Wisdom for this Mortal Life #2

And whether God takes you when you're 30 or whether God takes you when you're 90, He has appointed for you a destiny. He has appointed for you a purpose that lives on long after you're gone. Your priority is God's eternal purpose, not your earthly stuff. Thanks for joining us on the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hi, I'm Bill Wright. Don is continuing our series, Here You May Safely Dwell, with part two of a message titled, Wisdom for This Mortal Life. Last time Don looked at Psalm 90, offering the first two of three points to consider. This prayer of Moses emphasizes both the eternality of God and the mortality of man. Today Don will present point number three, the humility of prayer that should be the result of accepting those realities. So have your Bible open and ready as we join our teacher now in the Truth Pulpit. We're going to die. All the generations before us have died and we're going to join them in that realm of the dead, speaking humanly and beloved.

Moses is writing this for a purpose, not to depress us, but to instruct us. This unseen dynamic about the nature of life and the nature of death, it governs all of life. But we have a problem at precisely this point.

You and I have a problem at precisely this point. We do not have the ability in our natural mind and in our natural power to grasp that, because you tend to live by what you see. You live in the realm where life is pretty much the same day after day after day. And without even realizing it, you start to assume and presuppose that because yesterday was like this and today was like this, that tomorrow will be like this as well. And you don't even start to contemplate that it's not always going to continue and tomorrow won't always be like today and yesterday was. And you can't grasp that in your natural ability and here's what it does to you. It creates in you a false sense of security that life will go on as it always has.

And that is not true. And Moses says and points out to us, toward evening it fades and withers away. We've been consumed 70 or 80 years and we're gone and we fly away. But the vast majority of people don't have the wisdom to stop and think about that and calculate it into the way that they approach life. They just keep doing what they're doing without contemplating what the reality of life really is. Yeah, and yeah, I get animated about this.

That's alright. You see, your challenge is that you can't grasp that in your natural ability, with your natural faculties. You live by sight and not by faith, not informed by the Word of God. And so what does Moses do? Moses has a conclusion to draw from that that is profoundly significant. Moses has identified the problem. He says in verse 11, who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? God, you're angry against our sin.

God, we're mortal and transient and we're going to die and life is short. And who understands that? Who understands that? Who gets that? Who grasps that rightly?

The implied answer is no one does, naturally. Now look at verse 12, in light of that, he says, so, so, in light of all of these things that I've been saying, Lord, in light of your eternality and the mortality of man and our inability to grasp the significance of what all of this means for our individual lives, so therefore in light of all of that, God, I have another prayer request for you, God. Verse 12, I pray that you would teach us to number our days so that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. God, we need you to show grace and favor to us, to enlighten our minds so that we would consider time and the brief window of life that we have properly. God, I need your help to think rightly about the nature of life, otherwise I'm going to squander it.

I'm going to waste it. Help me to use and consider time in light of the mortality and brevity of life, God. Moses understands that we would not do that if we were left to our own devices because we are too fascinated by what we see around us, we are too much in love with ourselves, and we just have this natural thought that I'm just going to keep on living and keep on living and keep on living. That's the natural way that men think before life starts to get away from them, and so Moses is praying, God, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. God, help us to think rightly about the brevity of life so that we would live in a wise way in response to it and not squander the days that have been given to us by your gracious hand.

Teach us to number our days. Now, follow the thinking of Psalm 90 and think ahead to the end of your life. Picture yourself sitting on a rocking chair. You're on a porch someplace, life is basically over, you know that you don't have too much time left, your strength is gone and your days are few, you're an old man or you're an old woman and you're looking back on your life at that time.

It's an imaginary exercise but I think it's helpful. And here's the thing, here's the thing, man, I plead with you and if you're already at that point in life, that's okay, just teach it to somebody else who's coming up behind you. You're sitting on that rocking chair and here's the reality of life. It's occurring to you that you don't get to do it over again.

You don't get another chance. You had one chance and whatever you did with it, that's what you've got now as you're sitting in the rocking chair. Remember we're juxtaposing, we're doing a little bit of time travel here. In reality, you're on the front end of life, the front end of decisions but you're thinking about it at the end looking back on it.

Here's the whole point. When you're sitting in that rocking chair, beloved, what's going to be important to you at that time? What's going to matter then when you look back on life? What are you going to want to have to show for your life or for your decisions then? What's going to be important then when you are at death's door and you are about to give God an account for your life, what do you want to show for yourself? I can tell you this, you don't want to be sitting in that rocking chair having squandered your life on the foolish pursuits of youth.

You don't want to have squandered it in sin, having neglected scripture, having neglected biblical priorities or having shredded your family with excessive devotion to business, ministry or a double life that you think you're hiding from others. I can promise you that when you're in the rocking chair, you're not going to be glad you did that. I'm saying these things sympathetically to help you.

