[0:00] Thank you. Psalm chapter number 90. You know, the Bible doesn't just command us to know the Christian experience as described in Psalms, but it also calls on us to sing it, right?
[0:14] And so it's a wonderful thing that when we get to be reminded of God's truth through hearing it sung, and then on Saturday when people will go over the Believer's Baptist and they will sing the gospel. Brother Wayne, maybe the weather would be nice enough and you can just open up the doors and the whole community that are walking by can hear songs like we just heard.
[0:32] People turn their eyes upon Jesus. We're looking at a psalm here. I already told you, but it was by Moses, the oldest of the psalms. And you shouldn't be surprised that Moses had written a psalm. He had written a couple more that we find in the Bible in Exodus 15 and Deuteronomy 32.
[0:50] Also a blessing in Deuteronomy 33 that is written. And this one is so wonderful and so encouraging. I made a big deal out of the fact that Charlotte wrote the song that we sung on Sunday night and she loves when I do that.
[1:03] Like right now, she's really enjoying what I'm doing, all right? And I said that God gave the song to Charlotte and I said that and I thought, I really hope nobody thinks that I'm putting Charlotte's song equal to the inspired word of God.
[1:15] When I believe that God gave the word to us in this way, I don't, that's not what I mean. And you didn't believe that's what I meant, that she was inspired and that it's equal to God's word.
[1:26] But she gave a beautiful commentary on the truth of God's word that's available to us, right? And that's what just happened here in the song that was sung there. It reminded us of truth of God's word that we already know and it helped us.
[1:38] Well, here we do have holy inspired word from Moses as it was written and given to us. And as we sing it and as we know it, it can just do something wonderful.
[1:50] And we're told to not just know these things, but to sing it. In the book of Psalms, a lot of questions can be answered in this psalm. What should it feel like to be a Christian? What does a true believer experience in his or her life with God in this fallen world?
[2:04] What ought our affections and desires to be fixed upon? How shall we react to our circumstances? What should Christians' experience be characterized by as we live together in a world filled with sickness, trouble, and sorrow?
[2:18] I've never felt more of a desire to help you know that we are studying a psalm tonight. And for you not to leave and think, man, you had a lot of great things to say about that chapter. So if you will, if you'll follow along there in either your handout or preferably in your Bible.
[2:33] I meant to do more marking in my notes and I didn't print the one that had more markings in it. But maybe I can encourage you to pay attention to some things because every verse would be worthy of our time in here.
[2:44] Every single verse would be worthy of our time. And I want to help us as we go through it. We don't know when this is written. We don't know when most of them are written. But if you just think about the life of Moses, I don't know if I was able to get that picture of the tents on the screens.
[2:59] But I was just kind of thinking about Moses and maybe as they would set up, you know, every night they're traveling through the wilderness. And then they would set up camp for the night. Probably not near as nice as these tents.
[3:09] But there wasn't any real pictures from that time available to me without free of charge. And so this one was. And so this tent is available to us. And I don't know, were they around the campfire?
[3:20] And did he walk away when this was laid upon his heart? And he wrote it. But if you just think about the things. Numbers 13, there were 12 spies that went into Canaan and 10 were bad and 2 were good.
[3:32] All right? Of course, our children's pastor knew that song, right? And so we have Numbers 13 and there's that situation that's going on where a whole generation are going to be without faith. They're going to live in fear. And then they're going to get the fact that they're going to die off in the wilderness before the next generation goes in.
[3:48] And then you get the Numbers 20. That's a tough chapter for Moses. His sister dies. Aaron dies. And then he strikes the rock twice.
[4:00] Seeing the frustration that he has. Maybe that is the setting for this. But we just think about those 40 years. Moses' life as you've been taught your whole life. Set up in three different segments of 40 years.
[4:13] And now here he is in this last 40 years. And just completely nomadic. You know, just no mailing address. Just never knowing where he was going to be. I just can't believe they're never like, didn't we just see this last week, right?
[4:24] Or was there one guy that sat around the campfire like, I'm just going to stay here. I'll see you guys later. Because I know how this goes. You're going to go this way. Then you're going to go this way. And somehow, however God chose to do that.
[4:35] But Moses, maybe outside the campfire writing this psalm. Maybe that's not the setting. But him writing it. And you just know the background of the wilderness. Wondering. And this contrast that we first will see between how eternal and big our Lord is.
[4:49] In comparison to how the brevity of mankind acknowledging that it's our sin that makes life so short. And we'll get to all of that. But first off that we see here is Lord.
