CHRIST SANCTUARY  -  18 JUNE 2023

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Moses / is the writer of this psalm 

He was at that time 80 

And by then he had became familiar with the fragility of life

In a span of 40 years he watched 605,550 people die
that translates to about 15,000 people a year

this means that Moses was conducting 41 funerals a day

But this figure applies to men only
When you throw women and children into the mix
Moses was conducting about 87 funerals a day

That’s not the exact number every single day 

On some days / thousands were killed 

because of their rebellion and sin / Num. 16:49; 25:9

OT scholar Daniel Block / for 38 yrs Moses lived in “a walking mortuary”

He says: “The dominant sound as the people walked in the desert

was not the sound of the bleating of the sheep 

or that of crying babies / It was the death wail”

What a bleak experience / To have the air you breath
fouled by the stench of death / every day for 38 years

Even if the Israelites had learned the Egyptian art
of embalming the dead / which is questionable
you’re pitted against time and temperature!

The background of this psalm is Numbers 20 / The Israelites 

are near the end of their 38 years of wandering in the desert

There in one chapter Moses sees the death of his own sister Miriam
and the death of his own brother Aaron

And when they finally reached the promised land
except for Joshua and Caleb / not one person 

over 20 years of age/ that he’d known / is alive

How very depressive / that must have been for Moses

He is now about 120 years old
Aaron is gone / Miriam is gone / And Moses is all alone

And he senses / acutely / that his own days are severely numbered
And he sits himself down and he writes the only psalm he would ever write

This psalm / is one of the oldest text in the entire Bible
And it’s the nearest you’ll ever get
to any philosophical discussion of time in the Bible

It begins rather abruptly by pointing us to the eternity of God
Please look with me / at verses 1 and 2 

* He starts talking about generations past
He says “you have been our dwelling place / in all generations” / v.1
* Then he backtracks / to when the mountains were formed
Mountains seem to us to be timeless and imperishable
and yet / God predates all those lofty mountain ranges
* But Moses backtracks even further back in time to when the earth was birthed
v.2 / “Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world”
* Finally he takes a strident leap / all the way back into timelessness
He says /  “from everlasting to everlasting / you are God” / v.2b

Now / Moses isn’t the first to contemplate on God’s eternity
Job / who is older than Moses / is probably the first person 

to contemplate on the eternity of God
“Behold / God is great / and we know him not
      the number of his years / is unsearchable” Job 36:26 

Here are some affirmations from Scripture / on God’s eternality 

* Isaiah says God “inhabits eternity” / 57:15 

* The psalmist says God is “enthroned forever” 

His “years shall have no end” Psalm 102:12.27 

* Habakkuk / “O LORD / are you not from everlasting?” 1:12

God has always been / He predates time / and He will outrun time 

Time had a beginning and it will have an end

But eternity is a perpetual duration

Time has no bound on God
He’s above the tyranny / the dictates and the ravages of time       

Tozer says: “God dwells in eternity / but time dwells in God”

God is not subjected by time in the way like we are

“Yesterday” is not past for God / like it is for us
“Tomorrow” is not future for God / like it is for us

God does not / live through events / sequentially / like we do

We have a past / a present / and a future

We live between an unchangeable past and an unknowable future
But there is no chronological succession of moments with God

In one full broad sweep / God sees the end from the beginning

Now / soon as Moses contemplates on God’s endless eternity

He contrasts God’s eternity with human brevity and frailty!

Quite abruptly v.3 stares us in the face: “You return man to dust”

Then he says: “For a thousand years in your sight 

     are but as yesterday when it is past” v.4  

No one knows why Moses came up with the figure of a thousand years

Maybe he’s thinking of the lifespan of the longest living human
Methuselah lived to 969 yrs / close enough

But he’s here saying / even if we could live a thousand years
that would be just like a day in God’s sight

And as if to drive the point home / Moses piles up one analogy after another
v. 5 / “You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream”

Remember he’s seen with his own eyes
hundreds of Egyptians swept away in the Red Sea

He was almost certainly reflecting on the death of Miriam

who watched his little basket floating in the Nile!
v. 5 b,6 / “like grass that is renewed in the morning:
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed
in the evening it fades and withers”

I used to do some fly-fishing / and one of the flies I would use
was one that imitated the mayfly / trout love mayflies
But mayflies don’t live for more than 24 hours
In fact / some species of mayflies live for just a few minutes
They belong to a family called Ephemeroptera from which we get
the word “ephemeral” / meaning “short-lived” “fleeting”
And that / is what Moses is reminding us of here