I know I'm saying them strongly, but I'm saying it strongly just because it's so important. Beloved, let me shift tone here. Beloved, whether you've got two years or you've got 70 years to look forward to in the natural course of things, I plead with you, I beg you to live your life in a way that when you're sitting in that rocking chair, you're not sitting there thinking, and I say it reverently, oh my God, I've wasted it all. I can't do it over! And it's too late! And I squandered it!

I played games through all of my life! I never took God's word seriously, I never even responded to the gospel of Christ! Oh, I put on a show for man, but I never gave him my heart!

I never loved him with all of my heart, soul, strength, and mind! I just played the part of a hypocrite, and now I've squandered it all! By every appearance, some of you give me the impression that that's exactly the trajectory that you're on. I worry over you. I worry over what you seem to consider and what you seem to think is important in life.

It worries me no end. You see, beloved, that day of reckoning is coming, and you are in a position, now responding to God's word here, you're in a position to change the trajectory of that. And ultimately, it's really not the rocking chair that matters, is it? It's the fact that the rocking chair is just a preliminary act before you actually give an account to God for your life. And you have to give an account to Him for your life, because even as Christians, we're going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for the things that we've done in the body. What are you going to do with that? What are you going to say then?

What are you going to say? I can tell you what, you ought to pray right now, oh God, teach me to number my days so that I would live wisely. And let's also just humble ourselves even further and just realize that as we talk about these things, it illustrates for us how much we need a Redeemer to conquer death for us. How much we need Christ to overcome our sin and to overcome our foolishness so that we might be delivered safe through that passageway, so to speak.

God teach me to number my days so that I would live wisely. Now look, you know me, I'm here as a pastor, and if I can be personal for just a moment, and in passing deal with a question that I get asked all the time. People ask me, and I'm just illustrating how you think about this, how this applies and what it looks like. It's not to talk about me but to help you. People ask me often, why is it that you, speaking to me, why did you leave a law practice? Why did you abandon being an attorney to go into ministry?

What was that like for you? I get asked that question a lot. And there's a long answer, but there's a short answer in this context right here.

And at the end of the day, it was very, very simple. I was about 30. I don't know where the thought came to think about a rocking chair thing like this.

I don't know where that thought came from. But I was 30 in the midst of a law practice that I really enjoyed, and to this day I still miss. But I looked ahead to the rocking chair, and I asked myself, what do I want to look back on that I had given my life to? When I get to the rocking chair, what do I want to look back on of having given my life to? And I knew that I didn't want to have to show for my life a career in law when there was an alternate path of giving myself to God's Word. And that's what I wanted to sit in the rocking chair and look back on and remember, was that I had given my life to God's Word, and I'll trust God to honor that when I stand before Him in judgment. It was that simple.

This thought of the rocking chair changed the entire trajectory of my life. Now, let me clarify something really quickly here. It is not at all I don't say that because every man needs to go into ministry. That's not what I think at all. I don't even recommend it as a career choice, frankly.

Let's explain that some other time. I'm glad to be doing what I'm doing. The point is, is that every man, every woman does not need to go into ministry, but every man or every woman does need to do this. Every one of you, you do need to number your days and calculate in what you're doing with your time and with your priorities and with your resource and what you're doing because at some point, at some point, the end is going to come and whether you have time to reflect back on it or not, what you want to live life from is from a perspective that when I reach the end, I can look back and say, no matter how it went, I at least made choices that were informed by the fact that I was living a brief life under the eye of God.

That's what you need to do. That's how Christians live life. And you young guys, you've got a great opportunity to set the course now.

You older guys, some of you may be having squandered an awfully lot. Well, let me just remind you that we do serve a God of grace and that if you squandered it and you look back and you say, I've lived selfishly, this is why Christ came. Christ came to bring grace to sinners just like you and that you can go to Christ even now and confess a lifetime of sin and find Him willing to receive you and to forgive you and restore the years that the locusts have eaten, the years that you've wasted and even if it chronologically it's a small window of time after a lifetime of sin that there is still grace and productivity and an opportunity to live to the glory of God even if it's short by comparison. It's the nature of grace to say, come have at it. Come, all you who labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest.

He's able to restore the years that the locusts have eaten. And for that we praise Him and thank Him. But the younger you are and the more that you're on the front end, the more this is your opportunity and now that you've heard it, it is your responsibility to respond to the Word of God, what you give your life to.

This matters. Well, in response to all of that, let's look finally and quickly at number three, the humility of prayer. The humility of prayer. Understanding, this ends on a joyful note, Psalm 90 does, understanding, contemplating, meditating on the brevity of life, the mortality of life, it humbles us. It sobers us and it leaves us recognizing that there are dynamics about life that are just beyond our ability to grasp and to respond to and we need help.

We need help. The whole of this, the eternality of God and the mortality of man drives us to a position of humility before God. Moses is writing this toward the end of his life.

By the way, for what I was just saying, that's a good point to remember. Moses lived to be 120. God took him at the end of that 40-year wandering.

He probably only had a very short number of years of his own life to live when he was writing this. And what did Moses, the man of God, have to say then? And he turns to prayer in verse 13. Look at it with me.

