctor that he doesn't have much time to live.

[20:18] And so he tells us in his song how this fact changed his life and what he did. Well, I went skydiving, rocky mountain climbing, bull riding. I loved deeper, spoke sweeter, gave forgiveness I'd been denying.

[20:32] Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying. What's he telling us? Well, just that we don't live right until we live like we're dying.

[20:45] dying. And the truth is we are dying. So he goes on, I became a good husband and a good friend and a good son. And I finally read the good book and I took a good long hard look at what I do if I could do it all again.

[21:00] But of course we can't. Death is ever preaching that our life here must come to an end. The living should take this to heart and live like they were dying.

[21:14] Now even non-Christians can see this truth and be moved by it to live differently. But there may not be anything distinctly Christian about what they do with that truth.

[21:26] So I don't have much time left. Well, let me seek to pack into my life all the sorts of things and thrills that I can before my time's up.

[21:38] The person can become all the more living a life that's self-absorbed, doing what I want to do, getting thrills that I want to experience. But they've seen death's coming and they don't have much time and so I need to live like I was dying.

[21:56] Death itself doesn't teach us how to live. Death teaches us that death is the destiny of every man. But we must turn to God himself to learn how we should live in the light of our approaching death.

[22:16] You know, there are some who see death approaching and come to the conclusion, well, then let's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. That's the end they go to. So we see that death itself is not the sufficient teacher.

[22:31] We need God to teach us. And that's why in Psalm 90 and verse 12, we find this prayer of Moses. It's one of the rare Psalms of Moses. And it's a Psalm that's filled with death.

[22:44] We had it read for us. And how fitting for it to be a Psalm of Moses. You know, Moses saw gobs of death during his 40 years in the wilderness.

[22:57] During those 40 years, everyone who was 20 years and up died. could I just ask how many of you are 20 years and up?

[23:12] Could I see your hand? I hope that's not embarrassing to you ladies. Okay, that's more than half, isn't it? It was probably more than half of Israel as well.

[23:27] And during that 40 years, everyone 20 years old and over died except for Joshua and Caleb. that was the greater part of the nation. Estimates are that the nation was about 2 million people.

[23:39] And if only half were 20 years old and up, then that's a million people dying in 40 years. Let's do the math. That's 25,000 dying each year.

[23:53] That's 480 dying each week. That's an average of 68 each day. that's a lot of death in the desert.

[24:04] That's a lot of funerals and graves in the wilderness. That's a lot of preaching by death, and it wrenched a prayer out of the heart of Moses. Teach me to number my days aright that I might gain a heart of wisdom.

[24:27] Now, that's not something death itself can teach us. We can be surrounded with death and still not learn the lessons from it that we need. We can still be no wiser for it.

[24:39] We can still not get it and merely respond with the pursuit of cheap thrills. Teach us.

[24:50] Teach us. Lord, you teach us. He needed God to teach him what only God can teach. How to number our days aright. Now, let's be sure we understand.

[25:02] He's not asking God, tell me how many days do I have left in life? To be sure, there is such a number. Remember, David said, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

[25:15] God has your number. You won't exceed it. But that's one of the secret things of the Lord our God. Not one of the revealed things. That's something we're not to try to pry into.

[25:29] And that's not what Moses is after here when he says, teach us to number our days aright. He's just said in verse 10 that the average length of days is 70 or 80 years.

[25:40] But however many they are, they quickly pass and we fly away. Then, oh God, though death is all around us, we will grow callous to our own mortality unless you teach us.

[26:04] Unless you bring it home to our hearts, don't let me pass through this vast graveyard of life without my heart and life being changed.

[26:16] Impress upon my heart the limited number of my days, the preciousness of time that I might gain a heart of wisdom to use each and every day as I ought.

[26:30] To live like I was dying, to live backwards from death. And that sort of teaching permeates our Bibles as you know, but how many of us are getting it?

[26:42] How many of us are learning the lesson? Adolph Adolph Minot was called the leading Protestant preacher of France in the mid-1800s.

[26:52] Same time Spurgeon was preaching in England, Minot was preaching in France to many. And he spent 25 years preaching God's word with great success.

[27:03] At age 53, a fatal illness brought him near death's door. And for six months on Sunday afternoons, friends gathered around his bed, were under great suffering and such weakness that often he could not speak for any length of time.

[27:18] He literally spoke as a dying man to dying men. And those farewell addresses have been written down and translated into English.

[27:30] Five of them are called a dying man's regrets, which alone without reading them is just a sobering reminder that even a godly man, greatly used of God, can come to the end of life and say, oh, I regret.

[27:47] I regret this. Mr. Minot, what did you regret when you came near death's door? I regret that I lived no more for God and men.

[28:00] I regret that I didn't study the word of God more and get to know God better. I regret the waste of time in my life.

[28:14] number four, I regret I didn't pray more. And number five, I regret my preoccupation with petty things.

[28:28] The view from death's door clarifies things, doesn't it? Temporal things that had been so important faded and eternal things became even more weighty and deserving of VIP status.

