Genesis 47:8

Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?

Old year’s theme: “How old art thou?"

I. A COMMON QUESTION.

II. A SOLEMN QUESTION.

1. It is the solemnity of memory.

2. It is the solemnity of responsibility.

3. The question ought to create a solemn gratitude.

III. JACOB’S ANSWER.

IV. HIS LIFE MEASURED. “Days.” It is best not to take life in the lump, but to study it in detail.

V. HIS LIFE DESCRIBED.

VI. HIS LIFE SHORT.

1. He compared them with the ages of his fathers, and they seemed few.

2. Perhaps he compared them also with the great age of the world.

3. Compared with the solemn eternity, how short is our mortal career!

VII. HIS LIFE EVIL. A biography whose lines were written in tears.

VIII. HIS LIFE A PILGRIMAGE. (Chas. F. Deems, D. D.)

Time reckoned

Life always seems short in the retrospect; and that light of past experience is the only true light. He only who has paced the ground knows it. Life’s true measure is not years, but epochs of progress towards the ideal which the Creator has set before us. As the tree’s chronicles are its rings, so those of the soul are its definite expansions.

I. Ask yourself, how far am I advanced in my KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH. Do I know God yet? Do I know Christ and Him crucified? Do I discern spiritual things, or am I yet but a babe “crying for the light”?

II. How much have I developed in CHARACTER, grown in spiritual size, toward the statue of the perfect man in Christ Jesus?

III. What RECORD have I made in my Lord’s service? Veteran means old; but the soldier attains the title not by years--rather by the campaigns and battles in which he was found faithful. What noble fights have I made against evil? What service rendered the needy? What comfort brought the sick? What help to discouraged souls? (The Homiletic Review.)

How old art thou?

The wise reckoning of time will be of essential use to us--it may save us from overwhelming and eternal disaster.

I. How OLD ART THOU, O CHRISTIAN, computed by God’s standard?

1. OLD enough to be brought under infinite obligations to God’s redeeming, converting, and preserving grace.

2. Old enough to have made great attainments in the Divine life.

3. Old enough to have learned the ways of a deceitful heart, and the power of the adversary of God and man.

4. Old enough to have caught the heavenly spirit of the Master, and from the land of Beulah to get now and then a ravishing view of the unutterable glory beyond.

II. How OLD ART THOU, O IMPENITENT SINNER?

1. Old enough to have run up a fearful account against thy soul in “the book of God’s remembrance.”

2. Old enough to make the work of future repentance extremely bitter and difficult.

3. Old enough to make it well-nigh certain, if you still persist in impenitent sin, that you will never retrace your guilty steps and take hold on life. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)

What is your age?

We do not care to know how old you are by the almanac. You may keep this secret, as some are wont to do. But we would like to know to-day what is your age, by some standard, other than that of time.

I. ARE YOU MEASURING LIFE BY WEALTH? Longevity is not promised to the rich as such, nor to the poor; but those who observe the law of God, which is life to them that keep it (Proverbs 4:22; Deuteronomy 32:47).

II. ARE YOU MEASURING LIFE BY REPUTATION? Let it be a name for being and doing good, and do not run after even this, but let it follow you, as it certainly will if you keep such an aim before you, though you may, modestly, not consent to it. Two immortalities are possible to you and me--one in this, and another in the other world.

III. ARE YOU MEASURING LIFE BY ITS LENGTH? The sum of one’s years who has spent none of them for the service of God is equal to zero. His life is a blank.

IV. THE WISEST, SAFEST, TRUEST ESTIMATE OF LIFE.

1. Reflection. The thoughts he expresses are a good index of one’s age.

2. Moderation.’ It is folly to rush through life at break-neck speed. He who goes softly, goes safely; and he who goes safely, goes far.

