While preparing for this sermon I read a number of sermons by some older preachers. One of them commented on the fact that much of what was taboo when he was younger was now brazenly displayed on T-shirts for all to see. However he suggested that something that once was not taboo - death - is seemingly a taboo of today. We have all sorts of dress modes for the Barbie dolls of today but nothing like they used to have one hundred years ago when you could get the ‘black funeral’ clothes complete with coffin. There are a number of modern TV shows and movies where the show is set up by parents dying and leaving their children in their will to others. The parents had obviously discussed the issue but not with anybody else. Today death is far less talked about.
Why is that? Maybe it is because we as humanity have tried to conquer any and ever frontier we have come across, including death. Maybe it is because in our post-modern society death will destroy the many truths we live in. After death people find out though they are accepted with many different beliefs in life, there is only one post-death reality. The Psalm we are looking at today deals with the issue of death. It deals with how we are to live having a right knowledge of death.
This Psalm starts in versus 1 and 2, by giving us a picture of God as the one who was there from before the beginning and who will always be there. He was there before the hills were born, before the earth, the world was made. He was always there. But this isn’t just about God always being there. This is about God always being there as a source of comfort, a source of encouragement, a source of belonging, a home.
The implied comparison for us today is the changeless God versus the never ending change of today. The rate of change today is quite staggering. I’m sure there are many here today who have felt left behind by the rate of change in the world today. For me, six years ago I was working in IT, developing new software for different companies. Now six years later my knowledge of computers in my field is obsolete. I would now struggle to go to back to the work I was doing. Why? Because things are changing so rapidly, six years is an enormous amount of time in my past field.
Whatever else might change in this world the message of God as one who loves and accepts us into his house is one that won’t change. And he isn’t just a house, he is a dwelling, a home, a place that is more than just a building, like a church is more than just a building but the collection hopes, faith, love of the people that come and worship together and fellowship together.
Today we can be assured that the message of God is still the same. Even though the way the message is shared, the people with whom the message is shared mightn’t look the same, and the places in which the message is being share might all have changed, the message is the same. God is still there. God is still our home, our dwelling. That is the message of the scriptures and that is the message of this church. We aren’t changing the message of the scriptures though some of us may at times feel like that. I do want you to be assured of that.
The Psalm goes on to contrast the continuing eternal nature of God with the temporal nature of humanity. We see this in v3-6. God turns us back to dust. He has decreed that we should not live for ever but that we should return to the dust from which we have come. The flesh is to return to the dust and although the Psalmist doesn’t explicitly say it here the spirit back to God. We are to be ‘unmade’. Why? To what is the Psalmist referring? The Psalmist is referring back to Gen 2 + 3 where humanity was to guard the garden from all evil and failed. The perfect humanity that God created was no more. In the words of Tolkien God gave us the gift of death. No longer will fallen humanity live forever. No longer will the sins of one be afflicted on another forever. No longer will those who long for God be denied their home coming.
The Psalmist emphasises the contrast between frail temporal humanity and the enduring God from the perspective of time. For God a thousand years as just like yesterday, the day before today where many of us have forgotten what we had for diner, or lunch, or what was said or done.
In comparison with God people are merely like the grass of the field which can spring up in the morning after a good rain and then be cut and dry and die in the afternoon, our life span, 80, 90 or even 100 or more years compared to the eternal nature of God is less than a day, less than a part of the night which is slept through, a dream which is vaguely remembered in the morning.
This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t remember or that God doesn’t care. God does care. God does remember. God has placed importance on our lives. The Psalmist is simply emphasising the contrast between the ephemeral nature of humanity and the ever lasting God.
This is for me one of the reasons why God’s ways are higher than our ways. Why our plans, even when we plan for a whole generation, are short-sighted in God’s sight and why we need to follow God’s plans for us, as individuals, for us as a church. He takes a much longer view of time, of history, of our lives.
Things happen that we don’t always understand. Sometimes God asks of us, or of others, things that we don’t understand. Yet God has a much larger perspective. It is a loving perspective. It is a perspective that wants the best for us. But it is taken from an eternal viewpoint, not one limited to today, or this year, or the span of one life.
