(Preached at Trinity Baptist Church, Norman, OK, Father’s Day, June 21, 2026)

Just a few years ago, an elderly university president in South Carolina wrote: “It’s sundown, Lord … I fear not death … But I do fear that I should end before I finish, or finish not well.” 

Not long ago, one of our church members posted on Facebook and said “I want to finish life well. What do you think it looks like, to ‘finish well’?” I thought that was a great question. Because truthfully, a LOT of people do NOT finish well. So many in scripture did not:

— King David of course comes to mind, for several reasons:

— Eli the prophet, did not finish well, as he compromised with his sons’ sin.

— The last thing we read about Noah is his naked, drunken spell. Not what you want to be remembered for!

And we see that today too, don’t we:

— I know of a pastor who’s come out with some really liberal views in his last years; it’s very disappointing.

— You may know a pastor, or church member, or a family member, or friend, who just didn’t finish well — maybe it was immorality or unethical conduct — or maybe they just kind of slowly gave up. 

I hope that it’s your heart’s desire, men, this Father’s Day, to say: “I don’t want to finish like that. I want to finish well.” Truthfully, all of us as God’s people should have that desire. But how do we do it? Psalm 92 shows us:

:12 “The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree,
He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

13 Planted in the house of the Lord,
They will flourish in the courts of our God.

14 They will still yield fruit in old age;
They shall be full of sap and very green,

15 To declare that the Lord is upright;
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.

PRAYER

Psalm 92 opens: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O most high.” So it’s one of my favorite Psalms to quote in prayer to the Lord in the morning, or walking, or driving in my car, to lead me into His presence. But then it kind of “shifts gears” as it closes, saying: “The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree” and it goes on to talk about how “he will still yield fruit in old age.” So :12-15 of Psalm 92 describe for us what it means to finish well:

I. To Finish Well, You Must Begin Well.

By that I don’t mean you have to do everything well at the very beginning of your life, or that you can’t succeed with God if you’ve ever made any mistakes early on. If that was true, none of us would succeed. What I mean is that you must have the right foundation for your life, if you want to finish well.

Verse 12 begins this whole section by saying: “THE RIGHTEOUS MAN.” This is where we have to start. If you’re going to “finish well,” you have to be a righteous person. Now, as anyone who has ever tried to be righteous knows, we are NOT by nature righteous. As Isaiah makes clear, “All our righteousness is filthy rags.” The only way we can be righteous is through faith in Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for our sins. When we trust Jesus as our Savior, the Bible says God gives us His righteousness: II Corinthians 5:21 says: “He made Him who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” A “great exchange” takes place: we give God our sin, and He gives us His righteousness — and so by faith in Christ, we can truly say “we are righteous”! Not on our own account, but through Christ. 

And this Christ-given righteousness is absolutely vital. It is foundational. Without it, we are NOT “the righteous man” that Psalm 92 talks about. We must have the foundation of righteousness through Jesus Christ.

That’s why I Corinthians 3:11 says, “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.”  If you’re going to finish well, you have to start with the right foundation. You must build your life on a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as your Lord & Savior. 

How many of you have been to see/walk across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York? The bridge is beautiful, and  when it was constructed, it was considered one the great architectural wonders of the world: spanning the muddy-bottomed East River in New York City. David McCullough’s book, The Great Bridge, describes that the way they accomplished it was with “caissons”: large wooden boxes they’d sink to the bottom of the river with workers inside it, who survived on compressed air in the box. They would clear away the mud until they hit rock bottom. Then they would then fill the caisson with concrete, and upon that solid rock, it would be a foundation that the Brooklyn Bridge Could stand upon.

The importance of that foundation could not be overstated. John Roebling, the mastermind engineer who designed the project, said: “Upon the tower foundations rests the stability of the entire work.” He repeatedly emphasized: if we don’t get this foundation right, this bridge will not last! (At one point they even had to go back and undo three months’ work, because part of the caissons had been compromised. They knew they HAD to get that foundation right!)

It’s the same way with our salvation. If we are going to stand spiritually, we MUST build our lives upon the one foundation, of Jesus Christ. 

— Jesus said in John 14: 6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

— As the apostles proclaimed in Acts 4:12, “There is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved.”

We MUST build our spiritual foundation upon Christ. Just like Roebling said of the Brooklyn Bridge, it is true of our salvation as well: “Upon the foundation rests the stability of the whole work.” Upon the foundation of Christ, rests the stability of our whole life! 