[5:01] The relationship that he has with the God of heaven. Adonai. I am mastered. I am a servant. And you are the Lord. It's a wonderful thing to be mastered.
[5:11] Because it means we have a master. It's a wonderful thing to call him Lord. Because that means the creator of the universe is our Lord. It's this relationship that is there. Lord. And then he says, Thou hast been our dwelling place in our old generations.
[5:26] Not the place that we're at tonight. Not in the tent that we're in. But you have been our dwelling place through all generations. As they say, God, it doesn't matter that I'm living out of a tent right now.
[5:38] Now wherever I've been at, you have been my dwelling place. When I was a little kid and you saved me. And you put me in this huge home that I grew up in.
[5:48] And the protection was given to me by the Egyptians. Lord, they weren't my dwelling place. You were my dwelling place then. And then as he killed the man and then he runs off and he's gone for 40 years.
[6:01] It says he was a stranger in the land. That land wasn't his dwelling place. It was in the Lord. As he moved from place to place and lived out of a tent and was around the campfire. He said, None of that is my dwelling place.
[6:13] Lord, you are my home. I am not spiritually homeless because of you. You are my dwelling place. And then he goes more than that. Not just personally like, You have been my dwelling place, Lord.
[6:26] I have never been spiritually homeless. I have never been out without a sense of belonging or acceptance. Taking that, you know what it's like to come home after a long trip. You've been traveling and you can't wait to be back with your people and in your place.
[6:40] And then so much more that acceptance and belonging that you would have in the Lord. But he didn't just talk about his own life. But he says for all generations. So when the children, when Abraham set out for a city that he would never find, God was still his dwelling place.
[6:56] When they were in Egypt, it wasn't Egypt that was their dwelling place. It was in the Lord. And if you've ever been on a long trip that just seemed that it was never going to end. And that feeling of fatigue that you have to say, I can't wait to be home.
[7:08] You've also felt that in your own life and said, I just feel like I'm homeless. And I'm just not finding any place that I fit in. And you can find it in the Lord. Maybe you've moved here or you're moving somewhere.
[7:19] Or there's something in life that just makes you feel completely not at home. And in this world, you're never going to feel at home. You weren't made to feel at home.
[7:30] Just like Moses said, I was a stranger in a strange land. You are a stranger in a strange land here on earth. But you can say, just like Moses, you can say, Lord, you have been home.
[7:40] You have been my dwelling place. You are the place that I can go to. In any circumstance, I can come to you and it's been true through generations. And it will be true for the generations to come.
[7:51] Which means that we can teach our kids to find home. That home base is always the Lord and with him. And so before the Exodus and during that, during Egypt, all these times, they were never homeless people.
[8:04] Their dwelling place was in the Lord, no matter if they were living nomadically. And then it says, Feeling so temporal as he's just living from funeral to funeral and constantly moving.
[8:23] Nothing is really there for him. I like to watch wilderness shows where they just have a few survival things, you know. And they try to live off the land. And I realize I wouldn't make it to three days in before I'd be taking that radio and say, come and get me, all right.
[8:36] I don't like to sleep where bears sleep. That's just kind of a rule. That's how I made it this long in life, all right. And so that's few things that they would have, just how little it is and how it wouldn't be permanent.
[8:48] You know, the manna they would have would just be gone in such a short amount of time. The fire that they would build would be gone in a day. Nothing had any lasting significance. And then he'd look out in the distance and he would say, Lord, before the mountains were, you were.
[9:01] Something that's just not changing like the mountains. You were there before. And the strongest thing that you could say about the time was said about God, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
[9:14] As far as you can go in that direction you were, as far as you can go in this direction you're going to be, there could not be anything that is more in contrast to this life that I'm living. That just feels so temporal.
[9:26] It just feels so shallow. It feels often so meaningless. Pick up, walk a little bit, sit down, do it again. Pick up and walk a little bit. But God, you are everlasting and you brought forth the mountains and you formed the earth.
[9:40] You're everlasting, Lord. That is so wonderful. And thou hast turned man to destruction and saith, Return, ye children of men.
[9:51] Thou turnest man to destruction. And watching as a generation of people are dying right in front of them, Funeral after funeral. Not just walking, but people are dying. As that generation is dying off, numbers 20, 38 years into this, and they're just watching as a generation is going to die.
[10:08] And this return, not like a call to repentance, which we're giving in the Bible, But Genesis 3, 19, from dust to dust. And it just says, God, it's almost as if, if you could just picture it, It's like a generation of people were just walking into the dust of the desert and disappearing.
