The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Out, out, brief candle. Though both men ponder the meaning of life, King David is no Macbeth. Today on the Bible Study Hour, we'll take a closer look at Psalm 39, where David is troubled about the brevity of life. Our mortal existence on this earth is but a breath, but our hope is not in the things of this world. Macbeth despairs, but David brings it all to God. Although life is short, God is good.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. In Psalm 39, David recognizes the shortness of life. Rather than give up hope, he brings his concerns before God. In doing so, David realizes that we were made for eternity and our security lies in the only eternal God. If you have your Bible, turn now to Psalm 39.

Dr. James Boice: We're studying Psalm 39, and Psalm 39 is a Psalm that asks us to think. To think about the brevity of life, and I hope you're prepared to do that. It isn't an easy thing to do. The world doesn't want to think, of course, certainly not about such weighty matters as life, death, and eternity. And the flesh can't think, and the devil doesn't want us to think, so we have a problem. The world, the flesh, and the devil actually conspire to entertain us or amuse us rather than have us think about the things of God.

The word "amusement" is interesting, of course, because that's exactly what it means. It has three parts: "a", "muse", and "ment". "Ment" is just a suffix that turns it into a noun. "Muse" is the central part. "Muse" means to think or ponder, and "a" is the negative. So amusement is not thinking. And that's what the world is trying to get us to do. It's trying to entertain us so we won't think about eternity and will go into eternity unprepared. Now, this Psalm is meant to counter that.

I don't often find the book on the Psalms that Arno Gaebelein wrote terribly helpful because he's always trying to find prophetic references in the Psalms that I think go beyond what is really there. But sometimes he says things that are very, very wise. And in his comment on this Psalm, he says in one point, "Read it. It will bring blessing to your heart and life." Now, that's true. And as we read it and study it tonight, I trust that that will be the case with you.

I want to say a few things about an introduction, introducing it. First of all, it's a good Psalm to follow Psalm 38. In Psalm 38, which we were studying earlier, we saw that David was seriously ill and was facing the prospect of death. He thought death would come at any moment. Here in this Psalm, he is aware of the brevity of life. It's the kind of thing you would expect him to reflect on in the situation you find in the Psalm preceding.

There's a very direct tie in one other way. In the 38th Psalm, he says he's going to be quiet in the face of the accusations of the wicked. "I am like a deaf man who cannot hear, like a mute who cannot open his mouth," verse 13. This is exactly where he begins in Psalm 39. He's going to be quiet. He's not going to speak. We're going to see what that means in a moment. There are also certain Hebrew words that occur in this Psalm that are there in the preceding Psalm, though it's not quite so evident to us because of the English translation.

"My hope" in verse 7 is almost the same as the word "wait" in Psalm 38:15, and that was an emphasis of the previous Psalm. And then in verse 10, "your scourge" is exactly the same as the words "my wounds" in verse 11 of Psalm 38. So in those various ways, these situations are tied together. We're to think they probably came out of a certain time in David's life, though we don't have any details about it.

There's a mention of a man, Jeduthun, in the title to this Psalm that is worth thinking about. This is the first personal name in the heading of a Psalm so far, except for those that are used to give an historical reference. The name of Absalom occurs in the title to Psalm 3; Cush in the title to Psalm 7; Abimelech in the title to Psalm 34. But that's all to explain the circumstances under which the Psalm was written. This is not the case here. This is just an individual.

If you get out a concordance and look him up, you'll find that he was one of the leading musicians that David appointed to direct public worship, along with Asaph—and he has Psalms that are going to occur later—and a few other men. He is written about in 1 Chronicles 16 and 2 Chronicles 5 and in a few other places. His name also occurs in the headings of Psalms 62 and 77. And it's interesting that the subject matter of Psalm 62 is very similar to the subject matter of this Psalm.

It makes us think that there's probably some connection, though we don't know what it is. Maybe this man went through something in his own life that was very similar to what David was going through, and so he particularly commended this Psalm to him. "Here's a man who has experienced it, who has lived what I have lived. I'll give it to him to make the presentation." We could understand that, but we don't know that for sure.

