 D. Stuart Briscoe "How to Avoid a Wasted Life" Program #2908 First air date May 4, 1986 |
Biography
D. Stuart Briscoe was born and
educated in England. As a young man he served with the Royal Marine
Commandos in Korea. He spent eleven years in the British banking system.
Since that time he has become a noted English and American evangelist
and has conducted a worldwide ministry in over fifty countries,
including several behind the iron curtain. Mr. Briscoe has served as
assistant general director with the Caperwray Missionary Fellowship of
Torchbearer’s International. In 1970 he became pastor of the Elmbrook
Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He is a noted conference speaker and
author of many Christian best-sellers. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted
above.]
"How to Avoid a Wasted Life"
THEME: Have you ever heard someone
ask: “What should I do with my life?” That really is a very serious
question. Another question is, “How do you value your life?” The fact is
that life is probably the most precious commodity that we will ever
handle. Our speaker has some insights for us on this theme of life and
how we can handle it.
We all have some things in common. We’re all alive right now. Because
we’re all alive right now, we all know that at one stage in our
experience we were born. We also all know that we have not died as yet.
Therefore, we have a lot in common and a lot of things that we can share
together.
Now this business about being born. You had absolutely nothing to do
with it. They didn’t consult you. They didn’t even talk about the name
they were going to give you when you arrived. They didn’t talk about the
color of your hair, the shape of your nose. The whole thing was imposed
on you. It was totally outside your control.
Without being morbid, let’s talk about death for a minute. I hope that
that’s going to be outside your control too. Now, it’s going to happen.
I have a surgeon friend back home who says that it has been proved
conclusively, scientifically, that life is 100% fatal. That’s absolutely
true. “It is appointed unto man once to die,” the scriptures say. That’s
absolutely true.
In the same way that we had absolutely nothing to do with our birth, we
will have absolutely nothing to do with our death. Let’s put it this
way. Our initiation is outside our control. Our termination is outside
our control. It will be imposed upon us by disease. It will be imposed
upon us by accident. It will be imposed upon us by nuclear holocaust. It
will be imposed upon us by “who knows what”. But it is highly unlikely
that we are going to run around saying, “Oh, I am ready to die. How
exciting. Let’s go.”
We have nothing to do with our birth. We have nothing to do with our
death. Initiation — termination. But the little bit in between we call
perpetuation. We have an awful lot to do with that.
In fact when you really think about it, God having initiated us, and God
being the one who will determine to terminate us, God being the one who
perpetuates us, says, “I am giving you the precious gift of life. Now
then, be careful how you handle it.”
True, you can’t deal with your birth. True, you’re not responsible for
your death, but you are responsible for many of the things that go on in
the interim.
If this is true, then one of the most important things we can do is take
a good long hard look at our lives and ask ourselves the question, “What
on earth am I doing with it?”
Because if the attitudes I adopt, if the decisions I make, if the paths
I follow to choose are to a very large extent going to determine the
quality, the effectiveness, the validity of my life, I better be
careful. You see, there is always the possibility that I might come to
the end of my life and decide, “I blew it; I wasted my life.”
Dr. Baumgaertner was telling us about loving poetry so I thought I’d
give you a little quote from a poet, so she’d be impressed if nobody
else is. A famous British poet called Lord Byron was a singularly
handsome man, a very gifted man, a very, very popular man, a widely
traveled man, a deeply educated man. But on the day that he completed
his 36th year, he wrote this:
My days are in the yellow leaf,
He died when he was 36 years of age, a man who wasted his life.
The flowers and fruits of love are gone.
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.
Now, I want to talk to you this evening about how to avoid a wasted
life. Not that I have got any particular insights into this subject, but
I have a friend who had some wonderful insights into it. His name is the
Lord Jesus. In Mark’s gospel, chapter 8, the Lord Jesus in speaking to
his disciples told them that it was possible for them to “lose their
lives”. He asked the question, “What good is it if you gain the whole
world and lose your own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul?”
