The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): You're probably familiar with the old saying: you can't take it with you when you go. Today on The Bible Study Hour with Dr. James Boice, we'll continue our study of the Psalms with Psalm 49. This psalm reminds us that our bodies are mortal; we will all eventually meet with death. So how should such a sobering reminder affect the way we live and the choices we make?

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Jesus said in Matthew 19, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." Perhaps you're familiar with this verse. Like many of us, maybe you've even thought the lesson here doesn't apply to you because it only applies to the rich.

Well, in today's message, we'll find out just why you don't have to be rich to perish by your riches. If you have your Bible handy, turn to Psalm 49.

Dr. James Boice: I'm sure you know that the Bible is a most interesting book and that it was written over a period of about 1,500 years and by at least 40 different authors from all walks of life, and yet, in spite of that, it's a unity. It's an interesting kind of unity, however; it's a progressive unity. Sometimes theologians talk about that as progressive revelation.

What that means is that you often have the germ of a theological idea in the Old Testament, but then as you go on, you find it elaborated. It's often the case, therefore, that a New Testament text is an ideal commentary upon something you find in the Old Testament. Interestingly enough, however, sometimes it works the other way around.

I want to suggest that's what we have here in Psalm 49. It's really an Old Testament commentary upon a New Testament story. I'm thinking of the story that Jesus himself told. It's recorded in the 12th chapter of Luke, as verses 13 to 21. It's about a rich landowner. This man had such an abundant crop one year that he didn't know what to do with it.

And he said, "Well, here's what I'll do. I'll tear down my old barns. They're not big enough to hold it, and I'll build new barns. And then when I get my new barns built, I'll put all of my grain in the barns. And then I'll say to myself, 'Now, self, take it easy. Lie back, relax, enjoy the kind of things you've created for yourself. Eat, drink, and be merry.'"

And Jesus's comment on that was that the man was a fool. He said, "Don't you know this very night your soul is going to be demanded of you? And then whose will all those things belong to that you've laid up for yourself?" Now, that's the story, and Psalm 49 is the commentary. It's a wisdom psalm. It's a psalm about the vanity of riches, and yet it's more than that.

It's a very profound wisdom psalm. We haven't had anything quite like it so far in the Psalter. When you read the opening verses, 1 through 4, sort of a little introduction to the psalm, they sound more like the book of Proverbs than they do like the Psalms, or at least like some other wisdom portion of the Old Testament.

The word "wisdom" in verse 3 and the word "understanding" in the second part of that are actually plural in Hebrew, which has a way of intensifying them. It's saying this is unusual wisdom; this is unusual understanding. But in case we miss that, verse 4 says that what the psalmist is doing is getting his wisdom on this matter from God.

You see that phrase—we pass over it easily when we read it—"I will turn my ear to a proverb." Well, turning your ear really means to listen. And if you say, "Well, who is the psalmist listening to?" obviously, he's listening to God. God is going to give him some real insight into this great mystery. He calls it a riddle of life and death and riches and this life and the life to come.

He is going to give him some insight into that. And so with very special emphasis, he says, "Now pay attention to this. I want to talk about these things." Now, we all need to hear that. We might tend to miss it and say, "Well, this is only for the very rich," but notice verse 2: he's going to give it to low and high, rich and poor alike.

It's a way of saying that you don't have to be rich to perish by your riches. You can be trying to be rich and perish by the riches you don't even have. I'm very impressed with this kind of material because I'm well aware, as anybody who thinks about it is, that we live in an exceedingly materialistic age. Our whole economy moves by pushing materialism on people who live in it.

And you and I just can't escape that. We live in the Western world, and even though we call ourselves Christians and we have our horizons broadened so we think of eternity somewhat, and at least in times of sober reflection can begin to adjust priorities in a way that we certainly wouldn't have done if we weren't Christians, nevertheless, you and I still think very much of the time in materialistic terms, and the churches operate that way.

John White, the influential psychiatrist and Christian writer some years ago, wrote a book called *The Golden Cow*. It was about the church and its worship on the golden image. He used the golden calf out of the Old Testament as an image for what the church is doing. He said we bow down before the altar of wealth. And it was a great expose of the materialism in the churches.