The outline of the Psalm is easy enough, and it's reflected very clearly in the four stanzas that it's divided into in the New International Version translation. There's an opening section, a preface I would call it, explaining how it came to be written. There's a first problem that's developed in the second stanza, a second problem that's developed in stanza 3, and then you have a wrap-up which is a prayer and a committing of the whole thing to God. And that's the way we need to look at it.

Now, we look at the preface. And what we find David doing there is explaining that he tried to keep quiet about what he is going to say, but he found he couldn't do it. We find out that what he is concerned about is the brevity of life. That's what he develops next. But in this first stanza, he doesn't tell us that. He simply says that here he was trying to keep it quiet, and at the last, the fire that was burning in him just couldn't be contained any longer, and it burst out.

Now, I have no doubt that that reflects a real situation in David's life. If that is not the case, we have to imagine that all of this strong emotion that we find in this Psalm and others like it is something that's made up just as a literary composition. That taxes belief. It's not that. He actually lived through this and felt that way. But at the same time, when you look at this Psalm in a literary way, it's very evident that this preface heightens our interest in what's to come.

Because when we read David saying he's going to put a muzzle on his mouth and be silent and be still, not even saying anything good, let alone anything evil, we find ourselves saying, "Well, what is bothering David? Why is he being silent? Why doesn't he speak up?" Something very important must be going on. It's a way of getting us into the Psalm.

Well, as I said, what bothers him and he's going to say next is the brevity of life. But what he says here is that he is keeping quiet because of the wicked. Why was he keeping quiet because of the wicked? Well, because in his anguish, voicing the kind of things that were troubling him about the brevity of life or God's dealings with human beings, he was likely to say something that would be misunderstood and be misused by wicked persons.

So he says he's going to keep quiet rather than give them an occasion to use his words to criticize God. Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but it seems to me a number of very important teachings come out of that if we want to learn from David's example. For one thing, we learn that what we say is vitally important and that we can sin by our lips as well as by our deeds. We have to be on guard against what we say. David is concerned about that.

Second, we can learn that it's better to be silent than to say things that can be used against God by wicked persons. Sometimes Christian people, by unguarded speech, play into the hands of those who are hostile to Christianity, and we ought not to do that. Number three, we shouldn't be anxious to share such grief even with godly persons. That is something, of course, that we have to ponder about because it's good to have friends and be able to talk over the things that bother us.

But David here is not even seeking out the counsel of the ungodly. What he does—and this is the fourth point—is unburden himself to God. And that's what it comes down to. We should tell our troubles to God. And when we do, we will find that God speaks to us and ministers to us and gives us understanding. What we should do is what Paul in the New Testament counseled the Christians at Philippi to do.

He said, "Do not be anxious about anything." David here is anxious. But he says, "Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So that's what we need to do when we're troubled by this matter of the shortness of life, which is troubling David.

Now, he talks about that problem. I've called it the first of two problems in verses 4 through 6. The key word here is the word "hebel" in Hebrew. And it's translated in two different ways and used three times in this Psalm. In verse 5, it's translated "a breath." "Each man's life is but a breath." And then in the next verse, it's translated "in vain." It's exactly the same word but translated in vain. "He bustles about, but only in vain."

And then at the end of verse 11, it's translated "a breath" again. "Each man is but a breath." That repeats what was said in verse 5. Now, what's significant about that is that it's the same word that's used so many times in Ecclesiastes and which we're familiar with from the second verse of the opening chapter. In the old King James version, it's translated "vanity, vanity." And in the New International version, it's translated "meaningless, meaningless."

"Vanity of vanity, meaningless, meaningless," says the preacher. "Everything is meaningless." Now, that's the word David is using here. So he's not just saying, you see, that human life is short—three score years and ten and then it's over. He's saying in terms of what we aspire to, it's meaningless. That's what's bothering him. Because he said, "Look, you can work throughout a whole life, try to accomplish something, and then you die and it's gone."

