Psalm 49
Psalm 49 says to the choir master,
a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Hear this all peoples, give ear
all inhabitants of the world, both high and low, rich and poor
together. My mouth shall speak wisdom.
The meditation of my heart shall be understanding. I will incline
my ear to a proverb. I will solve my riddle to the
music of the lyre. Why should I fear in times of
trouble? when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds
me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance
of their riches. Truly no man can ransom another
or give God to the price of his life, for the ransom of their
life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live
on forever and never see the pit, for he sees that even the
wise die. The fool and the stupid alike
must perish and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their
homes forever. dwelling places to all generations. Though they called lands by their
own names, man in his pomp will not remain. He is like the beasts
that perish. This is the path of those who
have foolish confidence. Yet after them, people approve
of their boast. Like sheep, they are appointed
for shield. Death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall
rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed
in Sheol, with no place to dwell. But God will ransom my soul from
the power of Sheol, for He will receive me. Be not afraid when
a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases.
For when he dies, he will carry nothing away. His glory will
not go down after him. For though while he lives he
counts himself blessed, and though you get praise when you do well
for yourself, his soul will go to the generation of his fathers
who will never again see light. Man in his pomp, yet without
understanding, is like the beast that perishes. Pray with me.
God, we pray that you would bless this piece of wisdom to our minds
and hearts so that we can live faithful lives faithful to you
and faithful to one another, and even faithful to proclaim
to those who live foolish lives, that we might proclaim to them
the better way, the godly way, the eternal way. And we ask this
in the name of Christ, amen. Well, by now you’ve figured out
that the Psalms help us answer some very perplexing questions. It helps us, they help us reconcile
the realities, sometimes the harsh realities of the world
with the truth of the scriptures. One of the things you’ll recognize
through wisdom literature is that the Bible tells us over
and over that there are things in life that are only emptiness. There are things in life that
are only vanity. There are things in in life,
the cravings of our heart, the desires of our lifestyles, the
mysteries of this world. There are things that we can
only reconcile by understanding what is good and right and true
from the scriptures. And so this psalm is a call to
wisdom. This psalm is a call to wisdom.
And it says to us, you who are righteous, it says, figure this
out now before you endure the heartache. There’s one way to
figure things out, and that’s the hard way. What do we call
it? The school of hard knocks. That’s right. But the Bible gives
us the opportunity to learn early. And so wisdom helps us look at
reality and see it through the eyes of ultimate wisdom, ultimate
truth, ultimate reality, and to see it with those lenses.
You might say, Some people look at the world, how do we say it,
through rose-colored glasses. Everything’s happy and wealthy
and healthy and all that. And maybe it is for a time. But
we see things through the lens of scripture. And so Psalm 49
is a little bit of a reality check for us. So let’s dig right
in. The first thing we find in this
Psalm, verses one through four, is a call to wisdom. He says,
hear this, all peoples, Listen up and listen good, you might
say. If you’ve ever sat in front of
a coach or a drill sergeant, listen up and listen good is
what they tell us. Hear this all peoples, give ear
all inhabitants of the world, both high and low. These words
give ear, listen, heed, pay attention. These are wisdom terms. Where
else do we hear these in the Bible? Well, you go over to Proverbs,
my son, listen. My son, pay attention to my instruction. Over and over in the Bible, when
we bump into wisdom literature, it tells us to listen. It tells
us to open our ears. One of the many things I’ve been
doing a little studying up on lately, you know, it’s 2017. We have a church that’s rather
traditional. We have a church that holds dearly
to ancient truths. but we have a world that is changing
around us. And so one of the things we have to think about
as a church is how do we maintain our fidelity, our faithfulness
to the things that are good, right, and true, but how do we
minister in a context that’s changing around us? And one of
the challenges is we are moving from a listening generation to
a image generation. And so when you tell this present
generation, listen up, Well, first of all, they’re foolish
and they don’t want to listen. Second of all, they’d rather
see an image. They’d rather see a screen. And so it’s rather
difficult to tell this generation, listen to the words of the aged. Listen to the words of one who
has experienced or one who God has touched. We’re living A logos
or a word-centered life in the Bible in an image-saturated world. And so we wonder sometimes, is
anybody listening? Sometimes we wonder, are we listening?
