“What Is My Life For?”: The Psalmist's Guide to Aging

(Psalm 71)

When we planted this church I was thirty-three years old—old enough to have some life experience behind me, young enough to still feel young. But we’ll be celebrating our ninth anniversary as a church in less than a month. What God has done in the church, and in my own life, is mind-blowing to me. Some of it has been really joyful; some of it has been really hard; in all of it, God has proven himself faithful.

A lot has changed for me over these last nine years.

One of the most profound changes is also the most obvious: I’m nine years older. Nine years didn’t used to feel like a lot—it feels huge now. I’m in my forties. I’ve been married for twenty years. Our son, who was a toddler when we planted, is now in middle school, and we’ve added another kid who’s also in school. I’m still young…but I definitely feel older.

I know a lot of you feel the same thing. For a long time, the church was almost exclusively made up of young singles. Now, many of you who were in your twenties when we started are in your thirties, some of you even edging towards your forties. We even have some people in the church who are older than me, which for a long time seemed like a pipe dream. (Can I just take a minute to thank the brave souls who have stuck in with this church full of young adults? It’s a hard thing to do, and I thank God for you every day. I’m still praying for a lot more people who are in their fifties, in their sixties, and even their seventies, for reasons I’ll articulate in a little while.) We’re a slightly more homogenous mix than we used to be.

But we are still, on the whole, a young church filled with young people. And as time goes on, I feel the burden more and more deeply as a pastor to help prepare young people for aging. You need to know that every time I get up to preach, my goal is never to simply help you be faithful over the week to come, or over the next month, or the next year. My goal is always to preach the Bible in such a way that you have what you need to stay faithful for the rest of your lives—so that thirty, or forty, or fifty, or sixty years from now, long after I’m not here anymore, you will still be faithful to Christ.

That is why I love this psalm. It’s a psalm written from the perspective of an old man who has lived a hard life. Some people think it’s David who wrote it, since it shares some elements of language from Davidic psalms; there’s no way to know for sure, and it doesn’t matter. Regardless of who wrote this psalm, it paints a picture of what godly maturity looks like. This is what it looks like to be faithful over the long haul.

We see the psalmist exhibiting three habits, three characteristics, and this is where we’ll spend our time: we see remembrance of the past, steadiness in the present, and hope in the future.

Remembrance of the Past (v. 1-6)

The psalm begins with a kind of prayer of invocation—an opening plea for God to come to his help. V. 1:

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;

let me never be put to shame!

2  In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;

incline your ear to me, and save me!

3  Be to me a rock of refuge,

to which I may continually come;

you have given the command to save me,

for you are my rock and my fortress.

So we don’t know exactly what this man is going through, but we know he needs help. He’s asking for God to deliver him, to listen to him, to save him, to protect him. Many psalms begin this way.

What makes this psalm different is the grounds for his prayer—the reason why he feels confidence to pray it.

V. 4:

4  Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,

from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.

5  For [so here’s the grounds for his prayer] you, O Lord, are my hope,

my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

6  Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;

you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.

My praise is continually of you.

The reason why the psalmist feels confidence to pray for God’s protection and help is because God has been a constant in his life for as long as he can remember. In other words, he sees God as his home, not as a hardware store. He doesn’t dip in and out, coming to God when he needs help and then continuing his own way. God is his rock and his fortress, he said in v. 3, his hope and his trust ever since his youth.

And in v. 5, he only speaks as far back as his own memory goes; in v. 6, he goes beyond that, saying that God was enough to support him even when he was in the womb. God was with him at conception, he was with him at birth, and he has been with him every day since.

We all understand why this should make a difference. We’ve all been lost and had to ask directions. How do we do it? We say things like, “Sorry to bother you, but would you mind helping me?” We call on people, without having any assurance they’ll actually be able to help us, and we apologize for inconveniencing them.

That is very different from the way we ask a close friend, or a member of our family for help. In those cases, we turn to them because we know they’re dependable, and we don’t hesitate, because we know they love us.