[10:25] And it was just happening and happening. Because it was promised that man was going to return to the dust of the ground. And he was watching it happen right before him.
[10:36] Return, ye children of men and all men. The strong, the weak, the slow, the fast. Everybody in that generation was just returning as God had commanded them to do.
[10:48] He told them that they weren't going to. Right? And they weren't. And so they were returning as they were told to do. But for a thousand. So now we have this, what we would call this eternal paradigm, the difference.
[11:01] Man is just marching into the dust. He is just going right into the dust as it was promised. For a thousand years in thy sight are, but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
[11:14] A thousand years is nothing to you, Lord. This 40 years, this week has felt so long. Moses could be saying. This was just such a hard week. He had a lot of hard weeks. Every week walking in the wilderness would be hard.
[11:27] We'd had weeks that just seemed to go on forever. And it said, God, a thousand years in thy sight is just yesterday. It's just like a day as a watch in the night. Thou carries them away as with a flood.
[11:39] 40 years seems to be going very slow to them. But to them, it's just watching. You ever been to a creek or whether behind my house when the subdivision floods and where the water comes in, just watch everything.
[11:49] Anything in its way just gets taken. And it's just moving so quick. The 40 years has just gone fast forward to him. He's watching as it's nothing. And it says, as thou as a sleep, as a kid would talk, right?
[12:02] How many sleeps? How many sleeps until we go on family vacation? How many more sleeps until this is happening? He says, all this that's been going on to us, it just goes so fast in front of you as a sleep.
[12:13] It's like the morning where the grass grows up and it withers. In the morning, it flourishes. Then it grows up in the evening and it's cut down and withers. Nate Gaffney could tell you about how grass grows here in Georgia, right?
[12:25] If you mow it on Saturday, if you don't mow it short enough, you're going to be mowing it next Saturday here in the spring, right? The sun comes out in that in such a short amount of time. That's how quick these things to the Lord seem.
[12:37] He is not like us. He is holy and He is distinct. And these things that seem so long and impossible seem to be nothing to Him and so short. For we are consumed on every side by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
[12:54] As I said, a generation is perishing on every side. A couple million people here in the wilderness. I remind you, the problem with that picture is it looked like there was just a few people there, right?
[13:05] Whatever the number was, it's massive. Everywhere Moses was walking through the camp and checking on people, trying to care for all those people. Family after family. Grandpas died.
[13:15] So-and-so has died. Constant remembering that they were not going to get out of the wilderness. That they were going to die there. And it was consumed on every side around them. Everywhere he turned here as they're getting towards the end of that time together.
[13:30] But it reminds us why. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins, in the light of thy countenance. The iniquities. You know, the open things where the spies didn't have the faith or the time that they would build the idols and the open things.
[13:46] But also as they were walking, that murmuring and complaining that was happening. The outward things that they were doing. Taking more manna than they were supposed to. The building of the idols and melting the things down that they had to make these idols.
[13:57] But that secret sin of their hearts as they were walking, complaining, God sees all of that. And he is connecting here. Moses is connecting the shortness of our lives to the fact that we are in sin.
[14:09] That these lives will not last forever. It's the result of sin. I rarely hear it anymore. But I remember hearing as a kid, people would say they died of old age. They never say that anymore.
[14:19] People don't die of old age. Everything has a name. But what is it we really all die of? It's the result of sin upon our body. And that's what's happening here. So the iniquities. For all the days are passed away in thy wrath.
[14:33] And we spend our years as a tale that is told. It's just nothing. I've told you before about Jarvis Cornwell. How my great, great, great, great grandfather.
[14:44] He was a part of the union. And he got his picture made. I showed you one time. I gave him about 30 seconds. It's a tale that's told. It's just a sigh. Someday, if the Lord doesn't return, the life that I'm living, my great, great, great grandfather, Trent Cornwell.
[15:00] All right. He did this. He did that. It's just a tale that's told. It takes 30 seconds or less. And that's all that it is as a sigh that is there. Our lives are so short.
[15:11] And that by itself would just be so heavy. That brevity. For our days have passed. Then he goes on and says, The days of our years are three score years and ten, seventy. And if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet there is strength, labor, and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
[15:30] We fly away. We learn that Moses in Deuteronomy 31, Moses lives 120 years. He doesn't say that people can only live 70 or 80 years, but that would be the expectation.