Or if what you're concerned about is heaping up wealth, you can heap up a fortune but you die and it goes to other people. He says, "If you think about life in any serious way, you become aware not only of how brief it is, but you become aware of the corresponding vanity of life unless God somehow gives it meaning." So that's what he's trying to discover in this Psalm.

I think the brevity of life is something that should trouble people a lot more than it does. The young notably aren't troubled by it because somebody has rightly said the young think they're immortal. You have to live a little while before you begin to find out you're not. But we should be troubled by it. Everybody dies eventually, and after not a very long time at that.

I don't know whether Shakespeare was thinking of this Psalm or even knew it. I suppose he did because the Psalms were in the liturgy of the church of his day and probably he heard it read many times in church, had it in his mind. But he certainly reflects the idea sometimes in his plays, and most notably in that despairing speech of King Macbeth in Act 5 of the tragedy by that name.

His wife, Lady Macbeth, who instigated the murder of Duncan, has committed suicide. And when the news comes to him, you know the words. He says, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his brief hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

But King David isn't King Macbeth. And although King David is expressing the same concern, the brevity of life and its apparent vanity, he doesn't do what King Macbeth does. Macbeth despairs. King David brings it to God. Now, that's what verse 4 is all about. You see, he had said here that he was trying to keep quiet, that trouble bothered him so much that finally he had to speak. And the very first thing he speaks is addressed to God.

And what David says is this: "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days." Now, that doesn't mean, "God, tell me how long I have to live so I can get my affairs in order. Have I got a week, two weeks, a month, or a year?" It doesn't mean that. It isn't a complaint. David isn't saying to God, "Life is short and I've got a lot to do. You haven't given me enough time to accomplish it."

That isn't what he means. What he means is, "Give me a right perspective on the shortness of human existence so that I may apply my heart to wisdom and number my days and use them rightly." That's exactly, by the way, what we have in Psalm 90, verse 12. It's a Psalm that's often read at funerals. "Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." That's what David is saying here.

Psalm 90 was written by Moses, not by David. It expresses a much calmer and more trusting frame of mind, but it's the same thing. And David is having a hard time doing that, but he says, "God, help me to do it." Now, we ask the question, does he learn anything by going to God? You say, "Well, he doesn't have to learn anything if he leaves it with God. Maybe that peace that passes understanding will keep his heart and mind." And that's probably true.

I sense as we go through the Psalm that it becomes increasingly calm. But actually, he does learn something, and he reflects it in what he says. And the first thing he learns when he turns to God is that however puzzling the brevity of human life may be, it is nevertheless God who has caused it to be brief. Now, notice that's a motif of this Psalm.

You have it in verse 5. He doesn't just say, "My days are a mere handbreadth." He says, "You have made my days a mere handbreadth." And not just me. God isn't singling him out to kill him before his time. This is true of everybody. "Life is short, and You have made it that way" is what David says. Later on, it becomes even stronger when he deals with the second problem, verse 9. "You are the one who has done this. I am overcome by the blow of Your hand. You rebuke and discipline men. You consume their wealth like a moth," and so on.

Now, you say, well, how is that helpful? What does he learn from that? Well, he knows that God is a good God. And therefore, if God has done this, if it's not an accident, if it's God's doing, it must be for a good purpose even though he can't understand it. "It is good that our life not be too long," is what he's saying. You say, "Well, I can't understand that. It would be better for me if I had another 10 years or another 15 years or another 25 years."

That's what King Hezekiah thought. God sent the prophet to him to tell him that he was going to die, and he turned and faced the wall and cried and made a fool of himself. And God sent the prophet back and said, "All right, you can live longer." But the last years of his life were years of trouble. You see, if God has appointed you to have 25 years, He knows that that's what's best for you.

If He's appointed you to have the three-score years and ten, 70 years, that's what's good for you. If He allowed you to live longer, that's what's good for you. But in any case, it's not going to go on to 200, 300, 400 years. This is God's doing. And when David understands that, he begins to quiet down and learn from God. And then there's something else. And it's connected with the other thing. And that is, when he turns to God, he realizes that God is the only place in which he's going to find any meaning.

