[0:00] this psalm this evening. I'm going to start by reading Psalm 90.
[0:13] The Word of God. A prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
[0:34] You return man to dust and say, Return, O children of man. For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
[0:45] You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers.
[0:56] For we are brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath.
[1:09] We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away.
[1:22] Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So, teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
[1:34] Return, O Lord. How long have pity on your servants? Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
[1:45] Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
[1:57] Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Please pray with me.
[2:11] Lord, we ask that even this evening you would establish the work of our hands, the work I've put into preparing this, but Lord, we know that that would be nothing except that you also send your spirit to take your truth and apply it to our hearts.
[2:26] And so, Lord, we ask that this evening we would walk away different than we walked in. We pray that you would use your truth to do its work in us, and help us to see more of you.
[2:38] We pray that you would be glorified in how we respond. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, as you've seen, no doubt, Psalm 90, you've noticed that Psalm 90 confronts us with the reality of life in a fallen world.
[2:55] Life is short. It doesn't last long. We're here, and then we're gone. Perhaps you've seen this displayed for you. Someone's shown you a diagram of the timeline of the world, and then they've shown you, on that timeline of the whole world, all of world history, they've shown you your lifespan, this little blip on the timeline.
[3:19] We're all going to die. There's one certainty in life, and it's death. Or was it Franklin who said there's actually two certainties, death and taxes, right? But death is a certain thing.
[3:32] And this time of year, we even get lots of reminders of the fact that death is a reality. As people decorate their front lawns with images of death for Halloween, perhaps some of your neighbors are doing that.
[3:46] We have neighbors who are catty-cornered to us across the street, and in their big front window, they've decorated with two large skulls, lifelike skulls, probably four feet high.
[3:58] The eyeballs are still in there, and they're staring at us across the street. So they decorated, not this Halloween, but last Halloween. It's been up ever since. So we've got death just kind of staring us in the face, but that's a reality, isn't it?
[4:14] Death is a reality for us all. Now, it's funny. We all know that to be true, and we would acknowledge that to be true, but we don't always live as though that's true, do we?
[4:26] Many of us, and the younger you are, I think the more this is true of you, many of us walk through life like we are invincible, like we are untouchable.
[4:36] Nothing will happen to us. We're going to live forever. You've seen those superhero movies, right, where you've got the hero, or perhaps it's the villain, but he's invincible.
[4:48] Nothing can get at him. The bullets just kind of bounce off his chest, and we walk through life like that, just thinking, I'm not going to die. Life will always go on. There'll be tomorrow, and there'll be the next day.
[5:01] Now, if we're questioned, we'll admit that someday we're going to die. We know in our heads that that's the truth, but we don't usually carry it with us into our day-to-day, and it makes sense.
[5:13] I mean, if you think about it, so far, I've been right about not dying. I've made it this far through life, and my hypothesis that I will not die has always every day been true, and so I walk into each day thinking I'm going to live forever.
[5:30] But then, somewhere along the line, maybe it's around middle age, I'm forced to reconsider, and I'm forced to reckon with the fact that I may not be as invincible as I once thought I was.
[5:46] You know what it's like. You wake up in the morning with aches and pains. You play volleyball or soccer at a church picnic, and the next day, somehow you're suddenly feeling it, or you help out at a food distribution, and you think, I can carry that box.
[6:02] I used to be able to carry that box, and then all of a sudden, I can't carry that box, and I find myself making more frequent trips to the doctor's office, and I look in the mirror, and what I see in the mirror is not what I expected.
[6:14] I see skin that sags, and I see wrinkles, and I see gray hairs, and maybe I begin to feel depressed or even hopeless, maybe frustrated, because my body doesn't do what it ought to do.
[6:27] Everything's headed downhill, and it's not supposed to be this way. Now, I want you to consider these two people. You've got this invincible young person and this depressed, hopeless, aging person.
[6:45] Both of them, both of them have forgotten what life in a fallen world looks like. This young person over here needs to realize, I do get old and die, and this aging person needs to realize, I do get old and die, and it's normal.
[7:08] And Psalm 90, I think, is going to help us here. It puts these issues right in our face, and it forces us to deal with them. In fact, it's a psalm that's traditionally been used at funerals.
[7:18] In the Anglican Church, in their Book of Common Prayer, they recommend this being the psalm that's used at funerals and memorial services. And so I'd like us to look at the psalm, and the main message of the psalm is going to be this.
