A sermon
preached by the Rev. Scott D. Nowack on October 23, 2011
at the First
Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas.
"Overcoming Obstacles: Living a Life that Matters"
Deuteronomy
34:1-12
If tomorrow
was your last day, what would your legacy be?
What will you leave with the world when your time comes?
The legacy Moses
leaves is unmatched. It is extraordinary. With God’s power and direction, he led the
people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, across the Red Sea with God’s help hiked
through the wilderness of Sin an now stand on the verge of the promised land of
Canaan. From Mount Nebo, God allows
Moses to see the entire Promised Land.
He can see it, but Moses will not enter it because of the actions of the
past generation broke faith with God.
This moment represents the culmination of a life lived as God’s faithful
servant. His day is done; his life
complete. And that’s where he dies, on
the mountain top. He was buried, the
people mourned and the torch of leadership was passed to Joshua, son of
Nun.
Although
Moses is dead, his legacy lives on established with Joshua and all the people
through his teaching of the Torah, his very life and how he lived. His legacy is a lasting one.
I believe
nobody starts out in life saying, “I want to live a life that’s mediocre,
ordinary, plain; one that doesn’t ask too much from me or too much from
others.” We are given a drive deep
within to discover the person God has created us to be and what our calling in
life is, what is our purpose for living and where is my place in this
world. Psychologist Carl Jung says that,
“act one of a young person’s life is the story of his or her setting out to
conquer the world.”[1] What will your legacy be?
We all want
to live a life that matters. We need to
know that matter to someone; we matter to the world and that the world takes us
seriously.[2] We all want to know we made a difference with
our life.
Author and
speaker Stephen Covey wrote about leaving a legacy: “The need to leave a legacy
is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence
and contribution.”
Evangelist and
author Billy Graham says it this way, “Our days are numbered. One of the
primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we
leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What
preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth,
which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has
given us each day.”
What will
your legacy be?
So many days
in my life I feel I wasted away; so many days wasted on meaningless,
purpose-less stuff that has never made a lasting impact. And I think about the financial resources I
have squandered over the years. I
remember when I moved to Chicago after college and began attending a church
there in the city. The stewardship
campaign was in full swing when I received my financial commitment card from
the church asking me to prayerfully consider giving of my resources to the
church.
I thought to
myself, “What resources?” I’m twenty-two
years old in my first full-time job and working a part-time job, too, to make
ends meet. After the rent is paid and my
other monthly bills taken care of, there are not many resources left. I had nothing to give to the church… or so I
thought.
That all
changed one Sunday when Dr. Buchanan said in his sermon these words, “The life
of faith is very much a journey”. The
scripture was Joshua, chapter 1, where God promises Joshua that he will be with
him and the Israelites as they move forward into the Promised Land. God wants Joshua to trust, to be strong and
courageous, knowing God is with him and the people wherever they go.
Then one of
the elders gave a moment for mission on the stewardship campaign when he said,
“When we dig deep to give to the church, it helps us re-order our
priorities.” He went on to ask, “If not
now, when. And if not us, who?” When will the right time come for each of us
to give sacrificially to our savior Jesus Christ and the ministry of his
church?
Who among us
will step up; give sacrificially to God, and with faith, conviction and courage
trust in the gracious gifts God has for us?
That evening
I was looking closely at where I committed my financial resources every
month. I noticed I spent more on clothes
in a month than what I gave to the church.
I noticed I spent more on eating out for lunch while at work in a
month’s time than I gave to the church.
I realized this was not right. I
re-ordered my priorities and made what I believed at the time was a sacrificial
financial commitment to the church: gracious living through gracious giving. I bought fewer clothes and made my lunch at
home to bring to work.
What will
your legacy be?
As a young
Irishwoman working in England in the late 1800s, Amy Carmichael decided to
answer God’s call to serve in the mission field. She was sent to India.
The young
missionary soon discovered that the way to reach the Indian people was not
through preaching but through sacrifice.