Our past relationship with a person is vital to our present relationship with them. Who are the people you turn to when you’re most in need? We turn to the people we know are dependable, because they’ve been dependable in the past. If we’re feeling shame, we turn to the people who have been confronted with our shame and not despised us for it, but loved us. If we’re feeling fear, we turn to the people who have comforted us.

So the first step to Christian maturity we see here is simple: remember the past.

If you’ve been a Christian for a while, take a regular trip down the proverbial Memory Lane; think often about God’s goodness to you in the past—those times when it seemed like everything was falling apart, and God helped you make it through. The way that he drew you to him and saved you. We take Communion every week because it is a constant reminder of our baptism—a reminder that the Covenant that God has made with his people, which we celebrated on the day of our baptism, is still in effect today. Keep a tally of God’s past graces to you. Write them down even, and keep that list in a place where you can return to it easily and often. Remember.

And let me add this: since a lot of you are young, you may not feel like you’ve got a lot to put on that list, because you haven’t had that many years with God at your side; the psalmist talks about God being with him from his youth, but you’re still in your youth. If that’s the case, it’s okay. These past graces are sort of like ballast in a boat, the weight that keeps it from capsizing when waves get high; this kind of spiritual ballast takes time to build up. Start keeping track of these things now, and build on it as the years continue. (And if you need help knowing where to start, Psalm 103 is a great place—it’s what’s true of all of us, whether we’ve known Christ for fifty years or five minutes.)

That’s the first step: remember the past.

Steadiness in the Present (v. 7-16)

The next sign of maturity we see in the psalmist is steadiness in the present…despite all the reasons he may have for wavering.

7  I have been as a portent to many,

but you are my strong refuge.

8  My mouth is filled with your praise,

and with your glory all the day.

9  Do not cast me off in the time of old age;

forsake me not when my strength is spent.

10  For my enemies speak concerning me;

those who watch for my life consult together

11  and say, “God has forsaken him;

pursue and seize him,

for there is none to deliver him.”

12  O God, be not far from me;

O my God, make haste to help me!

13  May my accusers be put to shame and consumed;

with scorn and disgrace may they be covered

who seek my hurt.

14  But I will hope continually

and will praise you yet more and more.

15  My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,

of your deeds of salvation all the day,

for their number is past my knowledge.

16  With the mighty deeds of the Lord God I will come;

I will remind them of your righteousness, yours alone.

So we can see a sort of back and forth between two things here. The first is the situation he finds himself in. There are people coming after him, because they see his age and the strength that is failing him, and they’re thinking, Now’s the time. Go after him. He’s weak, God is gone. That’s what’s happening; that’s what he can see.

But he won’t stop at what he can see. Because of what we saw before—his knowledge of God’s faithfulness in the past—he knows where to turn for help in the present. He doesn’t let himself get flustered by the things he sees, because he knows where his strength comes from.

This is why he praises God. This is why he asks God (v. 9) not to cast him off in his old age, when his own strength is spent. That’s why he asks God (v. 12) to hurry to help him. That’s why (v. 14) he hopes continually in God, and praises him even more, proclaiming God’s righteous acts (v. 15-16).

His knowledge of God’s faithfulness in the past has made him steady in the present. Parents experience this when they first have kids. If you’re a parent, you’ll probably remember the first time you changed a diaper, or the first time you gave your baby a bath. It’s terrifying. Those things are slippery, and they wiggle, and you’re so scared of killing them that you do a horrible job. (Poor Jack was blue by the time we finished giving him his first bath, because we were so careful, we took way too long.) But you keep at it, and eventually you start to understand how things work. You learn where to hold them so they won’t slip, how to get the diaper closed easily and quickly. Before long, you’re doing it without even thinking about it. Experience makes you steady.

Experience outside of God can do that too, but not for the same reason (and it can also have the opposite effect: if you have bad experiences, you can become fearful). The psalmist is steady because he knows that he cannot do this on his own, and he knows that God can, and God will. His experience of God has given him confidence that God truly is trustworthy. So he doesn’t fear when the same things happen again; he knows what to do. He knows to turn to his God for help, and keep proclaiming his righteous acts, because God has proven himself to him in the past.