Sometimes we wonder, have we stopped our ears up? Well, this
is an appeal to do just that, to listen, to hear from God’s
word, and after hearing, to see what is necessary for life and
godliness. One of the blessings we have
in the scripture, 2 Peter 1, verse 3, tells us this, we have
everything we need for life, living life, and for doctrine,
what is good, right, and true. We have everything we need for
life and doctrine put down in the scriptures for us. So just
as our little parable, our teaching from Jesus from Luke 12 told
us, don’t need to worry about how God will provide for us.
He provides for the sparrows. He provides for the ravens. He
provides for the lilies of the field. How much more will he
provide for us physically? We’re also told in the Bible,
he gives us everything we need for spiritual life. This week,
like I mentioned at the Sunday school this morning, I was listening
to an interview with a pastor who taught me in seminary, a
man who’s in his seventies, who’s ministered and taught in the
seminary for maybe 50 plus years. And they asked him what his secret
was. You know, everybody wants to know your secret. How do you
look so good after living this long? That’s what we always want
to know, right? Well, it’s ancient pearl cream
or something. It’s how we keep our skin right,
whatever it is. We get on TV and sell it. Well, he didn’t
say anything much about rocket science. You know what he said?
The secret to his spiritual life has been going to church three
times a week. Now, who wants to hear that?
He went to morning church, still does, goes to evening church,
and guess what he does on Wednesday? He goes to a prayer meeting.
And so he was asked a little bit later, what’s been the secret
to your success in pastoral ministry? And you know what he said? Having
services three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday night,
and Wednesday. And then later he was asked, how did you raise
such good kids? And you know what he said? I
took him to church three times a week. And he said, same bow,
one string. And he said, but I like that
string. But there is something about being in the presence of
the word of God. How does God make himself known
to his world today? It was interesting at General
Synod just a few weeks back. one of the pastors who was asked
to preach a sermon, got up and said how much he lamented that
when we changed our form of government years ago, we took out this special
introductory statement. And the introductory statement
used to say that Jesus, the Lord and head and king of his church,
rules his church through men appointed to serve as elders.
And he ministers to his church by his word and spirit through
men. And he said, and we took that
out. But it’s still true. God rules his church by the ministry
of men through the word and the Holy Spirit. And so we have a
man, one of the sons of Korah telling us to listen for wisdom
and it will give us life. And so the challenge, the call
for us is to incline our ear to this proverb, to this riddle,
to this piece of wisdom that others may put to the side. So
that’s verses one through four. a call to wisdom. Verses five
through nine teach us that our money cannot redeem our lives. Have you noticed how much we
pay attention to our temporal life? You know, I’m follically challenged. You know what that means up here,
right? My barber’s been giving me a comb over. The wind blows
right, it sticks way up. Never thought I’d get to that
point in life, but here I am. But you know, I could go get some
hair plugs. And I heard it hurts real bad, but I could come in
one Sunday with a head full of hair and y’all would know something
was up. I might as well get my teeth whitened while I’m at it.
Go sell used cars. But we can get Botox and stretch
out those wrinkles where they don’t exist. We can, you know,
some of you have a little snow on top. You could make it a little
blonder or brunetter. What’s that? Frosted, yeah. There are things we can do to
endure life. I remember several years ago,
bumping into a wealthy man who, you know, there’s those of us
who don’t have the money for health care and there’s those
who do and they spend it. And this guy was going to, some
prevented a doctor and he was going to have a whole scan of
his body to see where there might be potential dangers. I can’t
imagine what that scan would cost. and also see the benefit
of it. He had the $10,000 or whatever
it took to go get that scan that was completely elective, insurance
didn’t pay for it, but he was gonna find out if there was potential
stroke one day or potential whatever. And we can spend a lot of money
keeping ourselves looking really good and being really healthy. When the Bible says, what we
don’t know what today or tomorrow may bring, whether we live or
whether we’ll die. We’re praying for a brother’s
family who he passed away at the age of 35. A lot of us are
past that age. And so it makes you think, but
our money cannot redeem our lives. All the money we can invest and
save all the preventative health or Botox or Living like the greats
in pop culture, it can’t do much for us. And so it leads us to
a question. What’s the price of our life?