[15:40] It's what's being seen. It's now. Have you ever met a person who believes they can live to be 120 years? There's a group of people in this world who believe they can live to be 120 years. This isn't true about all of them, but it's true about a lot of them.
[15:52] Chiropractors. They all believe that they're going to live to be 120 years, and they've got a game plan of how they're going to do it. And it's not off the table, all right? They're going to do that. But it doesn't matter.
[16:03] Yet, even if you live to be 120, yet is there strength and labor and sorrow? Life is the strength and labor and sorrow. Brother Ashley asked me of the service how my week has been.
[16:13] He says, Have you been busy? And I said, Yes, which is the easiest thing to do in the world is to be busy, right? Busy is the easiest thing to accomplish. Effective, that's a little harder, right?
[16:24] But being busy is so easy. It doesn't matter if you get 70 years, 50 years, 120 years. Life is full of labor. It's full of sorrow. And then at the end of it, we all fly away.
[16:36] Oh, glory. You want me to sing it for you? All right. We all fly away. And so here we see, acknowledging that no one can understand the power of God's wrath, Moses appeals to God for instruction in planning a life that would reflect the heart of wisdom.
[16:50] That thing that I told you, you said, yeah, we know that. You had to learn that. You have to learn to number your days. You have to learn that life is short. That, yes, Trent, why would you bring this up?
[17:01] Yes, it's morbid. Yes, Trent, our life is so short, it appears for a little bit of time. It vanishes away, as it says in James. We know that. Well, let me remind you, you know that because somebody taught you that.
[17:14] And not only did they teach you that, but they kept teaching you until your heart and mind got in line with Scripture. Because most people don't think like that. Most people don't think about how short their life is.
[17:26] Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Who knows the power of that anger? Moses saw a glimpse of it as he watched around all this generation of people that are dying as a result of sin.
[17:39] And so then he prays and he says, Lord, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. A prerequisite of this prayer to number your days and apply your heart to wisdom is to recognize that your life is short and that God is big and eternal.
[17:58] That your life is small, but he is big. That your life is very short as a result of sin, but by the grace of God, our iniquities are not laid upon us. And so we can live for all eternity.
[18:10] Knowing the gospel will help you understand how we should number our days. The story that I've told the teenagers many times between Noah and Gabriel here.
[18:22] When I was at a church camp, the speaker said, preaching out of James said, between Trent and Jason should be John Dunn right now, the point guard from their team.
[18:34] But John is not there because a couple months ago, John passed away in a car accident and John had already signed up to be at camp. John was already supposed to play on the team with Trent and Jason.
[18:46] But life is a vapor. And it doesn't matter if you're a teenager in here or if you're old, we do not know when our day, God has already numbered our days. There's already a signed time that is given to us to live and to die.
[19:01] And it just grabbed a hold of my heart. And when I realized how quick my life could be, then God was able to apply wisdom and say, I want to shape your life differently than the way that you have been shaping it.
[19:12] Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy. Nothing else. What will satisfy us? Nothing but his mercy. Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy that we may rejoice and be glad in all our days.
[19:27] This mercy I've mentioned to you many times. It's certainly not getting what you deserve, but don't leave it at that. It's his blessings upon it. It's his loving and his kindness that is bestowed upon us.
[19:37] It says, God, we are satisfied in you. Because when I look around this camp and I see people are dying left and right, and I realize that I'm going to die soon and that I may never enter into the promised land that was given to me.
[19:48] And I'm watching and I realize how temporal my life is and how it's just filled with making a tent and then taking the tent down and walking a few miles and then doing that again and doing that over again. I see that life is full of labor and of sorrow.
[20:01] But if I don't look to you for your loving kindness, Lord, my heart will never be satisfied. And so this is what he can pray. He can say, make us glad according to the days wherein we have been afflicted.
[20:15] God, take what we have experienced and make us glad. A goal of our lives is to say, God, you would have to make us glad. And there are the years wherein we have seen evil.
[20:28] God, as many miserable and long days as we have, would you give us these days? Does Moses get that? We'll find out in a little bit, a couple chapters more. Moses will be taken up on the mountain.
[20:38] He won't ever get to enter the promised land. He'll go to the Lord. But then Luke, that God will bring him back and we will see him on the Mount of Transfiguration. And God will satisfy him.
[20:49] God will show him all these things that for all eternity we will have, he will make us glad. God, and so we say, make us glad, Lord. What, that would be a prayer to us, God.
