A BORROWED LIFE

sermon 19.

A BORROWED LIFE

“But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?”─ Luke 12:20 Berean Study Bible.

When we gather for a funeral service, it reminds us that death is inevitable, it reminds us that one day, we will equally die. Having conscious of dying should make us to have a good relationship with our God because he has the power to destroy both the flesh and the soul.

I want to tell you today that everybody lives a borrowed life. We own nothing about our lives, our lives can terminate at any time. We don’t know when, and where the owner─ the lender of this life can take it back from us.

From the parable of the rich fool in the gospel book of Luke 12:13-21, we see that there was a certain rich man who failed to acknowledge God as the source of his life. All his mind was pre-occupied by the worldly riches. As a man who had enough crops, he planned to hoard them, store them up while the poor and widows starve. In fact his wealth became his god. He then said to himself─ “You have stored enough away for years to come. Now take it easy, eat, drink and be merry,” and God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is required of you.” A man is foolish when he fails to know his God as the source of his wealth, a man is foolish, when he fails to realize that the life he lives is not his, if he dies, who will inherit everything he has accumulated?

There was a time God required the soul of Hezekiah, the king of Judah. God said, set your affairs in order for you are going to die (2 Kings 20:1). The owner of life requires the life of both the sinners and righteous. Now Hezekiah who walked in complete obedience with God, his life was required. The Bible records that Hezekiah was critically sick, and God desired to collect back the life he gave to him. He let him know this before the time so that it would help him to put his family in order ─ make peace with neighbors, help the poor and the less- privileged individuals before his life would be taken. The limited time we have should be used ratify all the problems in our families. There are people that have caused problems in their families and of which when they die, those problems continue to interfere. It is now high time for us to set our affairs in order before the life will be taken from us. When Hezekiah heard that he would soon die─ perhaps what Job said in Job 14:7 sounded in his ears ─ “Even a tree has more hope! If it  is cut down, it will sprout again and grow new branches” He might have known that if man dies, he dies forever unlike trees when they are cut down, they spring out some branches again─ they continue to live─ But for man, if he dies, he dies without returning. Here, Job was not operating in the realm of metempsychosis─ the transmigration of souls, especially its reincarnation after death. But I want to tell anyone whose loved ones are no more that since there is hope for trees that are cut down because they sprout out branches again─ the root of your deceased ones is not uprooted completely by death. You are their branches, and will continue from where your loved ones stopped before they died. As your life is secured by God, no man will terminate it. If death is pricing your life, being at the point of death, the same God who redeemed Hezekiah’s life will redeem you now out of the web of death in the name of Jesus. Amen.