Again, for those who are young this can be difficult. We may not be very steady in the present—we may waver and be full of doubt—because we haven’t had enough experience with God to feel that full confidence. So what do you need?

First, you need to pray that God would help you grow from your experience, help you see his hand at work in the ordinary trials of life.

And second, you need to surround yourself with older Christians, who can help steady you. Nothing is more calming in a storm than being with someone who isn’t afraid of it—who has been through it before (or other situations like it), and who knows how to remind us of what is true. So surround yourselves with older Christians. Spend a lot of time with them. Impose yourselves on them—seriously. A young man did that with me last year—asked me if we could meet for lunch, and then asked if we could meet up regularly, because he felt he needed it. I loved that. Of course, I can’t do that with everyone, but that’s the right initiative. Find someone older—it doesn’t have to be a pastor—and ask them if you can spend time with them, to talk or read the Bible together, or even just to be there, to observe them and learn from them. Get a first-hand experience of what it looks like for a mature Christian to weather difficult times.

And if you happen to be one of these older Christians, there’s a specific call here for you (and for me too—the older I get the more I realize I’m really bad at this): be that support for your younger brothers and sisters. Often they may not dare come to you, because no matter what you tell them, they don’t want to impose. So invite them in. Seek them out. Put your arm around their shoulders and invite them to walk with you. They need you.

Hope in the Future (v. 17-24)

So in this psalm we see the psalmist’s maturity manifested through remembrance of the past; steadiness in the present; and lastly, through hope in the future. And his hope here is different than it is in many other texts, because it is not the hope of heaven. The psalmist’s hope here is the truth that despite his old age, his work is not finished yet. There is still more to be done. V. 17:

17  O God, from my youth you have taught me, he says,

and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.

18  So even to old age and gray hairs,

O God, do not forsake me,

until I proclaim your might to another generation,

your power to all those to come.

19  Your righteousness, O God,

reaches the high heavens.

You who have done great things,

O God, who is like you?

20  You who have made me see many troubles and calamities

will revive me again;

from the depths of the earth

you will bring me up again.

21  You will increase my greatness

and comfort me again.

We have to note that the psalmist’s prayer that God would protect him and revive him and raise him up from his troubles is not self-centered. When he proclaims that God will increase his greatness in his old age, he’s not talking about greatness for himself. He’s made it very clear that his goal, the center of his vision, is God alone—God’s power, God’s goodness, God’s faithfulness. These are the things he’s living to talk about, still, as an old man. And God’s faithfulness to glorify his own name, to show himself to the world as the great God he is, motivates the psalmist’s prayer that God would not let him simply flounder in his old age, not let him sit idly by, collecting seashells while he waits for death to come.

Because God is faithful to glorify his own name, the psalmist knows that God will give him strength to continue the work that he has pursued all his life. We don’t know what that work was, exactly. We don’t know if the psalmist was a priest or a Levite or simply a faithful Israelite. But we do know his goal, and that goal was to make God’s name known to those around him, and to those who would come after him.

This is what we see in the concluding verses of the psalm: continual praise to God, despite the psalmist’s obvious troubles, so that others might know how good God is to his people. V. 22:

22  I will also praise you with the harp

for your faithfulness, O my God;

I will sing praises to you with the lyre,

O Holy One of Israel.

23  My lips will shout for joy,

when I sing praises to you;

my soul also, which you have redeemed.

24  And my tongue will talk of your righteous help all the day long,

for they have been put to shame and disappointed

who sought to do me hurt.

He counts on God’s justice in regards to those people who seek to do him harm, and fixes his eyes on his objective, the purpose of his life: to celebrate the God of his salvation and proclaim his goodness and faithfulness every day of his life, until the end.

I’ve thought a lot over the last few weeks about how this psalm might sound to many of you. Many of you are still decades from retirement; old age seems to be the furthest thing from your mind.

