How do you measure life? Job says, it is few days and full of trouble (Job 14:1). He continues: “He comes forth like a flower and fades away; he flees like a shadow and does not continue.” To the young, Job’s words may seem fatalistic, depressing, and unusually bleak, even to the young adult or the young married. Live a few years as an adult, and one begins to see. This world is not our home, it wasn’t designed to be after sin entered into it. Some think life is measured in money earned, position/rank or popularity. How do you measure life?
Enoch walked with God living 365 years upon the earth (Gen. 5:23-24) and was “translated” [did not die] (Heb. 11:5). His testimony: “he pleased God.” In contrast Methuselah lived 969 years (Gen. 5:25) and the record simply says, “and he died.” Was he a wicked man? We don’t know that, but one can know that he was a father at age 187 years to Lamech. How does one measure life? Length of days, or the testimony of God? King David lived 71 years, but what a mark he made in his relatively short lifetime. A hero in Israel even in the time of Christ, David was said to be a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), and that is quite a testimony to a man and his life. In David’s lifetime he was concerned with the triumph of the righteous over the wicked, crying out to God “How long shall the wicked triumph?” (Psalm 94). Are you burdened by the triumph of wickedness in your world?
What if Balaam had listened to God [re: Num. 22 (18)]? He said some very right things, but did not have the courage of heart and soul to carry them out in obedience. Had he done what he said, wonder what might have been his report—the measure of his life? Demas had been faithful to God and to the beloved apostle Paul, but the love of the “present world” caused him to forsake his duty (II Tim. 4:10). The question what if? What if Demas had been faithful? Luke was, and he was the only one with Paul in his lonely, cold final days. Would you desire to be measured on the “what if” scale?
The challenge of life and measure thereof is found in the closing words of the preacher Solomon. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole of man. For every work will be brought into judgment with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil” (Ecc. 12:13-14).
The measure of life? Thirty-three years, three of which were devoted to preaching and teaching the gospel (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus Christ turned the world upside down forever changing the course of world and human history.
-David Hill, President of Tennessee Bible College