[21:00] Would you satisfy our soul with your mercy, Lord? We return unto you. And so you could draw a line here. And we go all the way from that returning all the way down to another returning. Lord, we have been returning to the dust of the earth as you promised.
[21:12] But Lord, I ask, would you return? How long, Lord? We're asking that you would give us a happiness and give us a joy that is available that only that you could provide for us.
[21:23] Because you are eternal. Let the work, and this has been my prayer, and I would like to encourage you to make this the prayer of this season of life for yourself as well. And he's last, let the work appear unto thy servants and thy glory unto their children.
[21:41] God, what I know about how temporal life is and how eternal it is, I'm asking that you would help me number my days. And as I number my days, would you apply wisdom to my heart and make me glad and make me rejoice and make me understand how wonderful, even in light of affliction, life can be when I find my mercy and blessings and I find my satisfaction in you.
[22:05] Another way that would be said is would you let the gospel shape my life, Lord. With my understanding of the gospel and with all of that you have done, Lord, I just come to you. And I would say, Lord, let the work appear unto your servants and thy glory unto your children.
[22:20] God, would you show me what I am to do with my days? You have numbered them, and now will you show me what to do with them? I don't want them to just be full of labor and sorrow, but I want it to be meaningful.
[22:34] A good man is anxious to not work in vain. I don't want to live my life in vain, Lord. I want to do what you have called me to do. I want to be invested in the kingdom work that you have told me to be invested in.
[22:47] And, Lord, I want you to show your glory unto the next generation, Lord. I want you to show them what's going to be done. This generation is about to pass, and we will not be with them. We will not go into that promised land with them.
[22:58] But, Lord, when they go forth, would you show them the work that needs to be done? Would you show them your glory? And just like they would enter into the promised land with the next generation, our young people are going to head into a generation, and we don't get to follow.
[23:11] That's why it's called the next generation, right? Every one of us are going to peel off at some point, and we pray that our children will see the glory of God and do the work that He has. And then in the midst of this, everything around them, bodies after bodies, returning to the dust, people dying, let the beauty of the Lord our God upon us.
[23:32] Show us something beautiful, Lord. We, this, everything in this world is just ugly and temporal. Would you just show us something that is beautiful and eternal, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us.
[23:45] Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. And I would like to ask you, would you make that our prayer as a church? I wish I could do it, considered waiting until Sunday morning when we'd all be together.
[23:59] But those that are in here today, would you make that your prayer? As we'll take a moment and we pray, would you say, God, would you establish the work of our hands upon us? Maybe you know the work that God's given you, that you're supposed to do.
[24:13] Maybe you don't. But if you want to know what it is, it's going to take going back to verse number one, and saying, Lord, you're my dwelling place. It's going to take recognizing that you have to number your days. It's going to take being satisfied in the Lord.
[24:26] But when all those things happen in your life, you can go before the Lord and say, God, would you show me the work that I need to do? And would you establish it? I want to do something that is meaningful for the cause of Christ.
[24:38] And I want that for everyone of us in here. And as we do that, we get to show the next generation the glory of the Lord. We get to show them what it looks like for our lives to be shaped by the gospel.
[24:49] And maybe you're like me in here today and say, I know a lot of good works to be involved in. I know a lot of the work that has appeared unto the servant. But I want gospel clarity.
[25:00] I want God to say, this is where you need to spend your time. This is what you need to ignore. This is the work that I've given you to do. Your days are numbered. And because your days are numbered, you don't get to say yes to everything.
[25:13] And you have to say yes to some things. And so, God, would you show me the work that you have established before me that I'm going to do? And let it be clear to the next generation that he is worthy of our service.
[25:26] We're going to spend some time in prayer. The piano will play. And I just want to ask you to spend some time in prayer. And then we'll end our night singing a song unto the Lord. Heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you so much for this song.
[25:39] Lord, I thank you for seeing the gospel in full display, Lord. Lord, we are going to return the dust very soon. Our life is short. Lord, by these measurements, I'm already past halfway.
[25:51] And I'm okay with that, Lord, that you have numbered my days. And I don't know how many you would have for me. But I know that I want to be about the work that you have given me to do. And so, Lord, I'm praying for wisdom that you would establish the work, that you would show me the work, that I would be your servant, Lord, and you would hand me the work.
[26:09] And I would say yes to it, Lord. And I would say no to all the things that you would not have for me. And I pray that for my brothers and sisters right now, that they would pray this prayer, Lord, that was given by Moses, that you would show them, your servants, the work that you would have for them to do.