This is why so many people are so unstable today: they don’t have this foundation! You must begin with faith in Christ. You can’t just try to be “good;” you can’t be good enough. You can’t just “start coming to church,” and try to do all the things that everyone there’s doing, and think you’re going to be ok. No: trying to live the Christian life without Christ is like trying to build a bridge without a foundation! You’ve got to start by first trusting Jesus alone to forgive your sin, because of His death on the cross, and commit your life to Him as your Lord & Savior. If you haven’t done that, then you don’t have the right foundation, no matter how many times you go to church, or what activities you get involved in. 

I can’t emphasize this enough: if you’re going to FINISH well, you need to make sure that you BEGIN well: you must start with the foundation of Jesus Christ. If you’d say, I want to do that today — or “I’m not sure; I need to talk to someone;” please come and talk with one of our elders after the service, and make certain that Jesus Christ is your one sure foundation today! 

II. To Finish Well, You Must Continue to Grow Spiritually

The second part of :12 says the righteous man “will flourish like the palm tree; he will GROW like a cedar in Lebanon.” If we want to finish well, we need to keep growing spiritually. 

Albert Einstein once said: “When you stop learning, you start dying.” That’s true in so many areas of our lives. And it’s certainly true in our spiritual life: When we stop learning, when we start “coasting,” when we stop growing in the Lord, then we start dying spiritually. It is vital that we keep growing.

But how do we grow spiritually? I Peter 2:2 tells us: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” The Bible says you grow by longing for the word of God the way a baby longs for its mother’s milk.

This is why THE #1 priority for every Christian must be to spend time every day in God’s word. His word is what feeds spiritual growth in your life. It’s how God speaks to you; how He teaches you; how He convicts you; how He directs you. God’s word is as important for your spiritual life as milk is for a newborn baby.

And that’s why the devil will put every obstacle he can in your way, to keep you from that. If you’re wondering why you’re not growing spiritually, and you’re not spending time in the Bible every day, you don’t need to look any further for the root of your problem. You’ve got to be in His word daily in order to grow.

And make sure it’s the “pure milk” of the word, as I Peter says. Don’t let someone else’s devotional book become a substitute for your own personal time in God’s word. Cheryl likes to say that reading a devotional is like reading what someone ELSE got out of their quiet time! Devotionals can be good, but they should never replace a time when it is just you, your open Bible, and God’s Holy Spirit speaking to you personally. There is no substitute for it.

But listen: if you’re not careful, you can even get into a rut in reading God’s word. It’s not just that you’re “reading” the word every day: are you paying attention? Are you learning? Are you letting God speak to you about your sin? Are you putting into practice what He shows you to do? Are you passing along what you are learning to others, in some way? That’s a whole lot more than just “reading your Bible.”

Some of y’all had the same experience I did, growing up at the First Baptist Church of Harrah, where every church member was given a little envelope to bring with us to church each Sunday. We’d put our offering in it, and there were also little “boxes” to check off: present, on time (we never got that one!) gave offering, read Bible daily, and so on. The problem with many Christians is that they can check “read Bible daily” off of on their checklist, but they aren’t really growing in the word. The Pharisees could check “read Bible daily” — but Jesus said they were sons of hell! Growing in the word means more than just “reading your Bible daily,” but LEARNING from your Bible daily; GROWING in your Bible daily; being CHANGED by your Bible reading daily.

We need to make sure that we’re really LISTENING to GOD when we read; that we’re applying and OBEYING what He shows us. God will never stop speaking to us — but we may stop listening. If we’re really listening, God will call us on new adventures of faith. He’ll say:

— “I’m not content with the attitude you have toward this other person!” 

— He’ll say: “I want you to leave your comfort zone and start this new class;” 

— “I want you to put aside your fear of flying and go on that mission trip.” 

If you’ll really listen to God in His word, and take the steps of faith that He calls you to take, you will keep on growing.

But what happens to many of us is, that we just “keep reading our Bible” but aren’t responding to it. If you have an accountability partner you could tell them, Oh yeah, I’m reading” — you’re doing the “daily plan” — but you aren’t really hearing God. You don’t want to be convicted about your sin, so you stop up your ears. You don’t want to take a risky step of faith, so you just quickly read and move on. On the outside, it may look like you’re “really walking with the Lord” — I mean you’re reading the Bible daily, come on!  Maybe you could say “I’ve read the Bible every day for the past FORTY YEARS!” But the question is, are you HEARING from God as you read? Is your life being CHANGED by what you read? If you are the exact same person today that you were 40 years ago, you are not growing in God’s word! You’re just “going through the motions” — and though you may be “reading the Bible” daily, the truth is, you’re dying spiritually, and you will not finish well. 

