Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity
Sermons. This week we're beginning a brand new
teaching series called A Matter of Time, where
we're talking all about time. Spoiler alert,
you only have a limited time on earth. So what
are you going to do with it? How do we make the
most of this time that we have? And can we really
do anything that lasts forever? Those are just
some of the questions that Rob is going to unpack
for us in today's sermon. It is entitled, A Psalm
of Moses. A thousand years in your sight are
like a day that has just gone by or like a watch
in the night. Yet you sweep people away in the
sleep of death. They are like the new grass of
the morning. In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered. We are
consumed by your anger and terrified. by your
indignation. You've set our iniquities before
you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath. We finish
our years with a moan. Our days may come to 70
years or 80 if our strength endures, yet the
best of them are but trouble and sorrow for they
quickly pass and we... Fly away. If only we knew
the power of your anger. Your wrath is as great
as the fear that is your due. Teach us to number
our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Today
we're going to get kicked off by talking about
an incredibly encouraging and uplifting topic,
and that is the topic of death. So aren't you
glad that you came to church this morning? This
probably all got started for me a couple weeks
ago when I visited this website that was called
Death Clock. The idea is you go there and you
put in your age, you know, when you were born,
your weight. They ask you a few other kind of
lifestyle questions. And then the website will
spit out what they say is the exact day that
you are supposed to die. And why anyone would
create a website like this is beyond me. But
of course, I couldn't resist doing it. And so
I put in my details. And according to deathclock
.com, I am going to die on Sunday. At least it's
a Sunday. Sunday, May 31st, 2061. So that means
I now have 12 ,811 days. 14 hours and about 45
minutes and 30, 29, 28, 27, 20. Yes, at deafclock
.com, they will actually give you a... countdown
that is counting down to the time of your death
now rationally i know in my head this is all
hogwash and you know surely my days are in god's
hands not in the hands of some algorithm but
still there is something very unsettling about
watching your life reduced to the ticking of
a clock That is especially true for me this summer,
because this summer I'm going to turn 50 years
old. Wow. Hey, you know, and I know they say.
50 is nifty, but I'm not so sure because I've
noticed something about myself. And that is,
you know, when you're young, right? Life feels
just endless. Like when you're 16, it feels like
the summer could go on and on forever. The summer
takes 14 months. And then when you're 20 years
old, oh my gosh, it feels like 50 is so, so far
away. You've got your whole life ahead of you.
But then at some point in your journey, something
happens. and you begin to realize that time is
running out. And you start counting, not how
many days you have lived, but you start thinking
about how many more days you might have to live.
And I don't know when this change in thinking
happens. I think it maybe happens at some point,
maybe in your 40s. But you begin to realize life
is moving fast. Time is moving fast. Time is
running out. And actually, the older that you
get, the faster that time seems to go by. And
that's actually a scientifically proven fact.
There's good reasons. Why? Like when you're a
kid, it feels like forever. You're waiting for
Christmas to come forever and forever. And then
when you're an adult, all of a sudden, it feels
like Christmas happens like every 11 minutes,
right? It's coming so fast. Life is coming at
you faster and faster the older that you get.
And so if the question that we're always asking
is, oh, what time is it? Or what time do we need
to leave? Or what time is this service going
to be over? Guys, I'm going to tell you, the
service always ends at about the same time. So
usually, usually at the same time, mostly at
the same time. But instead of asking the question,
you know, what time is it? There is a better
question we really should be asking. That is,
what am I doing with my time? Because your time
is slipping away with every tick of the clock,
with every flip of the calendar, with every day
and year that goes by. And we might try to want
to push that thought off or avoid that thought
or deny that it's even happening. We say things
like, oh, I got lots of time. Or maybe you've
heard people say, I got my whole life ahead of
me. And one day I'll get to that. And one day
I'll slow down. And one day I'll make time for
those important things. It's not the way it works.
And the Bible doesn't speak about time that way
at all. James says, what is your life? For you're
just a mist that appears for a little time and
then it vanishes. Or Job says, my days are swifter
than a runner. They fly away without a glimpse
of joy. The psalmist says, we're merely mortal.
We're gone like the breath of a wind that never
returns. And Peter says, all flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of the grass.