You see, that's what verse 7 says. "But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You." You see, if you can't look to the value of your life in the amount of wealth you can accumulate, if you can't look to the value of your life in the number of years you can endure, well, where in the world are you going to find value? And David has the right answer. It's the only one. It's in God. "My hope is in You."

The verse does not mean, "I turn to You because You're my last hope." No, no. He means God is the hope of His people, and we get an understanding of the meaning of our life when we see it in terms of God and eternity. Now, that verse, verse 7, where he expresses the second thing he learns, actually introduces the third stanza. And the third stanza, as I said, begins to talk about a second problem.

The first is the brevity of life. The second problem here is God's discipline of His people, which sometimes is very hard. You recall in the previous Psalm—and I think the two are connected—that David was sick and he recognized that this sickness, which he thought was leading him to the very brink of death, was because of his sin. He mentions it several times in verse 3 and verse 5 of Psalm 38.

He sees that kind of connection. And here he is bemoaning the fact that God is so heavy-handed in His dealings with him. This is the same sort of thing that Job said. Job had unusual suffering, as we know from that story. And at one point, as he was replying to his accusers, rather early on in the book in chapter 7, Job has a classic statement of exactly what David is saying here.

Here's what Job said: "What is man that You make so much of him, that You give him so much attention? Now, he doesn't mean that positively. The attention that Job is getting here is discipline. And this is a complaint. What is man that You make so much of him, that You examine him every morning and test him every moment? Will You never look away from me or let me alone, even for an instant?" is what Job says.

"If I have sinned, what have I done to You, O watcher of men? I mean, I of course I've sinned, but how does that hurt You?" Job is saying. "Why have You made me Your target? Have I become a burden to You? Have I become a burden to You? Why do You not pardon my offenses and forgive my sin? For I will soon lie down in the dust and You will search for me and I will be no more."

Understand that complaint? Doesn't that have an echo in your heart? That's what David is saying. King David, great King David. Job, the righteous man. Most righteous man upon the face of the earth at that time. That's the kind of feeling they were expressing under the hand, the heavy hand, of God. Now, we know in Job's case, it wasn't discipline. It was a case of Job being held out before the watching angels as one who would suffer great things and praise God in spite of it.

Saying, "I don't understand what's going on, but the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." David, apparently, was suffering for his sin. But you see, when you're going through those things, the question is the same. Haven't you ever said that? I've had many people say that to me. They've said things like this: "What does God want with me? Why does He care what I do?"

"Nothing I do can possibly affect Him or hurt Him. I don't have anything to contribute to Him. Why doesn't God just forget about me and leave me alone?" Now, that's the question David's asking. You say, is there an answer to that? Yes, there's an answer to that. A good answer to that. And the answer is this: in spite of the brevity of our earthly existence, we are not merely creatures of a day. We are creatures made for eternity.

What happens to us and in us and what is done by us has eternal consequences. So God is concerned about us and He takes time, by discipline if necessary, to develop the kind of character that is going to be a blessing and redound to His praise throughout eternity. Now, you see, you go back to verse 7 and you find that that's what he's really saying.

When he says, "Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You," what he's saying there is, "You're the one who gives meaning to life because You're the eternal God. I'm the creature of a day, but as I come to know You and live in the light of Your countenance and serve You and are blessed by You, then my life begins to take on meaning that gives me understanding even in the midst of the trials I undergo."

That's a very profound thing. I started out by saying you have to think, you have to think about the brevity of life, its apparent meaninglessness, what God is doing. Most people never think along that line at all. But Christian people do and should, and it's where understanding comes from. Now, we come to the last stanza, and we find exactly what we would expect.

Here, David has looked at the brevity of his life. He's turned away from that. He's looked to God. He's found that God has arranged things as they are and that the meaning of his existence is going to have to be found in the eternal God because it certainly can't be found in anything here. Everything here is passing. Now, he says, recognizing that, "I am a pilgrim passing through."

That's the meaning of those words "alien" and "stranger" that you find in verse 12. Those were classic terms in Israel for describing people who weren't Jews but were living in the land. The first, "an alien", probably means one who was there for a short time, and "a stranger", one who was there longer. According to Jewish law, they had to be treated nicely, but they weren't allowed to purchase property.

