THE BUCKET LIST!
What would you do if you knew you had 40 days to live? This question is not totally without some foundation in our life because many of us have gone to the doctor’s office and received news that turned out to be life transforming. Some have been told they have cancer, others that tumors are found. Still others have bad backs requiring surgery. There are reports requiring dialysis or a regular regimen of pills. These and other diagnosis truly make you stop and think about not only the quality of life but also the quantity of days. How many days do I have before the pain gets too great? How many more days do I have before I find myself limited?
When such news comes to our attention in the present we often discover that our minds will wander to our past. Back in the day we could drive without limitation or work those extra hours without too many problems, life was good or at least easier. Of course we could go back to our youth and remember the endless energy that we all used to own. Besides looking back to our past, we also think about our future. We wonder how we are going to cope with these new concerns. We might find ourselves becoming angry that we must deal with such issues or we might simply become numb.
But what if we were given exactly 40 days to live? Would we get busy living or get busy dying? Would you try to make the most of your 40 days or would you just wait for it to come? Some might say that when a doctor gives us an unhealthy diagnosis, we are in fact being given a second chance. I cannot tell you how many times I have ministered to people who knew they were going to die fairly soon, and who took that diagnosis as a wake up call. Such people mended broken relationships with family members or tried to do some things they always wanted to do but put off. I know of many souls who suddenly desired to hear the word of God, after receiving the not so good news from the doctors. Their hearts were now open and they saw life with a greater sense of hope.
There was a movie that came out somewhat recently with Jack Nicolson called THE BUCKET LIST. If you have not seen it already I encourage you to do so. In the movie two main characters discover they have a limited time to live and so they jot down on a list, all the things they want to do before they kick the bucket. The movie shows us what life can be like when you get busy living, even in the face of death.
I think most of us here, if we knew we only had so many days to live would make an effort to get busy living. Yet when God gives to us the great and terrible news that sin destroys our relationship with God. What do we do? Do we get busy living for God or do we get busy dying in our sins? What if God gave us only 40 days to get rid of our sin? Would we wait until the last day to get rid of it or would we seek to get rid of our sin just as soon as we became aware of how much God hates it? How would we get rid of it?
The answer to those questions depends on how terrible you view sin. Some Christians look at sin like a trash can that to them takes forever to fill but God looks at sin like a trash can that does not have to be full to stink. At home if I have a trash can near empty and I throw in a Tessa Diaper, then the entire trashcan would be in need of emptying right away. If I let things sit for awhile, with that Tessa Diaper lingering, we would have to fumigate the house! Well, that is how God sees our sins. Just one sin, one piece of trash, is enough to keep us from a relationship with God. Just one sin is enough to cast us eternally into the pit of despair. God’s task therefore is to help us see just how much he hates sin and what he is willing to do to destroy it. I believe that is one reason why we have the opportunity to go back in time and look at Jonah and his encounter with Nineveh. Here we see not only an example of how much God hates sin but, what he is willing to do to those who joyously live for it as well as in it.
In our Old Testament lesson we find Jonah coming to Nineveh, that great city. If you were just coming to chapter three of Jonah you only now heard God tell Jonah, “Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out to it the call that I am about to speak to you.” So Jonah goes to Nineveh but, he does not know what God is going to tell these people. He has three days to ponder what words God will give him when he speaks to the Ninevites. He has three days to remember what God put him through because of his outright disobedience to his Will. This newly humbled man therefore had time to think about what God would say. Surely what God did to Jonah would be nothing to what God would do to this city of sin.
As Jonah arrives he receives the Word from God and speaks it. Jonah says, “Yet in 40 days Nineveh shall be destroyed.” The Law of God has spoken. The people of Nineveh were wicked. The will of the Ninevites historically suggests that they were happy to just go on living the way they felt was best. They simply were living for themselves and if theirs was a trashcan of sin, their trashcan would have overflowed on the first hour of the first day of their existence. They lost sight of the fact that God hates sin and that just one sin was enough to condemn them and you and I would think that such a city deserved the same destruction as that of Sodom.
But God gave the Ninevites 40 days to live. In those 40 days they could have continued life as normal. They could have continued to murder, deceive, and act every way that Sodom was before their demise. But here we see a miracle. In the same way we see the power of God in how Saul was transformed into Paul. Here we see an entire city take God at his Word.
The Ninevites collectively began to see God for who he really is, the One True God that Hates Sin! They went from simply believing that God is one, which as James says, “even the demons believe that and shudder” (James 2:19) into believing that God was not only active in their life but, was ready to make a big change on their behalf. They went on to believe that God was what he said he was, HOLY! They also began to see God as merciful, even in light of the promise of destruction. After all, they did have 40 days.
God chose to give them 40 days to think about how they were presently living contrary to God’s Will but the Ninevites chose to not even let a day pass to take God at his Word as well as to seek out his mercy. Ninevites, who were pagan enemies of Israel, now were being changed into people longing for repentance and hope. Listen to these words again, “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. Then he issued a proclamation to Nineveh”. Here we see the leader took God’s Word to heart and he literally was moved into turning away from his old life. He chose right away to live for God. The King said, “let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” Even without a promise that God would relent, the Ninevites still humbled themselves before God. Now what does this action teach us?
