Famous Last Words

God blessed him to be a blessing. God gave him a long life; years and years to be the enrichment to others He called him to be.

As his life drew to a close, he gave a seven-word summary of his time on earth: "My years have been few and difficult." What a self-epitaph! Perhaps it's the shortest and sorriest of autobiographies.

Jacob, the Jacob of "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" fame, said those words. Yet, those words are also of interest for what they don't say. Jacob didn't reveal that, for the most part, he made those years difficult by scheming, conning, and playing the angle. He'd tried to scheme his way into the Abrahamic Covenant, something God had, even before his birth, promised to him (Gen. 25:23). By God's sovereign choice, Jacob had it, delivered, a God-given silver-platter-promise, his forever. Yet both he and his mother, who also knew of the promise, went through the needless and outlandish deception of her husband and his father (Gen. 27) to try to "get" what was already given to him.

This generated a split both geographic and mental in a family already divided. Because of his furious brother's angry vow to kill him, Jacob flees hearth and home with only the clothes on his back, little knowing that he'll never see his mother and father again in this life. Mother and son pay a high price. Sin has a way of extracting heavy premiums from the pockets of life.

Away from home, Jacob spends more years involved in schemes and counter schemes with his uncle, a man in whom he met his match for connivance. He winds up marrying a woman he didn't, and never would, love nor care for. When his children come along, he carries on the sin of his father and builds a house divided. Later, he finds that sin has a boomerang factor: his adult sons do to him what he did to his father, using an animal, just as he did, as they fake Joseph's death.

Thousands of years later, another famous man comes to write a much more than seven word autobiography. When he's through, it's huge; two volumes. Malcolm Muggeridge, now an old man of international fame as an author, editor, and speaker, has come to Christianity late in life, an exception to the norm.

The title he gives to his massive autobiography? "Chronicles of Wasted Years." It's essentially the same as Jacob gave to his.

So there we have it. Jacob comes to faith alone in Christ alone early in life; Muggeridge arrives late. Both regret the wasted decades that passed so quickly. What must have seemed so necessary to Jacob and Malcolm at the time, winds up on the ash heap of regret.

Enter James 1:21-22 and the principle that saves the heartache. Instead of wasted years, we can have productive ones. How? " . . . accept the Word implanted in you, which can save your life (literal Greek translation). Do not merely listen to the Word . . . do what it says."

Once the believer understands that James is writing about the ability of the Bible to save his physical life, this orients the epistle to its proper theme, that of how being a doer of the Word can save the Christian from the dire consequences of sin in this life.

The believer who lives out the implanted Word is neither sin nor problem free (I Jn. 1:8), but he is spared a whole host of innumerable problems, even death.

As long as she's living out the implanted Word, the Christian girl won't have to worry about getting drunk in a bar at 2 AM and never making it home that night. As long as he's living out the Word, the believer won't have the problems, even to the point of manslaughter, a DUI can bring. As long as we follow Christ, STDs are something we'll only read about as statistics in the paper. The list is endless.

But it's not only what we avoid, it's also what we gain by living out the Word. We gain a positive, productive life, and a tremendous inheritance in the kingdom.

Jacob, Malcolm, and look at one more. What a difference between Jacob's seven words, Malcolm's title, and Paul's statement as he came to the end. Read the mammoth difference between "My years have been few and difficult," between "Chronicles of Wasted Years," and Paul's words: "The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge will award me on that day . . ." (II Tim. 4:6-8).

Paul: saved, productive, and looking forward to his reward. Jacob and Malcolm: Saved, but precious years wasted. The difference? The implanted Word.

Dr. Mike Halsey,
Pastor, County Line Church