Where We Will Never Grow Old!

Psalm 90 and 91

Most of us have experienced disturbing thoughts.
It may be about an unsolved problem.
It may be about an unresolved relationship.
It may be about a haunting memory.

The one that troubles us the most are our hidden, unexpressed fears.
They always trouble our minds and resurface when we are not expecting them.
They drain our mental and emotional energies.
They rob us of our peace of mind and of being productive.

There is one submerged fear that all of us have in common.
It is the greatest of all fears.
It masquerades in lesser fears.
We try not to think about it.
We often resist facing it.
We also avoid talking about it.

That fear is the fear of death and dying.

I have witnessed the death of several people, and in several of those cases
I wondered if that person was ready to die.
Most of us would have to admit that we are not ready.
We try not to think of death, even though we know it will eventually come to all of us.
We refuse to think about it and stay focused on our everyday activities.

Death has been called the "king of horrors."
We try to disguise its stark reality, eventually, and physical finality with the skill of a mortician.
But the fear doesn't go away.

Each bout with sickness or physical limitation reminds us that there will be a day
when we will breathe our last breath.
Our heart will stop beating.
Our brain will stop functioning.
The terminal illnesses of loved ones and friends shock us again with the fact
that we too have an appointment with death.

We cannot live with freedom and joy until we have conquered the fear of death.
But we cannot do that with our own strength.
We need a profound healing of our fear.
The human philosophies of life will not help us.
Platitudes about our influence continuing after death will not satisfy.
Even the best worded theories of immortality and the endless existence of the soul
will be of no solace.

There have been times when I have been called to someone's bedside
when they have been told by the doctor that they didn't have long to live.
I usually begin by telling the person how sorry I am.
I have been amazed when several have told me, "Don't be sorry for me, I am ready.
I have known my Savior, Jesus, for many years of my life and He has given me freedom
from the fear of dying.
I'm not afraid.
I'm going home.
I conquered death when I gave my life to Christ.
I died then, both physically I lived for many more years, but heaven began for me then.
Now, it will get better and better!"

Many years ago, one of the men of our church told me on his way out
that he would be going to the hospital in the morning for major surgery.
I went to visit him in the hospital the next morning, and saw that his head
had been completely shaved.
He had been experiencing terrible headaches.

Only his family knew that.
To see him like that shocked me.
Here was a Christian father and husband and father of several children.
He lived his Christian life everyday.

As we talked together, he was optimistic that everything would go well.
As I left the room after praying with him, his last words to me,
"Preacher, I'll see you in the morning."

That next morning I sat with his family to his surgery and waited and prayed
that his surgery would go well.
The results wasn't good.
He had gone into a coma, and he didn't see me in the morning.
Three months past, and he remained in a coma.
He only weighed 85 pounds.
He was so pitiful to see what had been a strong healthy man in that condition.

After a Sunday morning service, I felt that I should go to the hospital
and be with his mother and father who were at his bedside.
That little woman, that great Christian mother said to me,
"Preacher, he has suffered long enough.
Please pray with us that God will take him home."
He died that night.
But thank God, I will see him in the morning.

So many experiences like that reminded me that I too will die,
but thank God, I know without a doubt where I will spend eternity.

How about you?
Do you have that confidence?
Do you have the assurance that God gives you of abundant life now and forever in heaven?

We will talk more about this we turn to the ninetieth and ninety-first psalms.
Both of these psalms teach us that only God is our dwelling place in this changing,
transitory life that we live.

The word, "place," in Hebrew is "maon."
That word means the abode of refuge, protection, and sustenance.
That word had great significance to the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness,
and never forgot that experience.
They also remembered their turbulent, national life.

Moses is said to have written Psalm 94 this psalm expresses the hope for permanence
in God's place for Israel when they reach the fulfillment of the promise land.
God alone was their security and protection in their instability and brevity of life.

This ninetieth Psalm was a vibrant source of courage for God's people through the ages.
People have repeated its words of comfort in times of turbulence and uncertainty.
It has also been the source of comfort when they have been comforted
with not only the trouble of life but also the transience of life.

For that reason, these wonderful words give us comfort as we realize
how short our life is on this earth.
In times of difficulty as well as the death of those we love, we have repeated the words:
"Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." (Verses 1-2)

In Deuteronomy 33:27 you can give the deep conviction of Moses
that "the eternal God is your refuge."
This is sounded triumphantly again in this psalm.
God had given Moses, the great leader of His people this vision of an eternal nature.
God was before all things, and through Him all things were made.
Therefore, God is the only reliable refuge in the instabilities of life.

This psalm goes on to stress God's eternity by comparing it with our brevity.
The comparison is a start picture of the shortness of life, but little comfort for the living of it.
For instance, we read in verses 3-6:
"You turn man to destruction,
And say, "Return, O children of men."
For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past, and
And like a watch in the night.

You carry them away like a flood;
They are like a sleep.
In the morning they are like grass which grows up;
In the morning it flourishes and grows up;
In the evening it is cut down and withers."

Our life compared to the eternity of God is like a second in the waves of time.
If a thousand years are like a watch in the night, which was considered four hours,
what is a full life lived to old age?