And who can pay it? That’s a big one, isn’t it? That’s
a whopper. That’s something our financial advisor or our tax
accountant or our bean counters can’t help us with. There’s no
dollar amount that can be put. And so we read in verse seven,
this piece of wisdom, truly no man can ransom another or give
to God the price of his life for the ransom of their life
is costly. It can never suffice. Man can live on forever and never
see the pit. We can’t buy immortality. We cannot purchase it. And so
you go back to the question, the question in verse five, why
should I fear in times of trouble when the iniquity of those who
cheat me surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and
boast of the abundance of their riches? Do you ever get in a
little fit? And you say, why is it that so and so has something
and I don’t have it? And then we rationalize it, I’m
more godly than they are. And because of my godliness, I should certainly have it before
they should because of their ungodliness, they shouldn’t have
it. And then what does that lead us to? It leads us to being dissatisfied
with our lot in life. It leads us to covetousness,
leads us to hatred. It leads us to, well, maybe theft. Leads us down into a black hole
of despair and all of a sudden God is no longer good. So this Psalm helps us have a
little perspective. Oh, people will get rich. I mean,
how many billionaires do we have in America? bunches. There’s a little infomercial
on TV last night and it was talking about how the middle class is
shrinking, which may be true. Middle class probably is shrinking,
it’s going to be the rich and the extremely poor and the in
between maybe shrinking, who knows. But this fellow, if you
come to a seminar in Greensboro, he’ll tell you how to get rich
by investing in real estate. Which we all know that can happen,
right? But you can also lose your shirt and your pants and
belt and suspenders and whatever else. Wealth is not everything. It comes to some, it eludes others,
but your money cannot redeem your life. And so the challenge
in these few verses here is that we need to prepare for eternity,
not with our 401ks, not with our dollars, our earning power. We need to prepare for eternity
with the word of God and put our faith and hope and trust
in Jesus. Now might God call us to a a worldly profession,
not worldly in a bad sense, but a profession in this life that
leads us to earning a few bucks, he absolutely might. And he blesses
some in that way, and there’s not a thing wrong with it. But
the end game is this, we need to go to the place where a ransom
for our life can be provided, and where is that? The Son of
Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life,
as a ransom for many, and it’s only in Christ. So our money
cannot redeem our life. Money can’t fix all our problems.
We think it will. And as my mom says sometimes,
she said, money can’t solve our problems, but it sure do help.
We know that to be true. Well, there’s a third thing to
think about from this psalm. We find it in verses 10 to 12, and it’s,
one day we’ll be dead and gone. Did you ever have that little
saying, so-and-so’s dead and gone and left the rest of us
to carry, or own. That’s a reality of life. It’s
one we cannot get around. They’re stark words. And if you
look at verse 12, man in his pomp will not remain. He’s like the beast that perished. This past two weeks, we drove
2,170 miles. 700 miles about to Mandy’s parents,
about 700 miles back. Yeah, same distance back, I reckon. unless you detour through Atlanta
or something. But we drove about 700 miles around there, going
and visiting family and this, that, and the other. And on that
trip, we saw a lot of road kill. A lot of it still stuck to our
front bumper till we get out there and wash it. But you see
a lot of dead animals. And you think about a pretty
deer. You see a deer. And what do we always say when
we see a deer? Aw. But what about a possum or a
raccoon or a rodent? We just kind of write it off.
But what would it be like to really unceremonially die? Just to be dead, nobody cared. I mean, we’re such a hygiene
freaked out environment. Somebody’s gonna pick up our
body and take it somewhere, it’ll get picked up. No man is really
gonna die at the hopper in today’s life. You’re gonna get some kind
of funeral. But that’s not what this says.
What a stark reminder, what a hard thing to say. You know, look
buddy, you got it all, but one day you’re gonna be dead. You
think about, you know, there’s the old story of the man when
he becomes emperor, what does he do on the day of his coronation
or whatever they do to emperors, ancient Rome. There’s an old
story where He would be taken to a yard and he would pick out
his piece of marble, his headstone. And then, so on the great day
when he would become Caesar, and what did they say about Caesar
back in those days? Caesar is Lord. Compare that
to our passage this morning about Christ. But he would be reminded
of his mortality, of his death. He would pick out his headstone.