So Psalm 92 challenges us: don’t just “read” God’s word; GROW in it. I like what Ronnie shared a few weeks ago about his Bible reading — Cheryl & I both do something very similar. We don’t always “read through the Bible” every year — sometimes we do, to get the “big picture.” But most of the time we just read through different books of the Bible until God speaks. When you read until God speaks, your focus isn’t on “finishing a certain amount of reading” and “checking off the box,” but your focus is on hearing something from God that impacts your life. 

So a key to finishing well is NEVER. STOP. GROWING. But to keep on growing, you’ve got to let God speak to you in a real, life-changing way in His word every day. 

III. To Finish Well, You Must Continue To Bear Fruit

Psalm 92:14 says: “They will still yield fruit in old age.” 

The Hebrew word here for “still” is “od”: it expresses “continuance”: it means “again, repeatedly, still, more.” It means we’re not only still growing, as we just saw, but that we’re still serving God, still leading people to Jesus, still teaching His word, still ministering to others; still using the spiritual gifts He gave us.

To me, one of the saddest phrases in the whole Bible is found in Psalm 42:4, when he says, “I USED TO go along with the throng, and lead them in procession to the house of God, with the voice of joy and thanksgiving.” He USED TO — but he’s not now. Psalm 42 says his soul is in despair and he’s spiritually “depressed” — no wonder, because he’d not bearing fruit like he used to. The Bible says the man who finishes well doesn’t say he “use to” do things; he’s still doing things; he’s still bearing fruit!

Like many of you, I’ve been praying for Max & Sandra Barnett over these last months. One of the things I prayed, was that the Lord would use Max to show us (and the world) how a man of God faces death. Well, we saw that, didn’t we? That had to be the most inspirational — and convicting — memorial service I’ve ever attended:

— To hear how Max, in his last days, was still memorizing and reviewing scripture. It’s not that he “used to;” he STILL was — at 89! 

— Ryan shared the other night at Bible study that when Max was at M.D. Anderson in Houston for treatment, he talked to a man who told Max that his father wasn’t a believer. And Max said: “I’ll call him.” And called him not once, but multiple times, and shared Christ with him. 

Max showed us how a man of God faces death. He continued to bear fruit, all the way to the end of his race. Max “finished well.”

That should be the goal for every one of us, to finish well by continuing to bear fruit as long as we live. Now, listen: this doesn’t mean you have to work forever. 

I’ve repeatedly heard people say: “There’s no retirement in the Bible.” But that’s not quite true, is it? Numbers 8:24-26 gives instructions for the Levites, who were to serve in the Tabernacle/Temple. It says: 

“From twenty-five years old and upward they shall enter to perform service in the work of the tent of meeting. 25 But at the age of fifty years they shall retire from service in the work and not work any more. 26 They may, however, assist their brothers in the tent of meeting, to keep an obligation, but they themselves shall do no work. Thus you shall deal with the Levites concerning their obligations.”

So God actually indicated a “retirement age” for the Levites who served Him at the Tabernacle (and later the Temple). So yes, there actually iS “retirement” spoken of in the Bible.

I’ve said for years, as many pastors have: I plan to continue to serve God until the day I die. I DID say, however, there WILL come a day when I don’t go to the church office every day; there WILL come a day when I am not going to deacons’ meetings, and school board meetings, and every other kind of meeting multiple nights a week. There WILL come a time when I’m not serving God in “full time Christian work.” I said I will retire from that. But I NEVER plan to retire from serving God!  

Now, it ended up that the time of my retirement was fixed by Cheryl’s stroke. We had to retire. But although we are somewhat limited by our circumstances, we want to continue to serve however we can. Why wouldn’t we? He’s our Lord & God! We want to do whatever we can to serve Him, to help to our elders, to minister to people here like you all minister to us. We always want to serve God in some way.

Someone may say, but what can I do? I remember visiting a senior adult woman, who was lamenting that God had left her here on earth; she didn’t know why He hadn’t already taken her home.

I said, I don’t know all of God’s reasons and purposes, but one thing I do KNOW is that God wants us to keep serving Him, and one thing we can always do, as long as we are alive, is pray. 

Different ones of us have different skills and gifts and abilities, and we can all serve God in different ways.

— Some can do carpentry and other work like Baptist Builders, or Disaster Relief

— Some can continue to preach and teach

— Others can visit the homebound

— But ALL of us can PRAY!  I Timothy 5:5 says of the widow “Now she who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.”