I’ve read (and no doubt some of us here will know far better on this topic than I) that this Psalm is often read at funerals. It is a Psalm which speaks of death, the difficulties of life, and the finite length of life. And these are all appropriate things to discuss and think about at funerals. But it doesn’t just need to be at funerals.
Others have chosen to use this at the beginning of the year where we stop and mark a new year, a passing of time in a way that we don’t often do throughout the year, a time for ‘New Year’s resolutions’, or to turn over a new page in life, a time to live a little better.
Why is that? It is because this Psalm points out not just that our lives are short in comparison to God’s infinite nature but that our lives are shortened because of the effects of sin in the world. As the Psalmist puts it ‘all our days pass away under you wrath’.
At a funeral, we are hopefully, farewelling somebody into a place where there is none of the ravenous effects of sin. For the beginning of a New Year, it is a time to stop and reflect on the difficulties of the past year, the good things of the past year, and the hope of the coming year, a hope which can be achieved with the help and presence of God. But in order to stay close and be away of that presence we need to aware of the effects of sin in our lives, in our bodies, in our relationships, in our world. We see it in the Tsunami sweeping away hundreds of thousands of people, we see it in the bushfires sweeping land, houses and people before it in South Australia, we see it in the lists of names judges read through day after day in the divorce courts, where once happy couples have what was left of their relationship declared over by a court official, we see it in weakening eyes, ears, arms, legs, in the cancers in our bodies, we see it in the loss of love and happiness in the eyes of those around us.
The Psalmist tells us in verse 10 that our span of days maybe seventy or eighty years, some of us here might be on overtime already. But the Psalmist isn’t being prescriptive about things. The Psalmist is being descriptive; back in the days of this Psalm it was very rare with their level of health awareness and hygiene. Today we have better knowledge of foods, medicine, operating techniques, today with our knowledge and technology we can delay the effects of sin, of God’s wrath, in our lives, but even still it isn’t forever. We may ten, twenty, even thirty years on to the average person’s life, but it is still little compared to eternity.
Is the Psalmist saying that all these things are a direct result of God’s judgment on our sins? Do I suffer cancer because of my sin? Do two people get divorced because God was angry with their sin? No. This week my wife went to court with a friend whose husband left her, had a child with another women, while they were still married. It wasn’t her fault. She was doing her best to live a God-centred life. But sin is in the world, and God’s wrath allows its effects to work in the world. Although he didn’t just leave it there did he? He sent Jesus and although Jesus death on the cross pays the price for our sins, the complete cure doesn’t come when we accept Christ. The complete cure comes when we finally enter into the fullness of God’s presence.
For some of us that might not be too many years away. For some of us it might come suddenly, for others over a longer period of time. I certainly hope I have many more years with my wife, Leni, and any children God might grant to us. But whatever the effects of sin that have affected our life we need to remember that it won’t be forever and that there is an end. It is this that the Psalmist encourages us to go on and consider. Let’s read verse 12.
The Psalmist teaches us here that if we are to count our days aright that we will have a heart of wisdom. What does it mean to count our days aright? Does it mean that we figure our future life expectancy? A few months ago there was an excel spreadsheet that people were emailing to each other. You plug in all the details and it tells you your life expectancy. Should we use that to literally count our days and figure out that I have 15,345 days left, or whatever number it might be? I don’t think so. In the context of this Psalm I think it means for us to remember the contrast between our limited number of days, days that are under God’s wrath in this sin affected world, and the timeless nature of God, the God who created us, who wants to have relationship with us, the God who is our home, our eternal home. I suspect that this is something we tend to focus on more as we get older.
A friend of mine was talking with the Psychologist of the Australian Rugby team, the Wallabies a few months ago. This man was talking about the current team, particularly how some of them who are more important to the team are starting to get older. They are now starting to think about how they will be remembered in the history of rugby. Will they be remembered well? Or will they be remembered as merely average? As strange as it might seem this is actually having a negative impact on their play. They are now getting more worried about making the big plays and as the tension builds they make more mistakes. The implication being when they were younger they were more focussed on enjoying the game and the tension then wasn’t as great, the plays came more easily, the won more of the close games.