They didn't have a share of the land. They belonged to another land, and they were citizens of another kingdom. And that's what David is saying, you see. That's the way I am to be here. "An alien and a stranger here as all my fathers were." As soon as he says, "As all my fathers were", anybody who read that and knew the Old Testament would immediately perk up their ears, realizing that this was an Old Testament theme.

You find those words again and again in the Old Testament. Abraham is the first one who uses them because Abraham, we're told, dwelt as an alien and a stranger in the land. One classic passage which is poignant in the way it's expressed—Abraham, as you know, was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and sent to Israel, the land that was going to be given to him and to his posterity forever. But during his lifetime, he never owned a cubic foot of it.

The only exception was that when his wife Sarah died, he had no place to bury her because he didn't own any land. And so he had to negotiate with the Hittites for a burial plot, the cave of Machpelah. It's all described there in the book of Genesis. And there's this poignant moment when Abraham rises from weeping over Sarah and addresses the Hittites. Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, "I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead."

You see, Abraham was just a pilgrim. Now, that's picked up in the New Testament as well. For example, in 1 Peter 2:11, Peter reminds the Christians of his day that they're pilgrims. "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against the soul." He means don't get bogged down here because this isn't your home. You're made for eternity. Your life should be characterized by righteousness because the place you're going to is a righteous kingdom.

Again, I think of Hebrews 11, that great catalog of the heroes of the faith, all of whom were pilgrims in this land. Verse 13 of the chapter says, "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on the earth." And the conclusion he draws from it is this: since we have their example, let's follow it.

And abstain from the things that entangle us here and press on in the life that we have to live, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. And mentioning Jesus, it's interesting, Jesus lived an exceedingly short life. The years of our lives are three-score and ten according to the Psalm, but Jesus lived only 33 of those 70 years. And yet His was the most influential life that ever lived.

You see, it's not a question of the duration. It's a matter of quality. And what makes our life a life of quality is by having it based upon God and a knowledge of Him. Alexander Maclaren says the lives that are lived before God can never be trifles. Now, we come to the very end of the Psalm and David says something that's understandable but not terribly edifying.

Verse 13: "Look away from me that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more." Now, when he says "look away from me", what he means is, "Lift Your heavy hand of discipline so I can be happy again just a little bit before I die." Not a terribly noble sentiment, but it is what Job said in those verses I read earlier. "Will You never look away from me or let me alone even for an instant?"

Or even a little later on in Job 10, "Turn away from me so I can have a moment's joy before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow." As I say, that's understandable if you're really down. If you really have the kind of distress burning within you that David expresses in that early stanza, so much so he doesn't even want to speak about it, but he can't control it and eventually it bursts out.

If that's going on in your soul, it's very understandable that you'd think that way and you'd say to God, "Just leave me alone for a minute so I can have a moment's peace and joy before I die." But I want to suggest that there's a better way of doing it, and really the Psalm itself indicates that better way. Instead of worrying about where God fixes His eyes, what we should worry about is where we fix our eyes.

And you know the teaching. Our eyes should be fixed on God Himself, the only stable point in a turning universe. Fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith who has gone before us. And like Abraham, upon that eternal city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. The city yet to come. And that's what it means to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom. And those who do it are wise.

Our Father, we thank You for this Psalm, sobering as it is, nevertheless touching something which we all experience if we ever pause to think at all. How short it all is and how meaningless apart from You. Our Father, we thank You that it need not be meaningless and is not for those who know You in Jesus Christ. And we would pray that for such there might be a new sense of living in the light of Your countenance, serving You, finding meaning in what we do because You have placed us here to do it.

And therefore knowing that what we do has eternal consequences. And we pray for any who may not know this, who are merely troubled by these things, worried about death, friends, loved ones, or the dangers that face us on every hand. We pray that You'll use these words to turn them from folly to that wisdom which is found in Jesus Christ, who is made unto us wisdom and redemption. For we pray in His name. Amen and amen.

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