For in Your sight a thousand years are but a day that passes, or a watch of the night.For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.For a thousand years in thy sight Are but as yesterday when it is past, And as a watch in the night.
3 sermons cite this verse
… One generation will commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. In Psalm 71, he says, I am now an older man, and I have been led by you from my youth and I still proclaim your mighty deeds. And so it is the longing of my heart, the psalmist says, that I will continue to proclaim your wondrous works until the generations that are yet to come will understand and believe these things. Now generational transitions are understandable to us. more so in the time in which we live than perhaps even in earlier centuries. It's hard for many of us to understand that the terminology, for example, of a teenager was an unknown notion until for halfway through the 20th century. And what is a generation after all? It's unlikely that there are any members here. It's not impossible, but it's unlikely that there are any members here of Generation Beta. Although I did hear some rumblings in the back earlier on. If you're Generation Beta, you were born in 2025. …
But what does it mean to number our days? Well, part of it may simply mean admitting that our days are indeed numbered. A good friend of mine has recently been reading the best-selling book, Being Mortal. As you may know, the book is by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon and professor at Harvard Medical School. And it's a very frank description of what it's like for us as human beings to come to the end of life. It's a book about what it means to grow old, for our bodies to wear down and to fail, and especially what it means to encounter the inevitable truth that we will all die. Well, when my friend got about halfway through the book, he confessed to me, you know, this book scares the heck out of me. Well, I understand that what frightens my friend, what frightens all of us, I suppose, is right there in the book's title, Being Mortal. We are all mortal. We know that, of course, but we tend to know it in the abstract. …
Down in those great depths, who knows what there may be? Pearls lie deep there—masses of precious things that would make the miser's eyes gleam like a star. There are the wrecks of old Spanish galleons lost these centuries ago and there they lie, huge mines of wealth, but far down deep! And so with the deep judgments of God. What wisdom is concealed there, and what treasures of love and faithfulness and what David calls, "very tenderness," "for in very tenderness," he says, "have You afflicted me." There is as much wisdom to be seen in some of the deep afflictions of God—if we could but understand them, we would see as much wisdom in them as in the creation of the world! God smites His people artistically. There is never a random blow. There is a marvelous degree of skill in the chastening of the Lord. Hence we are told not to despise it, which, in the strongest meaning of it, means that we are to honor it! We honor the chastisements of our parents, but infinitely more the chastisements of God. "For they verily chastened us for a few days after their own pleasure, but He for our profit," and there is a way of chastening us for profit. Now, Brothers and Sisters, I said there were treasures concealed in the great deeps which we cannot yet reach, and so in the great deeps in which God makes us to do business there are great treasures that we cannot come upon at present. We do not, perhaps, as yet, receive, or even perceive, the present and immediate benefit of some of our afflictions. There may be no immediate benefit—the benefit may be for hence and to come. The chastening of our youth may be intended for the ripening of our age. "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." The affliction of today may have no reference to the circumstances of today, but to the circumstances of 50 years ahead! I do not know that that blade required the rain on such a day, but God was looking not to February as such, but to February in its relation to July, when the harvest should be reaped. He considered the blade not merely as a blade and in its present necessity, but as it would be in the full corn in the ear. There are certain marks that an artist makes upon the block that you cannot see the reason of as yet—and they spoil the apparent likeness of the block and marble to the image which you know he wishes to produce—but then those lines are to be worked out, by-and-by! They are scratches now, but they will be lines of beauty soon, when he comes to finish them. So, a present trial may even lame us for present service, damage us—I will even go the length of saying—for years to come and make us go groaning and brokenhearted, so as to be of comparatively little service to the Church and of very little joy to ourselves. But then afterwards—afterwards as Paul puts it—it bears the peaceable fruits of righteousness in those that are exercised thereby. Why will you not let the Lord have time? Why will you be in a hurry? Why will you stand at His elbow and perpetually say, "Explain this today and show me the motive and reason of this in this present hour"? A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night! The mighty God takes mighty time in which to work out His grand results! Therefore, be content to let the treasures lie at the bottom of the deep for awhile. But then faith may see them. Faith can make the deep translucent till it sees the treasure lying there—and it is yours and though you may not at this hour be able to be at it—yet you shall have it, "for all things are yours." Everything that is stored up in the great deep of the Eternal Purpose, or in the deep of the manifest judgment, everything there belongs to you, O, Believer! Therefore rejoice in it and let it lie there till such a time as God may choose to raise it for your spiritual enrichment. God's judgments are a great deep— …