And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you; all have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed.
Not one thing has failed. It would be wonderful to come to old age and be able to say that, wouldn’t it? Not one thing has failed!
When I say, “She’s quite elderly now,” what do you picture? Do you think of a sweet little lady, or a cranky hag? Is your image Grandma baking apple pies, or is it the witch in the forest baking Hansel and Gretel? There is certainly more than one picture of old age.
Or when I say, “Look at that old man,” what do you picture? Do you think of a courtly gentleman or a grouchy coot? Is your image kindly Ossie Davis serving up sweet pearls of wisdom, or is it Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, the movie’s grumpy old men, about to kill each other for the attentions of Ann Margaret? People end up in different places as they age.
I suspect that at least we can agree on this much: that we need to know whether our lives have been successes or failures. I cannot imagine anyone coming to his senior years and not wondering, “Did I succeed? Or has my life been a failure?” I cannot envision anyone spending seventy or eighty years on this planet without measuring it and thinking, “How did I do? What was my score? Has my life been a failure?”
And I know that there are some who do feel that they are failures. I have seen and heard it men and women who show that they are filled with regrets, panicked over mistakes, anxious over lost opportunities, angry over wasted time, sick over burned up resources. There are plenty of people who arrive in their senior years feeling what the poet said, “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.”
Has my life been a failure? Too many answer, “Yes, it has been a failure.” Too many feel nothing but emptiness as the days grow shorter. Too many wish they could do it all over again.
So this morning I want to inquire in God’s word to see if we can find out what can keep us from failure. I want to invite you to probe the Scriptures with me and discover how to make our lives succeed. In fact, I want to bring some good news this morning: and the good news that it is not too late, even yet, to succeed. It’s not too late to get past failure. In the immortal words of that esteemed theologian, Yogi Berra, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. And that means that, in the providence of God, you and I can wipe out failure and can achieve success. As long as God is in it, we have the opportunity to snatch success from the jaws of failure.
Joshua, the general of Israel’s armies, was old. He knew it, he felt it, in every bone of his body. Joshua knew that he did not have much time left. He could no longer lead Israel into rigorous battle, as he once did. As a young man he had been named by Moses to take the people into the land of promise. And Joshua had worked hard. He had rallied the people behind him. He had summoned all their energies, he had won stunning victories at Jericho, at Ai, at Gibeon, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron. Joshua had succeeded wonderfully. From north to south the land of Canaan had known the skill of General Joshua.
But now Joshua had grown old. And he was measuring the years that had gone by. He was taking stock in his own heart of what he had done. Joshua was asking, “Has my life been a failure?”
How does he answer that question? With what insights does he guide us to measure our lives and find out whether we have been failures or successes? Has my life been a failure? General Joshua will teach us!
I
First, when Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua had learned to live by faith and not by sight. He had learned to live by vision and not by statistics. Joshua had learned that if you live by a great vision, if you find a great purpose, even if you don’t accomplish everything, you will be a success. But if you live by statistics, if you live by yardsticks like bank accounts and degrees and property and prestige, you will never have enough! And you will always be a failure. You will always be a failure if you choose to measure your life by what you have accumulated. But you can be a success if you measure your life by a vision, by the magnificence of the dream to which you have devoted yourself.
You have seen all that the LORD your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the LORD your God who has fought for you.
You have seen .. what God has done. You have been captivated by God’s plan. That’s vision.
How do we normally measure success? I remember one year when we were having Senior Adult Sunday, someone said from this pulpit that just living seventy or eighty years was an accomplishment. Someone said that people ought to be congratulated on just hanging around that long. Well, I am not so sure. Methuselah, the Bible says, lived longer than anybody else. But here is the sum total of the biographical sketch on Great-Grandpa Methuselah: Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years; and he died. And he died. Ho-hum. So what else? Not much. Just living out years means nothing. Living by statistics gets you nowhere.
Nor is success measured by the dollars in the bank account. The newspapers regularly chronicle people who pile up millions of dollars in the mattress and die in squalor and unhappiness, afraid that somebody will take it all away. A few years ago the pioneer aviator and industrialist Howard Hughes ended his days a filthy, lonely, suspicious recluse, afraid of everything, despite his great wealth. No, the last way you want to measure success is by dollars in the bank, or in the mattress or the cookie jar.
Nor is it good enough to measure success by achievements. Plenty of people have done things, and yet their lives were failures, because there will always be more that you could have done. There will always be additional things you could have accumulated. Live by the numbers, and your life will be a failure!