[7:31] A right view of God and a right view of man will help us to have a right response. And that's really going to be our organizational structure for the evening. A right view of God and a right view of man will help us to have a right response.
[7:48] So first, we must have a right view of God. We must have a right view of God. The psalm starts with God.
[7:59] You see that there in verse 1. It says, Lord, you. And it kind of serves to heighten the contrast. It's going to come later as we look at who man is. But it starts with God. So let's look at where the psalm starts.
[8:09] Let's begin with God. And let's look at who He is here. And I want you to observe three things about God in these opening verses. First of all, He is Lord. It's the very first word of our psalm.
[8:21] He is Lord. He is Master. He is Sovereign. Even over all the places that this psalm will go, and we've read it and you know something of it, man's brevity, the sinfulness of man, even over that, God is still in control.
[8:36] He's still Lord. He's still Sovereign. And so what do we do when we don't like life, when we struggle with life in this fallen world? Well, we do what this psalm does. We cry out to God.
[8:48] We cry out to the one who is Lord, the one who is Sovereign. So He is Lord. But then check out what comes next. It says, You have been our dwelling place.
[9:02] So this Lord, this Sovereign God, is our dwelling place. Well, what does that mean? He's our dwelling place. Well, dwelling place is a place where you dwell.
[9:13] It's a place where you live. And the idea here is that we live in God. We find life in Him. Some of your translations might say He's our refuge.
[9:24] What a neat idea. He's our refuge. He's this place where I find life. I go to this living God and find life in Him. I dwell in Him. Think of your house.
[9:34] Think of your home. I imagine you like your house. It's a place of comfort. It's a place of safety. It's a place of security. And when you're away from it for a while, you can't wait to get back to your house.
[9:50] And the psalmist says, that's God. That's who God is. It says, Lord, You're the one I run to for safety and for security. You're the one that I run to for comfort.
[10:03] I long to be with You. Lord, You have been our dwelling place. Now, look for a moment at who wrote this psalm. You see it right there at the top.
[10:13] Moses, which incidentally makes this psalm perhaps the oldest psalm that we have, just considering that its author is Moses. And so it's Moses here who's saying, Lord, You've been our dwelling place.
[10:24] Now, we believe that this psalm was written near the end of those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and you can remember that story. And there's a sense in this psalm of remembering their failures and where they went wrong in the past and anticipating and looking forward to God's help as they will, in the future, enter the promised land.
[10:46] And in the midst of this, Moses says, God, You have been our dwelling place. So in the midst of 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, going here, going there, without a piece of land to call their home, they did have a dwelling place, a shelter, a refuge.
[11:06] And it wasn't a particular spot in the desert, it wasn't an oasis, it wasn't the tabernacle, it was God Himself. God, You, for those 40 years of wandering, have been our dwelling.
[11:20] You know, sometimes we get this feeling of homelessness, this homelessness. I feel unrooted, unsettled. And sometimes that can be God's way of driving us to Himself, of reminding us that we're just pilgrims traveling through a wilderness.
[11:38] Hebrews 11 talks about we're strangers, exiles on earth, desiring a better country, a better city. It reminds us that the Lord ought to be our dwelling place.
[11:50] That's where I ultimately go for dwelling. So, God is our Lord, He is our dwelling place. Finally, another attribute of God in this psalm, and it's clear, it's probably the most predominant one, He is eternal.
[12:07] God is everlasting. There's a taste of it in verse 1 when it says, You have been our dwelling in all generations. But it's bigger than just all generations. If we limit God to all generations, God's time frame is limited to the generations of man.
[12:21] And so, verse 2 stresses, God, You've not just been our dwelling place through all generations, but through all time, You have been God. Look at verse 2. It says, Before the mountains were brought forth.
[12:36] I mean, think about that. Think of the most solid, massive piece of creation you can think of. Think of a mountain. It says, Before even those mountains began to exist, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, there's this kind of multiplication of everlastings, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
[13:00] God has always existed. God will always exist. This is where we get into those thoughts that kind of do funny things with our brains and they kind of blow our minds and we don't quite get it.
[13:11] God has no beginning and God has no end. He exists eternally outside of this created world. He's not subject to the changes of this life, to its brevity.
[13:23] He's altogether different than man. He is eternal. And that is precisely why He can be my dwelling place. Because He can be a dwelling place through all generations.
[13:37] He's a sure place, a certain place, in a world full of fickleness and short-lifedness. God is an eternal dwelling. And so I need this right view of God.
