A THOUSAND YEARS … AS YESTERDAY … AS A WATCH IN THE NIGHT

As these words were written by ‘Moses the man of God’, it is surely the oldest of the psalms and contains wisdom and warn­ings that are applicable to all generations.

Time has no meaning for God who dwells in an eternal pres­ent, ‘From everlasting to everlasting thou art God’, v. 2. But man’s life on earth is governed by it and is measured out by the ‘evening and the morning’, by ‘days’ and by ‘years’. These boundaries were divinely set at the creation of the world. The 24-hour day was established by the rotation of the earth on its axis. The 365-day year is determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun. Man, therefore, cannot control time nor can he decide how long he will live on earth. It is God who determines the day of our death, Heb. 9. 27.

There was a time in our world’s history when the principle of death did not exist. Adam’s disobedience brought sin and death into the world, Rom. 5. 12. Even God would not express in words the consequences for a sinful man to take of the tree of life and live forever. Genesis chapter 3 verse 22 is an unfinished sen­tence of scripture! The effects of the tree of life in Adam’s lineage may be seen in the life-spans recorded prior to the flood, but they are nothing when compared with eternity, v. 4.

The two great lessons that Moses sets before successive gen­erations of men are the brevity of time and God’s knowledge of our sins. God is not considering the economics, warfare, health, or education of nations, ‘Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance’, v. 8.

Moses once thought he could intercede on behalf of the nation, ‘I will go up unto the Lord; peradventure, I shall make an atonement for your sin’, Exod. 32. 30. But what Moses and other men could not do, Christ has accomplished by His death, resur­rection and ascension. ‘This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God’. And because of the finished work of Christ, God no longer dwells on His people’s sins but promises, ‘Their sins and iniqui­ties will I remember no more’, Heb. 10. 12, 17.