I don't know how that book did, but my suspicion is it didn't do very well. I haven't heard anybody talking about it, and it only shows how materialistic we really are. Well, if that's the case, we need to listen to a psalm like that and learn from it. I said it was a profound statement of this matter, the shortness of life and the foolishness of riches, but it's more than that.

Let me give you a quotation by one of the great commentators on the Psalms. He says of this one, "This psalm is no mere commonplace on the shortness of life and the uncertainty of riches. It's no philosophical dissertation which bids us to bear up bravely in our perils and sufferings, tells us that virtue has its own reward. It's not doing that. It goes to the very root of the matter.

It shows us not only the vanity of riches but the end of those who boast in their riches. It comforts the righteous in their oppression and affliction, not merely by telling them that they'll finally triumph over the wicked, but by the more glorious hope of life everlasting with God." And he says, as the quotation continues, that it is that hope particularly that sets this psalm apart and makes it so remarkable.

Now, it has a very easy outline. I find that almost all the commentators follow it more or less. Sometimes they combine the parts under one heading, but they're nevertheless talking about it in these terms. And it is more or less reflected in the paragraph divisions of the New International Bible. There really are five sections, except that there's also a refrain that you find in verse 12 and 20.

And if you put those verses with the verses that immediately precede them, you really have your five sections. The first is a call to wisdom. It's what I've been talking about a little bit here by way of introduction. It's the introduction to the psalm. The second section deals with the foolishness of trusting in riches.

The third section, beginning in verse 10, stresses that death comes to everyone, and that's the thing we must ultimately reckon with. In verse 13 and following, a great contrast is made between those who trust their riches on the one hand and those that trust God on the other. And finally, at the very end, verse 16 and following, there's an appeal to the wise to live like wise people should.

Now, that's what I want to follow. The foolishness of trusting wealth, which is what he's talking about in verse 5 and following, comes from the fact, as he states it, that you can't save your life by having money. Matter of fact, he says you can't save the life of someone else. Now, with modern technology, sometimes by the use of expensive means, you can prolong it.

But it doesn't do any good to argue that way. Sooner or later, you die, and it doesn't make any difference how wealthy you are. You can have billions upon billions—I don't know many people who do—but you can have billions upon billions, and in that final encounter, it doesn't make any difference. You can have ten cents; you still have to die.

And that's what he's saying. And because of that, well, you're foolish if you don't come to terms with that early on in life. Voltaire was one of the richest men of his day. He was the great intellectual in France at the time of the Enlightenment back in the 18th century, very sophisticated time. And he became wealthy through his writings: satirical writings, contributions of a scholarly nature, perhaps most of all by his little novelette *Candide*, which poked fun at Christianity.

He was known as the great skeptic and atheist. And yet when he came to die, his last words were very pathetic. He was talking to his doctor, and he was begging for life. He said, "I am abandoned by God and man. I will give you half of all I possess if you can give me six months more life. Oh God, Oh Jesus Christ." And with that he died.

Voltaire, with all his great wealth, was unable to slow down the advance of death. And the psalmist is saying we have to recognize that that is going to be true for us as well. Some scholars have pointed out that verse 7 does not express this matter of saving life by money the way we might expect it.

You see, what it says is this: "No man can redeem the life of another." And some of these scholars have said, "That really isn't what you should say. You should be saying no one can save his own life by his money." And so they propose a number of textual emendations. What that means is you just fool around with the original text a bit until you get it to say what you want it to say.

And that's what they have done with this text. But as usual with scholarly emendations, it misses the point. Instead of looking to the original text to see how they could change it, they should have studied the text as we have it a little bit more thoroughly because what you find later on in verse 15 is that the psalmist is going to talk about God redeeming his soul from the grave.

What he's saying here is that what we can't do, God can. We can't redeem the life of another, but God can redeem the life of another. So he phrases it the way he does in that verse in order to make the contrast that he's going to give later. In the third section of this, beginning with verse 10, he talks about the inescapability of death.

