We Are Dust
Our Bible passage, introduction to Sunday 12th April service and hymns are below.
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Our principal verse is:
Psa 103:14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
Psa 103:15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
Psa 103:16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psa 103:17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;
Psa 103:18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.
Psa 103:19 The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.
We Are Dust
David is rejoicing in the mercy of God. He has called his heart and soul to bless the Lord out of felt gratitude for His goodness, mercy and love. The psalmist-king had personally experienced God’s forgiveness. He understood reconciliation by blood atonement. He believed in sovereign grace. David knew that the Lord’s pity and care for His children suits the weakness of our frame and the poverty of our condition. As our Creator He knows we are made from dust and will return to dust. This truth ought to be humbling. There is nothing of value in us except what God puts there.
Flowers of the field
The psalmist likens our human condition to common grass or at best, flowers of the field. There is growth and vitality but it is short-lived and soon lost. Grass springs up in the morning and is cut down at evening. It is vulnerable and exposed, prone to be consumed by animals or trodden underfoot. It quickly withers under adverse conditions. Similarly, there is nothing enduring or substantial about men in body or mind. Human life is uncertain and precarious. Man in his most flourishing circumstances is soon gone and forgotten.
Our eternal God
But God is different. Here David links man’s brief life with the enduring constancy of God. God’s mercy, like God Himself, is from everlasting to everlasting. Here again we discern David’s deep understanding of covenant grace. In our fallen nature we are time-bound and soon disappear. Yet, says the psalmist, the mercy of the Lord is ever and eternally fixed upon them that fear him. God’s mercy towards His elect is not limited according to our fleeting years; it exists before and it continues after our brief sojourn in this world. God knows His people from eternity and has set His mercy upon them from everlasting to everlasting.
David’s gospel
David’s vocabulary is the language of the gospel. He speaks of everlasting mercy, forgiveness, redemption and imputed righteousness (Romans 4:6, 7). It cannot be man’s own righteousness that David has in view since he has already described our sins, iniquities and transgressions in verses ten to twelve. This righteousness is divine righteousness; the justifying righteousness of God which is settled everlastingly upon Christ’s seed in the covenant of grace. It is bestowed on children’s children, that is, it justifies all them that believe, throughout the history of the world, in all successive generations.
Christ’s covenant people
These everlastingly justified individuals live only a short time, comparatively, in this world. Remember, we all are as the grass of the field and must, in our human frame, return to the dust of the earth whence we came. However, the covenant of grace, entered upon by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in the eternal councils of peace, set apart and safeguarded these blessed individuals. Their everlasting good is fixed and sure. They were supplied with eternal life in Christ which was secured when He came and suffered and died for their sins.
Keeping His covenant
This blessed people are said to ‘keep his covenant’, that is, they believe it, treasure it and rest in the privileges secured by it for them in their Saviour, Jesus Christ. John Gill writes, ‘This covenant is made known to Christ’s people at conversion; his secret is with them, and he shows them his covenant; the blessings and promises of it; their interest in them, and in himself, as their covenant God: which they “observe”, as the word here used signifies; and observing it, they lay hold upon it by faith, as belonging to them; and laying hold upon it, they “keep” it as their own, and keep it fast, and will not part with their interest in it for all the world’.
Keeping His commandments
Christ’s people also keep the Lord’s commandments, that is, they remember and do all God’s will. They do God’s will when His work in them produces faith and they believe His word and trust in His Son for all their righteousness and acceptance with God. They do God’s will from the heart, says Paul and John says, ‘he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever’ (Ephesians 6:6, 1 John 2:17). David is not looking to the works of men or his own efforts for acceptance with God. He is resting upon God’s mercy and trusting His promises.
Personal assurance
David’s confidence and ours derives from the success of the risen, exalted Christ. His throne is in the heavens where He now dwells at the right hand of God and from where He will come to receive His church and Bride. This is the throne ‘prepared’ for Jesus Christ following the completion of His covenant duties and redeeming work. Jesus is King over His kingdom which includes everything created in heaven, earth and hell. His is an established throne that cannot be moved.
Amen
Hymn 1015
Divine Compassion. Ps. 103. 8-12; Isa. 43. 25
I. Watts S.M.
1
My soul, repeat his praise,
Whose mercies are so great,
Whose anger is so slow to rise,
So ready to abate.
2
God will not always chide;
And, when his strokes are felt,
His strokes are fewer than our crimes,
And lighter than our guilt.
3
High as the heavens are raised
Above the ground we tread,
So far the riches of his grace
Our highest thoughts exceed.
4
His power subdues our sins,
And his forgiving love,
Far as the east is from the west,
Does all our guilt remove.
Hymn 103
The Imputed Righteousness of Christ. Isa. 61. 10
Count Zinzendorf trans. by J. Wesley L.M.
1
Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
2
When from the dust of death I rise,
To take my mansion in the skies,
E’en then shall this be all my plea:
“Jesus has lived and died for me.”
3
Bold shall I stand in that great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay,
While through thy blood absolved I am,
From sin’s tremendous curse and shame?
4
Thus Abraham, the friend of God,
Thus all the armies bought with blood,
Saviour of sinners, thee proclaim –
Sinners, of whom the chief I am.
5
This spotless robe the same appears,
When ruined nature sinks in years;
No age can change its glorious hue;
The robe of Christ is ever new.
6
O let the dead now hear thy voice;
Bid, Lord, thy banished ones rejoice;
Their beauty this, their glorious dress,
Jesus, the Lord our righteousness.
God’s mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. David understood that while men and women were frail, weak and bound by time the Lord loved His own from before time and promised to gift them everlasting life. David’s psalm is a testimony to God’s everlasting love to His elect in the covenant of grace.