Page 33 - Psalms Ebook

Now life was selected here because life is the most precious thing on the
earth. If you ask a healthy person to name several precious things, they
might not think about life. They might mention gold or silver or gems or
family or friends or something like that. But if you ask a person who is
very sick: What is the most precious thing on the earth? I do not think he
will talk about gems and jewels, especially if he is dying. When a person
is dying, his eyes are opened to the vanity of those kinds of things. Seem
to lose their value. A dying person would give away all his gems if he
could live.

Do you remember Onassis, the tycoon? When he was dying, I happened
to be in New York. I saw a headline with his picture in the paper and he
had tape holding his eyelids open. He had a nerve disease, and he did
not have the strength to keep his eyes open. In an interview he said he
would give away his fortune for the strength to hold his own eyes open.
What is valuable? And the answer is life. Life is the most valuable
thing. My stepfather has a niece and she is now with the Savior, but she
was dying of cancer and she was given three months to live. There was
an experimental drug that cost 100,000 dollars up front. As soon as she
found out that she qualified for the experiment, she put her house on the
market. Why did she do that? And the answer is because life is more
precious than a house, and life is more precious than money.

Now come back to this psalm. Life is the most precious thing on the
earth, and the psalmist looked for a figure to describe how precious
God’s love is. He passed by gold and silver and treasures of the earth,
and he said, “Thy loving kindness is better than life.” He could not
find anything more precious to compare it to. But you say, that is a
strong thing. No, it is a weak thing because you are talking about the
Lord. He is not comparing it; he is contrasting it. “Thy loving kindness
is better than life.” The most precious thing on earth. Here is the
question. How much greater is God’s love than life? Is it ten times
greater? Is it one hundred times greater? A million times greater? You
see, infinitely greater than the most precious thing on the earth is God’s
loving kindness. His love is more precious than the most precious thing
on earth. Now look, if you would, at Psalm 51:7,

“Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow.”

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