The grass withers and the flower falls off. Or
today, as we read, our days quickly pass and
we fly away. It's cheery stuff, I know. But the
goal of the Bible is not to depress us. It is
actually to wake us up. Because according to
the Bible... A foolish way to live is to assume
that you've got all sorts of time, right? In
fact, one biblical definition of a fool is someone
who thinks they've got their whole life ahead
of them. Remember the parable Jesus told about
the rich fool, this guy who thought he had his
whole life ahead of him, and then he died that
night. As a pastor, I have done more than my
fair share of funerals over the years. You know,
it's interesting, even here at Trinity, it feels
like over the past few weeks and months, there's
just been more and more funerals. What's going
on, Trinity? Stop it. But in my 22 years as a
priest, I have done funerals for people in their
80s or 90s, in their 60s, in their 40s, their
20s. I've done funerals for teenagers, done even
funerals for children. And so I feel like I can
confidently say to you, you do not have your
whole life ahead of you. And today, Psalm 90
invites us not to run away from that reality,
but to actually face it honestly. Because if
a fool says, I've got my whole life in front
of me, then a wise person says, no, no, my days
are numbered. So that's what we're going to talk
about today. And I want to let you know that
it's going to take us a few weeks to really unpack
all the interesting things the Bible says about
time. Today might seem a little bit of a downer,
but we're going to get to all the other stuff
in the weeks ahead as well. I've given you a
little few teaching notes here, you know, just
so we can make the most of our time together.
One of the things that... Psalm 90 teaches us
right off the bat, and this is a good place to
start, is though our time is running out, God's
time is not. And I love how the psalm sets the
stage by reminding us that God is eternal. Lord,
you've been our dwelling place throughout all
generations. Before the mountains were born,
or you brought forth the whole world, God. In
other words, before there were oceans, before
there were planets, before there was human history,
before there were people, before there was the
Canada Revenue Agency, there was God, right?
God has no beginning. God has no end. The psalmist,
you know, he looks to the mountains as an example.
It's not a bad example. If you've ever stood
at the Rocky Mountains or the Alps, you look
at these things and you're like, these things
must have been here forever. There is a sense
of permanence when you look at a mountain. But
the psalmist says, no, no, actually before they
existed, God existed. And after they are gone
and one day they will be gone, God will still
be there. From everlasting this way to everlasting
that way, you are God. And that means that the
only permanent thing in the whole universe, the
only stable thing in the universe is God. Careers
change, relationships change, your body changes,
right? Cultures change, technology changes like
every 17 minutes. Everything in this world is
temporary. So if you are trying to find stability
through your achievements or through your health
or your beauty or your money or your career or
your plans, you're not gonna feel very stable
at all. These things all change. Stability. can
only be found in an eternal God who does not
change. And here, I think, is where we make a
mistake in our lives. And that is, we spend a
lot of our lives trying to make ourselves kind
of permanent. right? We're trying to make for
ourselves a name that will last. We want to leave
a legacy that's going to, you know, speak to
generations and generations of people after we
are gone. But the truth is, we don't got enough
time. You know, our lives are so small and so
short that we just don't have enough days and
hours and minutes to make of our lives something
that is going to last forever. For the future
to all look back and say, oh, what a wonderful
life that person lived. Let me give you a little
example. But I remember my grandpa, Grandpa John,
very, very clearly. He grew up in our home with
us. And so for most of our childhood, he was
there at every single meal. And he died when
I was, you know, just becoming a teenager. So
obviously my parents knew Grandpa John really
well. Me and my siblings, we lived with him.
We knew Grandpa John really well. really well.
Now, my children, I don't think, they never,
no, they never, they never met, of course. What
am I saying? They never met Grandpa John. They
might recognize his picture on a wall, and they
might have remembered that his name was John,
but certainly their children will have no idea
who he is. He will be completely forgotten. And
I hate to tell you this, but a hundred years
after you are dead, nobody will remember your
name. And that's not to be cynical. It is just
to say, hey, time moves on and history moves
on. And we can't make a name for ourselves. Alistair
Begg says that we are all going to elude the
pens of the historians. In the last 10 ,000 years,
just think of the empires that have risen and
fallen. The Roman Empire, the Zhou Dynasty in
China, Mongolian Empire, the Ottoman Empire,
the British Empire, the German Empire, whatever.
They're all gone now, right? They were just blips
on the screen of history. These nations were
once powerful enough to shake the whole world,
and now they are relegated to the history books
and the museums. So no. Only God is eternal.
We will not be remembered. Which sounds depressing,
I know. But we were never meant to find meaning
in making our own name eternal. So Psalm 90,
that's how it begins. It says, only God is eternal.
