To be the friend of God in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is the only thing that makes this life worth living. For outside of Christ there is only vanity and vexation of spirit.

Moses must remind us of that because we become enchanted with this world and the things of this world—bewitched by its sights, sounds, tastes, and experiences. In our stupors we forget heaven and our everlasting home in a perfect creation full of the glory of God. But all man’s life in the world must come to an end.

The word “it” in the text refers to man’s life in the world with its relationships, labors, and sorrows. Man’s life is quickly cut off, and we fly away, both the righteous and the wicked.

Moses speaks of ends. He has in view the ends of days, months, years, and lives. The time of the end is always a time for reflection, as it was in Psalm 90 for Moses at the end of his life of one hundred twenty years, when his eyes had not grown dim and his natural force had not at all abated in him. Yet his lifespan was cut off, and he flew away.

So every man’s lifespan must be cut off.

At his end Moses reflects on Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness, during which time a whole generation was cut off because of unbelief and God swore in his wrath that that generation would not enter into his rest. Among that generation some might have lived seventy or eighty years, but many did not. That generation was cut off in the wilderness. For forty years Moses had witnessed that generation perish there outside the land of promise by serpents, by the fire of the Lord that burned in the camp, by disease, by pestilence, and by a host of other causes. That generation was cut off and flew away. 

Now at last Moses must trudge from the plains of Moab to the top of Mount Nebo, where the Lord showed Moses all the land of Canaan and where he must meet his end. And he writes of our ends as his last bit of instruction to Israel as the nation is poised now to enter the land of promise with a new generation.

For us another year has passed! We have stepped that much closer to our graves. It seems that we were just wishing each other a happy new year, and now another new year is upon us.

Oh, how fleeting!

While men—we—rush along on the streams of time, men—we—are far too often ignorant of the reality of which Moses speaks in Psalm 90. Partly this is because we are created with time and are subservient to time and because we are so limited with respect to time. We cannot see a moment ahead in time. Partly this is because we are so caught up in the daily grind of time that we hardly notice its swift passage. We also have sinful natures that would like to make the earth of this time our home and to forget that we hurtle toward our ends in this world.

Yet a sober fact.

Our lives in the world are soon cut off, and we fly away!

This is sure and certain.

Men might boastfully try to contradict these facts, but these facts remain sure and certain because they are God’s word about his dealings with the sons of men.

Wicked men might boastfully say that their houses shall endure forever. Men might even take steps that outwardly and at first glance appear to contradict the facts of the text. Men write their names on buildings, monuments, businesses, trust funds, and important accomplishments in hopes of lasting fame. The pharaohs erected their pyramids to achieve immortality. The pyramids do stand yet today in the deserts of Egypt. But what are those pyramids in reality? They are huge monuments to the facts of the text. They are more akin to the toppled figure of Ozymandias, as pictured in the following poem:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”¹

Vain boast!

The fact that Ozymandias’ crumbled monument remains while he is gone teaches loudly and clearly for all to hear that man is cut off and flies away.

If we sit and contemplate this fact, then we will agree also with Moses on the other facts of the text. Seventy years are the days of our lives. Occasionally man reaches eighty years, if strength is great. And the best that can be said of that time is that it was labor and sorrow.

For life is quickly cut off, and we fly away!

In the quickly passing succession of moments, especially at certain points in our lives, time can seem as though it virtually stands still. The seconds seem like hours. The minutes are like days. Time for us can seem to plod along. Yet if we could see time from eternity, then time would move like a rushing mountain stream and like the howling wind that sweeps across a treeless and unbroken plain.

The reality of time is that time flies away.

Time is but a creature of God, created to be the instrument to carry all things along in the unfolding of his eternal counsel, wherein he demonstrates the riches of his wisdom and the glory of his name. Time was created in the beginning as the condition of all creaturely life. To be a creature is to be subject to time and to live and to move in time. The creature—not even the angels and certainly not mortal man—can never be eternal or exist outside of time.

Mighty creature is time.

Wonderful task that God has given to time.

To God alone belongs the perfection of eternality. To be eternal is to be exalted above time and above all succession of moments. God in his eternality is exalted above time; and he beholds time, with all its progress and movement and succession of moments, in a single instant. In his counsel all time is before him, and in that counsel all things that he will unfold in time are perfect and perfectly accomplished already.

Time is God’s creature and is for his creatures. The creature must dwell in time and take part in history. Even in heaven, and in the new heavens and the new earth, this is true. Heaven is not timeless. The new heavens and the new earth will be a new age, an everlasting age, yet they will be subject to time, in which every second will be devoted to the glory of God in righteousness and perfection. In hell too, in the punishment and torment of the wicked, every moment will be perfectly devoted to the glory of God. If we could see time now with a perfect eye, we would see that even here every moment and all that transpires in each moment is for the glory of God. Yet it is not so transparent. Time itself will have reached its appointed end here in this age, and time itself will have been redeemed in the age to come, when time will be the condition for the resplendent and transparent display of the glory of God in everything.

