Marcus Mecum - Don't Waste Your Life
So, verse 1 through verse 5 speaks specifically about this king in Babylon, he’s been blessed with privilege, he’s been blessed with prominence, and position, and influence, all the resources you could imagine. And, in many ways he’s wasted it. He’s wasted his life. And so, in verse 5 it says that in the middle of this great party that he’s having, he doesn’t have a care in the world, «Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on a plaster of the wall, near the lampstand of the royal palace. And the king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale, he was so frightened that his legs became weak,» one translation says he fainted. «And that his knees began to knock together».
If you read the King James version it says that his bowels were loosened. How many of y’all appreciate the niv version? So, the message that was being written was an intense message. It was a wake up call to this king. It struck such fear in his heart that he faints and cannot even stand, his legs are so weak. Well, it goes on to tell us in verse 24 what the hand wrote. It says, «Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription,» and this is what the inscription wrote, «Mene, mene, tekel, parsin». And, «Here’s what those words mean, mene means God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end,» so, God’s numbering our days. «Tekel means that you’ve been weighed on the scales and found wanting,» and God weighs our life as well.
And, I wanna talk to you about the picture of a wasted life for a few minutes. In the scripture here it says God has a scale, that your life’s weighed. Your gifts, your talents, how you use your time, how you use your life, is being weighed. Psalms 90:12 says, «Teach us to number our days that we may gain or have a heart of wisdom». So, wisdom teaches us to number our days. When you go back to Genesis 1 the Bible says God created the earth and everything in it. We would know that the first thing that God asked Adam to do was he says, «Hey, I’ve created all the animals, I want you to now go and name the animals».
And so, one animal after another is marched by Adam and he names the zebra, he names the giraffe, he names the hippopotamus, he names one animal after another. There’s an elephant. He goes on from that moment and he continues to name various things as God instructs him. The patriarchs in the scripture God would take them to certain places and something would happen, something divine or a historical event and he would say, «I want you to name that place. I want you to name that altar. I want you to name the spring of water that came up from that place. To want you to name the mountain, mount Moriah, mount Pisgah, Mount of Olives».
Starting to sound like a southern Baptist convention, is it not? Mount this, mount that. When they had children they would name their children, not just any name that they thought was the current popular names, they would name their kids with a prophetic utterance or significance. In other words, they would say about that child what they saw in their heart concerning the future of that child. They would also name their children after significant historical events too. As they told their genealogy or the family history, that name would remind the family of an important event. What I’m hoping that you see is that God over and over says, «I want you to name these things».
But then you come in Genesis 1 to days and God does not say to name the days, he says, «I want you to number the days. Don’t name them, number them». Genesis 1 it would say, «From morning to evening was the first day». It didn’t say Monday, he put a number on it. He numbered it the first day. Then it goes on to say from morning to evening it was the second day. He didn’t call it Tuesday, he named it the second day. And then, he went on and from morning to evening the third day. And, what I’m hoping that you’re seeing is God is putting in the minds of people, early on, there are some things that you name in life and there are other things you number in life. He’s teaching us to number our days.
When Jesus came out of the tomb it wasn’t on a Saturday or Sunday that everybody wants to debate about, all it says is it was the third day. You decide whichever day you want it to be, God didn’t prioritize that. He said he came out on the third day because the number is what mattered. Jesus came out of the wilderness after 40 days of fasting. Again, he didn’t name the month, he didn’t name those things he just said there was a number, 40, that was significant. This theme is all throughout scripture as you walk through it. So, the Psalmist says, «Teach me to number my days». The longer I personally live the more I realize, and I come to grips with the fact that, I don’t have time to waste. That every single day something and someone is consuming your time. And, wisdom says, «Teach me to number my days».
I don’t have as many days as I used to have. I don’t have as many days left as I once did. I don’t have as many years on the calendar in front of me, so I have to ask myself, who am I giving my energy to? Who am I including in a circle of friends and voices and influences in my life? It’s not that you’re ugly, it’s not that you are in any way pushing anybody out. It’s you’re asking yourself I only have a certain amount of time, and with that in mind there are some people that I’m assigned to, and there are others that I’m not. I love everybody, but I’m not assigned to everybody. So, you have to say, «What is my focus to be? What distractions might the enemy be using in my life? Because I do not have time to waste».
I can’t be everywhere at the same time. I can’t be everything to everybody. I can’t be the answer to every person. I don’t have a word for everybody, I don’t have the key for everybody’s life, but there are people that God has assigned to me and assigned to you and there are people that he has not assigned to you. What does this basically mean? Well, for Belshazzar what it meant is he gets to the end of his life and God writes with that finger on the wall, «Hey, I’ve numbered your days. You’ve come to the end, and now I’ve taken all those days, I placed 'em on the scale of life and you’ve come up wanting».