3. Religion (Proverbs 4:7). (W. H. Luckenbach.)

Pharaoh’s question to Jacob

I. Let us consider THE QUESTION PUT BY PHARAOH TO JACOB--“How old art thou?” The propriety of looking back to and of considering the past period of our existence is pointed out in Scripture. Of my younger hearers I might ask, “How old art thou?” They could probably give an accurate reply to the question--“I am seven, eight, ten, or fifteen years old.” Well, then, let me ask, what of that? or rather how much does it imply? What sins and neglect does it not remind you of? What duties does it not suggest? Or, I might speak to persons in middle life, or who are verging on its confines. You may have found prosperity, or at least some measure of comfort and respectability attendant on steadiness, sobriety and industry. Your temporal affairs may have been on the whole prosperous; your children may, like olive-branches, have grown up around you. Then, assuredly there is reason for thankfulness, and ground for acknowledging the goodness and long-suffering of a Father in heaven. There is yet a third and less numerous class, to whom the question in the text ought to be impressive--“How old art thou?” You have witnessed changes in society, almost revolutions of opinion. Many with whom you were once intimate have been removed; the haunts of youth are peopled almost entirely by strangers. All things admonish thee to prepare for meeting God; to set thy house in order; to improve the time that remains.

II. Let us now turn to JACOB’S REPLY, in answer to Pharaoh’s question.

1. As to its length, life may be spoken of as made up of comparatively few days. Looking forward, half, or even a quarter of a century, may seem a protracted time; looking back, it appears greatly diminished.

2. Jacob’s address to Pharaoh embodied the statement that man’s days upon earth may be considered as not only “few,” but also as “evil.” Nothing, indeed, which God has given to man ought to be viewed as in itself and as essentially evil. Present comfort, length of days, intercourse with society, diligence in business, temperate enjoyment, are all good, all lawful; but sin has interposed. The spiritual eyesight is clouded, and the spiritual energy has become benumbed. Man himself may be truly spoken of as man’s worst foe. (A. R. Bonar, D. D.)

