Psalm 49
July 9, 2023
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Lenin said that religion is the opium of the people… [But] it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God…Lenin only fell into a slight error: he only got it the wrong way round. The truth is that irreligion is the opium of the people. Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world, they will worship the world.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, “Christendom in Dublin”

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

~ George Orwell, 1984

“The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subjects to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.”

~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“No, I don’t wanna battle from beginning to end
I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don’t wanna follow Death and all of his friends.”

~ Coldplay, “Death and All His Friends”

Sermon Passage

Psalm 49 (ESV)

¹ Hear this, all peoples!
Give ear, all inhabitants of the world,
² both low and high,
rich and poor together!
³ My mouth shall speak wisdom;
the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.
⁴ I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre.

⁵ Why should I fear in times of trouble,
when the iniquity of those who cheat me
surrounds me,
⁶ those who trust in their wealth
and boast of the abundance of their riches?
⁷ Truly no man can ransom another,
or give to God the price of his life,
⁸ for the ransom of their life is costly
and can never suffice,
⁹ that he should live on forever
and never see the pit.

¹⁰ For he sees that even the wise die;
the fool and the stupid alike must perish
and leave their wealth to others.
¹¹ Their graves are their homes forever,
their dwelling places to all generations,
though they called lands by their own names.
¹² Man in his pomp will not remain;
he is like the beasts that perish.

¹³ This is the path of those
who have foolish confidence;
yet after them people approve of their boasts. Selah
¹⁴ Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
death shall be their shepherd,
and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.
Their form shall be consumed in Sheol,
with no place to dwell.
¹⁵ But God will ransom my soul
from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me. Selah

¹⁶ Be not afraid when a man becomes rich,
when the glory of his house increases.
¹⁷ For when he dies he will carry nothing away;
his glory will not go down after him.
¹⁸ For though, while he lives,
he counts himself blessed
—and though you get praise
when you do well for yourself—
¹⁹ his soul will go to the generation of his fathers,
who will never again see light.
²⁰ Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like
the beasts that perish.