Monday, August 30, 2016
Psalm 39:4 Lord, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I am.
MAKE ME TO KNOW MY END
The psalmist speaks to the LORD, prays to the LORD, "Make me to know my end!" Literally, "Declare to me my end!" The psalmist wants the LORD to remind him that his life in this world is short, his body is frail. He wants God to remind him of what is going to happen when he dies. What will his end be? Not so much, "How will I die?" But more, "Remind me that I’m going to die! Remind me that my life in this world will come to an end." And that it will end relatively soon. He declares that, "Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths..." So the psalmist prays in another Psalm, saying, "...teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).
With His Word, God the Holy Spirit gives us a heart of wisdom. In the Scriptures the LORD teaches us that, for Him, "One day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). Regardless of what the world says, we know from Scripture that we are only 6,000-10,000 years removed from Creation. In the context of eternity, the world was not created very long ago. Elsewhere, the LORD calls Himself, "The Beginning and the End" (Revelation 1:8). To Someone who sees the last 1,000 years as though it were yesterday, it is as the psalmist says: "...my age is as nothing before You..." How long have you been alive? Thirteen years? Thirty years? Forty or fifty? Seventy or eighty years? Ninety? That is very little compared to the thousands of years the world has stood, and it is absolutely nothing compared with the eternal God.
And none of the wisdom we can gain from this world in one hundred years, or a thousand, compares to the kind of wisdom the psalmist is talking about. God takes a dead, foolish heart, and breaths in the Word that makes us wise unto salvation in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). It is with this heart of wisdom that God makes us to know that our end is not dying in sin, but with sins forgiven in Christ Jesus, living eternally, in heaven.