But Joshua had learned to live by vision. By vision. Joshua had found that it is vastly more important to understand where you are in God’s big picture than it is to plod along with blinders on. Even businesses know that they have to live by vision. The businesses that succeed create mission statements that lift their sights and keep them on the creative edge. Somebody once observed that the difference between two railroads, one that failed and one that succeeded, was that one railroad said they were in the railroading business, and that was too narrow. They failed because they wanted to make their customers fit their standards. But the other railroad succeeded because they said, “We are not in the railroad business. We are in the freight moving business. Now what do we need to do in order to meet our customers’ needs?” They had a broader vision.
You and I need to learn to live by vision. We need to spend more time finding out what God is doing and joining Him in it than putting notches on our belts and awards on our shelves. Anybody can be busy; the issue is whether what we are busy with has any meaning.
Did you hear about the fellow who was standing all day long on Piney Branch Road, waving a huge fan slowly back and forth, back and forth? All day long he wielded this monstrosity, from dawn to dusk, waving, waving, waving. Finally somebody got up the courage to ask him what sort of fan that was and what he was doing. “Why,” he said, “this is an elephant fan. And I am keeping the elephants away.” Well, they said, you must be crazy! There are no elephants around here! His answer was, “See what a good job I’m doing?!”
There are plenty of ways to stay busy. But it’s not just being busy that brings success. It’s whether what we are busy with has meaning. Joshua found out that authentic joy and genuine success come when we invest not in pointless elephant-chasing exercises, but in God’s redemptive purposes. The symbols of worldly success don’t mean anything. Accolades, titles, the trappings of power do not count. All that matters is to be a part of God’s redemptive purpose. All that counts is to be where God wants you to be, doing something for the Kingdom. Joshua reminded his people that they had seen what the Lord had done through him; he had lived by vision.
If you want to come to your advanced years and know that your life has not been a failure, start with a vision. Know God’s purpose. Know God’s heart. Know what God wants to accomplish. Find a wound and heal it. Find a hurt and soothe it. Find a hunger and feed it. Find a thirst and slake it. Find an ignorance and teach it. Find an itch and scratch it. Find a great vision and live in it. You will never do all that might be done; but what you do will make you deliriously happy! Vision!
You have seen all that the LORD your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the LORD your God who has fought for you.
When Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua had learned to live by faith and not by sight.
II
Second, when Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua knew that he had not done it all! Joshua knew that he was not a failure because he left some of the job incomplete for the next generation. Does that sound strange? If you think we are supposed to get everything right and be perfect, it sounds strange. But Joshua had found a powerful secret of success: leave something for somebody else to do. Empower somebody else to do even more than you’ve done.
Joshua told his people that he had left plenty for them to do, and that God would bless them in their work. He had by no means finished it. Much remained for them.
I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. The LORD your God will push them back before you, and drive them out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as the LORD your God promised you.
There was plenty left to do. But there are those of us who have such a perfectionistic need to dot every “i” and cross every “t”! Some of us have a hard time relinquishing anything to anyone else. We are so afraid that somebody will think we are a failure that we hang on to things too long, and we are not willing to turn them over to somebody else. Is there anybody here who got up to retirement time and then became very anxious, because you just didn’t feel finished, you just didn’t think anybody else could do your job?
Well, guess what!? If you did everything, you are a failure! It is only when you empower somebody else to do what needs to be done that you are a success. If we take care of everything, button it all down tight, teach no one anything, that’s a failure. But if we take the time to teach someone else, if we make the effort to share the vision with someone else, that’s success. That’s success because it means that the work will go on. That’s success because it means that we’ll multiply ourselves. That’s success because it contributes to someone else’s success.
In our discipleship courses, we talk about trying to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Just being a good person is not enough. What counts is being somebody who can give somebody else a task to do and in turn they can give somebody more a task to do, and on and on. Success comes when we empower others for God’s work.
As some of you may know, I served six churches as interim pastor in the years before I came here. I spent anywhere from three months to two years preaching in these churches and helping them get ready for a resident pastor. In every case, when the new pastor would come, I would sit down with him and try to tell him what he would be facing and who needed help and what needed to be done. More than that, I would hand him a summary of all the sermons that I had preached over that period of time. The idea was that he could be helped if he knew what his people had been hearing. I found that almost every one of these new pastors profoundly appreciated getting that information. It reminded them that somebody had been doing something to prepare the way. But then I do also remember one pastor who gave it a glance, turned around, and threw it in the wastebasket and said, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve preached. I’m going to do what I’m going to do anyway.” That’s the time I felt like a failure. I felt devalued because somebody threw away my efforts. But at least I had done what I could to empower him.