And then the rest of the psalm goes on to talk
about how frail we are. Yes, God is from everlasting
to everlasting. We are not. Like, for example,
you turn people back to dust saying, return to
dust, you mortals. A thousand years in your sight
is like a day that has just gone by or like a
watch in the night. I actually did a little bit
of math and I said, okay, so if a thousand years
to God is like a day, then what would my soon
to be 50 years be to God? Well, I did the math
and actually it turns out it would be like an
hour and 10 minutes. So in God's eyes, my life
is an hour and 10 minutes. But it actually gets
worse than that because it says, no, a thousand
years is like a watch in the night. And actually
a watch in the night is three hours, maybe four
hours, depends on how you look at it. And that
basically means that my 50 years to God is nine
minutes long, which means somewhere around the
beginning of this sermon, God said, oh, Rob is
born. And by now I am long dead. You know, so
much of our life, you know, trying to think that
somehow we are in control, but we are just so
frail and we are so fragile and life is so unpredictable.
As a side note, this psalm purports to be written
by Moses himself. If you read it in your Bibles,
you'll see right at the top it says, A Psalm
of Moses. And it's very interesting because from
Moses' perspective, he would have had a vantage
point on the frail and unpredictability of life.
Like, for example, Moses spent his first 40 years,
you know, watching Hebrew slaves. suffer under
Egyptian taskmasters, right? Saw them die and
suffer over and over again. Then he spent the
next 40 years of his life, you know, tending
sheep, same thing, day after day, day in, day
out, just watching and waiting for these days
of monotony to tick by. And then he spent the
last 40 years wandering the wilderness, and we
are told that in the entire generation die off
before they could enter the promised land and
i thought i did a lot of funerals but for moses
every day was another funeral every day was another
grave another reminder that human life is so
so fragile and which is why he the psalmist moses
writes you sweep people away in the sleep of
death They're like the new grass of the morning.
In the morning, it springs up new. But by evening,
it is dry and it is withered. In the Middle East,
you know, the rain would come. And yes, grass
actually would spring up overnight, green and
vibrant and alive. But then by evening, after
the scorching sun, it was brown, it was withered,
and it was gone. That's what life is. feels like,
right? At one moment, everything can be healthy
and stable and secure, and then the next moment,
everything changes. A diagnosis, an accident,
a phone call in the middle of the night. You
know, yesterday, I was dethatching my front lawn
with this special rake, just pulling, and the
idea of a dethatching rake is it pulls out all
the dead and brown grass that has been laying
underneath of the green grass that is trying
to grow. And my goodness, I could not believe
how much was in there. We bagged up tons of this
stuff and put it by the curb, waiting for it
to be picked up and taken off. I don't know how
it all died, right? Maybe it just slowly withered
away, like some of us do. Maybe it was cut off
quickly by our lawnmower last year, and it died
just in a moment. But that's the whole point.
Life is unpredictable. You don't know if you're
going to wither away like grass or you're going
to be cut off all of a sudden. Right? The Bible
says human beings, we're not like oak trees.
We're like grass. Which means not only is life
fragile and unpredictable, but it is just, it's
just short. This is another hard truth that Moses,
the psalmist, wants us to face in Psalm 90. He
says our days, well, maybe they would come to
70 years. Maybe if things are going really good
for you, you'll live to 80 if our strength endures.
Yet the best of those years are but trouble and
sorrow and they fly away. They quickly pass.
I find it kind of remarkable that though this
was written thousands of years ago, those ages
are still kind of right, you know? Most of us
get 70 years. Maybe some of us get 80. Maybe
a few more. Maybe for others, less. But Moses
says they all quickly pass. And it's true, right?
You graduate high school and you blink and you're
paying a mortgage. And you blink again, and the
kids are going off to university. And you blink
again, and the doctor's saying, Rob, at your
age, you should da -da -da, right? We're like,
my age? What are you talking about, right? Life
moves quickly, and Moses has this beautiful poetic
line, and we fly away. It sounds lovely until
you realize he's talking about your death. Now,
like I said before, This creates a real problem
for us as human beings because we want to be
permanent. We want to have our lives matter for
something beyond these few years. We want meaning
that goes deeper than those few years. We don't
want to just be two dates on a gravestone. That's
why I think we try to build wealth. build careers
or reputations. That's why I think so many people
love to write down their memoirs, right? We're
somehow trying to find a way to make our story
last longer, but we can't, and it won't. But
there is good news buried in all of this, and
of course, that's where I want to end today.
There is actually a way to make your story count
forever. And there's a way to make your life
have eternal meaning. There is a way. There is
a way. Tell me, Rob, how does one do that? Well,
let's go back to that God. Remember that God
who is eternal from everlasting to everlasting?
If you are willing to place your life into his
life, if you are willing to make your short story
part of his eternal story, then your story in
him, nested in his life, does go on forever.