And that's important, you see, because you might have someone who seems to be trusting his wealth, but when you point out that wealth can't save him from death, he would say something like, "Well, no, I'm not trusting the wealth. It's just myself I'm trusting. I'm basically indestructible." You say, "Well, that's an absolutely foolish thing to say. Everybody must die."

And that's exactly what the psalmist says in verse 10. Everybody can see that all people die. The wise die as well as the foolish. Yes, but people live as if they're never going to die. I came across an interesting story that, as far as I know, is a true story. There was a wealthy landowner in Massachusetts many, many years ago, and he was pouring all of his life's energy into accumulating an estate, which was found in his real estate holdings.

And so he had this vast farm, but right in the middle of it, there was a very small farm that was owned by a poor man. And it kind of spoiled what he was trying to do. He wanted to get rid of it. The poor man wouldn't sell. But for one reason or another, the poor man got into financial trouble, and there was a lawsuit and judgments were made against the land, and there was a debt.

And it looked very much for a time as if the poor man was going to lose his land because of his debt. And in the meantime, this rich man was standing off on the side. He could hardly wait until this poor man lost his land because he was going to buy it up at whatever cost it might be. But somehow that poor man managed to meet the payments one after another.

And finally the time came when he'd paid off all the debt. Then he wasn't going to lose his land after all. When the wealthy man heard about it, this is what he said. He said, "Well, my neighbor is an old man. He can't live long. And when he's dead, I'll buy the lot." But the person who told the story said the strange thing was the neighbor was 58 years old and he was 60.

Now, that's the way we think, you see. We say, "Well, yes, of course, all people die," but somehow we don't really come to grips with the fact that that includes ourselves. And so, at least in practical terms, we live as if we're going to live forever and we're going to keep all our wealth and never have to give it up.

Two men met on a streetcar on one occasion, and they were talking about something that had been in the newspaper that morning. One said, "Did you see that this millionaire," named him by name, "man had a lot of money, that he died last night?" "Yes," he said, "I saw that in the paper." His friend said, "How much did he leave?" And the man who called his attention to the story said, "Everything he had."

Now, you see, the psalmist is saying that the part of wisdom is to come to terms with that. If we would understand that not on the superficial intellectual level in which we would say, "Well, yes, of course, the day is coming when we have to die and leave it all behind," but nevertheless we go on trying to accumulate all we can.

Not on that level, but if we would understand it on the profound level—that's the kind of wisdom the psalmist is talking about—we'd live differently. For one thing, we'd have different priorities: relationships would mean more than accumulating money. How we use our time would make a big change.

And in addition to that, what we do with our money would be something we would consider. We'd use it in different ways. We would try to use it to encourage that which is everlasting and spiritual rather than the kind of things that are quickly going to pass away. Well, the psalmist says man, despite his riches, does not endure.

He's like the beasts that perish. You know, it's a commonplace in lots of the literature of the world, not just biblical literature, that if you don't live by understanding, you're living like a beast. Plato said that among others. The distinct quality of the human being is that he can think and reason and come to terms with ultimate things.

But you see, a person who's not doing that, who's living as if this life is all there is, is living like an animal for whom this life is all there is. And the psalmist says come to terms with your mortality and the foolishness of trusting to your wealth. There's an interesting thing there in that verse, verse 12, which is hidden in our translation but is much more powerful in the Hebrew text.

We have those words "does not endure." But in the Hebrew, it's actually an idiom. It says he doesn't pass the night. And so it conjures up this kind of an image. He says, "Look, man on the surface of this planet is more insecure even than a traveler who stops in an inn in order to spend the night."

At least the traveler spends the night, but we, by the brevity of our life, don't even have that much time. So he says look, take notice of that and be wise. Now, I think the heart of the psalm really comes in verse 13 and following, where he begins to develop the contrast between the foolish man who is trusting to himself and his wealth and what he can do, and the wise man who is trusting God.

We've been expecting this all along, of course. He hasn't mentioned what he calls the upright person yet, but we've been anticipating it because this is a wisdom psalm. He's writing to people who are wise, people who will pay attention and learn and begin to live differently. So now he finally begins to bring that in explicit terms, and he says look, there's a great big difference between them.