You will feel a failure if you do not empower the next generation to do even more than you’ve done. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when He told His disciples, “Greater works than these shall you do.” If we can lay a foundation on which others can build, we’re going to feel successful. It’s only when what we’ve done isn’t offered that we feel like failures. When Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua knew that he had not done it all!
III
Further, when Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua had learned enough to warn others about the traps and pitfalls out there. Joshua had found out that no one was failure-proof. He’d arrived at some insights. He knew there were some traps. And because Joshua shared what he had learned, he felt no sense of failure.
Therefore be very steadfast to observe and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right nor to the left, so that you may not be mixed with these nations left here among you.
Joshua was not afraid to share a warning. Someone has said that some of us have fifty years of experience, but others of us just have one year of experience fifty times. Not all of us learn anything from all our years of taking up space on the planet. But Joshua had learned. Those battles, those arguments, those confrontations had taught him some things. And he was ready to share his insights. He was sure of what he knew and he said it.
Senior adults, the world is waiting for your wisdom. The world is waiting to hear whether you have learned anything worth passing on. And if you do not share it, you will be a failure.
I had the privilege of sitting down with a number of our youth this Friday night to talk with them about what had happened in Littleton. It was a revealing conversation. One of our youth quite rightly observed that it was almost unbelievable that no parents seemed to know what these boys were doing, tinkering in the garage with explosives. Another of our young people observed that evidently no one had ever felt confident enough to say to these boys, “What you are doing is wrong.” No one ever shared any wisdom with them!
So I asked our youth what kinds of things they need to see in adults before they will talk with them about whatever troubles them. They said, we need adults who can keep confidentiality; we need adults who know what they are talking about; we need adults who believe in us; and we need adults who have a spiritual dimension in their lives. What I hear from our young people is that they need what we have to say. They want it and they need it.
But what has my generation and yours done for them? What have we shared with them? Our youth have asked for positive role models, and we have given them multimillionaire bad boy basketball players, we have provided them oversexed and overexposed actresses, and we have offered them spiritual wickedness in the highest offices in the land! We ought to feel like failures if we can do no better than this!
Our youth have asked for examples of how to live positively and resolve conflict. What have we given them? We have tuned them in to the likes of Jerry Springer! “My momma’s boyfriend slept with your sister’s ex-husband’s lover, so take this … pow”. Great God, what garbage we are producing, and then we wonder why a culture of violence is growing in our schools! We ought to feel like failures if we can do no better than this!
Our youth would like to see what it is for people to live together in love and respect, but it seems like we’re not willing to take the time to invest in them. You know, if each senior adult would give just a few hours a week to only one youth, what a difference it could make. But we have other things to do and other pursuits to follow. After all, we need our relaxation. We want our entertainment. You know, pastor, I have only one life to live, and so if they are the young and the restless, let them get help from the bold and the beautiful, because it won’t be long before I pass through general hospital on my way to another world!
That won’t do. That isn’t good enough. If this generation reaps the bitter harvest of violence, and I have done nothing to share what I have learned, I deserve to feel a failure. When Joshua asked whether his life had been a failure, he could answer, “No,” because Joshua had learned to warn others about the traps and pitfalls.
IV
Has my life been a failure? If I can live by vision instead of accomplishments, it’s not. If I can pass on something empowering to others, it’s not. If I can share some wisdom, it’s not. And most of all, best of all, if I can live in the love of God, it will not be a failure. If I can understand and receive the gift of grace, my life will not be a failure. If I can see that my successes are God’s successes, I will feel no failure. In the end, it’s not what I do or what I make or what I give or what I think. It’s whether I love God because He first loved me.
Joshua is right on target:
One of you puts to flight a thousand, since it is the LORD your God who fights for you, as he promised you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the LORD your God.
Be very careful to love the Lord your God, because everything flows out of that relationship. Everything. And God will not fail. God will not fail. If you love Him, He will gather you up, successes and failures and everything, and He will make of them something beautiful for the Kingdom. God will not fail.
If you love Him, He will embrace you just as you are, and He is able to work together for good with those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. God will not fail.
Whether you are old or young, it is neither too late nor too early to get past failure. It is neither too late nor too early to succeed. Whatever your age, if you will love Him, He will take you to heights you have barely dreamed and will crown you with victories you can scarcely imagine. You will not fail because God will not fail.
Is your life failing now? Can you receive what He wants to give? Can you hear the good news, the best news:
.. know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you; all have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed.