Thomas Howard reminds us that / your short stubby wooden pencil
that little thingi that sits on your desk / will outlast you
it will still lie quietly there on your table top / when you’re gone

God does not necessarily promise us a long life
Here’s a list of some famous Christians / who died young
Peter Marshall 47 / Paul Little 46 / Oswald Chambers 43 / Eric Liddle 43

  Bonhoeffer 39 / Flannery O’Connor 39 / Nabeel Qureshi 34 

Nate Saint 32 / Henry Martyn 31 / David Brainerd 29 

Robert Murray M’Cheyne 29 / Keith Green 28 / Jim Elliot 28 

John Stamp 27 / William Borden 25 / Joan of Arc 19

We live under the illusion of immortality / but the Bible does not spare us 

from the stark reality of the brevity of life:

* Psalm 39:5 / “You have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime / is as nothing before you

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath

* Job  7:6 / “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle”

So / how much time do you have? / The Bible is blunt here

70 years is the milestone marker / if you have the strength 80

and v.10 goes on to say “Yet their span is but toil and trouble”

V.4 says / “A thousand years in Your sight / is like a watch in the night”

  which Judges tells us / is only 3 hours / 7:19

So / if a thousand years / is 3 hours / an 80-year lifespan

is less than 15 minutes / in God’s sight

Now this raises a deep / existential question

Why do we have to have our lives cut short / Why must we die?

This is the first question of philosophy

It’s right here that most philosophical thoughts begin

So why must we die? / Why is life so short?
Moses gives us the answer here

We must all die / because God is angry at our sin

Our mortality is a result of God’s anger over our sin

* Ezekiel: “The soul that sinneth / it shall die” / Ezek 18:20

* Paul: “The wages of sin is death…” / Rom 6:23

Death / ultimately / is not caused by a physical misadventure

The death certificate my say “hardening of arteries” 

“pulmonary edema” “coronary failure” or whatever

That / is not the cause of your death / that is the occasion of it

The cause of your death / is sin

Five times from v.7 to 11 / Moses talks about the wrath of God    

  v. 7 is almost brutal: “we are brought to an end by your anger 

  by your wrath we are dismayed”

And our condition is made worse by the fact that we’ve nowhere to hide

v.8 “You have set our iniquities before you, 

our secret sins / in the light of your presence”

God reveals / what we seek to hide

And v.9 is like adding salt to wound / “All our days pass away 

under your wrath / we finish our years / with a sigh”

Now / how long does a sigh last?

James is a little more generous / He says “Your life is a vapour”

Vapour at least makes it to the ceiling / But what we have is a sigh!

And the Bible attributes every death to the hand of God

Whenever a person dies / it is God Who takes him/her away

The summons comes from Him / The subpoena is issued by Him

Moses makes sure we get it

v.5 /  “YOU / sweep them away as with a flood”
v.3 /  “YOU turn man to dust”
Literally “You crush him to dust”

The sovereignty of God over death is taught everywhere in scripture
Scripture is explicit It is God Who spares life It is God Who takes away life 

The sobering reality is that He takes away lives / every day?
He turns 56 million people to dust each year
He will take about 155,000 lives away before this day is over
7,000 or 8,000 people will die during this worship service
3,000 from the time I began this sermon to when I finish

And when God takes away a life / He does absolutely no wrong
whether He takes it at seven or eighty-seven

So here we are / And this is our lot 

In contrast to a God Who is eternal / we are ephemeral 

we have only a few short fugitive years 

Now / Why does the Bible even carry a psalm like this? 

To make us miserable? / No / to get us to turn to God 

And even as he writes this psalm / Moses turns to Him

He prays for three things 

* One / he prays for wisdom / v.12 

* Two / He prays for satisfaction in God / v.14 

* Three / He prays for ultimate deliverance v.16     

All the three prayers can be summed up in one line: 

“Lord Have mercy on us”

Moses asks for mercy in TWO ways 

FIRST / He asks God to teach us to number our days

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” 12

Moses is not asking us to count our days

You can’t count / what doesn’t have a set number

Instead Moses is saying / “Teach us / that our days are numbered”

So that we may get a heart of wisdom / and in this context 

getting a heart of wisdom / is knowing that we are grass

Let me explain what it means to number our days

In 1915 / Clarence Macartney the Presbyterian minister

    preached a sermon called Come Before Winter / In it he says:

“There are gates wide open on this autumn day

but next October they will be forever shut

 There are tides of opportunity running now at the flood

Next October they will be at the ebb”