Did you hear that last part? “She continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.” What does that look like?

One day while I was in the office at our first church in Oklahoma City, I was reading The Baptist Messenger. Towards the back there was a little article, with a headline that read: MISSIONARY PRAYER WARRIOR DIES. It told how this man years ago started praying for one of our Southern Baptist missionaries, and God kept answering his prayers, so this missionary told others who asked him to pray for them, and they told others who asked him to pray for them — until one day, the man finally said, “That’s all I can handle!” I want to keep up the quality of my praying for these missionaries, so he said, I can’t add anyone else to the list until someone retires or dies! Can you imagine that?! He was so busy praying, that someone had to die for you to get on his list!

THAT’s continuing in entreaties and prayers night and day! And that’s something we can ALL do! If you’re conscious; if you can think and talk, you can pray. This ought to challenge some of us; let’s expand our ministry; let’s really learn to pray. Let’s continue to “yield fruit in old age”!

So pray, serve, know that it may look different as I age, but determine: I will never stop serving God. I want to “yield fruit in old age,” and finish well! 

There’s so much more to be said here in Psalm 92: like where it says “planted in the house of the Lord” — the person who finishes well doesn’t give up on the church. They PLANT themselves there! And they “flourish” there. I tell you what, Cheryl & I are so thankful we “planted” our lives here at Trinity. We feel like we’re getting to “flourish” here, and not just “wither away” in our old age. Plant yourself in church, and don’t let any hardship or disappointment keep you from it. Never get to where you’re saying “I used to” lead everyone to the house of God, like the guy in Psalm 42. If you’re going to finish well, you need to plant yourself in the house of God. That’s true for all of us, of all ages. 

There’s much more to be said, but let me share one more thing:

IV. To Finish Well You Must Keep Speaking Well About God

Psalm 92 ends with :15, “To declare that the LORD is upright, my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”  “Declare” here is Hebrew word “nagad,” which means “show forth.” We’re to tell others about the Lord, and we talked about that some in the point about bearing fruit. 

But notice what it says next: a key part of what he declares is that “the LORD is UPRIGHT” and he says “there is NO UNRIGHTEOUSNESS in Him.” This means that that you continue to speak well of God as you live out your days. You don’t start “blaming God” for all the disappointments of life. You don’t allow the hurts of life to sour your outlook.

Don’t so many people get “old and cynical” as they age? The hurts of life have just sapped all the joy out of them. 

In Psalm 71:18, King David prays, “And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me.” That’s a legitimate prayer to pray (and we can be confident that God will not forsake us!) But the problem for many is not that God has forsaken THEM in their old age, but that they have forsaken GOD in their old age! They’ve been hurt, they’ve been disappointed, they’ve been “burned,” and it’s left them old and bitter.

MARK TWAIN comes to mind. Most of us think of Twain as a comedian — and many of his writings are so funny and entertaining; classic Americana. Twain’s The Innocents Abroad is one of my very favorite books. It’s his travelogue of his steamboat voyage to Europe and the Holy Land, and he pokes fun at almost everything he sees on the way.

But Twain’s life — especially as he grew older — was marked by multiple tragedies: the loss of a daughter, the death of his adoring wife Livy, some financial reverses due to poor decisions on his part — and all these things left him very bitter. Near the end of his life, Twain wrote some very harsh, bitter things; in one of his books (not to be published until after his death) He said that a good father shelters his children, but God does the reverse; He subjects them to unspeakable punishments on earth. His daughter didn’t want the book published; it was so blasphemous and bitter.

Life can do that to you, can’t it? Job was tempted to “curse God and die” because of all that happened to him. We can be tempted like that, too, with some of the devastating blows life gives us. “Just curse God and die. God’s not good; look at what He’s done to you!” It’s easy to feel that way, and let bitterness and disappointment throw a wet blanket over our faith in God, and just give up — or at best just “go through the motions.”

But Psalm 92 says the righteous man doesn’t do that. It says he “is still full of sap and very green — to declare that YHWH is upright; there is no unrighteousness in Him.” Despite all he’s been through, and as an older man, he’s undoubtedly been through some hard things. Everyone has. Our choice is how we respond to these things. The righteous man who finishes well holds to his faith no matter the hurts, and he continues to praise God as holy:

— David in Psalm 22 felt so abandoned by God that he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” But despite that, he still adds in :3, “YET You are holy; O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.” He says, I feel forsaken, but I don’t blame God. God is holy. David kept on speaking well of God.