Take the part of those who trust in themselves, first of all. They are like sheep destined for the grave, and death is going to feed on them. There's a new idea in verse 13 we haven't seen thus far in the psalm. It says, "And their followers." It's what I mentioned earlier when I said in order to perish by riches, you don't have to be rich.

You just have to fix your mind on riches, even the riches you don't have. Lots of people are destroying themselves that way. They don't have any money at all, but they want to get it if they possibly can. They'll do anything for it. And some fall into crime in order to get it, and some fall into patterns of manipulation in order to get it, and some sell their souls to it.

And that's all they think about in order to get it. You see, they don't have it yet, but they're following the lie of those who say, "Well, as long as you have plenty of material resources, everything's going to be all right because security really comes from money." And he says look, those who like that are like sheep destined for the grave.

Once again here in verse 14, there's an idiom that's hidden in the translation. It says the words in our translation, "Death will feed on them." It actually says in the Hebrew, "Death will be their shepherd." And death is going to lead them to a horrible end. One of the commentators on this says the psalmist probably has in mind Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd."

And I think he probably does. He uses that kind of image. It's the same language, and I think he is making a deliberate contrast. He's saying, "Look, you've heard the words, 'The Lord is my shepherd.' That is true of the godly. But people who trust their wealth—well, their shepherd is death." And death is an unfortunate shepherd to have.

How wise, by contrast, to have the Good Shepherd. The Lord Jesus Christ said, "I am the Good Shepherd." The Lord Jesus leads his followers not to death but into life, and he blesses them abundantly in this life as well. He said, "I've come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." Well, here's the other half of it. It's those who trust God.

He begins to talk about it in the latter half of verse 14: "The upright will rule over them in the morning. Their forms will decay in the grave far from their princely mansions." That's the wicked. "But God," verse 15, "will redeem my soul from the grave, and he will surely take me to himself." Now, those words "but God" are one of the great contrasts in the Bible.

I'm sure you know that again and again in strategic points in the Bible, you have those two words "but God." And that makes all the difference in the world. If you're trusting riches, the riches will let you down. But if you're trusting God, God never lets you down. God never breaks a promise. God is never inadequate to any situation.

God is never confused by the complexity of circumstances. And if you have God for your shepherd, then you have what you really need. Verse 15 is really a great statement of hope in the life to come, the afterlife. It says God is going to redeem his soul from the grave. Peter Craigie, who's in other respects one of the great commentators on the Psalms, is uncharacteristically unwise at this point in my judgment.

He doesn't see it that way. He thinks this is a boast of the wicked, that the wicked are saying, "Surely God's going to redeem me from the grave because I'm rich." I think he misses the whole point. You see, you can argue exactly the other way. Another commentator, his name is Leupold, a great Lutheran commentator, asks the question: "Why doesn't the psalmist elaborate on this more than he does?"

You see, one of the arguments on the other side is that the Old Testament doesn't talk about the afterlife very much. And here's this great statement. We think that's marvelous. But if it is as great as it is and means what we think it means, it ought to be elaborated upon. Well, Leupold says the reason the Old Testament writers didn't elaborate upon it was not that belief in the afterlife was a novelty, but that it was a commonplace.

You and I wouldn't feel we have to elaborate on a statement like that at great length. We say when I die, I trust in the resurrection. Jesus is going to raise me from the dead. You don't have to elaborate upon that. Leupold says that's what we have here. I would argue that there are a number of things here in the context that indicate a faith on the part of this writer in life beyond the grave.

The latter half of it uses that word "take me to himself." That is most significant. It's a rare word and occurs in the 5th chapter of Genesis, verse 24, of Enoch. Enoch didn't taste death, you know. It says in that chapter early on in Genesis that he was no more because God took him. Now, all Jewish writers knew that Old Testament text.

They knew the story of Enoch, and they could put two and two together as well as you and I can. If Enoch was no more because God took him, God took him to himself. That's what it means. And if God took him to himself and Enoch is no more here, well, then there's a life beyond the grave, and that's where Enoch was taken.