By way of these words from a pagan leader, we are able to see the true holiness of God. By way of these words from a terrible sinner, we are able to see how God changes lives. By way of these words spoken by someone who had in his mind 40 days left to live, we see just how much God hates sin and longs for his people to turn away from sin and turn toward the Holiness and Mercy of Almighty God.
The leader of Nineveh soon saw his trashcan for what it was. It was overflowing with sin, which means it was overflowing with the promise of death and destruction. God, in His Great Mercy showed him how high a pile of garbage this leader and his people have created for themselves. We too have created for ourselves the promise that the wages of sin leads to death.
When we minister to others, in order to help them see the value of Jesus Christ we must first help them understand the weight of sin. We would ask something like, “Do you believe that you have created for yourself a pile of garbage that overflows with death and destruction?” Or better said, do you understand that we were born in sin, we cannot escape it and God hates it? We might also ask, “do you understand that God sent us Jesus, His Son, as the only instrument powerful enough to take away our sins, so that God would welcome us into His Kingdom?”
Christians might answer the question of “Are you concerned about sin?” with a loud NO! We might say that I know Jesus Christ. Fine! That is a solid answer but, I must then ask, if by knowing Jesus Christ, do you then daily confess your sins to Him? Do you daily look to his death and resurrection upon the cross as more than just a blanket coverage to all sin and instead see it as a Work to show us How Much God hates sin; hating it so much to allow his only Son to die because of it? Do you see Christ’s sacrifice as something not to take for granted but, to go to each and every day? Do you see a need to bring to Him your sins each and every day because you know how much God hates sin and in seeking to live for God you hate sin too? Do you so much hate sin that you want to get rid of it by turning to Jesus and saying, “I a poor miserable sinner confess unto you all my sins which I have ever done wrong…” because like the Ninevites you want to live under God’s Holiness and Mercy?
The good news is that whereas the Ninevites prayed that God might forgive them, we have Jesus who offers no doubt. We do not have to think for one moment that if we fail to confess every sin we will somehow lose the opportunity to receive our eternal reward because we know that Jesus forgives us ALL our sins even before a repentant thought reaches our lips. Yet, because we have been changed by Christ and because our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, we choose to daily turn to God and confess our sins not only to honor the work of Jesus but also to remind us of what Christ’s Work and Word accomplished. For by hating sin the way God hates sin, and by casting our sin at the feet of Jesus and seeking His Mercy and Grace, the way the Ninevites sought God’s Mercy and Grace, we show ourselves that our love for God is more than lip service. We also remind ourselves that if God gave us only 40 days to live, we would not hesitate to get busy living for God instead of living for ourselves. When we come before God daily and ask him to forgive us our sin, we also are immediately moved to look to Him for Mercy. We look to the empty cross.
Sometimes, I wonder if the reason why God allows us to struggle and suffer with difficult diagnosis is because he wants us to associate the trial we have with yet another reminder of the effect of sin on this world. When the arthritis comes, when the back pain gets too intense, when the Chemo seems to try and kill us before the cancer does; those things can remind us that sin is real and that it kills and it destroys.
For years the Ninevites lived as they wanted to live without really understanding the consequences of sin. Only when the consequences made themselves manifest in the 40 day countdown, did the Ninevites wake up. Sometimes, even as Christians we lose sight of just how deadly sin really is or just how much God hates sin. Maybe that is why people of God stop going to church or studying God’s Word because they no longer believe sin is as bad as God said it is. God however does not give up on those folks, even as he did not give up on us or the people of Nineviah in Jonah’s day. God continues to speak to us about the dangers of sin and his desire to give us a second chance.
You see when I began today’s message talking about being given 40 days to live, I had hoped that you would have considered the option of getting a second chance because medically speaking, that is what each and everyone of us thinks about when we look for cures or solutions to take away the pain that a doctor says might not ever get better. Cancer patients look for second chances after regular doses of Chemo just as much as a person with terrible arthritis looks for a second chance that a cure might come soon. A member of this congregation recently went under the knife and as he close his eyes he might have thought about receiving a second chance by way of the skill of the doctors. Yet you and I do not need to receive a troubling diagnosis in order to long for second chances. We seek those second chances every time we bow our heads and pray to our Lord. We ask for forgiveness, or healing, or help or encouragement and each time we do this we ask for a second chance from Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We ask for God’s intervention to take away that which is hurtful and to replace it with something positive, holy and just.
In a way, when Jesus finished his work he gave us all a lifetime supply of do-overs. You remember do-overs don’t you? We would often call out DO OVER when a sporting activity or a game did not quite go the way we wanted it. Well, here God gives us a daily dose of do-overs thanks to the Work of Jesus Christ.
I would encourage you therefore to take time out and give thanks to Almighty God that each morning as we open our eyes we see it as a do-over, a day when we can look to God more today than yesterday, repent our sins more today than yesterday and to long for His Word more today than Yesterday. Who know? Maybe we should start writing down our own bucket list but, instead of jotting down all the things we want to do before our time is up, we jot down all the things God wants us to do. Who know? We just might have 40 days left to live, if that is the case I am encouraged all the more by God’s Word to get busy living for Jesus while getting busy dying to my old nature, my old habits and everything else that is contrary to the Will of God. And if you need any encouragement, just remember how wide the eyes of the Ninevites were opened when they were given the same opportunity.
Amen!