The psalmist wants his readers to get the point, so he repeated the specifics:
"The days of our lives are 70 years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away." (Verse 10)

The brevity of life is used as an admonition for us to confess our secret sins
and more competently abide in the dwelling place of the Lord while there is time.
We must notice that the psalm does not promise that coming to God's dwelling place
in this life will give us a place for eternity.
Rather, we are to carefully count the brief number of our days so that we may experience wisdom,
and the knowledge of God, before we die.

"Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom." (Verses 11-12)

The advice seems to be, "Get with it!
Life is short.
Our purpose here on earth is to know God.
Our sin mars that possibility.
Fear God and get right with Him, for this life is all you have to live in His dwelling place."

This psalm closes with the same note of urgency, not in preparation for the next life,
but in making the most of this life.

"Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy,
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days!
Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us,
And the years in which we have seen evil.

Let Your work appear to Your servants,
And Your glory to their children.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, established the work of our hands." (Verses 14-17)

This message is focused on the difficulties and afflictions that have been allowed by God
to bring His people to trust only in Him and, while life lasts, to work for His glory.

Psalm 91 provides magnificent periods for our brief pilgrimage in this life,
but it also offers no promise of any hope beyond death.
Again the place of abiding with God during these years is stressed:

"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust." (Verses 1-2)

Having a "place" with God for these years of our earthly existence is not enough.
There are eternal longings in our souls.
There is an insatiable hunger to live beyond the grave -- and these feelings
should not surprise us because God made us that way.
But not even the majesty of the language of these promises provides us with lasting contentment.

We long for a place with God now that gives our souls of place forever.
We hunger for an eternal security.
The psalms focus on the eternity of God and the shortness of life,
and in Christ, we discover both the eternity of God and the eternal length of our life.

Christ told us of a dwelling place.
Jesus came to prepare a place in our hearts for God and an eternal place in God's heart for us.
The psalms lead us on to the incarnation, where the dwelling place
"in all generations" is revealed to be an eternal dwelling place for each of us.
In that context the admonition that we "number our days, that we might gain
a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12) takes on a new meaning and an urgency.

Real wisdom is to realize that this life is but a brief phase in the chapter of our life.
Our life is not even an inch on the yardstick of eternity.
Therefore, discovering a dwelling place in God now, becomes the most urgent need of our life,
so that when death comes, our dwelling with God does not change.
Rather, we are released from our earthly, physical limitations for even more sublime realizations.

We remember that in the upper room we have the promise of Christ to us, as He said,
"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself;
that where I am, there you may be also." (John 14:1-3)

These words are promises of love.
Repeatedly, Jesus declared the purpose of His life, death, and rising from the dead
was so that we "should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)
Jesus came to reveal that eternal life.
He went to the cross to defeat the power of evil and death.
He rose triumphantly as proof that death had lost its power.
And Jesus returns to live His life in His people.

What Jesus said to the disciples that night in the upper room makes it possible
to say God is our dwelling place and to abide in the secret place of the Most High
with greater assurance.
We might wonder if Jesus had this ninety and ninety first psalms,
and the "dwelling place" on His mind when He spoke those words of comfort.
Hope just comes to us from His description of His own destination and through Him,
the eternal destination of all who live in Him and in whom He lives.

Our Lord's description of heaven includes its nature and how expansive it is.
"In My Father's house are many mansions…"
Father's house -- dwellings -- each word is a blessing to our thoughts and our feelings.
Whatever else heaven will be, it will be unlimited communion with God.

Our partial knowledge of God will be replaced with free access to Him as His children.
"House" defines that family union with our Father and with one another.
In that blessed fellowship, all that we know here in part will be maximized to the fullest:
love, joy, peace, complete satisfaction, and contentment.

You can think of the most blessed experience that you have had of the presence of God
in your life, and multiply it a billion times, and you have some hint
of the "glory that shall be revealed in us."

"Mansions" means dwelling or rooms.
The Greek word is "monai," plural of "mone," corresponding with the verb to abide, "meno."
The word conveys to us the truth that there will be ample room for all the redeemed
who have believed in Christ, and already have eternal life and salvation in Him while on earth.

The time for our decision about eternity is now!
Jesus said in John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through Me."

Jesus is life.
He is life eternal.
He is God incarnate, and the only way to God is through Jesus.
He is the only way to God.

When we receive Christ as our Savior, we receive eternal life.
Because of that we can go to our "home" to the Lord's dwelling place
where we will spend all eternity.

When you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you invited Him
to make His home in you, and he is preparing you for eternity.
You can say with Peter, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope
to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled
and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God
through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (1 Peter 1:3-5)

The minute we were born, we started to die.
Every day of our lives, we die a little more.
Some of us have grown older through the years, and we expect
that we have just a few years left on this earth.
The most wonderful blessing that we have is that we are going to our home in heaven
where we will never grow old.

Where We'll Never Grow Old

"I have heard of a land on the faraway strand,
'Tis a beautiful home of the soul;
Built by Jesus on high, where we never shall die,
'Tis a land where we never grow old.

In that beautiful home where we'll never more roam,
We shall be in the sweet by and by;
Happy praise to the King through eternity sing,
'Tis a land where we never shall die.

When our work here is done and the life-crown is won,
And our troubles and trials are o'er;
All our sorrow will end, and our voices will blend,
With the loved ones who've gone on before.

Chorus:
Never grow old, never grow old,
In a land where we'll never grow old;
Never grow old, never grow old,
In a land where we'll never grow old."
-- James C. Moore, 1914

Sermon adapted from several sources by Dr. Harold L. White