Alistair Begg: My times are in Your hands (1) Biola University
Biola Chapel from April 22, 2013 - “One of the distinguishing marks of a Christian, of a Christian worldview is to be found in the way in which he or she views the passing of time and the ordering of the events of life.”
Psalm 31:
A Psalm of Complaint and of Praise.
1In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge;
Let me never be ashamed;
In Your righteousness deliver me.
2 Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly;
Be to me a rock of strength,
A stronghold to save me.
3 For You are my rock and my fortress;
For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me.
4 You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me,
For You are my strength.
5 Into Your hand I commit my spirit;
You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth.
6 I hate those who regard vain idols,
But I trust in the Lord.
7 I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness,
Because You have seen my affliction;
You have known the troubles of my soul,
8 And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy;
You have set my feet in a large place.
9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also.
10 For my life is spent with sorrow
And my years with sighing;
My strength has failed because of my iniquity,
And my body has wasted away.
11 Because of all my adversaries, I have become a reproach,
Especially to my neighbors,
And an object of dread to my acquaintances;
Those who see me in the street flee from me.
12 I am forgotten as a dead man, out of mind;
I am like a broken vessel.
13 For I have heard the slander of many,
Terror is on every side;
While they took counsel together against me,
They schemed to take away my life.
14 But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord,
I say, “You are my God.”
15 My times are in Your hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies and from those who persecute me.
Alistair Begg:
Gauguin, the post impressionist painter, painted large and very graphic pictures, particularly of women from the islands. He led a dissolute life, although brought up as a Roman Catholic and catechized, and he was not known for writing on his paintings, apart from signing them. But, on one of his most famous paintings, depicting the journey of man form birth to the grave, he wrote on the top corner, he wrote 3 questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Unfortunately, he had no answer for those questions. He died in his fifties, as a result, really, of a life that was lived in excess, without finding answers to those questions.
In contrast, the catechism, the Heidelberg (corrupted a little), asks the question: What is our only hope in life and death? And it provides an answer: That we are not our own, but belong, body and soul, both in life and death to God and to our Savior, Jesus Christ. You see, one of the distinguishing marks of a Christian, of a Christian worldview is to be found in the way in which he or she views the passing of time and the ordering of the events of life. To think Christianly is to have a radical shift in the way in which we view all of these issues and to be able to affirm, “My times, o God is in your hands,” is a Christian thing to do. And so, I want to say just 3 things on the strength of that this morning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=I39OdPpI2RU
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