Fellowship in the Word

Guest (Male): Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functional follower of Jesus Christ.

Bill Gebhardt: I fought the good fight. I have finished the course. Now spiritually, I have kept the faith. I have still done what God has asked me to do. He says, "So then in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing."

You see, that's His point. He says, "I've ran the race, I've finished the course, I did what God asked me to do, and God will reward me for that." And oh by the way, He'll reward you too. You see, He'll reward you as well. Do you finish the course?

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church, located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world.

Bill Gebhardt: As only Max Lucado can write, he wrote: "Several years ago, when our children were small, we traveled to New York City to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. We arrived on Tuesday, which may have been a big mistake. A full day on Wednesday of shopping and sightseeing left us so tired that we overslept on Thursday morning. I awoke about the time the parade was passing down a nearby avenue, but the girls were sound asleep. Knowing there was no hope of getting them ready, I determined to video the sights.

I ran down the street, only to find the signs that the parade had already passed. Soda cups on the sidewalk, streamers on the street, sweepers cleaning up the mess. I looked down the parade path and saw the backside of the disappearing celebration, a high floating image of Bullwinkle. I sighed and thought, all this effort and all I get is a picture of Bullwinkle's inflated bottom." Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like life has passed you by?

Have you ever thought like maybe your best days are behind you? It's easy to get stuck on yesterday. It really is. This morning I'm just going to say one thing in a variety of ways to you, and I'm going to say it over and over and over again: Don't quit. Don't quit. The Bible says this in so many different ways to us. Don't quit. As long as God leaves you on this earth, He has work for you to do. That's why you're here. Don't quit.

Open your Bibles to Hebrews 12:1-2. The writer of Hebrews is going to use a metaphor for us so that we can understand what life is like from a different point of view. The writer writes this: "Therefore," in conclusion to everything he's written so far, "since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us..." The metaphor is going to be a stadium, like a gigantic stadium of a cloud of witnesses. He means everybody who has ever lived before us who was a believer. They're all watching us.

He said, "Therefore since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." Now that's interesting. What he makes clear here, you and I, from God's point of view, are in a race. You have a race to run, I have a race to run. They're different races. Sometimes the race could be extraordinarily long, and sometimes overwhelmingly short.

But he said if you're going to run this race, you have to run it. First of all, he said you have to lay aside every encumbrance, the things that weigh you down. When I preached this passage some time ago, I said that the things that weigh us down are things like wrong priorities. We live our life with the wrong priorities, so you go through your spiritual life and it's sort of like you're running with a piano on your back. You just can't go very far.

But then he says also, "And the sin that so easily entangles us." And I want you to imagine, in a sense, the kind of thing that wraps around your legs and drops you in the race, because that's what sin does. Sin just stops you from running spiritually. He says you've got to be able to deal with this sin that so easily entangles us. The key to running your race or mine isn't how fast we run. Ultimately, it's not even how far we run.

It's that every time we fall down, we have to get up and run. That's the issue. You have to get up. And he said, "We'll run the race with endurance." And that's what life is. If you want to know what life is, and especially if you live long enough, it's just an excruciating marathon. It is. You just go on and on and on and on. Some of us have only gone halfway there and you think it's long already, but it'll be a lot longer in the future.

Then he goes on and he says, here's how you do it. "You fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross." That was the culmination of His race that Jesus ran. That was the race God the Father asked Him to run. It's a race that you and I are asked to run by God. You have a race. As long as I leave you here, there's something I want you to do.

To illustrate that, I want you to go with me to 2 Timothy, just a couple pages to your left, chapter four, verse seven. The apostle Paul. If we're in 2 Timothy, there's something you should know about it. These are Paul's last words. Paul's race is coming to an end. Paul's going to be executed, and Paul knows it. He knows he's at the end of his life. He knows his race is over.

So when he gets to this point in chapter four and verse seven, listen to what Paul says. He says, "I have fought the good fight." Second metaphor. Now he's using a boxing match. I have fought the good fight. By the way, have you ever—many of you probably have never seen boxing matches, but I did especially as a boy—but have you ever watched a fifteen-round heavyweight championship of the world or something? Whenever it's over, you ought to see the two guys. You just know what they've been through. It's just amazing they can stand on their feet.

