“So Moses and Aaron did this; they did just as the Lord commanded them. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things I learned when I was growing up is that when there’s work to be done, you keep at it until the job is finished. It drives me crazy when someone starts but doesn’t finish a project. Now, yes, this can be taken too far, and we need to have the wisdom to recognize when we need to pause for a break, but in most cases it is pretty sound advice. As much as this idea applies to individual tasks we take on, though, it also applies to our lives as a whole. Let’s talk about Moses and Aaron’s lives and this interesting little note we get as they get started on the biggest task of their lives.

The old cliche holds that the Devil is in the details. And he often is. But when it comes to the Scriptures, the details are instead where we find some of the deepest, richest, most surprising spiritual insights. Verses like this duo are so easy to skip over when we engage with the Scriptures because they seem out of place. They seem like they take away from the story. They seem irrelevant to everything else going on around them. But if every word really is inspired by God like the apostle Paul claimed, then we had best pay attention because there’s something for us even here.

In this case, Moses goes out of his way to note that he and Aaron were both octogenarians when this whole adventure started. I have a handful of nonagenarians in my church. They are all wonderful pillars of faith, and remarkably active given the sin of life they are in. But the fact that I felt the need to add that qualifier—and the fact that you probably had the thought at least flitter across your mind before I said it—is noteworthy. The truth is that most people don’t live that long at all. The average U.S. life expectancy is somewhere between 76-79 depending on which survey you are using. Folks whose lives extend beyond that by more than a decade may be robust individuals, but they are robust for 90+. We don’t expect them to be able to do what they were able to do at, say, 50.

Culturally speaking, the subject of octogenarians comes up fairly frequently these days. This is mostly in the context of folks making the argument with increasing volume that we shouldn’t have octogenarians or near-octogenarians serving as or running for President. That’s when we expect most folks to be enjoying their retirement. We expect that because we are told all our lives to look forward to retirement when we can quit doing productive work and just relax and play for the rest of our time on earth. We can do what we want and not be controlled by anyone else’s schedule. We can finally enjoy life instead of running around working so that other people can. We can at last do things for ourselves instead of doing them for everyone else.

“I’ve done my time. It’s time for someone else to come along and take up my work.” As a pastor, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that expressed in some form or fashion. In almost every instance it comes in the lips of a long time church member who is 75 or older and has served faithfully and actively in the church for many years. And in almost every instance, it is their justification for why they aren’t going to be active other than showing up for church and giving any longer.

That’s all where the culture around us is. But then we look at the Scriptures here and find that God called Moses and Aaron to the biggest, most consequential task of their lives, a task that would require them to worker harder than they had ever worked before, one that would involve terrible danger and huge challenges and incredible physical exhaustion, and He called them to this when they were in their 80s.

And if this was a one-off sort of deal, we could try to ignore it. But it isn’t. Abraham was called to start his adventure with God when he was 75. Noah was 600 when he was called to build the ark. Many others in the Scriptures served faithfully all the way until the very end of their lives. The Scriptures, you see, have no concept of retirement. The retirement program of the kingdom of God doesn’t come in this life. Even there we will be working for eternity. But before you think that sounds awful, that work will be totally free from the futility that marks all of our work here and now and which leaves us longing for retirement in hopes of escaping it. Work in God’s kingdom will be meaningful and fulfilling in ways we only dream of now. Our call here and now, though, is to work like we are already there. And that means no retirement.

Okay, but what about when we start to get to the place where we can’t physically do as much as we once could? Is there ever a point at which we can start to slow down a bit? Yes indeed. But slowing down doesn’t mean stopping. Rather than thinking of ourselves as finally getting to slow down, we should think of ourselves as entering a new season of work.

And what might this season be? Well, it might be a new kind of work, but allow me to offer another thought. If you are entering a season when you are unable to physically do as much as you once could, perhaps the reason you are in is one of preparing someone else to follow in your footsteps. Your season is no longer to work actively at whatever you were doing before, it is to train someone else to do it so that your work can eventually be carried on through the next generation.

The work of advancing God’s kingdom never stops until the kingdom finally arrives. Your role in that advancement never ends either. There is no retirement for followers of Jesus. Instead, there is joyfully working toward seeing the Gospel proclaimed and the kingdom advanced until He calls us home. If Moses could take on the most powerful ruler in the world and the leadership of a whole nation at 80, you can keep going too. You may not be called to lead a nation, but you can equip someone else to do what you once could but can’t any longer. Keep at it. There’s still more to do.