Feature
Perseverance In Ministry:
A Reflection On Psalm 90
by Ken Garrett
PERSEVERANCE AND LONGEVITY
The word perseverance is defined as steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks. The word longevity, on the other hand, simply means the length of something’s duration, such as (as my dictionary puts it) “somebody's employment or career.” The former is a word of rich description, including struggle and persistence, all in the context of the will of a person bent on continuing in one direction or endeavor. The latter is simply a measurement of time—a long time.
I am not the only person in the world who wants to live for a long, long time. I want to keep hiking and walking and preaching and loving for many, many years. I want to enjoy this earthly life with my wife and three daughters for decades to come. And I want, one day, not only to be a grandfather, but even a great-grandfather. These are worthy hopes and expectations, dependant mainly upon longevity.
A life marked by perseverance, however, is an entirely different ballgame. It has to do with resistance, failure, exhaustion, difficulties, and setbacks. Longevity is measured by clocks and calendars. Perseverance is recognized by character and a depth of resolve often mistaken for stubbornness. It persists in its course despite clocks and calendars. Longevity is the bottom-line guarantee of many industries - from diet plans to fitness clubs to 401K programs, all promising to be the facilitators of a long, satisfied life. Perseverance, on the other hand, makes no such promises. Sometimes things don’t get better, at least not by a humanly measured scale. Sometimes the Lord doesn’t heal and doesn’t deliver on demand. Sometimes we even come to an unexpected, unplanned end of our days. While these disappointments are the enemies of longevity, very often they prove to be the ingredients of perseverance.
In past years, when describing how I thought life would unfold for me, I have used words like perseverance, credibility, maturity, character, etc. What I was really hoping for was simple longevity—and given the choice I would have traded perseverance for it any day. But not anymore.
MOSES: A MODEL OF PERSEVERANCE IN MINISTRY
Moses was a man who persevered in ministry, facing heights of success and depths of failure (both personally and in the people he led) at which we can only marvel. He was the abandoned child, the adopted prince, the avenging murderer, the fugitive from justice, the shepherd son-in-law “with a past,” the man called by God to lead His people out of slavery into freedom and nationhood in a land called Canaan, the land promised to the fathers of Israel centuries earlier. Along with writing the first five books of the Bible, Moses also wrote three songs. In Exodus 15:1-18 Moses led the nation in the singing of a song of exultation after God delivered them through the walls of a parted sea and subsequently destroyed their Egyptian enemies. Deuteronomy 32 records Moses’ psalm of reminiscence and warning to his people who had proven themselves prone to wander from their God. It is Psalm 90, however, “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God,” that gives us the most detailed and somber look into the heart of Israel’s law-giver. Let us now consider this psalm, not as pastors seeking to achieve longevity in ministry (although Moses was 120 years old at his death), but as those who would learn how to persevere in ministry; particularly in the face of frequent disappointment and the inevitability of our own physical death.
PERSEVERANCE AND THE TIMELINESS OF GOD
A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
Scholars have suggested that Moses wrote this song soon after the events of Numbers 20 while leading the nation of Israel to the land of Canaan. In that chapter, we read of four heartbreaks that Moses, the man of God, endured: 1) His sister, Miriam, died; 2) He failed to obey the instruction of God in the miracle of producing water from a rock and was told he would not enter into the Promised Land; 3)He was denied travel through the land of Edom (ethnically cousins of Israel), and so was forced to lead the nation a greater distance into the desert over more punishing terrain; and, 4) His brother, Aaron, who served as his forty-year partner in ministry, died. The death of dear family members . . . the death of a forty year dream . . . the denial of immediate conveniences necessary to proceed in the task God gave him to accomplish . . . no wonder Psalm 90 is one the most frequently read psalms—at funerals!