So she
reached out to the poorest, youngest, and most despised among them, especially
the babies and children given to the Hindu temples who were forced to serve as
slaves and were tortured if they were caught trying to escape. She said, “There
were days when the sky turned black for me because of what I heard and knew was
true. Sometimes it was as if I saw the Lord Jesus Christ kneeling alone, as he
knelt long ago under the olive trees. And the only thing that one who cared
could do was to go softly and kneel down beside him, so that he would not be
alone in his sorrow over the little children.”
Amy not only
felt sorrow for the children, but she was spurred to action. She rescued them,
built a home, and recruited a staff to care for them. To those who profited
from the enslavement practices, she was known as “the white woman who steals
children.”
Amy
Carmichael’s mission trip ended 55 years later, when she died at the age of 83.
During that time she rescued over 1,000 abused, abandoned, and enslaved
children. And though her stories, prayers, and devotions filled 35 books back
in Britain, not once did she return to hear the praises of her friends and
supporters. To Amy anything that called attention to her stole attention from
the God she served. In fact in 1919, her name was published in a British honors
list. When she found out about it, she wrote back to England asking to have her
name removed. It troubled her to “have
an experience so different from his who was despised and rejected—not kindly
honored.”
Ironically,
the woman who wanted no honor other than that of being Christ’s servant became
famous nonetheless, as tens of thousands of readers in Britain and America were
moved by her writings. Her example of sacrificial love has encouraged countless
numbers of Christians to follow her into the mission field.
The path to a truly successful and significant life is
through the relationships we form, through family, friends and through acts of
generosity and self-sacrifice. When we
sacrifice ourselves for the life of another person, we make a difference in the
world; we make a lasting impact on another and prove that in fact we do matter.
What
will my legacy be? I am not a man of
great financial wealth. I won’t be
leaving millions of dollars to the church or my alma maters or anybody. So what will my legacy be? It will be based on what kind of friend I am
to others, what kind of husband I am to D’Anna, what kind of dad I am to
Michael and Marissa, what kind of brother, son, cousin, nephew I am, what kind
of pastor I am, on what words I say, what actions I take, on the decisions I
make. But most of all, it will be based
on my relationship with God in Christ Jesus and living life in the sweet sound
of God amazing grace.
When we
give graciously to Christ and Christ’s church, we sacrifice ourselves and
proclaim to the world that giving to the church is the answer to the idols of
consumerism, materialism and acquisition that run rampant in our culture. The challenge we face is not wealth
itself. Rather, it is the understanding
that living a life that matters is not based on what we own, the home we live
in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear and more. It’s in the people whose lives touched ours
and the lives we touched. The legacy we
leave is grounded in knowing we are all children of God because this is the
place where we find comfort, hope, meaning and generosity for our lives. Living a life that matters and leaving a
legacy in the name of Jesus Christ clearly shows the world that life is not all
about getting, but that true joy comes from joyful living; gracious living
through gracious giving. The offering we
take every Sunday is not about the church’s need to receive, but about our need
as disciples of Jesus Christ to give graciously of ourselves.
Moses gave himself fully to serve God and lead the
Israelites to the Promised Land. This is
the legacy he left his people and all the people of the world. He didn’t get the earthly prize, but he lived
a life that mattered, a life of impact, a life of sacrifice, a life of service
to God and the people. What will your
legacy be?
A legacy makes an
impact that cannot always be seen or fully known. It takes courage and faith to give
sacrificially and make a significant impact to the ministry of the church. We can trust in God to help us do this. We can trust the one who began a good work in
each of us will see it to completion in Christ Jesus our Lord. We can trust in the one in whom all things
are possible. We can trust in the one
who formed our inward parts; who knit us together in our mother’s womb. We can trust in the one in whose book were
written all the days that were formed for us, when none of them as yet
existed. We can trust God to help us
leave a legacy, to live a life that matters.
Hear the words of
the prophet Isaiah who declares, “I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the
Lord God is my strength and my might and he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah
12:2)
Now is the time;
the time for each one of us to take courage, stand firm, trust in Him and
give. Give.
It’s our
time. Will we do it? Of course we will. Of course we will.
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