That's a boxing match. And Paul says, "Yes, I fought the good fight. I have finished the course." Paul said, "I ran my race. I have finished the course. Now, spiritually, I have kept the faith." I've still done what God has asked me to do. He says, "So then in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also all who have loved His appearing."

You see, that's his point. He said, "I've ran the race, I finished the course, I did what God asked me to do, and God will reward me for that." And oh by the way, He'll reward you too. He'll reward you as well. Do you finish the course? So I want to talk about some of the challenges or some of the insights about how we run this race, the things that are necessary for us.

The first point I want to make is this: To finish well, you have to stay focused until you're finished. You have to stay focused. You can't not think about it. You have to stay focused. An ironic thing that I read in the Bible was how important to God it is that people finish things. If you're going to teach a kid something, teach them that. You have to finish. There's so many of us in so many ways that really don't finish. And He says, "No, you have to finish."

A great finisher, by the way, was Solomon in the Old Testament. That guy finished all kinds of stuff. And by the way, when you read Ecclesiastes, he's now going to finish his spiritual life, which he put on hold for a long time. But Solomon, it says in 1 Kings 6:22, he finished all the temple. 6:38, the house was finished in all its details according to all its plans. 7:51, so all the work that Solomon had done for the house of the Lord was completely finished. 2 Chronicles 5:1, so all the work that Solomon had done for the house of the Lord was finished.

2 Chronicles 7:11, Solomon successfully accomplished all that came into his heart to make the house of the Lord. He finished. I said that's important. And I wonder one of the reasons why he finished was because of the advice he got from his dad. That's the verse I want to look at. I want you to go with me to 1 Chronicles 28:20. If you know anything about Solomon, you know who his dad is. His dad's David. That's his dad. So David wants to give some advice to his son.

"Then David said to his son Solomon, 'Be strong and courageous and act. Do not fear or be dismayed, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished.'" I wonder if Solomon thought about that when he was building the temple. David said, "I've got to stay with this. David said God will stay with me until I get this all finished."

Now what's interesting is I could say to you, so the point is you have to finish your spiritual work. But for many of you, I know what you'd be thinking. I don't have any idea what my spiritual work is. If you say it another way, I could say it this way: You don't have any idea why God has you here, because that would be what you're saying. We often think like that. I don't even know why I'm here.

Well, you still can't get out of it. There's no "get out of jail free" pass here. Paul wrote the New Testament Epistles, he said, "Whatever you do..." That's pretty big, isn't it? "Do it all to the glory of God." Whatever you do. So the kind of friend you are—to the glory of God. Kind of employee you are—to the glory of God. The kind of employer—to the glory of God. The kind of child you are, the kind of parent you are, the kind of sibling you are—you do it all to the glory of God. You've got plenty to do.

You can't say, "Well, I couldn't really focus on what I needed to do." You'd better. You should understand this. The whole idea is God says—and think about this from another perspective. If you belong to God and you're a child of God, and you don't have anything left to do, what would God, because He loves you so much, likely do for you? Take you home. It's infinitely better, and He knows it. I'll just take you home. Now we wouldn't like it. You hear it all the time. He took them too soon.

I think once you get there, you might have said, "Wow, I think He took me too late. I would have loved to have got here a long time ago." I mean, that's the whole point of our existence. But the idea behind it is pretty interesting idea. You have to, in that sense, stay focused until you finish. Secondly, retirement may have nothing to do with your service to God. You see, you and I are conditioned as Americans, and it affects us psychologically.

As an American, you just go to—you get your schooling, then you go to get your job, and then you do your years. You do your time, right? And then they give you a watch, okay? And then you're put out to pasture. And that's it. What do you do? I don't do anything. I'm just retired. Retired people don't do anything. They just sit and stare. The whole point is you think it's retirement. And it's interesting. I can only find one place in the Bible where it says one word about retirement.

It's an American idea, but there is a place. And I invite you to turn with me to Numbers in the Old Testament, chapter eight, verse twenty-three. The Lord is speaking to Moses and He's talking to him about the Levites, the priests. So Moses writes this: He said, "Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'This is what applies to the Levites. From twenty-five years old and upward they shall enter to perform service in the work of the tent of the meeting, the tabernacle and eventually the temple.