How does a man “of God” respond to such loss, failure, and disappointment? Moses rested his hope in what he knew to be true about God: You have been our dwelling place in all generations. These are profound words from a man who had spent at least one third of his life living in tents. A dwelling place is not simply an abode with four walls and a roof. It is a place marked by safety, protection, and peace. But Moses had no such place left on earth. No people with whom to share his life. No place to call home. And, finally, no longer the dream of a blessed land. All of these dreams and opportunities had passed away, one by one. Even the land on which he stood was not his own, and never would be in his earthly life. But from eternity past, God is God, wrote Moses. Before there were any mountains to climb or hills to own or lands to conquer or houses to build, there was a lasting place of rest and safety—God Himself.
If we are to stand with Moses, perhaps forced to see a future and a blessing that has been divinely delayed, we must first acknowledge that God is, and that He is a certain kind of person. Perseverance is a measurement of sustained direction, despite resistance, over an extended period of time. But there is a Person beyond the measurements of both time and resistance, One who has provided safety and refuge from both of these inevitable burdens of ministry. From everlasting to everlasting—even before creation itself—God’s existence has preceded His people’s troubles, and even the troubled world itself. As pastors, then, our security is not to be found on earth, any more than Moses’ rest would be found in Canaan. It is not found ultimately in our families or churches, as it was not found by Moses in his family or nation. It has preceded us and awaits us. It is the eternal God Himself who calls us to serve Him and suffer for Him in our ministry to His people.
PERSEVERANCE AND TIME-BOUND PEOPLE
From a consideration of the God of eternity, the God unbounded by time itself, Moses moves to the consideration of a creature who is bound by years, seasons, clocks, and timers—man.
You turn man back into dust and say, "Return, O children of men."
What a cold, clinical description of death! We are turned back into dust. The organic and inorganic materials from which our physical frames are made are deconstructed to their basic, unassembled state. I remember the stock Hollywood funeral scenes from the cowboy movies of my childhood, with a black-suited parson intoning the words, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away . . . ” Moses reminds his readers that the Lord Himself is in sovereign control of everything, including the moment in which our bodies cease to have physical life and begin the inevitable decline back into the earthy stuff of which they were made.
The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils (now defunct) determined the cash value of the material elements of the human body (carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, magnesium, Iron, etc.) and found that our physical remains are worth about $4.50 at today’s market values. The highest valued component is our skin, worth about $3.50. All of these elements, of course, when reduced to their molecular components, become dust, or in Hebrew, dacha. This is not the same word Moses used in Genesis 2 to describe God’s creative work in forming man out of the dust of the ground, but is instead a word that connotes the remains of something that has been crushed. It describes the rubble of a destroyed house (Job 4:19), the overwhelming devastation experienced by an abused, neglected widow or orphan (Job 22:9), the crushing defeat of the Lord’s enemies (Psalm 89:10), or the devastation of His own people when persecuted by their enemies (Psalm 143:3). (By the grace of God, it also describes the crushing blow willingly endured on our behalf by a Suffering Servant - Isaiah 53:10). Here, in verse three, it is God Himself who allows us to be crushed, a crushing that is often inflicted upon our strength, love, dreams, hopes, and plans.
For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.
Many have tried to interpret this verse as some sort of a time-wrinkle theory of God, arguing that one thousand years of our time is swallowed up into one day of God-time. The most direct interpretation of the verse, however, leaves no need such for a sci-fi view. Our thousand years are like a day, or even a portion of a day, in His sight. The passage of time is without meaning or effect to God. We change with time, He doesn’t. We are enslaved to time, finally answering its steady call to lay our heads on death’s pillow. He answers no such call, because time itself is an entity He created. God created suns, planets, moons, seasons, days, and nights in order to give people reference points by which to measure time and so order our lives according to its passing. God has no need to so order His life, and thus requires no such reference points. Time is one of God’s gifts to humans. Of course, along the way we have created a more user-friendly instrument for the measurement of time, the mechanical clock. But while we may have devised a way to measure the increments of seconds, minutes, and hours, the idea remains the same: We are within and under the measurement and demands of time itself, and God is not. Moses placed this verse in a stanza that speaks of the weakness of humans, introduced by the assertion that the timing of our own deaths is a matter completely under the authority and control of God. Likewise, time itself, in its persistent relevance to our lives, is also a mark of our weakness and dependence upon our Creator.
