The late atheist Christopher Hitchens as soon as described the bizarre circumstances beneath which he got here to phrases with loss of life: “It was solely once I watched [my son] being born,” he feedback, “that I knew without delay that my very own funeral director had very instantly, however fairly unmistakably, stepped onto the stage.”
We normally keep away from considering or speaking about loss of life and dying. The explanations are quite a few. We grieve on the deaths of our family members, maybe as a result of their deaths present us a glimpse of our personal unavoidable finish. Others view loss of life with concern, unsure about what’s to return.
The Bible, although, has a distinct view. The author of Ecclesiastes, for instance, says it’s higher to go to a funeral than a celebration, “as a result of the residing ought to all the time remind themselves that loss of life is ready for us all” (Eccl. 7:2 GNT). Slightly than keep away from the thought, the Previous Testomony author urges us to mirror soberly upon it.
Since loss of life is a reality we should face—and face it we finally will—Psalm 90 offers counsel for God’s folks on this facet of eternity. Actually, the psalmist raises and solutions two essential questions: Why does loss of life come round so shortly? And why do we’ve got to die in any respect?
Our Unchanging Dwelling Place
We’re launched to the writer of Psalm 90 straight away: “A Prayer of Moses, the person of God.” Moses, who led the folks out of Egypt and thru the wilderness, will need to have composed the psalm someplace alongside the journey—and he begins by addressing God because the everlasting, unchanging, and immortal God: “Lord, you may have been our dwelling place in all generations” (v. 1).
If we take into consideration that phrase for a second and the context wherein it was written, we all know Israel had no dwelling place at this level. They had been within the wilderness, organising after which packing up as they went. However these realities didn’t alter the truth that God, not Israel’s earthly dwellings, was their dwelling place.
These in Christ discover their dwelling place in God Himself.
And God continues this manner with believers. These in Christ discover their dwelling place in God Himself. Our “life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3); our “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20).
God’s Immortality and Man’s Brevity
The psalm goes on to explain God’s immortality by way of His eternality (v. 2). In reflecting on God, we’re typically tempted to start with ourselves after which extrapolate out to Him. However it’s as a substitute after we descend from (to cite Spurgeon) “a religious musing upon the topic of the Godhead” that we are able to perceive our goal. And that is what the psalmist does. Earlier than the earth and its options had been created—earlier than the formation of the Grand Canyon or the pyramids or Stonehenge—Moses reminds us that there was the eternal God.
Instantly, the psalm contrasts the everlasting God with mortal man, who returns to the mud from which he was created (v. 3)—an allusion to the early chapters of Genesis. It’s for that reason that in funerals, the phrases of committal embrace “And now we commit the physique of our pricey brother to the bottom, ashes to ashes, mud to mud.”
The prospect of our mortality, when contrasted with God’s eternality, places our quick lives into perspective. Even when we had been to dwell for a thousand years, that might be nothing to the God who sees a millennium as however sooner or later (2 Peter 3:8). It will be like how a billionaire views a hundred-dollar invoice: a drop within the bucket in comparison with his whole portfolio. Most of us have seventy or perhaps eighty years (Ps. 90:10). That’s a life: gone!
Man’s mortality, contrasted with God’s eternality, places our quick lives into perspective
Pondering on this approach isn’t some type of morbid introspection. The realism the psalm supplies is critical to convey silly, self-centered humanity to our senses. We see it time and time once more within the Bible:
O LORD, make me know my finish
and what’s the measure of my days;
let me understand how fleeting I’m! (Ps. 39:4)
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and are available to their finish with out hope. (Job 7:6)
What’s your life? For you’re a mist that seems for just a little time after which vanishes. (James 4:14)
God’s Wrath and Man’s Sin
Having spoken to the felt brevity of life, the psalmist strikes to contemplate a second query: Why do we’ve got to die? Neither the atheist nor the secularist has an evidence. The Bible has the reply. Psalm 90:7 says, “We’re dropped at an finish by your anger; by your wrath we’re dismayed.” In different phrases, loss of life entered the world by way of sin (Gen. 2:17). And loss of life is the punishment for man’s rise up.
It is sensible. God—who is ideal, immutable, everlasting, excellent in justice and knowledge—isn’t detached to man’s rise up. We don’t need an detached God, very like how we wouldn’t need to play golf with somebody who says there are not any guidelines. Slightly than sweeping our rise up beneath the rug and saying it doesn’t matter, God offers with it, as a result of it does matter.
The settled response of God is revealed, the psalmist tells us, not solely within the passing of time however within the actuality of our guilt: “You may have set our iniquities earlier than you, our secret sins within the mild of your presence” (v. 8). In verse 11, too, he asks, “Who considers the ability of your anger, and your wrath in keeping with the concern of you?”
In brief, the notions of loss of life and guilt are inseparable. Each time we expect rigorously on loss of life, we can even must reckon with the guilt we’ve incurred in relation to God. The tradition explains away loss of life with axioms like “Effectively, it’s simply inevitable” or “There’s nothing to concern as a result of there’s nothing right here.” However the biblical worldview says that after loss of life, we are going to stand earlier than the God towards whom we’ve sinned—and until He does one thing on our behalf, we die beneath His wrath and with out hope.
Making the Psalmist’s Requests Our Personal
Fittingly, the psalm ends with a string of requests from the psalmist and to the eternal God. As we mirror on loss of life and dying, we might be helped to make the psalmist’s requests our personal.
First, Moses prays to God, “Educate us to quantity our days that we could get a coronary heart of knowledge” (v. 12). He isn’t asking for elevated mathematical acumen; he’s requesting godly knowledge. Like all of us, he must be taught.
A part of the character of our rise up towards God is that we don’t need His knowledge. We reject considering His ideas after Him (Rom. 1:21–22). Humbly, then, we have to method God and ask. The sensible individual doesn’t keep away from fascinated about loss of life; he filters the prospect by way of God’s Phrase, God’s guarantees, and God’s knowledge: “Educate us…”
Subsequent, Moses prayers that God would “fulfill us within the morning along with your steadfast love, that we could rejoice and be glad all our days” (v. 14). The context of this psalm makes this verse treasured. The psalmist has come to phrases with God’s immortality (v. 2), man’s frailty (v. 3), and the connection of God’s wrath to man’s sin (vv. 7–11). And now he prays, “Lord, fulfill us and make us glad in you.”
We all know in full what Moses, writing right now in historical past, knew solely partially: God’s covenant love finds its success in “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). For the Christian, our loss of life has been dealt with by the loss of life of one other; our life is discovered within the lifetime of one other.
That is our hope in loss of life: God in Christ has entered into our realm of rise up, struggling, and sin. He’s taken upon Himself these items in order that those that flip to Him in repentance and religion needn’t concern loss of life however can truly relaxation within the loss of life and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
Maybe you’re in your early a long time of life, and the notion of loss of life is much off. Gaining a coronary heart of knowledge means not ready till you’re older to reckon with issues of eternity. “Keep in mind … your Creator within the days of your youth,” the author of Ecclesiastes urges you, “earlier than the evil days come” (12:1).
Gaining a coronary heart of knowledge means not ready till you’re older to reckon with issues of eternity.
And to the outdated, for whom loss of life is an actual prospect: now could be the time! Immediately is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2). Make the psalmist’s prayer your personal: “Make us glad for as many days as you may have us” (v. 15). He will certainly do it.
This text was tailored from the sermon “Frail as Summer time’s Flower” by Alistair Begg.