When he talks about the soul, it means life. What can you give in
exchange for your life? What happens if you gain the whole world and
finish up with a life that just slips through your fingers? These are
the questions that he was asking. What he was merely saying to us is
this: you better be careful because there is always the possibility that
you might waste your life. But, of course, his point in talking to his
disciples was to help them avoid wasting their lives.
Three things I want you to notice in what Jesus said to his disciples on
this subject about how to avoid a wasted life.
First of all, he said to them in effect: you’ve got to be prepared to
square up to the issues.
The second thing he said in effect was this: you’ve got to dare to make
a decision.
And the third thing he said to them was this: and then you’re going to
have to be willing to bear with the consequences.
You’re going to have to be ready to face up to the issues, to square up
to the issues. You’re going to have to be ready to dare to make a
decision based on the issues you’ve confronted. And then you’ve got to
be willing to bear the consequences.
Now what does he mean? Well, the issues that the Lord Jesus raised are
very simple. He says it is possible for you to invest your life or it is
possible for you to waste your life.
And in a very interesting way he sort of put many peoples’ thinking on
their ear. Here is what he said, “If you want to save your life, if you
want to hold on to your life, if you want to keep your life for
yourself, if you want to spend your life on yourself, if you want to
save your life, you lose it. Conversely, if you are prepared to give of
your life for my sake and for the gospel, you will find it.”
A lot of people will say, “If you really want to have a full life, live
it to the full yourself. if you really want to get something out of
life, do your own thing, go your own way, be your own person.” But make
absolutely certain that like Frank Sinatra at the end of your days, you
can say, “I did it my way.”
Jesus said, “Go right ahead, but there is always the probability that if
you hold on to your life, you will lose it.”
On the other hand, he said, “If you are prepared to abandon your life to
me, if you are prepared to surrender your life to me, if you are
prepared to give your life to me, then do it my way. Then you will find
it.”
So I guess at the end of our days, we’ve got to be able to look back and
say to ourselves, either “I did it my way,” or “I did it his way.”
Jesus said, “That’s an issue you need to face up to.”
But there are some other issues that he insisted that his disciples face
up to as well. Remember when Peter heard that he was going up to
Jerusalem and that he was going to get into trouble and he was going to
be beaten up and was going to be crucified and all this kind of stuff,
Peter stood in his way and he said, “Oh, no, you don’t. Oh, no you
don't.” He began to rebuke him.
And the Lord Jesus turned to him and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”
That was not very complimentary, but it surely did the trick. That was
the kind of talk that Peter understood.
But think about what he said. What he said in effect was this: “It is
possible for human beings to come under Satanic influence.” Even Peter,
the big fisherman. Even the man who bragged on the fact that he left all
to follow Jesus was still capable of being subjected to Satanic
influence. That’s an issue we need to face up to. Here’s another one.
The problem with Peter was that as he talked with the Lord Jesus, the
Lord Jesus said to him, “Hey, you’re talking just like a man. You’re not
talking the things of God at all.”
What does that say to us? What it says to us is this — that it is
possible for us to have purely secular thinking. We can think just like
men and not like God. Think of it for a minute. If I can be subjected to
Satanic influence and if it is possible that I can just think like a man
and ignore the things of God, I can get myself into a real mess. But the
Lord Jesus went on to say this. He said, “Now, listen, this generation
that you are a part of, Peter, is sinful and adulterous.” I don’t have
time to get into what he meant by that. Suffice it to say that what he
was saying was, “Society sometimes is corrupt.”
Now then, if it is possible for a human being to come under Satanic
influence, and in addition to that to get their thinking all screwed up,
and in addition to that to live in a society that is fundamentally
corrupt, do you see how wrong you can get about things? Do you see how
easy it would be to think the wrong thoughts? Do you see how easy it
would be to be subjected to the wrong influence? Do you see how easy it
would be to be taken down the wrong path? That’s what Jesus is saying.
There are monumental issues that we need to address. I have discovered
some. I have discovered that a lot of people don’t want to think about
these things. They don’t want to think about the possibility of wasting
their life. They don’t want to think about what Jesus said, “Hold on to
your life, and you lose it. Surrender it to me and you will find it.”