But it is coming. I’m not that old—I’m forty-two—but one shocking thing that everyone knows but no one believes until it happens to them is that the years go by incredibly fast. I feel like I was twenty years old last week. I was talking to Loanne a couple weeks ago about the little things we don’t notice when we look in the mirror, until we do: I’ve got gray in my beard, and it’s slowly creeping into my hair. I’m getting tiny wrinkles in front of my ears, which is one thing I’ve always noticed in older men. It’s happening.

It will happen to all of us. And if it doesn’t, it’s because you died young—that happens to a lot of people too, though no one believes it can happen to them. I thought a lot about our friend Edouard Nelson during our vacation, because the anniversary of his death in a climbing accident came while we were doing what he was doing when he died: enjoying time with our family in the mountains. Rock climbing with his kids, slipped, hit his head…and that was that. It can happen in an instant.

So the question in the back of our minds at all times—the question I know was in Edouard’s mind all the time—should be this: What is my goal during this day, these hours, these minutes, that I have in front of me? Notice I didn’t say, What should my vocation be? There are reasons to ask God if he’s calling us to be pastors or missionaries or to serve in the church in specific ways—but that’s not what the psalmist is laying out here. He’s getting at the why of our lives—what am I living for?

The psalmist is living to proclaim God’s goodness and faithfulness and might, so that the people around him and the people who come after him might know who God is, and worship him and proclaim him in turn to others.

This psalm will speak to you in a particular way if you’re getting older. But it should also be a help for those of you who are younger, because the psalmist’s goal should be your goal. No matter how much work you do in your life for Christ, there is always more work to be done. There will always be people in your orbit who do not know Christ, who have never heard the good news of the gospel. There will always be people around you who don’t know that their sin deserves God’s righteous judgment, and that Christ came to take that sin and to die in our place, and that if we place our faith in him we can be declared righteous by God, and freed from the judgment we deserve.

So why are you living your life the way you are? What is your life for? What is your family for? What is your home for? What are your relationships for? These questions are never irrelevant, whether you’re ten years old or twenty years old or eighty years old. If you’re young, then you have the opportunity to decide—while you still, Lord willing, have time ahead of you—that your life will be devoted to making Christ known.

I understand why that may sound like a burden, but it’s not. This psalm begins with prayer that God will deliver the psalmist from trouble. But it ends on an overwhelmingly joyful note. The work that is still in front of the psalmist is not a burden, but a joy. Because he knows he is doing that for which God created him. He knows why he is here. He knows that nothing else he could do with his life would be as worthwhile or as eternally satisfying as living it for him.

And if you’re one of the few older people in this church—let’s say, my age or older—these questions should be more pressing than ever. We’ve seen our lives shrink. If God doesn’t take us before old age does, we have maybe half our lives left? Maybe less?

What will that time be for? What will our retirement be for?

We always talk to single people about 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul tells them that their singleness is a gift, because they are not distracted by the burden of worrying about their families—they have all the time and space they need to devote their lives one hundred percent to God.

If retirement had existed in the time of Paul, I am convinced he would have said something very similar about those years. Retirement is a wonderful thing—because now, we are unburdened by a job and free to devote our lives more completely than ever to the kingdom of God. What does that look like? There are a million possibilities, but at the very least, it looks like doing what the psalmist is doing: proclaiming God’s goodness and faithfulness to the generations that come after us. It looks like investing in the young, coming alongside them and helping them see why living for Christ is better, and how to do it.

No matter how old we are, no matter where in life we find ourselves, there is always more to do. And doing it for the right reason—no matter what the circumstance—is what Christian maturity looks like.

How do we do it?

We remember God’s faithfulness in the past; we lean on the truth of the faithfulness of God in the gospel for steadiness in the present; and we count on God’s faithfulness in the future, to give us what we need to finish well.

This is the trajectory of the Christian life, from birth to death. This is how we live well. This is how we waste nothing.