And time, therefore, never stands still. Time rushes headlong like a mountain torrent freshly swollen with melted snow.

That time moves and rushes along is because God controls time. He does not disinterestedly behold time and the events of it, but he thoroughly determines every millisecond of time and all that occurs within each millisecond.

And God actively controls every moment of time according to his counsel. He moves time along. He hastens time on its journey from the beginning of history to the end of the world and the coming of the purpose that he appointed before all worlds in his counsel, so that time is but the unfolding of God’s counsel.

Eternally active, eternally the same, eternally changeless in his being and in all his perfections, and eternally at rest in himself is the God of time.

And he is the God of men’s lives in time!

And what is God’s word to men in time? “It is soon cut off, and we fly away!”

With those words Moses sums up the life of mortal man in time. It is quickly cut off, and we fly away!

“It” in the text refers to the span of a man’s life of seventy or eighty years, along with all man’s relationships and all his labor that God gives for those few moments. The days of man’s years are quickly cut off. Time is flying; and as creatures of time, we fly with it.

And we fly away!

The words “fly away” are used for the rising of sparks from a fire. Sparks shoot up out of the fire with so much vigor that they quickly fade and fall. The words are used for the flit and the flutter of a bird that cannot sit still for more than a moment. The words are used for the fleeting nature of a dream, which is so real for a moment. Then as quickly as the dream began, it is gone and forgotten.

The words “fly away” teach the relentlessly fleeting nature of every man’s life. There is endless movement, constant flux, and manifold transition in a man’s life. It relentlessly hurries along. No moment is the same. Like the waters of a stream pass a place and return to it no more, so does man hurry along in time.

The words “fly away” teach us the transitory nature of every man’s life. We fly away to somewhere else. This life is not permanent, and man flies away to his permanent abode, whether heaven or hell.

The words “soon cut off” teach us the brevity of a man’s life. Death is the instantaneous cutting off of all earthly relationships, achievements, activity, breath, and movement. Those words also teach us that death does not simply happen as though it were a natural part of a circle of life that operates in the world.

Rather, someone is active in death. God is active in the cutting off of men. His word spoken to Adam in the garden when Adam fell into sin was the word of death. That word is active in the life of every one of Adam’s descendants. Moses refers to that word of God in verse 3: “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, [to dust], ye children of men.” That is God’s word over the whole human race, and that word is active in the life of every man. That word works quickly, so that man’s life is but the blink of an eye in history; and that word cuts off quickly, so that one moment man is breathing and the next he is gone.

There are the days of a man’s years that are given to him. Each lifespan properly laid out has its seconds, minutes, days, and years. Each man receives his appointed time for just so long, just so many days, minutes, and seconds and not a moment longer. From the moment of his conception, the seconds turn into minutes, the minutes into hours, the hours into days, the days into years, and man is cut off and flies away.

Do you want to know just how fleeting is this mortal life? and also then the character of this fleeting, mortal life?

Listen to Moses, the man of God: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

Seventy are the days of our years; eighty years if strength is great.

When Moses says that the days of our years are seventy—and if by reason of strength they be eighty—he is not referring to the average or to a reasonable length of time that a man may expect to live in this life, but Moses is referring to the upper end of the days of our years. If a man and woman have lived to seventy years or if by reason of strength have attained to eighty, they have reached the upper limit of human life according to God’s word.

Oh, how fleeting are our lives!

Our lives are fleeting in comparison to human history, which is around six thousand years old. Barely a blink of an eye, but our lives are particularly quick in comparison to the endless expanses of the time to come, in which ten thousand years will be like a day.

Some will attain seventy or eighty years. But that is the upper limit!

Man will mock at that. He will point to his nutritional and medical advances as though he can change the Lord’s word. With all his might man strives to overcome a lifespan of seventy or eighty years.

But such is the word of God. Some will attain seventy or eighty years. The centenarian is living on the edge of a very sharp knife posed to cut him down.

Most are cut off and fly away before that. There are billions of babies whose lives are only a few days or months in their mothers’ wombs. Millions of children last but a few days, months, or years outside the womb in this sin-cursed world. Young men and women are cut down by the billions, having barely achieved twenty years of age. Men and women labor all their lives to retire early, and their lives are cut short at age fifty. Millions perish in their prime from disease, war, famine, pestilence, and a thousand different afflictions.

By far most do not reach seventy or eighty years.

Man may speak differently now. “Most children,” man will say, “now survive past childhood. Many live until they are ninety. We have medicines, hospitals, doctors, and vaccines.”

But the word of God is seventy or eighty years.

That is the limit God has placed on man’s life. For some life is cut off quickly in youth, for others death comes after their seventieth or eightieth year, but quickly for all that. One moment we are born; then as in a moment, we are thirty, then fifty, then seventy, and we are cut off, and we fly away! One moment, so it seems, we are holding our newborn children in the hospital, then holding their hands as they walk down the aisle, then holding our grandchildren, then we are cut off, and we fly away.

