We are in Psalm 90 on outliving your life even though you can’t outlast your life. The only one who can outlast our life is God himself. The Welling is for your spiritual health, for your spiritual well-being and your spiritual overflowing.
Psalm 90 verses one and two talked about God as He is. He is eternal. But now, the psalmist here, Moses, not David, comes to speaking about humans as we are, that the essential reality of humanity is mortality, just like the essential reality of God is eternity. God is eternal. We are mortal.
So open your Bible to Psalm 90. Verse 3 on, all people are mortal. Our life is finite, fickle, it’s futile. God is permanent. We are impermanent.
Listen to what he says about all humanity, “You turn man back into dust.” Have you ever heard the phrase “dust to dust” at a funeral service, also “ashes to ashes”–the latter phrase is not in the Bible–but here it is: You return to dust.
God says, “Return, oh children of men.” We go back to this earth, to dust. Verse 4, “for a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by or as a watch in the night.” A thousand years is a long time. None of us is going to live that long. Even Methuselah didn’t make it, did he? A thousand years is like one day. The same is captured by Peter when he says, for a day is like 1,000 years. So don’t be scoffing and scorning the fact that Jesus has delayed His coming. The reason He’s delayed His coming is that more people will repent. God has a different view of time. We are the ones who are mortal, therefore, have to focus on time. It’s like a watch in the night.
In the U.S. Naval Observatory, they have what’s called a Master Clock. This Master Clock works in such a way that not a second is lost in 500 billion years. Neither is a second gained.
But it also shows that we mortals live in a space-time continuum. All your GPS constellations are built on GPS satellites, about 24 satellites, which cover the earth. They take a picture of the earth as it changes time. They tell me that getting the precise location depends upon precise time. Time and space work together, that if one GPS satellite is off by a billionth of a second, a nanosecond, your GPS receiver will be off by a foot. But if a satellite was off by one full second, then your location on your maps app would appear to be about two-thirds of the way to the moon. We are time-space located, mortal, finite creatures. And that’s why for God, 1,000 years simply is gone like yesterday.
Look at verse 5. It says, You, oh, God have swept them away like a flood. Swept them could be time or years or it could be human beings. We fall, they fall asleep. It’s likely to human beings because it goes on in verse 5B to say, “In the morning, they are like grass which sprouts anew.” In the morning, grass flourishes, sprouts anew. “Towards evening it fades and withers away.”
All flesh is like grass. That’s how frail we are. That’s how fickle and feeble and finite we are. We’re gone.
Johannes Brahms wrote an amazing requiem called “A German Requiem.” Some think it should be named a human requiem. He used the Luther Bible rather than the Roman Catholic liturgy in order to make a statement that we’re simply vanishing and impermanent on this earth. The start of the second movement in German, Den alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras. For all flesh, we’re as grass.
The BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, when they had a series on The Nazis: A Warning to History, used that particular opening statement as the credits rolled by. You’re frail. I am feeble. We are finite.
All humanity is like grass. We are mortal. How do we engage the eternal so we can outlive our life even though we cannot outlast it? That’s for your welling.