Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from
everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
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 have 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 seventy years, or eighty, 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.
Psalm 90:1-12 (NIV2011)
It
seems quite clear from reading the Old Testament that the writers had little or
no belief in a future life beyond the grave.
The word translated as soul simply means life and the word sometimes
translated as “hell” in the Old Testament simply means “land of the
dead” which is where all people, good and bad, ended up.
The Hebrew word is sheol. The
New Testament word for sheol is the Greek word Hades.
It is neither heaven nor hell, it is more like a shadowy world of decay.
Yet
Jesus certainly speaks of life beyond the grave.
Even Psalm 23 indicates that the writer somehow thinks God is present
with him even in sheol. Why
then would God not reveal the idea of eternal life to the ancient Hebrews as He
has for followers of Jesus and even for many in other religions as well?
Could it be that God was protecting his people from being preoccupied
with a future life after death?
Is it possible for human beings to become too much concerned with their
eternal destiny? I think
so.
I
have sometimes thought that the promise of life after death as an incentive to
become a Christ follower is a kind of
like a bribe. It’s a
self-serving reason to believe. It
keeps me in the center, not God. He
is important only insofar as He provides me with what I want.
But what Christianity demands is that we want God for God’s sake not
for ours. We need to develop an
appetite for God. Perhaps the
Old Testament is the record of God training a people to desire God more than
themselves and in order to develop that appetite God has seen fit to delay the
information about being rewarded with eternal life.
In fact the desire to go to heaven, if it ceases to mean union with God,
is an desire that can work against our salvation to the degree that it keeps us
focused on self and personal rewards instead of on God.
“Lord,
lead me to count the number of my days and thereby gain wisdom of heart, not
because our days are limited with you, but because I want to experience all of
you that I can right now and forever. Amen”
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more:
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Our Creator, become in Christ our Redeemer also, will not destroy the work of his hands in any humble believer; but will renew him unto holiness, that he may enjoy eternal life.
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