Title: My Way of Life
Contents
Sunday day sermon
Text: Psalm 90:1-17
Title: My way of life
After Joseph became prime minister of Egypt, he persuaded Pharaoh to let his father and brothers come and live in Egypt, and the king grants permission. Jacob, who had followed Joseph to Egypt, introduced himself before Pharaoh, saying, “The days of my sojourn are one hundred and thirty years. My age is short, so I am not short of the time of our ancestors as a sojourner, but I have had a rough time.” Even though Jacob is quite old, he introduces himself in front of him, saying, “I am only one hundred and thirty years old now, and I am living the life of a stranger,” meaning that his number of years is far less than that of his ancestors. Jacob said this to Pharaoh to show respect for the king, but from Jacob's point of view, it can also be interpreted as meaning that his age or wealth is not something to be proud of compared to his ancestors.
What we need to pay attention to here is that Jacob is always using the expression “stranger” when introducing himself. The term stranger is easy to understand, so we often call a person who wanders aimlessly without a family. However, Jacob had 12 sons with him, and when he moved to Egypt at the time, the Bible records that the number of his family already reached about 70. Nevertheless, Jacob calls him a stranger, as if he were left alone. Why does Jacob use this expression so often? For that reason, leaving the land of Canaan, which was like home, was the way of a stranger's life for him, and secondly, staying in this world itself was a way of life for Jacob. Humans seem to live for a thousand or ten thousand years after being born in this world, but as Moses confessed in today's text, "Even if our years are seventy and eighty if we are strong, the pride of those years is our toil and sorrow. Our life will never be long, and even if we live twice as long as we live, we are proud of it only with our hard work and sorrow.
In the book of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs written by Solomon, he records how vain and vain life on this earth is. It is said that no one in this world has the wisdom that God has given him, but what he realized with God's wisdom only recorded the futility of the people living on this earth. But he realized the true truth through the wisdom God gave him. Even though Moses, who wrote today's text, was the one who was used as the servant of the Lord, because of the truth he realized from God, it is expressed in every passage that human beings are nothing in the sight of God. As our proverb says, “Only those who have eaten bread wet with tears can discuss life,” in the end, only those who have tasted the bitter taste of life will know what love and grace are.