I don’t want to get to the place where I get to the end and, «Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,» is written and God says, «I’ve look at your life, I’ve weighed your life, and unfortunately, you had all the opportunity, you had all the blessings, you had everything at your disposal you needed, but unfortunately, you wasted it on a careless life, you wasted it on these things and», I don’t wanna get to the place where I’ve wasted my life. You can’t waste the time that you’ve been given, you can’t waste your anointing, you can’t waste it on things that are not important because you do not have time. I’m not 25 anymore. I’m 49, closing in on 50. I’m not ready to sit down, I’m not ready to give up, but I don’t have the time I used to have.
My runway is shorter than it used to be and many of you can relate. I have to be more strategic now. I have to think about when I was in my 20's, I’d go here and I’d go there and I’d do this and I’d do that, but when I got to my 30's I started rethinking some things. I started thinking, «I can’t do those same things because those things didn’t matter». I wasted a lot of my time worrying and thinking about things in my 20's that didn’t matter in my 30's. And then, I got through my 30's and hit my 40's and I look back and all of a sudden, my life became more narrow. What am I going to spend my 40's doing? I can remember telling Sara when we turned 40, I said to her, «I’m not going to waste this decade».
I look back at my 30's just busy, focused on work, worried about failing, worried about, you know, in some way, not being anything in life and I got so consumed with it. I’d be sitting down with my kids and going through all the motions, but my mind was at the church, my mind was worrying about something or somebody. But in my 40's I said, «I’m not going to waste my years like that». Now, I’m coming up on my 50's and I’m saying to myself, even more than I ever have before, I have to be more selective with the opportunities that God has given. Teach me to number my days. Teach me that if I make a wrong turn I don’t have 40 years to fix it, I don’t have another 40 years to get it right. My life is becoming more and more clear that the opportunities I’ve been given, I may not be given these opportunities again, and I’ve got to number my days and cease the opportunities and take advantage of the time that I have left.
I didn’t know that my life would be marked by this idea of mentorship. That a lot of people now see me as someone who is, one of the messages of my life is surrounding the idea of mentorship. And, it wasn’t really anything because I sought out to be that. I just as a young man knew there were things I didn’t know, and that there was somebody ahead of me that had done things I had not done, that had accomplished things I had not accomplished, they had been where I wanted to go, and so instead of listening to all my peers, I started to say, whether it’s a podcast I’m listening to, a book I’m reading, or I’m just, maybe God cracks the door and gives me an audience with that person that I would do everything that I could to honor their time, to make sure that they knew that I was listening, to ask good questions to let them know the time they spent mattered to me, and if you cracked open the door, I made sure I swung that bat and I did not miss the opportunity I was given.
And, the point is I knew that because they were ahead of me they had made decisions, they had made mistakes, they had failed in different areas, and they could look back on their life and teach me some of those lessons so I could redeem the time that I was given so I didn’t have to waste all those same years learning from the same mistakes that they had already learned from. So, you have one life, you have however many years that are in front of us and the Bible says, «Teach us to number our days». They say the best time to plant a fruit tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now. So, there is power in right now. Now is sacred.
The moment that you have today will never be given to you again. Live not in the past, not out there in the future someday but live now, act in the sacred now. If you take too long to decide what you’re gonna do with your life you’ll find out that’s exactly what you’ll end up doing, nothing. Well, I got to the end trying to figure out what I was gonna do, that was what you did with your life. At some point you have to say, «I’m gonna live on purpose, I’m gonna live with a purpose. I don’t find time, I make time. I prioritize my life». God’s given me time, he’s given me days, he’s given me minutes. And the same amount of time that he’s up to this point, anybody else that’s my same age has been given the exact same time I’ve been given and a lot of them are a lot further ahead because they just made a decision, «I’m not going to waste my days. I’m not going to waste my time. I’m gonna redeem the time knowing every second is irreversible».
John Maxwell tells a story of a man who wanted to figure out how time worked, and so he figured out the average lifespan of a person is 75 years. He got out a calculator and he said, «Well, 52 weeks is in a year, I’m gonna multiply that times 75 years,» and he came up 3,900 weeks. When he did the math, he had to continue to do the math because he was 55 years old, so then he had to discover that number realizing that a large portion of the 3,900 weeks was already gone. And, he realized 2,800 weeks are already behind me. That he only had 1,100, if he was lucky, 1,100 weeks in front of him so, he went out and he bought a glass vase, and he filled it with 1,100 marbles. And every week Saturday would come around and he would go over to that vase, and he would take one of those marbles out and he would throw it away.
