Sermon Tone Analysis

On September 11, 2001, singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman was in Washington D.C.

He and his wife, Mary Beth, were to be honored at the White House that evening for their work in regards to adoption.

He began the morning with an interview with CNN, and then headed back to his hotel to watch the airing of it with his wife.

Of course, instead of the interview all they found was coverage of the horrible events of that day.

They received a call from the Whitehouse telling them that the evening’s festivities were cancelled, and they were encouraged to flee from D.C. Since all flights were cancelled they had to wait in line behind hundreds of others at a car rental agency.

It took them nearly two days to get from Washington D.C. to their home in Franklin, TN and their children who had not made the trip with them.

As they were driving home in the midst of all the frenzy and worry, Steven wrote these lyrics:

God is God and I am Not

And the pain falls like a curtain

On the things I once called certain

And I have to say the words I fear the most

I just don't know

And the questions without answers

Come and paralyze the dancer

So I stand here on the stage afraid to move

Afraid to fall, oh, but fall I must

On this truth that my life has been formed from the dust

God is God and I am not

I can only see a part of the picture He's painting

God is God and I am man

So I'll never understand it all

For only God is God

And the sky begins to thunder

And I'm filled with awe and wonder

'Til the only burning question that remains

Is who am I

Can I form a single mountain

Take the stars in hand and count them

Can I even take a breath without God giving it to me

He is first and last before all that has been

Beyond all that will pass

Oh, how great are the riches of His wisdom and knowledge

How unsearchable for to Him and through Him and from Him are all things

So let us worship before the throne

Of the One who is worthy of worship alone

Songwriters: Steven Curtis Chapman

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I was reminded of this song as I was meditating on our passage for this morning.

Please take your Bible and turn to .

Over this past weekend I began to reflect on what I should teach this morning.

Should I try to bring another episode for our Christmas series?

Should I return to our study in Galatians?

Should I do a topical message with the new year in view?

As I was praying about this a phrase from this passage jumped into my mind: “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

As I meditated on that thought it seemed like a fitting message for the ending of a year and the beginning of another.

So here we are.

is one of the most ancient texts in the Bible.

You may have already noted that it was written by Moses, which places it about four hundred years before the time of David.

It was probably written sometime after the events of , when Israel refused to enter into the Promised Land.

At that time God swore that no one from Israel age twenty and over would be allowed to enter the promised land with a couple of notable exceptions — Joshua and Caleb.

Many commentators interpret this psalm in the light of the events of that fateful time.

Think about Moses watching the adults of his beloved nation pass away as they wandered for forty years in the Wilderness.

It certainly puts the statement of verse 3 in perspective: “You turn man back into dust and say, ‘Return, O children of men.”

As we consider this beautiful psalm we will look at the eternality of God, the frailty and sinfulness of man, and then Moses plea for mercy in regards to God’s people.

Let’s read the psalm together.

GOD’S ETERNALITY ()

God’s Names:

Lord — Adonai

God — Elohim

God’s Relation to His People

Dwelling Place — in Him we live and move and have our being...

In his commentary on the Psalms, Charles Spurgeon wrote this:

Moses, in effect, says - wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we find a home in thee ... To the saints the Lord Jehovah, the self-existent God, stands instead of mansion and rooftree; he shelters, comforts, protects, preserves, and cherishes all his own.

Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the saints dwell in their God, and have always done so in all ages.

In the times of the patriarchs Abraham and his descendents were wandering nomads.

They did not have a specific dwelling place.

But to them God was their dwelling place in that it was to Him that they turned for refuge from the storms of life.

And it is to Him that we also should turn to for our refuge.

As the song-writer once wrote: “The Lord’s our rock in Him we hide, a shelter in the time of storm.”

The psalmist goes on to explain why it is that we can take refuge in God: it is because of His eternal nature.

God’s Eternal Nature

Look at verse 2. What a beautiful expression of the eternality of God.

As human beings we are subject to change.

Dare I say it, we are subject to evolve — not as in the Darwinian theory, but as we mature and grow, and then decline.

In contrast to that God does not change.

He is eternally the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

It is a huge mistake on our part to measure God by human understanding.

We are finite.

He is infinite.

We are frail.

He is omnipotent.

God is God and I am not.

God is God and I am man.

Once again Spurgeon wrote:

God was, when nothing else was.

He was God when the earth was not a world but a chaos, when mountains were not upheaved, and the generation of the heavens and the earth had not commenced.

In this Eternal One there is a safe abode for the successive generations of men.

It is a huge mistake on our part to measure God by human understanding.

We are finite.

He is infinite.

We are frail.

He is omnipotent.

God is God and I am not.

While we could spend the rest of our lives meditation on the eternality of God, for today we are going to move on to consider the frailty of man in light of the eternality of God.

MAN’S FRAILTY ()

Look with me at verses 3-6 as we consider man’s frailty.

The first thing we see is what I have referred to as man’s dusty beginning and ending.

Man’s Dusty Beginning and Ending

In the creation account of Genesis we learn that God created man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

Eventually (unless the Lord comes for us first) we will return to the dust of the ground — ashes for ashes, dust for dust.

And that is pretty much what Moses is referring to in verse 3. Man’s life is cyclic much like the cycle of water.