But at the age of fifty years they shall retire from service in the work and not work anymore.'" That beats America. Sounds like Europe. Fifty. You can retire at fifty. You're done. Not exactly. He said, "But at the age of fifty when they retire, they may, however, assist their brothers in the tent of the meeting to keep an obligation. And they themselves shall do no work. Thus you shall deal with the Levites concerning their obligations."

When they become fifty, they retire from being an active priest and they become an assistant and a mentor priest to young priests. And I thought about that for quite a while, and I've come to a couple conclusions. One of them is if you look at the average lifespan at the time of Moses, 1500 BC, there aren't tons and tons of people living way beyond fifty. Their lifespan's pretty short. But there's another reason. Do you realize how physical that job is?

Did you ever think about that? How physical it is to be a Levitical priest. Now if you said, "I never thought about it. I thought they just sort of go like this..." Okay. If you've thought that, find yourself—I don't know where too many oxen are—but find yourself a bullock and then build yourself a little altar and then bring him up on there and slit his throat and see how that goes. Because that's what he does.

On the Passover, according to Josephus, they offered up 200,000 plus sheep in a day. You think that might get a little tiring? Do you think that's a physical job? Put them on the altar, take them up. You see how this works. It's a young man's business in that sense. That's the idea. It's the only place you'll ever find this whole concept of retirement, what it means to retire. And I find it kind of fascinating that from this point of view that they're free now to be helpers to others.

But physical retirement doesn't have anything to do with your spiritual life. You see, you can't say, "Well, I retired so I'm done." And I can tell you something, as long as you're sitting here and breathing—it looks like from here most of you are—God has you here for a reason. You have a reason to be here. And you have to think about the reason. So you have to stay focused until you finish. Retirement has nothing to do with you serving the Lord.

And thirdly, to finish well, you have to stay connected to your calling. Go with me to Romans chapter eleven in the New Testament, verse twenty-nine. Stay focused on your calling. And here is the reason, and this applies—this one little verse applies to all of us. Eleven twenty-nine says: "For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." And that's about as clean as something could be. They are irrevocable. Whatever spiritual gifts God's given you, they're yours.

Whether you ever use them or not, even if you deny it, it's irrevocable. It's your gift. And God's calling on your life, that is, what does God want you to do? He said these things are irrevocable. Now you don't have to work with God on this. You can work against God. You can say, "I don't care about any of that, I'm just going to do what I want to do." You can, but it doesn't change the gift and it doesn't change the calling.

This is an important verse, and I know one I've thought about a lot. Several years ago, I read a quote by Os Guinness that affected me at that time a great deal. Os Guinness wrote this: he said, "I think it's important to realize that we can retire from our jobs, but we can never retire from our calling." You don't retire from a calling. I've known guys that have. They just retired. "Well, I got to be a certain age, I have to retire." From your calling? Well, yeah. You have to be careful thinking like that.

By the way, I'm extraordinarily grateful to a lot of guys who didn't think that way. For me as a pastor, some of these men have been tremendously encouraging to me. Tony Evans in Dallas is 73 years old. David Jeremiah, 81. John MacArthur, 83. Chuck Swindoll, 87. I just read on Dallas's website, Chuck Swindoll just taking a whole other large group of people to Israel for ten days. He's done this his whole life. He's 87. Charles Stanley is 90.

Now I want you to think about this. How many millions of people worldwide have benefited from these men's ministry to them? Millions upon millions of believers all over the world have benefited. They didn't say, "Wait, I turned 65, I retired." It didn't work like that in any sense of the word. They continued to do what they've always done. When Velma and I first came to this church, our plan at that time was we'd spend three or four years here and then the Lord would move us to do a ministry back closer to Western Pennsylvania where all of our family and friends were.

That's what we thought. God had other plans. He had completely different plans. And as of this Sunday, I believe it's this exact Sunday in October, I have now completed forty years here. Now wait, wait. I know what you're thinking. He's going to retire and that's why you're applauding. He did his time and he's done. I don't want to disappoint you, but I will. I plan on serving the Lord as long as I have my health and I'm relevant in teaching the Word of God. But you see, that's what these men have done. They've encouraged me. You see, if you're here, you need to keep vividly serving the Lord. You have to think about it. You don't walk away from it. There's not a time to stop.

Jason Gebhardt: You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the radio ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you'd just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org. That's f-b-c-n-o-l-a-dot-o-r-g. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online or if you prefer you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.