They don’t want to think about the possibility that there are forces of
evil that are governing them. They don’t want to think about the
possibility that the thinking that is common in the people around them
is erroneous thinking. And they certainly don’t want to accept the fact
that perhaps their society is corrupt and is influencing them.
But the Lord Jesus said, “If you want to avoid a wasted life, you better
square up to those issues.”
Then the second thing we read in this passage of scripture is that when
we have decided to square up to the issues, we’ve got to be ready to be
willing to make some decisions. We’ve got to dare to make some
decisions. About what? Oh, the Lord Jesus just wants people to make
decisions about him. It’s as simple as that. Remember, he said to his
disciples, “Who do men say that I am?”
And they all said, “Oh, some say you are this man, and some say that man
and some say somebody else.”
But then he asked the big question. He said, “All right, but who do you
say that I am?” In other words he was asking them not for hearsay. He
was asking them for a personal, well-thought-through opinion about him.
It is rather interesting to note that Peter comes in with a superb
answer, “Thou art the Christ.”
The Lord Jesus said, “Very good, Peter. Very, very good. Don’t tell
anybody.” Was it not strange that he said, “Don’t tell anybody?” Not
really if you read on a little bit. You will discover that whereas Peter
had got a handle on who Jesus was — that he was the Christ, the Christ
that he got a handle on was the Christ that was a figment of Peter’s
imagination and had nothing to do with reality at all.
The Lord Jesus then sits Peter down and the other disciples and he says,
“OK, fellows, let me explain something to you. I’m going to Jerusalem
and I’m going to be crucified there.”
And Peter said, “Hold it, hold it. Not so, Lord.”
The Lord Jesus said, “Be quiet, Peter. Be quiet. You’ve got to
understand something. You say I’m the Christ but you have got in your
mind’s eye a Christ who is far removed from the Christ that I am. You
want a political leader. You want someone who will keep the Romans off
your back. You want somebody who will restore the golden age of the
Davidic era here. That’s what you want, Peter, and I’m not your man, I
have come to give my life on the cross, to shed my blood for the sins of
the world.”
Peter said, “Not so, not so.”
And Jesus said, “Oh yes, oh yes.”
You see, we’ve got to decide whether Jesus was who he said he was or
whether he could do what he said he could do. But we’ve got to make sure
that the Jesus that we decide for is the real Jesus and not the Jesus
that we would like him to be. I know lots of people who would love
Christ to be what they want him to be. I’ve met lots and lots of people
who would commit their lives to Christ if Christ would simply be the
Christ they want him to be. The only Christ is the Christ of scripture.
He is the suffering Christ, who suffers on the cross for my sin.
Now as soon as I decide that he is the way, the truth, and the life, I
decide that I am the sinner for whom he died and that’s humbling. But I
have to dare to make that decision.
Notice something else. The Lord Jesus goes on to tell Peter and the
other disciples that when he goes to Jerusalem, he’s going to run into
all kinds of problems with different people there. He’s going to run
into problems with the priests. He’s going to run into problems with the
scribes. He’s going to run into problems with the rulers.
Who are these people? Well, some of those people were the moral leaders.
And some of those people were the political leaders. And some of those
people were the intellectual and religious leaders. And Jesus was going
to get into trouble with all of them.
What does that remind us of? It reminds us of something very simple —
that the Lord Jesus has a happy knack of getting across religious
people, and he has a happy knack of getting right across political
leaders, and he has a happy knack of imposing his own morality on
situations. Do you know what he says? The political and the religious
and the moral leaders of his day wanted nothing to do with him because
he stood tall and stood above them all. And so it is today.
You see, the Lord Jesus, when we confront him, is the Lord Jesus who was
the one who was willing to go to the cross for our sin, and he is the
one who was roundly rejected by the systems of our day. And if we
identify with him, let’s face it — we are identifying with the Savior of
sinners, and we are also identifying with the one who is rejected of
man. If we identify with him, there is always the possibility that we
might find a degree of rejection ourselves.
