Well, the patient was shocked, that is bad news. Yes, the doctor said, but I’m afraid there’s even worse news than that. What could be worse than what you’ve already said? And the doctor said, well, I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday.
Now, you might find that a little amusing, but nonetheless, it sends a message to me about time. How much time do we have on this planet Earth? How many years have we been allocated? Now, this is not a message I think that many of us want to hear, and I think we’ve got to remember that our time here on Earth is limited. Our days may seem endless, you know, that we’ve got all the time in the world, but actually, we don’t have all the time. As you get older, you realise that time really does fly.
Living in the present for the future
And one of the wisest things we can do is sometimes remind ourselves that we are not God. And we should live in light of that perspective. We are finite people. We want to have significance in this life. We really want to make a difference. We want to be happy. And if you have a look at many of our magazines and the self-help books that are around, they remind us that our worth and meaning will be found once we get certain things, you know, the elusive prize of wealth or fame or some other significance. It’s sort of saying if you get that, you’ll be happy, you’ll be fulfilled. But you know, of course, that doesn’t always work. We feel that sense of emptiness.
And I want to say this morning that the Old Testament from the Bible can actually help us in this regard. Particularly if we look at Psalm 90 from the Old Testament. Now, here is a wonderful chapter from the Bible, the Word of God that asks us really to think of two things, and then takes two actions. Now, it could be that you don’t read the Bible. You may not take its message seriously. Well, I hope you do. Well, here we have Psalm 90. It’s actually one of the oldest writings we’ve got. 17 verses written by Moses, and it was written in the wilderness during the 40 years, and the history records that Israel was wandering in the desert.
So you have something like 2 or 3 million people that had been released from Egypt, and a whole generation of people had to die as they made this 40-year trek. And I guess there would have been constant funerals during that time. But in the middle of all this, Moses reflects on two realities. Now, don’t accept the fact that people say the Old Testament is irrelevant or the Bible’s lost its impact. No, not really, because in verse 1 and 2 of Psalm 90, it really says something simple that God is eternal. Lord, Moses said, through all the generations you’ve been our home before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.
So here’s Moses looking back over the course of human history, and he’s saying there that God is great because God is the God of history. Now Moses had probably seen the Pharaohs come and die. He may even, we don’t know for sure, he may have crossed the River Nile, gone over to the valley of the kings that tourists now visit today, and the tombs of the pharaohs there, and he may have noted many people in history who’ve come and gone and yet despite, despite rather the passing centuries, there’s no change in the relationship of man and God. He’s been the home of man for all generations.
We today, you know, can go to some of the museums and see the old Egyptian exhibitions. And we can stand there amazed at how old they are. Some could be 4000 years old. But here was Moses saying, before Egypt, before there were mountains, before there was even an earth, God was God. God has no beginning. He was God before the mountains came, and He is God from everlasting to everlasting. No beginning, no end. Yes, God exists from eternity to eternity. It’s a wonderful statement.
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Let’s Pray
Thank you, Lord, that you are from everlasting to everlasting. What a wonderful God you are. Amen.
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