[28:43] The main things overpowered the lesser things that are ever clamoring for time and attention. The chaff is blown away and the heavy stuff remains. There's much to learn from a man speaking from death's doorstep, from the very portal of eternity.

[29:00] But the truth is we don't have to die in order to learn from death. We don't even have to have a brush with death. Some men have done that, haven't they? They've had a brush with death and on what they thought was their death bed.

[29:14] Things became clear and God healed them and brought them back to health and they lived differently in the light of what they you don't even need to have a brush with death if we will but consider death and then learn to live backwards.

[29:30] So if you had just if you learned this week that you had just six months to live, what would change? live backwards from that reality or if you should die this evening, would there be any regrets?

[29:45] Consider it. It will soon be your time and in that day, how will you wish you would have lived your life? You see, according to God, these are not morbid thoughts but healthy thoughts.

[29:59] This is the stuff we are to be taking to our hearts. This is the stuff we are to be opening our hearts to and saying, Lord, teach me this stuff. This is the stuff I need.

[30:10] The world's not teaching. The devil's not teaching me that. My flesh isn't teaching me that. You teach me. You teach me. Well, that's what changed life for Asaph.

[30:24] That's what Moses is here praying for in Psalm 90. It's what Jesus was saying when he said, work while it's day. The night is coming when no man can work.

[30:34] Today's the day to be sowing seeds for a good harvest in eternity. Then be up and doing. Get after it. Life is passing. Your days are diminishing.

[30:47] If ever there was one who lived life backwards from death, it was our Lord Jesus, wasn't it? That's why he came into this world. That's why he came from heaven.

[30:59] To die. To die. That was it. He was born to die. Born to give his life as a ransom for many.

[31:13] And that obedience to the death of the cross was never out of sight, out of mind for our Lord. He was a man on a mission. And different times in the gospel that just comes bleeding through from his heart.

[31:27] I have a baptism to be baptized with and how constrained I am until it is accomplished. He set his face like flint to go up to Jerusalem undeterred.

[31:42] I came to die. His death cast a shadow back upon the whole of his life. He lived each day beneath the shadow of that cross.

[31:54] That's where I'm going. That's my life's goal. That's why I'm here. And it affected what he did each day of his life. It gave shape and focus and purpose and set the priorities for how he lived each day of life leading up to it until he could finally say, it is finished.

[32:15] I've accomplished the work that my father gave me to do. And by that death he conquered death for all who would trust in him.

[32:26] For death is the sure wages of sin. It's what God demands for our sins. Death under his wrath followed by the second death of the lake of fire forever.

[32:43] So by dying the death that we deserve he sets his people free from the fear of death. He removes the sting of death which is sin. Sin that brings us face to face with a judge to face his wrath forever and ever.

[32:57] that's the sting of death. That's what makes death such a nasty painful thing because it just pushes us right into the presence of a God who is angry with us because of our sin.

[33:11] But when the believer's trust is in Jesus the stinger is taken out of death because his sin is taken away. His sin was suffered by Christ. We sang of it not my sin in part but the hole was nailed to his cross.

[33:26] I bear it no more. That's the stinger gone from death. So now the worst death can do for me is just push me right into the presence of the one who lived and died and rose again for me.

[33:42] So where oh death is your sting? Where oh death is your victory? Thanks be to God. He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore stand firm.

[33:55] Don't let anything move you. Move you from what? From what you've been put here to do. Your purpose in life. Let nothing move you.

[34:07] Always abounding in the work of the Lord because you know that your work in the Lord is not in vain. Are you doing everything you do for the Lord?

[34:18] Stand firm. You living life backwards? What would that look like? What's on the Bible's bucket list? If death and judgment are coming how then shall we live?

[34:31] Well the short answer is live for God. Live for God. The God who gave you life. Live that life for God. But to break it down that means in the first place to repent of your sins.

[34:45] To renounce your life of living for yourself. To say that's the greatest wickedness of all. To be content to live without God and without Jesus without the Holy Spirit and not for him but for me.

[34:58] Repent of that. Repent of that. And cast yourself by faith on the Lord Jesus Christ to save you. To save you from yourself.

[35:11] To save you from your sin. To save you from the second death. And then go on repenting and go on trusting every day that God gives you.

[35:23] That's first. First thing on the bucket list. Get right with God. Until you're right with God you're not ready to die.

[35:34] Secondly, live a life of communion with God through the word of God and prayer. Live a life of fellowship with God. It's the one thing needful in life.

[35:48] And death shows us that. That's why Minot said I regret I didn't spend more time in prayer and in my Bible. So what's on the bucket list?

[35:58] Communion with God through his word. To sit with Mary at Jesus' feet and to learn from him and then having sat at his feet to go through your day in the yoke with Jesus still learning from him who is gentle and humble in heart.

[36:16] Getting to know him better through communion with him. A life lived for him is a life lived with him. Taking everything in your day to him in prayer.

[36:29] Lord, this trouble, help me. Lord, this gift, thank you. Praising him all the day long. You see, a life lived in communion with God. That should be way up on top of the bucket list.