How do we number our days aright? Sometimes we try too hard and we try to make things perfect and they fall short of that because we are trying too hard. Sometimes we want the best for others and it doesn’t happen. Instead of enjoying our life and enjoying God’s blessing in our life we get lost in what others will think, what history will think, what people from the past will think.
To number our days aright doesn’t means that we live for the future or for the past but that we live in the now, knowing the lessons of the past and with having a view to the future. We enjoy God’s blessings for us.
Have we allowed bitterness from the past to rob of us of God’s joy for now? Have we allowed concerns for whatever future we may or may not see rob us of God’s love?
To number our days aright means we look for the good that God is doing today! Can we see it? Can we receive joy from it? Can we find God’s love for us in that? Despite the effects of sin, of God’s wrath in the world, there is hope, there is love, there is joy, and there is life to be lived not just endured.
So the Psalmist goes on to in versus 13-16 to show us how we might count our days aright. The Psalmist goes to God. The Psalmist asks to see God intervene, have compassion on us is the cry. The Psalmist knows when we see God’s love in our lives joy will come, gladness will come, and cheerfulness will come. Not just as a passing phase but as a part of our life that isn’t dependant on our circumstances. The Psalmist looks for God’s actions in life. How? By asking for the removal, or at least the lessening of the effects of sin, particularly the distance from God. The Psalmist asks to see God in action by asking that God’s deeds be shown that his splendour be known.
Finally in verse 17 the Psalmist asks that ‘the work of our hands’, the things that we do, be established, maybe these works stand and not fade away with the deadening effect of time as people might. The Psalmist asks that with God’s help, God’s favour, what we do might be of eternal value.
What do we think of when we, who know too well our workless salvation, think of work? Do we think of doing something to gain God’s favour? If we I don’t think that is the meaning meant here for us. Work is that which we do in response to God’s favour, that which we do in response to God’s goodness or God’s grace. It can be difficult but it doesn’t necessarily need to be heavy, physical work. The key thing here is the idea that it is established in the sight of the eternal God. It is something that has eternal value.
I used to work in Singapore with YWAM. While I was there part of my ‘work’ was as a worship leader. I enjoyed ‘working’ with some of the best known worship leaders from around the world, from all different Christian traditions. Our work was leading people in worship, playing music, singing. Ordinarily this isn’t seen as work, but when it is your job sometimes it can feel like work. But it can have an eternal effect on people’s lives. People can encounter God in a different way, God can speak truth into their hearts through the music that he couldn’t in that person in another way. It was work. But it was in response to God’s goodness, and it wasn’t difficult.
The question then for this morning is how do we, and some of us are much older than we were, even know do ‘work’ that will be established in God’s eye sight.
I could think of two things that even the frailest of us can do.
Firstly we can pray. I know my maternal grandmother prays for me every day. She can’t do much more than that. She is very frail, has a room in a nursing home. But she is on the phoning praying with people everyday. And likewise we too can be praying for those we love. Before starting here I used to think those in retirement had plenty of time to give to prayer, although now I know retirement can be quite busy. Prayer can be one way of responding to God’s grace that will be established in God’s sight.
Secondly we can speak words of encouragement. Not speak words of what you think the young should be doing but words of encouragement in whatever they have chosen to do. For the younger generations they will only respect and hear what others have to say if others hear and respect them. If you are critical of choices they make you what really be able to speak love and encouragement to them. If you hear and are encouraging about what they have chosen to do, even if you disagree, then you will be given more opportunity to share your view. I know my paternal grandfather was often encouraging me, even when he didn’t understand why I would give up a good paying computer job to go be a missionary in Asia. But he would also be encouraging to me, about me as a person, even when he disagreed, and that opened up me to hear much more from him.
Let’s pray ...
