A BIBLICALWhat do you plan to do in God’s service with the freedom and time of retirement once you have it? Will you serve God or self? The choice is yours as it is mine. As crazy as the times seem, there is an exciting mission to be accomplished in the present and into your older years-if God gives your and I those years. The elephant in the room is one simple question. Will you burn out or rust out?
I befriended a Jamaican man who was born in Jamaica over ten years ago. He was from the same part of the Washington D.C. area as I was so had some commonalities. Politically speaking, we were about as opposite as they come on most issues, but we were friends because we respected one another’s political beliefs and held a common bond regarding respect and decency for one another regarding how we see right and wrong. One day this man and I were speaking when he said to me, “Steve, I don’t understand American retirement”. Only in America do people retire on pensions and other wise in such large numbers.” His mother had a pension from the Federal government by the way. And then he went on to say something that stuck with me to this day. He said, “Steve, in my country (Jamaica), it’s not uncommon to see an 80 year old man ride his bicycle to work each day. He won’t work a long laborious day, but he goes to work each day”.
When I look around the world, what I see is a Western, and certainly an American sense of entitlement. I concluded that this is some kind of malformed misconception of retirement that leads to the same Davidic mess that King David got into with Bathsheba due to the simple element of idol living and relaxation with out mission. I searched the Bible and can find a single example or even the concept of retirement. When I look around the world, retirement is not a concept available to most outside of the most wealthy in society.
As I was reading in my Bible this morning, I ran across a passage that tells us something about God’s idea of retirement in light of the life of Moses and Aaron. To put what we are about to share with you in its proper perspective, I want to clarify that I am not putting down the ability to retire-only what we do with our time once we have retired. In America, I do have a serious concern about government retirement plans that are 90% or more unfounded-due to be paid for on the backs of our children and grand children. Most all of the 550 plus government pensions in the United States alone are not made up of money saved by the individual or any literal savings, but are based on profit projections in stock market-where there actual pension plans reside. In other words, those pensions are based on a gamble or premise that the stock market stays in tact and profitable. Sadly, in most cases, government pensions are not paid for by money or investments but on the backs of our children and grand children through high taxation. In either case, I see both as unwise and immoral on behalf of the keepers of those funds. What happens is the stock market fails? What happens if the young people leave the country-as is the case in many European countries, to find a better place to live with lower taxes? To look at what proper view of retirement is, we must turn to God’s word to see retirement from a biblical perspective.
Part of the answer can be found in Exodus, whereby Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh at God’s command to tell Pharaoh to let His people, the Israelites go to worship God in the wilderness for three days. Keep in mind two things. First, Moses and Aaron were living out their God given mission into their 80’s. They could have kicked back and relaxed but they didn’t. Instead, they worked hard up until they were called home to be with the Lord. Moses died at 120 years old. His life can be considered tragically premature, because it came before completing his life mission to reach the Promise Land. Despite the fact, Moses and Aaron had no retirement plans in mind and worked into their older years. Please read the following passage.
“7 And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. 2 You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. 5 The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” 6 Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them. 7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1-7 ESV).”
Moses and Aaron obeyed the Lord. The ages of these two major biblical figures are given by God for a reason. Moses was 80 and Aaron was 83. This is important because often in the Old Testament the age of a prominent figure is given when a major even was about to occur such as Genesis 16:16 whereby, “Abraham was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram”. After 40 years in the wilderness wondering Moses died at age 120 (Duet. 34:7) and Aaron at 123 years of age (Numbers 33:38-39).
In a sense, these men had lived a lifetime of service to God up until 80 and 83 years of age (Psalm 90:10)-before their principal life work had even begun! Moses was to lead the nation of Israel for another forty years before he died (Duet. 29:5; 31:2; 34:5). Aaron died in the same year as his younger brother, at the age of 123 (Numbers 20:22-29; 33:38-39).
Now for what this means for you and I. I would ask you to pause just a minutes and read this passage for yourself and think about the concept of retirement for yourself. My teacher and mentor of 19 years, Dr. Norman Geisler once told me, “Steve, I will burn out, not rust out”. When Dr. Geisler passed away in his mid-80’s, I was speaking a friend who lives in the State of Tennessee. She told me that just a few weeks before his passing, that he had been out to her church to speak. He wasn’t as spry as he once was, but he showed up to fulfill the important mission God had given him during his shore 80+years on this earth.
Having said all of this, some of us reading this today have a pension or the financial means to retire now or in the future. Good for that. The point is not to criticize retirement but to look at what we plan to do in God’s service with that freedom and time once we have it. Will we serve God or self? The choice is yours as it is mine. As crazy as the times may seem, God has an exciting mission for you to be accomplished in the present and into your older years-if God gives you those years. The elephant in the room is one simple question. Will you burn out or rust out?