I am sure that they didn't have the full understanding that we do. Jesus Christ had not yet come; they had not yet seen a resurrection. They didn't know the power of the triumph over the grave achieved by Jesus Christ. And so they didn't have any of that to flesh out the doctrine. But nevertheless, they understood that God had entered into a personal relationship with those who trusted him.

And because God is eternal, the relationship is eternal, and those who die physically are going to be with him some way. Now, I wonder if you really believe that. I'm sure you say, "Well, I do. Yes, of course, I'm a Christian. Christians believe that." But the question is: do you believe it in order to live like it?

You see, when you really believe something, you act differently. You believe this building was on fire, you'd get out of it in a hurry; you wouldn't just sit here. And if you believe that this life is short but that there's an eternity beyond it, then you'll begin to live differently. And that's what the psalmist says we should do.

"Surely God will redeem my soul from the grave and take me to himself." I'd like to argue that verse 14 also has to be understood in that way. You see, verse 15 is the strongest statement of the psalmist's hope, but once you realize what he's saying, you go back to the previous verse and you find him saying, "The upright will rule over them in the morning."

Now, that is not explicit. That sentence could mean, "Well, there's going to be another day. The wicked might be prospering now, but their day will come. They'll die, and then the righteous will have their chance." It could mean that, but I don't think it does. For one thing, it doesn't always happen. It's true that the wicked die, but those who are upright don't always triumph over them, at least in this life.

I don't think it's actually true if that's what it means. But if we understand the hope of the psalmist as expressed in verse 15 to be in life beyond the grave, then this is not "morning" in the sense of another day; it's the morning of the resurrection, whatever that may be in the understanding of the psalmist. In other words, there's going to be a bright new day. That's the way all the Old Testament commentators understood it.

Well, the conclusion that he comes to after he goes through that great contrast is what we have in verse 16 and following. What he really says here is: don't be overawed by riches, therefore, but what you really need to do is trust God. You trust God as your redeemer. That's what he says. Some people have said, "Well, that idea of redemption isn't a very good one. Why does he talk about redemption here?"

He does it because it's a commercial term, and it's the most appropriate of all words he could have used. You see, redemption means to buy out of slavery when you're talking about it spiritually. Only God can do that. And here are the rich who are trusting to what they can buy with their money.

But what can their money buy? Can't even save their life physically, can't save them from the grave. But God is able to redeem, to buy out of slavery, to buy for eternal life the souls of those who trust him. So the question is: do you really do that? Or are you still trusting to the material things that our world is trying to push upon us all the time?

I want to tell you a final story. One of the old preachers was called to the bedside of an old miser who was dying. Everybody knew how stingy he was; he had a lot of money. And apparently he knew he was dying, and he was worried about his soul. So as a result of that, they called the preacher. He came, he offered to pray with him.

He said, "Now I want to pray for you. May I hold your hand while I pray for you?" But the man wouldn't do it. He kept his hands down under the covers like this, real stiff. And so the preacher did pray for him, but then he began to explore it a little bit. There was something wrong there, and he began to ask him about what he was really trusting.

"What are you really trusting at this moment? What's your heart set on?" And in the conversation, the truth came out. What the old miser was doing was hanging onto the keys to the storage cabinet where he kept his treasure, and he had the keys under the covers down beside him in the bed. He was afraid he was going to die and somebody would get his treasures.

And so he was hanging onto the keys. That's why he wouldn't take the preacher's hand. Now, what I say is: don't be foolish. It's the message of the psalm. Don't be foolish. Wise up is what the psalmist is saying. Relax your grip on perishing treasures and instead put your hand in the hand of Jesus Christ who will bear you over the troubled waters of this life and raise you up to be with him and reign with him upon his throne in heaven.

Let's pray. Father, give us wisdom in the area of our wealth. We probably have more trouble in this area than any other because we think not as you think or as we ought to think, but as the world thinks and forces us and compels us to think. So Father, give us an eternal perspective. Develop in us a Christian mind that we might see things in the light of eternity and live thereby and so make even our wealth count for something spiritual. For Jesus' sake, amen.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church.

To learn more about the Alliance, visit Alliancenet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888.

Please take the time to write to us and share how The Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep The Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come.

You can do so at our website, Alliancenet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support and for listening to The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.