Title: How to Outlive Your Life
Text: Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Thesis: What we do for God outlives us.
Introduction
You can see the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on Logan Street in downtown Denver. It is a beautiful French Gothic structure. The front doors are brass. Its vaulted ceiling is 68 feet high and the twin towers reach skyward 210 feet. Most notable about the cathedral are the 75 beautifully crafted stained glass windows… the most stained glass windows of any cathedral in the United States. (The windows were imported from Germany at the outrageous price of $34,000.) The cathedral was begun in 1902, the cornerstone set in 1906 and the spires capped in 1911. The stonework includes limestone from Indiana, Granite from Gunnison, CO and marble imported from Italy. The church serves a large congregation as well as the needs of the community. One of their most noteworthy ministries is feeding the homeless… approximately 60,000 lunches a year. (The total cost of construction was $500,000 in the early 1900’s)
While I am impressed when I pass by the Basilica I am more impressed by the Cathedral of St. Paul which sits on Summit Hill and overlooks the city of St. Paul, MN. It is a massive structure that is 306 feet tall and is capped with a 120 in diameter dome covered with copper.
But even the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minnesota is dwarfed by many of the cathedrals in Europe… the most massive of which is the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family) in Barcelona, Spain. Ground breaking for this Sacred Family was in 1882 and construction is expected to be completed by 2026… Imagine a single construction project taking nearly 150 years to complete. Despite the fact that European cathedrals typically took 100 years to complete, over 400 cathedrals were built in one 500 year period.
As I read about the construction of those cathedrals I was stunned by the realization that in some cases, four generations of craftsmen likely worked to complete the construction of one of those cathedrals.
Thinking of Sacred Family of Barcelona, Spain alone… stone masons began stonework in 1882. For the last 130 years stone masons have continued their craft. Sons picked up where their fathers left off, grandsons began to lay stones where their grandfathers had begun. Great grandsons are laying stones today on the same project their great grandfathers began in 1882. And the project and the process will continue until the year 2026.
Generations of stone masons who began and worked on projects knew they would never see the completion of what they had begun. Every stone they laid in its place was for the benefit and blessing of generations yet unborn.
That is what Moses knew as well. He would spend his life leading people to the edge of the Promised Land but he would never get to live there. Moses lived and died having hope for the future of others.
I. Have hope for the future of others.
The Lord said, “This is the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” Deuteronomy 34:1-4
Last week we talked about one of the ways Moses outlived his life was because he lived his life with hope for the future of other people. And we concluded that one way to outlive ourselves is to: Live in a way that demonstrates we want others to be blessed in the future by the way we live in the present… remembering that what we do for God and others outlives us.
Another thing we can learn from Moses is that he lived so well that when he died people were saddened by his death.
II. Live life so that people will be saddened by your death but gladdened by your hope.
The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab for thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over. Deuteronomy 34:5-8
Probably 15 or 16 years ago Carl Freeman asked me to take him for a drive. Carl was elderly and wanted to show me some of, what he called, “places,” in his life. It was toward the end of winter… a cold and rainy day. I drove out to his farm and we set off. He directed me up one gravel road and down another. He showed me an abandoned farmstead back in a field where he lived as a boy. He showed me where the country school he attended once stood. He showed me the first farm he and Evelyn had lived when they were first married. I was driving slowly and enjoying his reminiscing when at the top of a hill he said, “Stop right here.” I did and then he reached over and placed a gnarled old hand on my knee and said, “I know how you feel. This is where my two month old son was killed when he was a baby.” He told me the story of how he and Evelyn were on their way home. Evelyn was holding the baby in her arms and as they topped the hill they were hit head-on by another car. They were all seriously injured and the baby was killed. And then he said, “I think about little David every day.”
That little ride in the country was Carl’s way of telling me that he understood the extent of my loss and his way of telling me that our lives would never be the same again. When someone you love dies it breaks your heart and sometimes the grief is indescribable.
It has been nearly twenty years now and every year there is an inner clock inside of me that begins to tick in January and a sense of sadness sets in through March 15 as I live in anticipation of that sad day in our lives.
I was curious about the way they grieved in Moses’ day… when someone died they declared a period of mourning… they wept and the mourned for thirty days, after which the period of mourning was over. And then they got on with their lives.
We all know it isn’t all that simple but it was their way of honoring Moses. It was their way of marking his life and acknowledging who he was and what he meant to them.
As followers of Christ we grieve like everyone else... but not exactly. In I Thessalonians Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica saying, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in the death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” I Thessalonians 4:13
Yesterday in my devotional reading I read from Romans 8. It was the passage that says, “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” Romans 8:11 In other words, though we mark the passing of our loved ones with sadness we do so with the hope. We, as body people, have bodies that are mortal. But we also believe that we are spirit people and that our spirits are immortal. We believe that though our bodies die our spirits do not.
