It is dangerous to think that God will send a special wake up call to help a person avoid the consequences of negligence. That’s not the way it works. "But what about that Gingery guy?" you ask. "Didn’t he get a wake up call from God?"

"The night breeze felt good against Rob Gingery’s face as he and a buddy rode their Harleys through Bartlett, Tennessee, a Memphis suburb. The distinctive roar of their engines drowned out all else. At the light just before Gingery’s subdivision, his buddy gunned it and sped by."

I’m reading an article taken from the August, 2002 edition of The Reader’s Digest. Continuing…

"Not to be outdone, Gingery, 35, pushed his bike to the limit. The

speedometer needle flew past the 120 m.p.h. mark. He zoomed ahead, feeling free and fine, forgetting the bend in the road just ahead - and screeching straight through the curb.

"He skidded 200 feet before the Harley hit a second curb and went airborne. Gingery flew over the handlebars, breaking bones, bruising organs. Tendons and muscles tore as the rider, now sans bike, tumbled down Dawnhill Road, staining it red. Asphalt scraped at his face, ripped his ear, broke his skull in four places. Pieces of bone lodged in his brain.

"At the hospital, doctors performed emergency brain surgery, but told Gingery’s family not to hope. If he woke up at all, he’d be an invalid.

"But incredibly, Gingery regained consciousness within hours, and four days later, with 51 staples holding together his battered skull, he was well enough to go home.

"Rob Gingery liked to tell people that if God had been trying to get his attention with that close call, he’d succeeded. The life of the party had instantly grown up."(1)

That account was published five years ago this month. I wonder if Rob Gingery still holds to his comment about God getting his attention. If he’s like many, the chances of that are not good at all. Things get bad – God is remembered. Things get better - God is forgotten.

Turn to Matthew chapter 24 with me please. I’d like to read verses 35-39:

This passage refers to the second coming of Christ, a future event that Jesus says will be in some way "just like the days of Noah." No, He didn’t mean that there’s going to be another worldwide flood. The similarity is that people ignore the warnings until it is too late. They’re busy "eating and drinking" and "marrying and giving in marriage" – having a good time in the everyday affairs of life in other words, without a clue to what awaits them.

"They did not understand," Jesus said in verse 39, "until the flood came and took them all away."

People by the millions are headed for a day or reckoning with their Maker for which they are totally unprepared. Whether that day will be precipitated by the Second Coming of Christ or simply by the unexpected arrival of their own death, they will finally "get it" only when it is too late. The Christ they avoided during their lives be unavailable to them as their saving sacrifice.

Wake Up to Your Own Mortality! is the name of my sermon today and that is exactly what I hope all of us will do – whether we’re young or old, sick or healthy, bored or busy. Let me see if I can remind you of a few things to help you stay alert on this very important issue. First, let me remind you that:

There’s a familiar parable of Jesus in Luke 12:16-21 about a man who apparently thought he was young enough to have many years of life left. Jesus’ words go this way:

Verse 19 is the one to note. This man "had many goods laid up" – in other words, he was wealthy – or at least he thought he was. He was secure – or at least that’s how he felt. He was self-sufficient – or at least it seemed that way to him. And he had "many years to come" when he considered his own young age against the expected lifespan of those in his day. But he hadn’t reckoned that his Maker had a different time frame in mind. God said, "This very night your soul is required of you." This man was about to die. He would not see the light of the next day on this earth. There would be no motorcycle wreck from which he could recover that might cause him to reflect on his condition. There was no advanced warning. Judgment was upon him. Those "many years to come" never came. You’re never too young to die.

Clay McClean wrote a song some years ago called "Plenty of Time" that highlights the danger neglect in this area:

You and I don’t know when we will step out of this life and into eternity. The only thing we know is that God is calling us now to get ready for that day. It’s so easy to think like the rich fool in the parable, "I have ‘many years to come.’" Maybe so – but maybe not.

You’re never too young to die.

Secondly, in order to help you wake up to your own mortality, consider that:

Not everyone survives a serious motorcycle accident so as to be able to reflect on their life’s direction.

Jesus told a parable about a rich man and a poor man. The rich man lived "high off the hog" as they say. The Bible says he was "gaily living in splendor every day." The poor man, a guy named Lazarus was very sick – so sick that the only thing he could do was beg. Apparently someone had left him near the gate of the rich man in the hope that there might be some mercy shown by someone who could help. It was a horrible existence for this man, Lazarus. He couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the wild dogs that often surrounded him, biting at him and licking at the open sores on his body. Then suddenly, both men died. The rich man went to Hades. The poor man was comforted in Abraham’s bosom. In the agony of his new location the now former rich man cried out for mercy, but there was none that could be given. "Then I beg you…" he pleaded in Luke 16:27-31, "send someone to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them,' But he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.'"

Yes, there is a deeper meaning here than the fate of one man. Yet we see that there was to be no special warning to this man’s five brothers – no motorcycle accident or the like – to get their attention. The word of God’s spokesmen in that day – Moses and the Old Testament prophets – was all the warning they would get.

It is dangerous to think that God will send a special wake up call to help a person avoid the consequences of negligence. That’s not the way it works. "But what about that Gingery guy?" you ask. "Didn’t he get a wake up call from God?"

What makes us think that such situations are necessarily messages from God? I know people look at it that way and I’m not going to say positively God doesn’t sometimes make such a point. He can and will do whatever He pleases. But in considering the guy’s motorcycle wreck, an equally strong case could be made for simple stupidity on the part of a reckless driver. Did God cause the wreck or did the man bring it upon himself? Can something like a serious accident cause a person to wake up to his own mortality? Yes it can. But for us to think that God will in some way warn a person beyond what He has done through His word is a risky assumption. There is nothing in the Bible that assures it. In fact, it would be easier to make a case for the opposite. We need to wake up to our own mortality when we hear warnings from the preaching and teaching and reading of God’s word because this will likely be all we receive.