And that’s what Jesus was saying to these people. You’re going to have
to square up to the issues and you’re going to have to dare to make a
decision about me whether you will really surrender your life to me. Now
remember, he says, “I’m not the Christ who is a figment of your
imagination. I am not the Christ who has come to make things happen the
way you want them to happen. I am the one who can die on the cross for
you. I’m the redemptive Christ. I’m the one who is going to be rejected
by the systems of this world. I am the rejected Christ. If you identify
with me, it’s on my basis, and on my basis alone.”
And then he goes on to say something else to Peter. He said, “I’ll be
crucified. I’ll be rejected by the authorities. But on the third day
I’ll rise again from the dead.”
That’s enough to blow your mind! He was either saying the most
ridiculous, the most stupid thing that anybody ever said, or he was
predicting the most phenomenal event that our world has ever seen.
I guess we have to decide what was true was he talking a lot of nonsense
or was he predicting the most phenomenal event that our world has ever
seen? You see, it’s on this issue that we have to decide. Is Jesus the
redemptive Christ dying on the cross for my sin? Is Jesus the rejected
Christ who challenges all religious and political and moral systems? And
is Jesus the risen Christ who through his resurrection has defeated
death, dealt the Devil a body blow, blown hell wide open? Is Jesus
Christ in his resurrection striding over what everybody else sinks
under? I have to decide this.
As I face up to these things, as I square up to the issues of what
Christ has said about wasting my life, I have to dare to decide whether
the Lord Jesus is who he said he is, or whether I am to respond to the
call that he offers to me.
There is something else that the Lord Jesus pointed out to these people.
He said, “The day is coming when I will return in great glory with the
holy angels,” and of course he was referring to the fact that he was
going to come to establish his kingdom. He was going to come in order
that he might be seen to be King of kings and Lord of lords. He was
referring to a day in which every eye would see him, every knee would
bow to him and every tongue would confess he was Lord. He was predicting
his universal, eternal reign.
We have to decide whether we believe this. Is Christ real? Is Christ
redemptive? Is Christ rejected? Is Christ risen? Is Christ reigning?
If we decide that all of these things are true about him, then we have
to dare to make a decision and it’s a simple decision. Am I going to do
it my way or am I going to do it his way? But I better make absolutely
certain that I know who the Christ is to whom I am committing myself.
One of the lovely things about the Lord Jesus was he never gave small
print in his sermons either. He never promised people all kinds of
wonderful things and then later on they discovered that there were all
kinds of things they didn’t learn about at the time. He never said you
should have read the small print, he never did that. He was up front. He
said to his disciples, “You are my dear sheep.” And they all loved that,
and they all snuggled together in their little fleecy churches, and they
were all warm and cozy. And when he said lovely things to them, they all
said, “Baa,” and it was all a wonderful, cozy little thing.
He said, “Hold it, hold it. You are all my sheep. But, behold, I send
you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” That will freeze anybody’s
“Baa” in their sheepy throat. You gag on that one. “Behold I send you
forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.”
Do you know what he said to his people one day? “In the world you will
have trouble.” Now people usually say something good is going to happen
to you, on television. But Jesus said something bad is going to happen
to you. But then he smiled and he said, “Don’t worry. I have overcome
the world.”
What the Lord Jesus said to his disciples is this — you’re going to have
to bear up to the consequences of daring to make a decision, having
squared up to the issues. And if you are prepared to decide that your
life should be committed to me, the consequences are very, very simple
and very, very straightforward. You’re going to have to deny yourself.
You’re going to have to take up your cross and you’re going to have to
follow me, daily.
Now — denying yourself doesn’t mean selfdenial, giving up candy for
Lent. That’s good. If you give it up for Lent, don’t start again. It
will do your teeth a lot of good. But that is not denying yourself.
Denying yourself is simply saying, “I will not do it my way; I will do
it his way.” Taking up your cross is not putting up with the
unavoidable. Taking up your cross is willingly identifying with the plan
of God. Being prepared to follow him daily means that you are prepared
consistently and persistently to live in dependence upon him and in
obedience to him.
Do you know what Jesus said? “You can waste your life or you can invest
it.” Don’t waste your life. Square up to the issues. Dare to make a
decision. And be ready to bear up to the consequences. God bless you.