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We live in a disposable culture. Very few things are built to last. In fact, much of what we build and buy is meant to be discarded in a short time. Even our lives are brief. In the United States, the average lifespan of a man is a little less than seventy-five years. How quickly we come and go.
The Bible recognizes this. In Psalm 90, Moses describes human life in this way: “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (v. 10). As the saying goes, we are “here today, and gone tomorrow.” That is the nature of our lives.
Moses does not simply leave us with this realization. He asks for God’s favor, he asks for God’s blessing, and he asks that God would “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v. 12). This should be our prayer as well.
The brevity of our lives stands in stark contrast to the eternality of God’s Word. The prophet Isaiah declared this vividly:
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever. (Isa. 40:6–8)
The Word of God is neither ephemeral nor disposable. In His most famous sermon, Jesus put it this way: “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:18). Jesus also said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
This means that if we are looking for something solid, something that we can count on, something that will last, we have that in the Scriptures. Other things come and go, but God’s Word abides. It is a rock on which we can stand and an authority to which we must submit.
This also means that the moral commands of Scripture have no expiration date. What the Bible teaches about the creation of male and female in God’s image is as true today as it ever was. What it teaches about the nature of marriage and of the family has not changed and will not change. The Bible’s instructions about how to approach God in worship will never be out of date. And perhaps most importantly, what the Bible teaches us about the Lord Jesus Christ and His work of salvation stands unassailed.
So much around us changes. Nations rise and fall. The things that we own can wear out or be taken away. Those whom we lean on may not always be there. Even our own lives are a mere breath in light of eternity. But the Word of our God abides forever.