Thirdly, with regard to waking up to our own mortality:

Isaiah 55:6-7 says,

The words "while He may be found" and "while He is near" suggest that He may not always be accessible.

So does God hide Himself from people at times or is there something else here?

I think this means that there are certain times when our own awareness of God and perceived need for Him is more readily understood than at other times. A crisis in life – like the motorcycle accident we read about – can show us that we need something more than ourselves. But heightened perception of need is not the whole picture. Unless there is a way to hear the right message at that special time, the perception fades. Romans 10:14 says, "How shall they hear without a preacher?" While it is probably true that someone could pick up a Bible and study his way to salvation – that is rarely the way it happens. Opportunity to hear the message from someone we can relate to is the other part of the picture. In fact, it often a heightened awareness of our need for God coupled with an opportunity to hear the message in a way we can understand that provides the avenue for approaching God on the right terms. One without the other usually goes nowhere.

I went for 23 years of my own life without God. We had Bibles in our home, but no one was reading them. We were having extreme difficulties in our marriage and I was beginning to consider that perhaps I needed more than the human help we had sought. Then an old friend knocked on my door and invited me to come to church. I almost didn’t go but circumstances were such that I ended up going. That was the first step that led to my hearing the gospel in a way I could understand and conversion to Christ. Had there been no heightened awareness of need or had I not chosen to answer the door that day, the opportunity would have passed and I would have stayed in my sins. Would there have been another opportunity? There is no way to know. But passing an opportunity assuming that there will be another is, as I said earlier, very risky business. Occasions when a heightened awareness of our need for God comes together with the opportunity to hear the message in a way we can understand are not that common –certainly not an everyday thing. So it is folly to think we can respond to God any old time we wish.

When Jesus approached Jerusalem for the last time before His crucifixion He wept for them and the opportunity they had passed up in rejecting Him. In Luke 19:41-44 we read:

The Jews did not recognize the unique and ultimate opportunity provided to them when Jesus came, called here, "the time of your visitation."

Peter used the same terminology to refer to opportunities for the lost to hear the message of truth in 1 Peter 2:12:

Again note the phrase, "the day of visitation."

Go provides special times and circumstances, unique in the regular course of life, for people to respond to Him – called in these verses times of "visitation." If they pass on these times, they may not get another opportunity. These times are precious and relatively uncommon – certainly not opportunities to neglect.

Listen to Psalm 32:6:

And Psalm 95:7-8:

And then a warning from Jesus in Luke 13:25-28 about missing such an opportunity:

"Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, 'Lord, open up to us!’ then He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ "Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets’" – in other words, "You were so readily available to us all that time, why won’t you open up to us now?" The passage continues, "and He will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from; depart from Me, all you evildoers.’"

This tendency to think we have plenty of time or many opportunities to make our peace with God and so neglect the needed decision can be seen in Scripture.

When the Apostle Paul was jailed in Caesarea, accused by the Jews of upsetting their religion with his preaching and a trumped up charge of desecrating the temple, he stood before Governor Felix to plead his case in Acts 24. Luke hints in verse 22 of that chapter that the Governor already had some knowledge of Christ. But apparently he had never acted on it. Paul used the occasion of his defense to preach the message of Christ to this man. In verse 25 of the chapter Luke tells us:

Opportunity was knocking at the door of Governor Felix. Apparently he was aware of his own mortality to the extent that Paul’s words frightened him, so the heightened sense of need was there. And, standing there before him was someone who could explain it all. You don’t get a better human spokesman than the Apostle Paul. So what did Felix do with rare opportunity? He put off making any decision until a point when he had more time.

Did Felix ever get back to Paul on the issue to talk about his condition before God? Luke 24:27 tells us:

He let the opportunity pass.

Clearly if an opportunity presents itself where there is a heightened realization of the need for God along with the presence of someone to help one understand what needs to be done, and that opportunity is neglected, it goes away. We have no further knowledge of this man Felix. Did he ever respond to the gospel? Based on his procrastination here, I think it is unlikely.

What was that again that we read in Psalm 95:7-8?

As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6:2:

Travelers tell us that there is, near the Jaffa gate at Jerusalem, a small flat terrace on the top of a hill, called the "Terrace of Indecision." The ground is so level at that spot that the rain falling upon it seems at a loss as to which way to go. Sometimes the slightest breeze will blow part of the water over the precipice into the Valley of Roses and down into the Plain of Sharon where it gives life, fertility, beauty, and fragrance to the whole area. Sometimes however, the wind blows in the opposite direction, causing the water to run down the east side into the Valley of Tophet and onward into the poisoned saltiness of the Dead Sea.

Every life has its terrace of indecision. Yours does, as does mine. Sometimes the slightest breeze of choice determines whether our life flows down into something that springs up into the blessing of eternal life or down into a Sea of Death.

Don’t minimize the importance of the decision to serve God.

You may die sooner than you think.

You may not get any more wakeup call than you get at moments like this when the word of God is preached to you.

If you understand the message of the gospel, the time to act is now. If you don’t understand the gospel message, the time to start learning it is now. Today is the day of salvation.

Footnotes: Please use your back button to return to your place.

1. "Everyday Heroes," READER’S DIGEST, August 2002.
2. http://www.pine-net.com/babcocksstore/plenty.htm

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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