"The days ordained for me"
Notes
Transcript
Welcome and Prayer
Welcome and Prayer
As we have gathered here today to say goodbye to dear Doris Race, let us remember Jesus’s words, spoken to Martha, the grieving sister of friend of Jesus, a man called Lazarus. John 11:25-26 records,
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
Prayer
Sermon
Sermon
Read Psalm 139:13-18. Thoughts on v16
God made us, v16a cf. v13
God made us, v16a cf. v13
The doctrine: God is my maker.
The ancient hymn-writer is nut unaware of biology: he himself fathered many children! Rather, he is turning our attention to Who makes biology work: the Creator God.
The God about Whom we read in Genesis 1:1-2,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
is the God about Whom we read: “Your eyes saw my unformed body”. And v13 makes it clear He wasn’t a passive spectator: He “created my inmost being … knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
The Creator God is my maker. He is Doris’s Maker; amazing to think, isn’t it? A 99 year old woman was once a millisecond old in her mother’s womb, made alive there by God. It doesn’t get much more intimate than this.
The implication: my life is not mine but God’s.
I did nothing to exist. I worked for the money I bought my clothes on: they are my clothes. I have the right to own them, put them on. I did nothing for my life. Other than enjoying the benefit of being alive, I do nothing else for it. My life, body and soul (“my inmost being”, v13), belongs to God. This is why Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 teaches us:
Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
I am reliably informed that Doris
As a single woman she [went] in 1947 at the age of 25 [to] Montevideo in Uruguay on a cargo boat which took about 5 weeks. [W]hile there she help[ed] to set up a Christian book shop and ran a Christian bookstall in the market as [outreach].
Why on earth would you take such a risk to your life?! 5 weeks on a boat as a single woman?! In 1947? Maybe because you want to serve the God Who gave you life. Do you want to live like that? Do you, with the Psalmist, praise God, by living the life He gave you to serve Him every day?
Speaking of days...
God made our days, v16b
God made our days, v16b
The doctrine: we receive every day from the God Who made us.
Almost every time I visited Doris, she would tell me that she wanted to go home, wanted to go to glory. For the Christian this means: I want to be where God is, uninterruptedly live with Him, and enjoy Him forever. That’s where my home is: “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through”, we sing. As a Christian, she in a sense did no longer belong here, and she knew that. So she had this great desire to be with the Lord, which is far better. And invariably I would tell her the only thing I could say in good conscience: “In God’s good timing, Doris.” It was because of Psalm 139:16b that I said that.
What this teaches is that just as God made us, He also made our days: every single one of them. He has ordained, in His sovereign wisdom, the exact number of them, before one of them came to be. Nothing we do or don’t do changes this number; this is why Jesus told us that we can’t, by worrying, “add a single hour” to our lives (Matthew 6:27). The sovereign God orders the number of our days, hours, minutes, seconds, tenths of a second… You get the idea. This very moment was foreordained by Him way before it came to be.
How does that make you feel, my Friend? It certainly takes away the illusion of control. We are in God’s hands. For the believer, there can be no better news, as the Psalmist goes on to say in v17. This was a great comfort for Doris as well. When her days on earth were up, her days in heaven began.
The implication comes from Psalm 90:12
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
When the number of our days are up, death takes us from this life to the throne of God. This is what puts our days into our perspective: have I lived my life wisely? That’s actually going to be God’s question to us, as it were. But wisdom is not about good choices, primarily. It is about fearing God, as we read in Proverbs 9:10, for instance:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
To be wise is to know that God is God and I am not. That He is my Maker. None of us have lived consistently wisely, friends. So death is fearful, because it brings us face to face with our Maker. So today, if you are convicted that you have not lived for God’s glory, you can still repent and turn to Him for forgiveness. For God sent His Son to be punished in place of unwise sinners like us. Look to Him, your Creator, the One Who ordered all your days, and be saved. Then, you, too, like Doris did, can look forward to your days on earth ending, so you can see your Maker.
Hymn: “Before the throne of God above”
Committal
Committal
God said to Adam: Genesis 3:19
By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’
Since it has pleased Almighty God in His great wisdom and mercy to take to Himself the soul of our dear sister Doris here departed, we commit her body to be cremated, earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will transform our lowly bodies, so that they will be like His glorious body.
The Apostle Paul writes: Romans 8:22-25
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Prayer
Numbers 6:24-26
‘ “ ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.’ ”