I can remember two separate mornings in my life, when I woke up early because I couldn’t breathe.
When I woke, my lungs had stopped breathing and I realized they weren’t taking commands from my brain. So I darted out of bed, standing in the middle of the room with my mouth wide open, prompting my lungs to breathe in air, and finally, they opened up again and after a few moments I was breathing normally again. Those two moments without breath were terrifying experiences and I never have found out why that happened, but I do have a new appreciation for life, and breath…
When we sing the song, ‘Breathe’ and I hear, “This is the air I breathe. Your very presence living in me… And I’m desperate for you”, it reminds me of my full dependence on God for every breath I breath. It evokes all the emotions of gratitude and passion that I have for the Lord and reminds me of the barrenness of an existence without Him. I’m humbled and honored by God when I’m reminded of all these things…
I can picture a runner, exhausting himself in a race, and gasping for breath just yards from the finish line… His heart is pounding oxygenated blood to the rest of his body. Striving to finish the race, he’s forcing his disciplined body to obey, to push beyond its limits. Especially now, he’s fully dependant on the supply of fresh air he’s receiving from his lungs. If the supply of oxygen were to be cut off at this critical moment, his body would fail and the runner would fall dead, just short of the finish line.
In the same way you and I, the body of Christ, run a race. And we depend on the Lord for every breath we breath. The further along in the race, the more desperate and dependent we are on Him…
His breath is vitally necessary for the finishing of the race we run. Without the breath of God, we the body of Christ would collapse in the very places where we stand. Without the breath of God, and the blood of Jesus coursing through the veins of the church, the body dies and the runner falls short of the finish line. Without God’s breath, everything lays bare and lifeless.
In Geneses chapter 2, we see God giving life to mankind, by His own breath. He breathes this breath into the first man, Adam. Gen 2:7, “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
At the moment he received this breath, Adam was transformed from being a sand castle (essentially a form made from the dust of the earth), to a living being: The Lord’s pride and joy, made after His likeness and in His image for the purpose of carrying on an intimate, respectful and productive relationship with His creator.
Everything God created, He designed for a specific purpose. And everything He breathed life into became a living being with the breath of God inside. Anything He did not breath into has remained dead and will remain lifeless.
Take this balloon for instance… Lifeless and empty. Let’s say the balloon is the first man.
ILLUSTRATE: Balloon & helium tank. God filled Adam with the breath of life… (Draw Adam’s face)
As a person in the congregation draws a man’s face on the front of the balloon, pop it and illustrate how suddenly life can end. It portrays the unpredictability and suddenness of death: the moment the breath of life passes from this earthen vessel and ascends to the heavens like the helium in this balloon did.
In the same way that the bursting of the balloon surprised us, so death will come suddenly and surpisingly to each one here.
“…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” Heb 9:27
The Greek word used for judgment here is ‘krisis’ (kree-sis), the word from which we derived ‘crisis.’
It implies that at the end of every life, each man faces a crisis in which we will be judged.
2 Corinthians 5:10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.”
Every one of us has an appointment with God in which He will assess the passion of your life based on everything you’ve done, all you’ve said and all you’ve thought. For some of us, that day is remarkably near. And since none of us here knows that day of crisis, when you will stand before God for judgment and be appointed to eternal destination, all of us should be living as though our last day is today. Don’t cast your life to the winds of chance, assuming it will last a few days longer. Don’t waste your breath cursing your brother or seducing your sister because very soon: much sooner than you think, you will stand before the God of absolute Holiness and perfect Righteousness and you will give an account of everything you’ve done with the breath God has entrusted to you.
Your life, your words and your deeds will be weighed in the balances. Hidden or open, everything will be revealed. On that day, I suppose many will stand before God with their mouths gaping wide. Many, who thought their robes of righteousness were so white by their own standards will find them to be as filthy rags…
At that moment, all the scriptures you’ve ever read about the blood of Christ will streak through your mind and at that moment, the decision you made concerning Christ while you were alive in your earthly body will determine the destination of your eternal soul. As the anonymous author of Romans has said in chapter 4, verse 7: "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him."
The only escape from eternal death is a relationship with Jesus Christ…
A doctor called one of his patients into his office to deliver some very important news. He said, "I’ve received your test results and I have some good news and some bad news.” The patient was quiet for a minute, sensing the severity of the announcement and said, "Let me have the good news first."
So the doctor took a deep breath and said, "You only have 24 hours to live." The man was shocked and surprised… "What?! 24 hours to live? If that’s the good news what could the bad news possibly be?"
The doctor replied, "I was supposed to tell you that yesterday."
Eccl 9:12, “Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”
This is your warning my friends: None of us really know when we will live our last day… Death is a mystery to all of us and yet each of us will have to experience it as long as the Lord tarries, and we will all give account for what we did with that precious breath of our life.
With that knowledge in mind, you and I should be very careful and thoughtful as to what we spend our time doing, shouldn’t we? If this breath is so fleeting, shouldn’t we carefully spend it and try to get the most out of it? We should strive, as the song says, to be history makers in this land for the cause of Christ?
King Solomon said, ‘In the end, everything else is meaningless.”
He had a lot to say about meaningless things. His whole book, Ecclesiastes is a discourse about the meaningless things men chase after all life long. He said, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Eccl 1:14
His whole point is that most of the time, people are preoccupied with things that are meaningless in the scheme of things, in the end… Most of us are usually preoccupied with chasing after the wind.
ILLUSTRATION: LASER POINTER. Every once in a while, I enjoy sitting on the couch with this remote control in hand, because it has a laser integrated into it. When we’re all relaxing and the dogs are lying nearby, sometimes I like to turn on the laser and walk it up their nose till they finally chase after it.