It would be depressing. God, we would be depressed by all of this weakness, so God, I ask you for grace. I ask you for help. Look at verse 13. Do return, O Lord.

How long will it be? And be sorry for your servants. He's praying for mercy. God, have mercy on us.

Be sorry for us. Give us joy that we don't even deserve. Verse 14, O satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years that we have seen evil. What is he saying here? He's saying, God, show us mercy.

God, the reality of this would crush us if you left us here. And so I'm asking you to show mercy to us, to be sorry for us, and to help us even in our inner man to give us joy to replace the despair that we would otherwise feel in light of these things. There is joy in Christ even in light of the brevity and mortality of man. Moses says, Lord, give that to us in our inner man. Help us to be enraptured by you, by your character, by your grace. And if we can see your grace and be satisfied with your grace, then we can sing for joy.

We can be glad all of our days. God, help us in our inner man to transcend what would otherwise take place. And then he gives a second prayer in verses 16 and 17. He prays for God to grant a lasting impact to his life.

Look at verse 16 with me. Let your work appear to your servants and your majesty to their children. God, make yourself known to us. God, you are the answer to this brevity of life. You are the answer that satisfies our soul. And so make yourself known.

Break into this earthly realm of despair and make yourself known and show your majesty to us. In verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands. Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

Moses wanted his life to have a lasting value. And so he says, God, here's what we're doing. Here's what I'm doing.

Confirm it. In other words, establish it. Bless it so that somehow it has an enduring impact on posterity, that what I do will outlive my natural life and somehow turn to be a blessing to those who come after me. And what all of this means, beloved, for those of you that are older especially, you may have regrets about the past.

Some of you aren't even all that old and you have regrets about the past, don't you? But here in this prayer of Moses, my friends, what you find is this, is that by grace you can finish well. You can finish well. One writer said this, said, so long as we are here, God requires us to do something. Let us therefore find out what that is and do it.

And while we do it, let us pray that God may establish it so that it may remain to bless posterity. Here's what you should be thinking, no matter whether you're young or old, here's the way that you should think in light of Psalm 90. Lord, I'm still here. I'm still here. I detect by that, here's the way that you should think, beloved.

I detect by the fact that I am still here, that I still have work to do, that there is still purpose in my remaining days appointed by you. God, I pray. God, I ask you. God, I beg you to guide my steps and to give me enlightened understanding so that I could see what that is and that I could devote my time and energy to that which you would be pleased to bless. And with all of that said, to just wrap this up, time goes so quickly.

Yeah, that's right, Don. The whole Psalm's about that. Beloved, we're family here together.

Let me just say this. If you are a Christian, God does not intend for you to cling to this life. This life is mortal, it is passing, it is brief. Yes, you are to use that time to His glory, to love Him and to serve Him while you can, but to recognize that this life is not why God created you. The purposes for which God created you transcend this life. There are eternal purposes that God has appointed you to.

And whether God takes you when you're thirty or whether God takes you when you're ninety, He has appointed for you a destiny. He has appointed for you a purpose that lives on long after you're gone. Your priority is God's eternal purpose, not your earthly stuff. Ultimately, Christ redeemed you to be with Him in heaven forever. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 1 said, For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. To depart and to be with Christ is very much better. Beloved, that is the blessed position that all of us have as Christians. Not to fear death, not to resent it, not to run from it when it comes to us, but rather to embrace it, understanding that death is your escort into glory. And all fear is gone then.

You're free to leave when the time comes. You look back and bid farewell to life. You say, God be gracious, be merciful to me the sinner. That's what I intend to pray with my dying lips if I have breath and thought to think it, to just look back over all of the life of failure and sin and despair and everything that I messed up and to go before Him, not with boasting in my accomplishments, but God be merciful to me the sinner. And knowing that our gracious Lord is disposed to answer that because He is favorable to us as He showed when He died for us on the cross.

And in these things we find the philosophy and priorities by which we can live. May it be true for each one of you. If you should find your priorities in life shifting back to earthly things like health and wealth, please come back again and again to Psalm 90. In light of life's brevity and the eternal purposes of God, pray humbly that the Lord would restore your focus to where it should be on Him. Pastor Don Green will have more of our series, Here You May Safely Dwell, next time on The Truth Pulpit, so be sure to join us then.

Right now though, Don's back in studio with some closing thoughts. Well friend, if you have enjoyed this broadcast today, let me encourage you to do something that would be an encouragement to the partners who help make it happen. Drop a note, if you would, to the radio station that you've heard this broadcast on. They would love to hear that they have ministered to you because they love to share God's Word with you. And also it will help them know that they're reaching people with God's Word through the ministry of The Truth Pulpit. So drop them a note and give them thanks and be sure to tell them that you heard The Truth Pulpit on this station. Thanks Don. And friend, remember also to visit thetruthpulpit.com where you can learn more about podcasts and free CDs of Don's teaching. That's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright. See you next time on The Truth Pulpit.