[36:42] Knowing that you're going to die one day. And somewhere high on that bucket list will also be thirdly, the daily pursuit of holiness. Be holy in everything you do.

[36:54] So be holy in your marriage. Be a holy wife, a holy husband. Be holy in the family. Holy father, holy mother, holy teenager, holy in the family, holy in your financial things, holy in your studies.

[37:15] Be holy in your work. Be holy in your recreations and in your use of technology, in your plans and your goals. Be holy in in everything you do.

[37:28] And what is holiness? If you want to boil it all down, it's being like Jesus. That's life lived backwards from death. I want to live like Jesus, the perfectly holy man.

[37:45] And that means finding out what pleases the Lord, and that's only found in here. And once I find out what pleases the Lord, it means then doing it and pleasing him instead of myself.

[37:59] It means seeking his name to be honored, his kingdom to come and his will to be done. like the psalmist said, Lord, let me live that I may praise you.

[38:12] Let me live that I may praise you. Is that why you want to live another day, another year, a dozen years? for his name to be praised and honored.

[38:27] Means seeking first his kingdom and righteousness. It means keeping priorities straight first things first. His kingdom, his rule and his righteousness.

[38:40] And that means pursuing the two greatest commandments. Loving God with all my heart. That's got to be first. That's the first and greatest command. That's got to be my top priority.

[38:53] And then second after it is to love my neighbor like I love myself. It means laying up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal.

[39:10] It means using your time, your money, your talents to further God's kingdom, to grow God's church, to invest in things that will remain on the other side of death.

[39:22] It means redeeming the time that we're given each day. It means never putting off for tomorrow what I need to do today. Being ready to meet the Lord anytime, day or night.

[39:37] Those are just some of the things on the bucket list. You just read through the whole book and you'll see the bucket list. how to live since our days are few.

[39:49] But you say, John, that's just the basics of the Christian life. That's the point. That's how we're meant to live. That's how we were created to live.

[40:00] Knowing God in communion with him, reflecting his holiness, loving him, loving our neighbor. using the time, buying up the opportunity.

[40:12] This is just the way that we are meant to live. This is the life for which the father sent his son. This is the life Jesus redeemed us to live. This is the life the spirit indwells us to live.

[40:24] This is applying your heart to wise living in the light of approaching death. This is really living like you were dying. This is living life backwards from death. life. A life without regrets.

[40:40] Let me just encourage you. That no one has ever regretted a life lived for God. No one's ever come to the end of life saying, oh, what a fool I've been.

[40:56] To have lived for God in eternal things. Instead of living for self and temporal things. If only I had my life to live over. Oh, I wouldn't waste so much time with God and the Bible and prayer and church.

[41:09] Or helping needy people with my treasure time and talents. Telling others about Jesus. If only I could do it all over again, I'd just fill up my life with eating, drinking, and being merry and living for me.

[41:25] No, people don't regret having lived their life for God. God. A godly man like Mano regrets that he didn't live his life more for God.

[41:38] But oh, there have been many, many people who have come to the end of their lives with plenty of regrets. Ruined relationships, wasted opportunities, duties left undone, living for all the wrong things.

[41:52] So let us number our days aright. that we might gain a heart of wisdom. So that we might be wise through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

[42:07] Having him as our Savior and Lord, the one we are walking with, living with, trusting in, obeying, serving. Let us live for him so that when it comes our time to die, we'll have nothing to do but die.

[42:22] No mad rush around to try to rearrange things, but just just to die, to fall into the kind arms of the Lord Jesus. To meet him with confidence and joy and not with shame.

[42:42] God wouldn't give us that command. If he didn't intend to help us to obey it, let's pray. Father in heaven, there are things in your word that that just fill our hearts to overflowing with joy and make us feel like jumping up and down.

[43:11] And then there are other things in your word that hit us like a bucket of cold water in the face. And yet, we've seen this morning that when you do that to us, it is not to make our lives morbid, but everlastingly happy.

[43:35] And so we thank you. We thank you, Lord, that you know where we live in a world that's hiding death from us. And you know how our minds often think, so little of death, even though it's all around us.

[43:54] So thank you for filling your word with over a thousand times that we will be bumping into this word. And Lord, may that come in more than word.

[44:06] May it come in power with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction to us, that we not come to the end of our life with a bunch of regrets, but that we might learn to take this day, a day that you have made, a day that you've given us, and that we not count on tomorrow, for you promise none of us tomorrow, but that we would take this day and live it to the fullest, to your glory.

[44:36] Thank you, Father, for sending your Son. Thank you, Jesus, for laying down your life, that we might live life with you. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for taking up your home in us to enable us to think seriously about death and to actually live differently in the light of it.

[44:57] So we confess our sinfulness, that we often live for trivial, temporal things that will evaporate in a breath, life, and we beg you to teach us to number our days aright, that we might live more wisely with the time remaining, all that you might be glorified, people might be helped, and we might find our greater joy in giving than in receiving.

[45:26] We ask it through our Savior, in his powerful name, Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.