 There are voices / speaking / pleading with us so earnestly today

which a year from today / may be forever silent

There are things we ought to do / words we ought to speak

before the long days of summer / turn short and cool

before the heart turns cold / before life is over

In August 2003 / the transcripts of messages / to and from the 

    Port Authority of New York on September 11th 2001 / were released

Many of those transcripts were transcripts of actual phone conversations

between people / who were caught in the World Trade Center 

and those dear to them

Most of these calls were from those who never made it

because by then the stairwells were filled with smoke 

and the elevators were jammed

Many of these calls are agonizingly heart-wrenching 

You don’t want to listen to them

You hear people frantically saying their goodbyes 

- words which should have long been spoken

The Bible says / in James 4:13-14 

   “You do not know what tomorrow will hold

    You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” 

You want a commentary on that verse 

just turn to the obituary column in your daily papers

We need God’s mercy to teach us to number our days
People who know that their days are numbered
do not spend their few years chasing the wind
* they do not flirt with trash and trivia / with froth and bubbles
* they know they are mayflies / ephemeral

If you knew you have two years left to live / what would you do
that you aren’t doing right now?
What priorities would you start to make real priorities?
What people would you try to spend more time with?
What will you allow to bug you / that aren’t all that “bug-worthy”?

Numbering our days is an invitation to think more soberly about eternity

There’s a SECOND way / Moses asks God to show us mercy / He says 

v. 13 / “Return / O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!

v. 16 / “Let your work be shown to your servants

and your glorious power to their children”

Just what exactly is he praying for in those two verses?

The phrase “your work” here / refers / ultimately

  to the great work of redemption by the Messiah

Prophetically / it refers to the 6 hours of Jesus’ work on the cross 

In short its a prayer expressing a longing for the promised Redeemer

Remember this psalm was written / in the midst of people
     dying everywhere / and it’s a prayer / that death be put to death

But isn’t that the longing of every heart! / that we not have to die

See / there’s an arrogant bravado out there / that says death is no big deal!
People like Voltaire / Bertrand Russell / or Christopher Hitchens
will brazenly tell you “When you die that’s it / It's all over!
And that nothing lies beyond death!” 

Really! / as Keller recently reminded us / When you say that
“you’re hardening / you’re squashing and killing
a part of your heart’s hope / that makes you human”

See / if there’s no Creator / if there is nothing eternally enduring out there

then / when you’re in love / or when you feel so much love 

or the one you love / like your mother / then what you’re feeling

is merely a psycho-pharmaco-logical reaction / in your brain

There really is no such thing as love / beauty / joy 

Those feelings are merely biological impulses

synapses - firing in your brain

If that is true / then Richard Dawkins is right / “DNA neither cares 

nor knows / DNA just is / And we dance to its music”

But we do have real tangible deep love for people we deeply love
     and surely / all that can’t be extinguished / by death of the body

God couldn’t have given us all this love / just to have it extinguished
                                                                                                    

See instinctively / we know that this life can’t be all there is to it
Our hearts cry out / to not to have to die / but to go on living

We look forward to a day when we will no longer be molested by death

Looking back I’m grateful God delivered me out of Buddhism

I was taught I was mere atman / and because of my adviya (ignorance)
I’m caught in the endless cycle of samsara and even if through
a series of reincarnations I finally pay off my karmic debt
and obtained moksha / and attained to nirvana

nothing of my original personality would endure

I would only be just another candle snuffed out
a drop of water returning to the ocean
a potter’s wheel grinding down to a halt 

How can that be!!! My heart cries inside me / to live on / as me!!
We repulse at the thought of being annihilated to nothingness
           We want to be able / to go on / and on / and on
loving the people dearest to us

Have you not noticed / that when people fall in love
they say silly thing to one another / things so lofty so sublime
they simply can’t be true / But we say it anyway

We’ll say things like / “I’ll love you / till the moon deserts the sky

till all the seas run dry / I’ll love you till the sun grows cold 

till the rivers flow upstream / till lovers cease to dream”

Or / you watch a soppy movie / and in the carriage of a subway train
a man proposes to his girlfriend / and she says “Yes!”
and all the other passengers looking on / go “Aaww!!” and they cheer!

