1 Chronicles 29:15-16 For we are strangers before you, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow… 1. How short our stay is! The average life is less than thirty-five years. Multitudes die in infancy. No man can say that this is his home. He knows not how long he will remain. He is not even sure that he will be here to-morrow. He is a "sojourner." 2. He is a "stranger." He does not have time to become acquainted. "The proper study of mankind" may be "man," but life is too short to make much proficiency in it. The average man has no real knowledge of his fellow-men. Of their inner lives he knows nothing. 3. Nor have we a better knowledge of the world. Who knows the secrets of rocks and hills, or the laws of vegetable life? Who understands the mighty forces of nature, or the mysteries of the visible universe? Who can interpret for me the message of the pebble beneath my feet? One of the wisest of mankind likened himself to a child playing on the shores of an unknown ocean. Sensible men no longer attempt to learn everything. Realising the shortness of the time, they select some particular branch of learning and count themselves fortunate if they succeed in mastering that ere death comes. 4. The brevity and uncertainty of man's sojourn make sad havoc with cherished plans and stamp his whole career with incompleteness. Man's tenure is feeble and precarious. 5. This solemn undertone of life's song is often referred to in the Bible. 6. Out of the ashes of despair hope springs. The very words "strangers and sojourners" are suggestive of a place where man will be at home. The very brevity and incompleteness of earthly life raise the question whether there is not some complemental life. Since the powers are not developed, the character not matured, the plans not executed here, the mind instinctively believes that there is a place where they will be. "What a waste," exclaims Burr, "if death ends all! What a host of abortive and abandoned undertakings! Whole cities of houses in the first stages of building, and lo, all work finally suspended; whole navies in the dockyards with great keels fairly laid, and then left to rot! Who does such things? Here and there a fickle, foolish, or impoverished man, but certainly not the all-wise and all-mighty and steadfast God." A dead man is "merely an evicted tenant." He has gone out of sight but not out of mind. 7. The Word of God sets this truth in the white light of revelation. Christ comforts His sorrowing disciples by reminding them of "the mansions" prepared for them. 8. This thought lends inspiration to endeavour and affords comfort under the troubles of life.Conclusion: 1. Take the right road. That road begins and ends in Christ. 2. Make spiritual use of temporal things. True riches are spiritual, and temporal riches are of value only as they are used for spiritual ends. God will require an account of our stewardship. 3. "Live by the faith of the Son of God." (Arthur J. Brown, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. |
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