To finish well we will take the hardest shots life gives us, and even if we don’t understand it all, in our darkest hours we proclaim by faith:

— With Psalm 92 that “the Lord is upright; there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

— feeling forsaken like David we say like him in Psalm 22, “YET You are holy.”

— Devastated like Job we still proclaim: “Blessed be the name of the Lord”

— With Randy we sing this morning, “You’re a good, good Father. That’s who you are. You’re perfect in all of Your ways.” 

There’s plenty of things we don’t understand in this life, but one thing we can stand on for sure is that God is holy; God is good; and as Psalm 92 says “There is no unrighteousness in Him.” 

I love that Psalm 92 ends like this: “To declare that YHWH is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.” It ends with a positive word of praise to God. No matter what hurts he’s suffered, he doesn’t allow himself to be swallowed up by bitterness. He keeps on worshiping God. He keeps on proclaiming good things about Him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the Him, no matter what. That’s what we’ve got to do, if we’re going to finish well. 

CONCLUSION:

One of the best, and most fun things I ever did as a dad was join the Jenks Running Club with our kids when we lived in Tulsa. It was such good fellowship with the kids, and I got in pretty good shape. Now, to be clear, I was never fast at all; in fact for the longest time I could never break a 6:00 mile — I’d come close, but I could only get down to 6:08 or 6:09 or so. But I was looking forward to the Cherry Street Mile they have every year in Tulsa. I’d heard that the first third of that mile race is uphill, but the last part is all downhill. I thought: If I’m ever going to break 6:00, it’ll be that Saturday at the Cherry Street Mile. 

So the day came, and the gun sounded and we took off. The first third was hard, all uphill — but then it turned, and I could feel the downhill just stretch out my stride a bit longer. I was keeping up a good pace, and about a hundred yards out, I could see the finish line. There was a big digital clock overhead with the time. It ust then hit 5:00 and I wasn’t that far out; I thought, “I’m going to do it!” I was so excited, I looked over to see if I knew anyone in the crowd lining the street and I saw an older man there that I knew. I raised my hands and said “I’m going to break 6:00!” I thought he might congratulate me, but instead he said: “Keep your eyes on the finish line!” Duly chastened, I set my eyes on that finish line, and sprinted in. As I crossed the line, the clock read 5:45. I finally did it!  One of the best days of my very non-athletic sporting life!

But I learned a good lesson that day — and it’s really the lesson that Psalm 92 points us to: If we want to finish well, we can’t get distracted by the crowd; we can’t get lulled into slumber by the world’s comforts, or become jaded and bitter by its hurts. 

— We can’t let our eyes get distracted like David’s were with Bathsheba

— We can’t let our eyes be drawn like Demas was to the things of this present world

— We can’t allow ourselves to be swallowed up, like Jesus said in Matthew 13, by the “worries of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth.”

We need to remember what we’re here for, and never, never, stop — not at 50, not at 60, not at 70, not at 80 — we’ve got “keep our eyes on the finish line” and RUN — until we cross that finish line and run into His arms — and “Finish Well”!

Let’s bow our heads together …

INVITATION:

We don’t come to Trinity to be entertained, check off a box, and go home. We come to worship God, to hear His word, and respond to it. So would you consider: how do you need to respond to God’s word today?

— Maybe you’re a dad, and you’d say: “I need to finish well, and lead my family.” You can’t lead them where you aren’t going! Make sure you have the foundation of Christ in your life — and make sure you kids do too. 

— All of us need to make sure we’re not only “reading the Bible daily” — that’s a great start — but as we saw, that’s not enough. Some of us need to ask the Lord to forgive us today for just “going through the motions” in my time with You. Let your word be a fire in my life, a hammer that shatters a rock; my daily bread; my necessary milk. Help me to finish strong by continuing to grow in Your word.

— Maybe you’d say, “I’ve been considering just stepping aside from some things.” And I’m not saying your ministry always has to look the same — it may change over the years; we can’t always do what we’ve done — but just make sure you’re always serving God in SOME way.

— And maybe life has hit you very hard with something. And maybe in your heart of hearts, you’d be tempted to say, “God has not been good to me.” Bow before Him this morning and confess, “Lord, You are holy. You are upright. There is no unrighteousness in You. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Determine: I am never going to let the hurts and disappointments of life make me bitter, and spoil my witness for the Lord.

Maybe it’s something else you need to talk about. I’m going to pray, and you pray too. Talk to God about how YOU need to respond to His word today. And if you need to talk to one of our elders, have somebody pray with you — especially if you need to commit your life to Christ today, or you’ve got some question about it; please come see one of them after Randy sings.

Let’s pray …