And what is the quality of our lives in all those years?

The strength of them is labor and sorrow!

What if a man lives eighty years? Some may boast of that and say, “He lived a good, long, full life!”

What a vain boast according to the text. The strength of our years is labor and sorrow.

The word “strength” is used for boast, pride, or prime. When Moses says this, he is saying that the boast, the strength, the prime of life, the very best of those eighty years is labor and sorrow.

The word “labour” indicates the backbreaking toil that characterizes a man’s life in the world that is under the curse of God. The word “sorrow” indicates all the trouble that accompanies that work.

All our labors are nothingness, vanity, sin, and accompanied with sorrow. We can understand that in a purely physical sense. When men and women are in their prime, that is the prime time to work, and with that work comes sorrow. During that time they build their businesses, establish themselves in the world, raise their families, and make their plans. But what is that?

Labor accompanied with sorrow!

But Moses is not talking about mere labor and sorrow in a purely physical sense. He means labor and sorrow in light of that killing word of God: “Return to dust, ye sons of men!”

It is laboring in a world that is under the curse of God, that has been subjected to vanity, so that a man eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, and the ground brings forth thorns and thistles. It is the labor of a woman to whom God multiplies the sorrows of her conceptions. It is the labor of bloodied knuckles, weary bones, tired muscles, and exhausted minds and spirits. It is the labor and sorrow of man, who is conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins. For the natural man all his labor is nothing but sorrow because he goes to hell at the end of it. For the child of God, the labor is undertaken with a sinful human nature, so that all that labor is accompanied with sin and then also with sorrow. If we would look at all our labors, we would see sorrow, sorrow multiplied, and a daily increase of sin, so that even if a man would live seventy or eighty years, all he could boast about would be labor and sorrow, and with that God is not satisfied. He demands perfection, so that even our labors and sorrows serve for our condemnation.

Then our lives are cut off, and we fly away.

The finality of death!

A man passes his whole life in labor and sorrow, and he rushes headlong with breakneck speed toward the end, and he is cut off and flies away. Like a tree cut down, he lies where he fell.

Exactly because a man is cut off and flies away, concerning those seventy or eighty years he can only boast of labor and sorrow. He flies away from this life to the judgment seat of God, where man’s whole life is cast in the brilliant and searching spotlight of God’s righteousness and holiness.

How fleeting is man’s life! The duration of a spark that shoots up from a fire.

How fragile! Like a puff of air. Like the grass. All man’s beauty is as the flower of the field. The grass withers, and the flower fades.

We might say that Moses is too bleak. Today he would be characterized as too somber and pessimistic about life. He would be labeled a holiday-cheer killer, a wet blanket on the atmosphere of merriment. We have many conveniences and comforts to alleviate the sufferings of this life, many new inventions to ease our labors, and good medicines and doctors to ward off death. Is there no joy in the world? Is life all vanity and vexation of spirit?

But then let our lives, our activities, our purposes, and our hearts be cast in the powerful spotlight of God’s eternality, his brilliant and unapproachable holiness, his awesome righteousness, his judgments and the terrible finality of his verdicts, and the crushing power of his wrath and anger. Let that word ring in the ears of every man: “Return to dust, ye sons of men!” That word is operative in the life of every one of the sons of Adam, and that word works inextricably upon every one of those sons of Adam in every aspect of his life, in all his activities and labors, to pull him down into the grave.

And then let us cast ourselves at the foot of the cross of Jesus, God’s Son and our Lord. He is all that is beautiful in the world. He is God’s grace, beauty, and light that has broken into this world of cursing, ugliness, darkness, vanity, and death.

Yes! Jesus willingly and graciously took on himself that terrible word: “Return to dust, ye sons of men!” He labored under that word. He sorrowed under that word with the wrath of God resting upon him.

Look at him!

Is there any sorrow like his sorrow?

Excruciating!

God saw and was satisfied! With all the brilliance of God’s holiness, the awesomeness of his righteousness, and the crushing power of his wrath, God saw Jesus’ laboring soul and was satisfied with his anguish and suffering. Jesus was born, crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hellish agonies on the cross; he arose the third day as the Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings; and he brought to light life and immortality.

Apart from faith in Jesus’ name, there is only the swift and inextricable passage of time for man. Man has his allotted time, and man is cut off and flies away to an eternity of sorrow; and his house, which he supposed would last forever, crumbles into ruins. Man cannot ever have rest apart from faith in Jesus Christ and his completed and finished work. There are only seventy or eighty years of sorrow, and then man is cut off into eternal misery.

But all who look to Jesus Christ in faith are satisfied and made to rejoice and to be glad, and in him also the work of their hands—Jesus’ own work in and through them—is established by God for good.

And then also in Jesus Christ by true faith, the light afflictions of the swift passage of time, which are but for a moment and quickly pass, work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. For our lives are quickly cut off, and we fly away to an eternal home fixed in the heavens and appointed to us from all eternity, where there is no more sorrow and where every tear is dried.