That is the only way. That is the only way to
make your story make lasting sense, to put your
little frail life into God's forever life. You
could choose, if you want, desperately to spend
your 70 or 80 years trying to make a name for
yourself, which won't happen. Or you can put
your little story into the eternal story of God.
And when you do that, then all of a sudden, everything
you do matters forever. Every word, every act
of... faithfulness, every relationship that you
have, whether you're raising children or whether
you're a CEO, whether you're serving others,
whether you're worshiping God, all of those things
now will echo throughout all of eternity, not
because they're connected to you, but because
they are now connected to the living, eternal
God. The point was never to make our lives last
forever, but to take our few years, and drop
them into the God of everlasting life. That is
the only way our brief lives become part of something
eternal. That is the only way that we will never
be forgotten. Which is why after everything that
Psalm 90 tells us, it tells us, you know, that
life is short, time is running out, that God
is eternal, that we are frail. It ends with the
most important thing it has to say to us. And
that is, so therefore, therefore live your life
differently. Live differently. Or as the psalmist
says, teach us, therefore, to number our days
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. You see what
this all really boils down to is numbering our
days. It's remembering the brevity of life. If
you do that, the result is not fear. It is not
anxiety. It's wisdom. Because wisdom, the Bible,
isn't just something you know. It is a way that
you live. Wisdom, therefore, is learning to live
your life, your limited life, in light of eternity.
It's to recognize that because your time is so
limited, it is therefore so, so valuable. Do
you guys, why is gold so valuable? It's because
it's scarce. Why are diamonds so valuable? It's
because they are scarce. Why is your life so
valuable? so valuable is because it's scarce.
Your time is running out. Your time is limited,
right? Time is one of the, it is the most valuable
thing that you have. You know, wisdom says, hey,
if I lose money, I can make more money. If I
lose my career, I can rebuild another career.
But you cannot relive a single day of your life.
Yesterday is gone forever. And wisdom, therefore,
says, I'm not going to live my life worrying
about distractions or constantly scrolling through
my phone, right? Because my time is running out.
Why do I sit around here and say, one day I'm
going to slow down. One day I'm going to get
around to tending to my spiritual life. One day
I'm going to prioritize my family. No, wisdom
says... We need to number our days, realize how
precious they are, and then live our lives differently.
You know, I think that by the time you subtract
sleeping and working and commuting and all the
things that you have to do, by the time you subtract
all those, even for like someone who's middle
-aged like myself, I can't believe I said that,
but middle -aged. you've really maybe only got
a few hundred really significant days left in
your life. Like days that are all yours to like
determine what you want to do with. Goodness
gracious, don't waste them. Live differently.
Wise people, according to Psalm 90, they live
with the end in mind, not in a morbid way, not
in an anxious way, but in a clarifying way. It
really makes things clear. Certain things do
not need to matter as much as they do, right?
Those petty arguments, accumulating wealth, trying
to impress people, all those other things, they
don't matter. What becomes important are the
relationships. love the forgiveness faith the
kingdom of god right the wise person knows to
invest in those things because they actually
last and honestly i don't think anybody ever
lived this way quite like jesus did i mean there's
two things i want to say about jesus as we close
first jesus he lived With a sense of urgency.
Especially when you read the gospel of Mark.
One word keeps coming up again and again. It's
actually annoying if you keep reading. It's the
word immediately. Immediately Jesus went here.
Immediately he healed someone. Immediately he
taught. Immediately he moved toward the cross.
There was this sense of urgency in Jesus' life.
It was not panic. It was not anxiousness. It
was... purpose jesus lived as someone who was
fully aware that his own days were numbered and
so he invested his time in the people and in
the purpose that was most important he never
lived like he had unlimited time and neither
should we but secondly in jesus the most amazing
thing has happened and that is that This God
from everlasting to everlasting in Jesus entered
into our time, right? And stepped into this fragile,
temporary world. He submitted himself, Jesus,
to clocks and calendars, to aging and suffering
and exhaustion and ultimately death itself. And
because the eternal God entered into our mortal
life, it means that us mortals can now enter
into his eternal life. Through his death and
through his resurrection, he opened up a way
for our short little lives to be caught up in
his eternal life. And when we trust Jesus with
these fragile lives as they are, he gives us
his eternal. Which means that your short life
does not have to be meaningless. A life rooted
in Jesus becomes part of something good and eternal.
So, in closing for today, you do not have forever.
But in Jesus, forever can have forever. So God,
teach us to number our days. Teach us to treasure
our time. Teach us to live wisely, to live urgently
like Jesus, and to live eternally with Jesus.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Thanks for listening
to this week's episode of Trinity Sermons. This
sermon was recorded at Trinity Church Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario on May 3rd, 2026.