It’s fun watching them run around and chase the light…
Even if the dog lays his paws on it, the laser will elude him because it has no substance…
So is the chasing after worldly things.
Every day we run in circles: mankind chasing after wealth and striving for the passion of our hearts, but in the eyes of the wisest man who ever lived, it is all chasing after the wind. King Solomon himself, lay his hands on all that the world had to offer, and happiness eluded him because it was without substance.
Isn’t it interesting that everything we can see with our eyes are just the illusion of substance?
And the things we cannot see with our human eyes or touch with our hands: the spiritual things…
These are the things of true substance.
Professional golfer Paul Azinger was diagnosed with cancer at age of 33.
He had just won a PGA championship and had ten tournament victories to his credit.
He said, "A genuine feeling of fear came over me… I could die from cancer. Then another reality hit me even harder. I’m going to die eventually anyway, whether from cancer or something else. It’s just a question of when. Everything I had accomplished in golf became meaningless to me. All I wanted to do was live."
Then he remembered something that a man named Larry Moody, who teaches a Bible study on the tour said to him. "Zinger, we’re not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We’re in the land of the dying trying to get to the land of the living."
Paul eventually recovered from chemotherapy and returned to the PGA tour, and he’s done pretty well. But that bout with cancer changed his perspective. He said, "I’ve made a lot of money since I’ve been on the tour, and I’ve won a lot of tournaments, but that happiness is always temporary…
The only way you will ever have true contentment is in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
I’m not saying that nothing ever bothers me and I don’t have problems, but I feel like I’ve found the answer to the six-foot hole."
Paul reached the top of his mountain: the pinnacle of his career, and it took a bout with cancer to realize that happiness was just temporary without a relationship with Jesus Christ. Even when we lay hands on our desires, happiness and peace still eludes us because at the end of the day, we all still face the six-foot hole. Too many of us are spending our precious time chasing after the wind.
No one knows his appointed time. Therefore, we should make the best of what time we have.
When someone dies a slow death to disease, such as cancer, we consider them cursed. But God gives them a gift that others don’t get, and that gift is the time to reconcile their wrongs with the Lord.
In the last few months of my dad’s life, he became tired and weak. The cancerous growth in his esophagus exceeded the capabilities of the chemotherapy and radiation to fight it. Soon, dad couldn’t eat solids. Then he couldn’t drink fluids. He knew his time was coming to a slow end and, rather than be angry with God for a slow, painful death, dad used the time to make things right with God.
He called some of the people he hadn’t heard from for years to reconcile any wrongs from the past because God’s Word says, "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Matt 5:23-24
Although he was a strong Christian, I saw his dedication increase in his last days. He recommitted his life, asked me to baptize him (which I proudly did), studied God’s Word more than ever and prayed more. Even the little sins that every Christian seems to commit without guilt melted away in the last few weeks of his life because he knew that soon, he would stand before his righteous Lord.
In that long and painful death, God gave my father the opportunity to draw closer to Him than he ever would have before, because the reality of life and death overshadowed him. And early in the morning, the day after Thanksgiving, the Lord required my dad’s last breath.
I still don’t understand why dad had to die so early in my life, but I did learn from his death that our life is too short to waste. It may sound silly to say, but it’s true: we don’t all have the luxury of a slow death. There’s no time to waste running after (frankly) a bunch of stupid things…
I believe God is pleading to the heart of every man and woman here today, “Spend your life wisely.”
Consider the wisdom of your ways…
Psalms 50:19-23, “You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you. But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face. "Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue: He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God."
Our life is a thank offering unto God!
At the conclusion of Solomon’s book, in Ecclesiastes 12, his final suggestion was this:
Eccl 12:13, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of man.”
Fearing God is understanding and taking to heart the fact that He could require your soul at any moment, and living as though you believe that by following His commandments.
Notice these are called the Ten Commandments and not the Ten Suggestions.
They’re found in the book of Exodus, not the book of Hesitations or Procrastinations…
1) Have no other god before me.
2) Don’t make any idol in the form of anything in heaven or earth.
3) Don’t misuse the Name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not hold anyone guiltless for that.
4) Remember the Sabbath (seventh) day and keep it Holy. (for real!)
5) Honor your father and mother.
6) You will not murder.
7) You will not commit adultery.
8) You will not steal.
9) You will not give false testimony (lie, gossip) against your neighbor.
10) You will not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. OBEY!
Love your neighbor as yourself. (“That part about loving your neighbor… I meant that.”)
These commands aren’t so hard to follow. And when we obey them, then we find that we are at one with the Lord, and because of that we have peace in life. Peace doesn’t come from possessions; it comes from pleasing God. He is the source of our joy. He is our daily bread. He is the air we breathe. We obey these commands because we love Him and want to please Him more than ourselves, and because we fear judgment.
I Jn 2:3-6, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”
Therefore, if the Lord is your bread, then eat till your spirit is full, and if He’s the air you breathe, then breathe Him in. He is our strength! “He is our life to infinity and beyond!” – Buzz Lightyear
This breath we breathe, this life we live, is so precious and so unpredictable in measure that we ought to spend it very wisely.
Acts 20:24, “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-- the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” Grace, Acts 20:24 Testify to the Gospel of truth and grace.
The Challenge: Reconcile your life with God today!
Today is your gift from God! Who knows if you will live today, or be given time to repent before you die or right the wrongs you’ve ignored for so long?
Don’t waste your life chasing the wind.
Ours is a life of passion.
When you’re given the opportunity to pray and praise and worship, take it with all your heart!
It may be your last.
Purify yourselves today before the Lord your God.
Today is the day of salvation…
2 Cor 6:1-2, “As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”