The pilgrim and the king

History presents to us few more striking contrasts than the Hebrew pilgrim and the Egyptian king. “The things seen and temporal, and the things not seen and eternal,” have seldom stood more fairly in front of each other than there. The old shepherd who had no possession on earth but a Divine promise--the king who wielded the sceptre of the most splendid monarchy in the world. But there was something in that old pilgrim which made him a meet companion for kings--a king, too, of an elder and mightier line. From the first dawn ofcivilization there were men moving about the pathways of that eastern world, playing indeed a chief part on its theatre, who had absolutely no right or power but that which their sense of a Divine vocation conferred upon them; and no means of influence, but such as the recognition of their spiritual calling by the princes among whom they lived, bestowed. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, were emphatically, God’s prophets. They had nothing if they had not that seal. The whole secret of their power was the belief that the God of Heaven was with them; that they were the friends and living organs of that supreme and only Lord. These lofty and earnest shepherds seemed to step down from a superior sphere; and some of its lustre streamed round them as they moved on God’s errands around the already darkening pathways of the world. Jacob stood before the Egyptian monarch as the embodiment of that which had faded into a dim tradition in Egypt; it belonged to the glorious golden age of which all peoples had memories, out of which they were beginning to weave for themselves dreams of a paradise restored. The chief prince of the world felt humbled before this lonely, lofty pilgrim; as the representative of a mightier than Pharaoh was troubled by the calm glances of a poorer, sadder, more godlike pilgrim, who stood for judgment helpless before his bar. Spiritual power is the supreme power, and none know it like monarchs of genius.
“Don’t talk to me against the divinity of Christ,” said Napoleon; “I know what man can do, and He was more than man who has done all this.” The men who, like Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon, stand on the very pinnacle of earthly greatness, are the men who are most perplexed and awe-struck by the sense that there is a power above them which sweeps through their armies as magnetism sweeps through mountains, and has an armoury of words more mighty infinitely than their spears and swords. Something of this spiritual grandeur invested this aged and weary pilgrim, and drew the likeness of a crown around his brow as he stood before the Egyptian king. Aged he was, and bowed, and sad, and weary. He halted, too, as one who had been sore wounded in the battle of life. There were furrows seamed on his brow, and channels worn in his cheeks, which were eloquent of tears and cares. The expression of high intellectual power on his brow must have been dimmed somewhat by the traces of that suffering which made him the “man of sorrows” of his time. There was a promise in his face which his life of schemes and snares, fears and flights, had half broken; and yet there was a look of faith and a glow of hope which seemed to carry on the promise, and to lay it up with God to preserve and to complete. A strange, bewildering man. So sad, so broken; so grand, so powerful. A prince having power with man and with God, and bearing it in his gesture; a man who had prevailed, sore buffeted, in the battle in which Pharaoh and all his people had gone down into the dust. And he stood there before the world’s chief potentate, who knew no superior will upon earth to his own. There was a nobleness of a kind about Pharaoh also. The man who on such a throne had an eye for the dignity of such a pilgrim was no vulgar king. He was a man of far-reaching plans and high achievements; and as he sat there smooth, sleek, royally garbed and tended, at the height of human power and splendour, and gazed on the sad old man before him, a sense of something in the universe to which his mortal might was but as a marsh-fire to a star, stole over him, and he bowed beneath the blessing of a superior hand. And what now of the pilgrim, and what of the king? Where is the state and the splendour of the Pharaohs? Their cities are buried beneath the sands of the desert; the dust of time has settled on their names. Their temples, their palaces, their treasures, are ruins; their wrecks have mingled with the sands of the Lybian waste. Their tombs alone endure, sad sentinels of the desert; sole witnesses that men of such state and splendour once lived in Egypt, and covered its soil with the monuments of their power and pride. And the pilgrim? His name after four thousand years shines more brightly than ever on the roll of earth’s most mighty and illustrious spirits. Ages have but confirmed the title which he won in that long and stern night-wrestle with the angel. His little company who dwelt round him in his tents grew rapidly into a nation, which has exercised in all ages a transcendent influence on the progress of the world. And to this day the noblest and most cultivated in Christendom pore earnestly over his history, and find in the way in which he won his princedom fresh inspirations of courage and of hope. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)

The measurement of years

There is a right way and a wrong way of measuring a door, or a wall, or an arch, or a tower; and so there is a right way and a wrong way of measuring our earthly existence. It is with reference to this higher meaning that I confront you, this morning, with the stupendous question of the text, and ask: “How old art thou?”

I. There are many who measure their life by mere WORLDLY GRATIFICATION. When Lord Dundas was wished a happy new year, he said: “It will have to be a happier year than the past, for I hadn’t one happy moment in all the twelve months that have gone.” But that has not been the experience of most of us. We have found that though the world is blighted with sin, it is a very bright and beautiful place to reside in. We have had joys innumerable. There is no hostility between the Gospel and the merriments and the festivities of life. If there is any one who has a right to the enjoyments of the world, it is the Christian, for God has given him a lease to everything in the promise: “ All are yours.” But I have to tell you that a man who measures his life on earth by mere worldly gratification is a most unwise man. Our life is not to be a game of chess. It is not a dance in lighted hall, to quick music. It is not the froth of an ale pitcher. It is not the settings of a wine cup. It is not a banquet with intoxication and roystering. It is the first step on a ladder that mounts into the skies, or the first step on a road that plunges in a horrible abyss. So that in this world we are only keying up the harp of eternal rapture, or forging the chain of an eternal bondage.