Realizing every time he did that he was simply numbering his day, signifying I have one less week in front of me. I have this much less time, I need to make sure that I’m making the most of it. I need to make sure that in my life I’m asking God to teach me to number my days. You say, «But Marcus, I’m already past this age and I’m here now, my best years are behind me».
Well, Psalms 90 goes on to say that in your old age you can flourish. Sir Francis Chester was 65 when he sailed around the world by himself for the first time. Winston Churchill was 65 when he became the prime minister of England and ultimately led his nation and allied forces to a victory over the Nazis. Ronald Reagan was elected president as 69 years of age. Think about it, he’s almost 70 and he’s made the decision, «I wanna be the busiest man in the world. I wanna be under the most stress I’ve been under before».
When Ronald Reagan turned 77 he would look at mr. Gorbachev and say, «It’s time for those walls to be torn down». Michelangelo was 66 when he completed the Sistine chapel painting. He was 88 when he painted the Pauline chapel. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most famous American architects was 89 years old when he completed his master piece, the Guggenheim museum. Moses was 80 when he said, «I wanna go into the Promised Land». Caleb was 85 when he said, «Give me this mountain».
Lord, teach me to number my days. Since I’m running out of marbles, help me to live a life that counts. Help me to live a life that matters, help me not to waste my life on drugs, or alcohol, or bitterness, or unforgiveness, or fear, or worry, or regret. Help me to number my days. I only have so many heart beats, I only have so many breaths to take, I only have so many days in front of me, teach me to number my days. Wisdom says my days are numbered. I don’t wanna get, it’s all been weighed on the scales, and I’ve been found wanting. Fitness expert, jack lAlanne, they’ll throw a picture up there, this is him at 89 years old. That’s gonna be me, I’m on my way. I’m working on it right now. But this is what he said, he said, «Any stupid donkey can die. Dying is easy, living is a pain in the backside, you gotta work at it».
George Bush senior went skydiving on his 80th birthday. When he landed in his parachute they ran up to him with a microphone and said, «Why did you do that? You are 80 years old». And he said, «I was telling father time, 'take that you, old man'». Now, if you could take everybody that’s north of 50, pull them together and say we’re gonna send one solid message to everybody in their 20's or in their teenage years and we could find a message somehow to tell them we would say, «It went so much quicker than I thought. It went so much faster than I thought. I wish I could go back, and I wouldn’t waste my time here, and I wouldn’t waste my», I’m not telling you you’re wasting your life, I’m saying you would go back and you would say, «Hey, don’t wrap yourself up in this thing or that thing, it goes so quick».
So, to young people that are saying, «I have my whole life ahead of me,» realize, wisdom says, «Teach me to number my days». What opportunities, what blessings, what gifts, what talents have you been given? Do not waste your life. Do not waste your time. Number your days. Benjamin Franklin was 23 years old when he owned his own newspaper called, «The Pennsylvania gazette». When he was 25, he founded the first public library. When he was 30, he started our nation’s first fire department in Philadelphia. When he was 37, he invented the heat efficient stove. You don’t have to wait 'til you’re 60 or 50. You don’t have to get to a certain point and say, «Okay, now I’m gonna take life serous. Teach me to number my days. Teach me to number my days».
I love that the scripture says in James that if you lack wisdom you can ask of God who gives generously. Isn’t that amazing? That if you’re at a place in your life and you say, «Man, but I’ve wasted so much of my life». You know what Paul said? He said, «This one thing I do, I forget about the past». This one thing I do. I can’t go back and change that, so I’m not gonna live toady in regret because I can’t do anything about those years. Teach me to number my days. God, I need wisdom, I can’t fix what’s been, but I can number now. I can say today I’m gonna live in the scared now.
That right now I’ve only got so many marbles left and I’m gonna make the most of every one of 'em. Maybe you’re here today and you’d say, «Marcus, I’ve been living in the past so much, beating myself up. Without any question, regret just seems to be the thing that’s taken over so much, just what could’ve been and what should’ve been».
That’s not what today’s message is about. The Bible says that God can restore the years that the cankerworm, the palmer worm, and the locusts have eaten. And, all three of them had a specific purpose, one of those would eat the roots of the tree, the other one would eat the bark of the tree, the other one would eat the leaves of the tree. The goal of what those things that were sent by life to that tree to do was to take away it’s fruitfulness, but the Bible says God can restore.
In other words, everything that those thing, that thing that was sent, that trial that was sent, that trouble that was sent, that tragedy that was sent, that heartbreak that was sent. All those things that were sent God can say those years were wasted on that, but God can restore them. That he’s a restorer. I can’t restore anything, you can’t restore anything, but God can. I love this phrase that, «A moment of God’s favor is worth more than a lifetime of labor». That’s what God can do, he can fill the sacred now and do in your life what you and I could never do. He can restore the years.