So while we gather to mark the death of our loved ones we also mark our hope because the bible teaches us that we are confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord… and to absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. II Corinthians 5:6-8
Bob Russell tells the story of his father’s death and how on the day of the funeral the weather so bad and the roads so impassable that he and his brother and their sons, along with the funeral director, made it to the gravesite. The snow was so deep that they had to carry the casket the final stretch down to the grave where they lowered the casket into the frozen ground.
And then he tells of how the seven of them gathered around that grave and he prayed the prayer of committal, “Father, this is a cold and lonely place but I thank you that to be absent from the body is to be safe in your warm arms.” (Bob Russell, Favorite Stories, PreachingToday.com.)
One of the secrets to outliving your life is to leave loved ones who love you and who are comforted by your hope of eternal life.
Another way to outlive yourself is to entrust your hopes to others.
III. Entrust your hopes to others who will continue your life’s work.
Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses. Deuteronomy 34:9
The bible is rich with illustrations of how God planned for his work to continue through succession. In the course of biblical history, God is the only constant. Abraham was replaced by Isaac and Isaac was replaced by Jacob. Elijah was replaced by Elisha. Saul replaced David and Solomon succeeded David. Jesus trained 12 disciples who were to continue his work in his absence. Paul mentored Timothy and then he said to Timothy, “This same truth that I have entrusted to you, entrust to others who will be faithful.”
Living with the knowledge that you are not going to live forever and that eventually you will have to entrust your stuff to others is sometimes a challenge.
If you’ve been following the Tim Tebow saga for long one of the speculations you will hear is that John Elway is not ready to give up his role as the best quarterback in Bronco history and that he feels threatened by the young Tim Tebow.
In a perfect world John Elway would take Tebow aside and pour his own life and experience into that young man so that one day the Elway legacy might live on in the life of his successor.
In our story today Moses handed the reigns over to young Joshua who then carried on his life work after he died.
This year a Barna Group Survey found that when teenagers were asked to identify the person they most admired other than their parents, 37% named a relative other than their parents. !! % named a teacher of a coach. 9% named a friend. 6% named a religious figure they knew personally. Another 6% named an actor or musician. 5% named an athlete and 4% named a political figure.
The study found that two out of three teenagers emulated people they know best. (Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; source: "Teen Role Models: Who They Are, Why They Matter," Barna Group, 1-31-11)
The challenge from the life of Moses is to not only live in such a way that others will pick up where you leave off and do what you’ve done but live so that when you are gone others will follow your example and be who you have been.
: And finally, live so that when you and others look back over your life, you can celebrate what God had done.
IV. Look back and celebrate what God has done in your life.
…for no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. Deuteronomy 34:10-12
One of the things I have noticed over the years is how I am hearing people say things like, “I don’t want my funeral to be a sad occasion. I want my funeral to be a celebration of my life.”
Moses lived so that though people were saddened by his death, they also celebrate his life.
The scripture is not silent about how we are to live. “Whatever you do,” it says in I Corinthians 10, “do it all for the glory of God.” I Corinthians 10:31 Jesus said, “Let your light [life] so shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16
A review of the latest Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson reveals that he had a personality that could drive those around him to fury and to despair. Yet, According to the Rome Sentinel, “Steve Jobs was a brilliant entrepreneur, in part because he showed no fear of failure, failed quite spectacularly from time to time, learned from those failures, and returned better, stronger, wiser, and more successful. There is pride in a life well lived.” (http://www.romesentinel.com/news?newsid=20111007-142107)
Those who reflect on the life of Steve Jobs may well note his imperfections but they cannot help but acknowledge his accomplishments.
In August of 2006 Newsweek Magazine interviewed Billy Graham. One of his daughters, Ann Graham-Lotz commented that she had learned an important lesson from her father that being: “When you get older secondary things, like politics, begin to fall away, and the primary things become primary again. And for Daddy, the primary thing is, as Jesus said, try to love God totally and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” (Jon Meacham, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Newsweek, 8/14/06, P. 38)
Live so that when people look back they can celebrate not only what you did but who you were.
Conclusion
Picking up where Moses left off, we too may:
1. Have hope for the future of others.
2. Live so that people, though saddened by our death are gladdened by our hope.
3. Entrust ourselves to others who will continue what we did and who were.
4. Look back and celebrate what God has done in us and through us.
The way to outlive your life is to:
Live in a way that demonstrates we want others to be blessed in the future by the way we live in the present… remembering that what we do for God and others outlives us.
