“My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.” —Psalm 102:11
The other day I heard a song, an “oldie” evidently, but one I’d never heard before. The essence of the song was “someday you are going to die.” It is not often that one hears that insight from our secular culture, but there it was. What an opportunity for sober reflection. Yet I caught a tragic line that went something like this: “Someday you’re going to die, so get on with your sin; you don’t have a lot of time.” That is old fashioned hedonism, long ago expressed in the pagan philosophy, “Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
For a world without a bible and without God, it is as good a philosophy as any. Without God life is as significant as a mirage. There is no meaning, are no defensible values, no significance to virtue or even pleasure beyond the moment. Life essentially is empty, or to employ Solomon’s insight, “All is vanity,” and nothing really matters but the moment.
The Psalmist has the same insight; “My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.” But because he believed God, he emerged with a radically different philosophy. His perception and his faith are echoed by the prophet Isaiah long years after: “The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever [Isa. 40:6-8].” Later still the apostle Peter takes up the theme: “For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever [I Pet. 1:24-25a].” Then he adds, “And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” Finally the apostle James employs the same analogy, but as an admonition to those whose god is material prosperity in which they have placed their trust. “Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted: but the rich in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways [Jas. 19-11].” Thus he urges faith in God as the alternative to the desperation this insight will otherwise generate.
Now all of this is brought into significant focus by the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul when he declares, in his great dissertation on the resurrection of Christ, “If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die [I Cor. 15:32],” echoing the secular note above. The key phrase is, “If the dead rise not.” Paul had already affirmed his life transforming faith in the resurrection of Christ as the climactic evidence that the dead will rise, and it is this grand historical fact that marks the folly of those who, seeing death at hand or as inevitable, choose to “eat and drink” on the grounds that death is all we have to look forward to with any certainty. Faith in God, and the bible as His word (cf. Isa. 40:8) changes everything, giving life meaning, significance, hope, a future—and a warning: There is more to come!
Faith determines destiny. However, it is not faith in the abstract, but faith in the finished work of Christ, the gospel of the grace of God that will make the difference. Such a faith will influence not only how we view the future, but how we make the journey. Contrary to the pop philosophy, “Get on with your sinning; you don’t have much time,” the apostle quite logically exhorts believers, “Awake to righteousness and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame [I Cor. 15:34].”
Beyond death lies either everlasting destruction or the everlasting consolation of eternal life (Cf. I Thess. 1:9, 2:16). Careful reflection on the inevitability of physical death will move the wise man to “choose the good and refuse the evil.”
“Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, Comfort your hearts , and stablish you in every good word and work.” —II Thess. 2:16-17
“Life is short, death is sure; Sin the curse, Christ the cure.”
May you have a great forever,
“Pastor” Frasier
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