You know I could never have a condensation on our bedroom window
and not walk to it / and scrawl the words Gloria Forever
I did that for 47 years 

We know that it can’t be true / people die!
if they don’t die / they open the back door and walk out on us

But yet you go on talking like that / you want to believe it
You want to believe / that there’s something that lasts forever

We’re all hopelessly addicted to a “happily-forever” story 

That’s why the movie Sleepless in Seattle is such a hit

earning $17 million on its opening weekend

and ultimately grossing over $228 million 

People love a movie  where the lovers walk off hand in hand

to love each other for all eternity!
It rings a nostalgic note in your heart
It’s a deep longing to be in touch with the never-ending

It’s as old as human tears

I like to call this the existential proof of the existence of God

It’s a signal of transcendence / pointing to an ultimate gratification

Ronald Rolheiser in his book The Shattered Lantern tells us 

that there is a deep undertow to everything we experience

* beauty makes us restless when it should give us peace

* the love we experience with our spouse gives us a quiet pain

a longing for it to last forever / knowing it won’t

* in relationship to the grandeur of our dreams and hopes

our jobs look hopelessly mundane / the small talk we make
All told / they’re frivolous 

There’s a nagging ache deep inside us

something fidgety / restive and twitchy that wouldn’t go away

Karl Rahner / the Jesuit theologian / perceptively remarked that 

“Here / in this life / all symphonies remain unfinished” 

Our hearts / minds and souls are a bottomless abyss 

with insatiable longings

We feel there is more to life than what our two hands can hold

Susan Cain the writer / said “the fundamental aspect of humanity 

is the longing for a more perfect and beautiful world” 

adding that the Wizard of Oz expresses it as “somewhere over the rainbow”

The thing we long for is over there

Lewis refers to this longing as “the music you were born remembering” 

Keller says “You’re looking for a song you remember but you’ve never heard” 

Our affliction is really a cosmic homesickness

We were made / not for time / but for eternity

  Congenitally / we’re overcharged / over-built for this earth

We’re eternal spirits trapped in garments of skin / flesh and bones

Ann Murray in her song You Needed Me says / “You put me high 

upon a pedestal / So high that I could almost see eternity”

It would look like we’ve been given 

to know enough of eternity to make us ruefully perturbed

Some days when you stand on tip-toes / you imagine you could see it

But you can’t clench it / You have a glimpse but no more

and that / is enough to make you throb inside

The point is this / Eternity is our home

The writer of Ecclesiastes / nails it down:

“[God] has set eternity in the human heart” 3:11. 

Paul puts it plainly: 

“We were “prepared beforehand for glory” Rom 9:23

I like to think of our cosmic homesickness as a homing beacon 

guiding us to our true home / a place where love lasts forever

But this is not that place / We’re not home yet

And the greatest news is this / God has shown us mercy
by satisfying our heart’s raging cry / for eternity

How so? / Let me put it this way
For all the talk about the wrath of God
not one of us / has experienced it in it fullness
For all our defiance / unfaithfulness and perversion
not one of us / has had to bear God’s wrath
apart from the fact / that we shall all have to die

This is why Moses slips in v.11 / “Who knows the power of your anger”
But Moses / is only asking a rhetorical question
The answer is plain and obvious / Moses doesn’t even care to answer it
“Who knows the power of your anger? / The answer is “No one”

But Moses was a man of his time
We know something Moses didn’t
We know of one man / who knew the power of God’s wrath
* His own Son / Jesus Christ

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law 

by becoming a curse for us” / Gal 3:13

On the cross / our sins were imputed to him / and 

He absorbed / the full brunt of the Father’s wrath       
He was totally forsaken / abandoned by the Father

He DESCENDED to hell / so we might ASCEND to heaven

He DIED / so we might inhabit ETERNITY 

Seen in a larger context / this entire psalm 

is a prayer / that the curse of Genesis 3 be reversed

The prayer “Establish the work of our hands upon us” v.17

has been answered / the curse has been lifted

Remember the work of our hands / was cursed in Genesis 

It is symbolic of God’s curse in general

Moses asks for the entire curse to be lifted 

And restore all / that was lost in Adam 

the greatest of which is life eternal

If the mother of all fear / is the fear of death
Here is someone who has dealt decisively with this predicament?

So / who is our comfort when we sprint headlong at breakneck paces

toward the grave?

Christ!

In Christ / your death has died 

And like Paul / you can thumb your nose at death / and your grave

You can mock your death! 

“O death where is your sting!”

“O grave where is your victory!” / 1 Cor 15:55

In Christ / you do not have 70 or 80 miserable years

you have the joy of life everlasting with God

In Christ / your story does not end in a vale of tears / in Sheol

Your story ends with “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”

In Christ / you will not be just another candle snuffed out

just another drop of water returning to the ocean

But you’ll be journeying on to the New Jerusalem

You are a new creation heading to an imperishable inheritance

to the praise of His glory

In Christ your story will end in your resurrection and life everlasting

You will die a stingless death 

You will stand over a  defeated grave

So Christians / because of Christ / you can look forward to a time

when time will merge into eternity

you will ceased to be ephemeral

for death shall me no more

and you will dwell in the House of the Lord forever

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