II. Again: I remark that there are many who measure their life on earth by THEIR SORROWS AND THEIR MISFORTUNES. Through a great many of your lives the ploughshare hath gone very deep, turning up a terrible furrow. The brightest life must have its shadows, and the smoothest path its thorns. On the happiest brood the hawk pounces. No escape from trouble of some kind. Misfortune, trial, vexation, for almost every one. Pope, applauded of all the world, has a stoop in the shoulder that annoys him so much that he has a tunnel dug, so that he may go unobserved from garden to grotto, and from grotto to garden. Canno, the famous Spanish artist, is disgusted with the crucifix that the priest holds before him, because it is such a poor specimen of sculpture. And yet it is unfair to measure a man’s life by his misfortunes, because where there is one stalk of nightshade, there are fifty marigolds and harebells; where there is one cloud thunder-charged, there are hundreds that stray across the heavens, the glory of land and sky asleep in their bosom.

III. Again: I remark that there are many people who measure their life on earth by the AMOUNT OF MONEY THEY HAVE ACCUMULATED. They say: “The year 1847, 1857, 1867, was wasted.” Why? Made no money. Now, it is all cant and insincerity to talk against money as though it had no value. It is refinement, and education, and ten thousand blessed surroundings. It is the spreading of the table that feeds your children’s hunger. It is the lighting of the furnace that keeps you warm. Bonds, and mortgages, and leases have their use, but they make a poor yardstick with which to measure life.

IV. But I remark: there are many who measure their life by their MORAL AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT. It is not sinful egotism for a Christian man to say: “I am purer than I used to be. I am more consecrated to Christ than I used to be. I have got over a great many of the bad habits in which I used to indulge. I am a great deal better man than I used to be.” It is not base egotism for a soldier to say: “I know more about military tactics than I used to before I took a musket in my hand, and learned to ‘present arms,’ and when I was a pest to the drill-officer.” It is not base egotism for a sailor to say: “I know how better to ‘pull’ the windlass and clue down the mizzen topsail than I used to before I had ever seen a ship.” And there is no sinful egotism when a Christian man, fighting the battles of the Lord, or, if you will have it, voyaging towards a haven of eternal rest, says: “I know more about spiritual tactics, and about voyaging towards heaven, than I used to.”

V. I remark again: there are many who are measuring life by the AMOUNT OF GOOD THEY CAN DO. John Bradford said he counted that day nothing at all in which he had not, by pen or tongue, done some good. Contrast the death scene of a man who has measured life by the worldly standard with the death scene of a man who has measured life by the Christian standard. Quin, the actor, in his last moments said: “I hope this tragic scene will soon be over, and I hope to keep my dignity to the last.” Malherbe said, in his last moments, to the confessor; “Hold your tongue I your miserable style puts me out of conceit of heaven.” Lord Chesterfield, in his last moments, when he ought to have been praying for his soul, bothered himself about the proprieties of the sick-room, and said: “Give Dayboles a chair.” Godfrey Kneller spent his last hours on earth in drawing a diagram of his own monument. Compare the silly and horrible departure of such men with the seraphic glow on the face of Edward Payson, as he said in his last moment: “The breezes of heaven fan me. I float in a sea of glory.” This is a good day in which to begin a new style of measurement. How old art thou? You see the Christian way of measuring life and the worldly way of measuring it. I leave it to you to say which is the wisest and best way. (Dr. Talmage.)

How old art thou?

I. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONVERSANT WITH LIFE’S SUFFERINGS? Take even the life of a believer. A devout pastor, closing tranquilly a prosperous career, intermingled with words of faith and hope the significant declaration, “It is a fight to be born, a fight to live, and a fight to die.” And what do such facts teach us? They forbid idolatry of pleasures so disappointing and so piercing. They direct us for happiness to God and glory. They commend to our aspiration a better country, which is a heavenly--a country where possessions are unimperilled, bliss embittered, and sorrows are forgotten as the stream of brooks that pass away.

II. How LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONVERSANT WITH SIN? Who can look back on his past course and not be ashamed in the retrospect? What shortcomings--excesses--follies I What time lost l What privileges perverted! What cleavings to the dust! It is well to mourn over our trespasses. If this sorrow be sincere, it will be salutary.

III. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CONVERSANT WITH LIFE’S MERCIES? God was merciful to Jacob; and what have been His mercies to you? They have not been few nor small. He has clothed you, fed you, sheltered you. When you have been sick, He has healed you; when you have been imperilled, He has rescued you. In the review of your past life every stage of it demands the acknowledgment, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped me.”

IV. I trust that many of you have not only been born, BUT BORN AGAIN--“born not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.” In that case we have to ask concerning a new life--a divine life, “How old art thou?” How LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN CHRIST? Since when have you turned from idols--idolized sins and pleasures--to serve the living and the true God? But whether or not you have this mercy in possession, know assuredly that you have it in offer. (D. King, LL. D.)

Two ways of measuring life

There was a very old man--eighty-three years of age--and somebody said to the old man, “How old are you?” He said, “I am three years old.” “Three years old?” was the reply. “Why, you are eighty-thee!” “No,” he said. “My body is eighty-three years old, but my soul is only three years old. My old life is eighty years old, but my new life is three years old. I did not begin to live till three years ago. So my soul is only three years old.” A person was asked, “Where were you born--in Brighton?” The man said, “I was born in London, and I was born in Liverpool!” “How can you be born in two places? “ was the reply. “If you were born in London, you could not be born in Liverpool.” “I was,” said the man; “and I will let you see how that was. My body was born in London, but my soul was born in Liverpool. It was not till I lived in Liverpool that I cared about my soul!” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Good deeds healthy

Ancient Grecian and Roman ladies used to reckon their age from the date of their marriage. Many wise persons have reckoned their years from the time that they really began to live as they ought. Mere existence can hardly be said to be living.

“We live in deeds, not years--in thoughts, not breaths,

In feelings, not in figures on a dial:

We should count time by heart-throbs: he lives most

Who feels most, thinks the noblest, acts the best.”

A good man was once told he might live six years if he gave up working, but he would die in two or three years if he continued to work. He replied he had much rather spend the shorter time on earth in trying to do good. But hard work seldom shortens life. John Wesley was an indefatigable worker, and when he was seventy-three years old he said he was better and stronger than he was at twenty-three years of age; and he attributed this, under God, to his early rising, his activity, his undisturbed sleep, and his even temper. Said he, “I feel and grieve, but I fret at nothing.” Some, however, who do not observe and obey the laws of health, are cut off in the midst of their days. Young people should feel, “It is time to seek the Lord,” for religion alone prepares for a really happy and profitable existence; then it ever becomes more and more difficult to turn to God and to live aright the longer these duties are neglected; moreover, no one should give to the world and to Satan the best of their days and energies, and then hope to give to God and to their spiritual and eternal duties and interests, the paltry and miserable residue of their existence. When Care was old, he said his greatest pleasure arose from the remembrance of the good deeds he had done (see also, Proverbs 16:31; Leviticus 19:32).

Knowing the time of life

When Mr. Moggridge (universally known as Old Humphrey) was a lad, his father taught him how to know what o’clock it was. When the boy could tell the time, his father said, “I have taught you to know the time of the day; I must now teach you how to find out the time of your life. The Bible describes the years of man to be threescore and ten or fourscore years. Now, life is very uncertain, and you may not live a single day longer; but if we divide the fourscore years of an old man’s life into twelve parts, like the dial of the clock, it will allow almost seven years for every figure. When a boy is seven years old, then it is one o’clock in his life; and this is the case with you: when you arrive at fourteen years, it will be two o’clock with you; and when at twenty-one, it will be three o’clock, should it please God thus to spare your life. In this manner you may always know the time of your life, and looking at the clock may perhaps remind you of it. My great grandfather, according to this calculation, died at twelve o’clock; my grandfather at eleven, and my father at ten. At what hour you and I shall die, Humphrey, is only known to Him to whom all things are known.”

How old art thou?

A venerable lady was once asked her age. “Ninety-three,” was the reply. “The Judge of all the earth does not mean that I shaft have any excuse for not being prepared to meet Him.”