[13:51] I also need, secondly, a right view of man. We must have a right view of man, mankind. So once Moses has established who God is, he immediately makes a contrast with man.
[14:06] So God is eternal. Man is altogether different. Man is short-lived. Man is sinful. And I want for us to kind of walk through verses 3 to 11. And I want us to notice man's condition here.
[14:21] So we'll start in verse 3. And you're going to see immediately this contrast with verse 2 where God was everlasting. Man, on the other hand, we're going to see is being returned to the dust.
[14:31] It says, You, God, return man to dust and say, Return, O children of man. Now, a lot of commentators believe that Moses, as he's writing Psalm 90, might have been meditating on Genesis 1 through 3, which he'd be familiar with because he wrote it.
[14:52] And he's got Genesis 1 through 3 kind of going around in his mind because there's a lot of overlap. And so here, when it says, You return man to dust, it ought to remind us of those days of creation, particularly the sixth day of creation.
[15:07] And you'll remember, Adam was created out of the ground. Genesis 2, 7 says this. It says, Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
[15:22] So you have Adam here formed out of the dust. Okay? But then you'll remember as the story goes on and we march into chapters 2 and 3, there's the fall of man in chapter 3.
[15:34] Adam sins. And then there's the curses. And do you remember the curse? The ground becomes cursed. The dust becomes cursed. And then God says to Adam, You, Adam, will return to the ground.
[15:46] Genesis 3, 19, He says, For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You're going to die. That's part of the punishment for the fall.
[15:58] And I wonder here if Moses is remembering that. He's remembering God's directive to Adam that he is going to return to the dust. And so God is everlasting.
[16:09] But man, no, he's not. And why not? He's not because of the fall. Because sin entered the world. And death exists because sin exists.
[16:20] And so here, in verse 3, we've got God saying to man, Return to the dust. And it happens again and again, day after day. Man is being returned to the dust. Return to the dust, O children of man.
[16:31] Actually, that could even be translated, O children of Adam. Another reference to Genesis 1-3. Return to dust. So man's life is brief.
[16:42] Verse 4 says that a thousand years in God's sight are but as yesterday when it's passed, or as a watch in the night. So even a thousand years. I mean, we believe Adam, we're told in Scripture, Adam lived 930 years.
[16:56] That's almost a thousand years. Almost the entire length of Adam's life are like nothing to God. A thousand years. I mean, think of just how far back a thousand years is.
[17:09] Kids, do you know how far back a thousand years is? How far back would we have to go to go back a thousand years? Could we go back to World War II? That was a long time ago. Practically black and white television.
[17:21] But we've got to keep going, right? Civil War. That was a long time ago. We've got to go back farther. Maybe to the start of America. Okay? Well, we're not there yet.
[17:32] We're about a quarter of the way there. Perhaps we could go to those olden days of colonial times. We've got to keep going further back. Shakespeare. He was old and wrote funny stuff, right?
[17:43] That doesn't sound like normal modern stuff. Got to keep going. Jamestown. Pocahontas. Keep going. Columbus. 1492. Sailed the ocean blue, right? Keep going.
[17:53] Medieval times. Kings, queens, knights. Okay, now we're getting a little bit closer to a thousand years ago. The closest date I could find that's really a well-known date to a thousand years ago is that 1066 Norman Conquest.
[18:08] Okay? That was a long time ago. 1066 Norman Conquest. That was nearly a thousand years ago. And to God, all of that is like yesterday.
[18:20] I imagine you could do a pretty good job telling me about yesterday. You could probably figure out and tell me what you had for breakfast yesterday. Right? You could do that. But can you tell me what you had a thousand days ago?
[18:32] A thousand years ago? And those thousand years are like yesterday to God. It's not far removed. And actually, if you want to get technical, it's actually not removed from God at all because God transcends time.
[18:46] Right? And so to God, you know, the 1066 Norman Conquest is as present to Him as right now in 2018. That's who God is.
[18:58] The psalm goes on. Verses 5 and 6. You'll see here three images that show the brevity of life, the shortness of life. It says, the beginning of verse 5, that our lives or mankind get swept away as with a flood.
[19:15] You know, this flood just kind of comes through and takes everything with it. I can remember as a teenager, my family traveled to Niagara Falls. Some of you have been there. And there's that one spot, I can't remember if it's the American side or the Canadian side, but you're right next to the river before it plummets over the edge.
[19:31] Right? And if you stand there and you're just watching this massive amount of water just rushing by you as it's about to plummet over the Niagara Falls, and you know that if anything gets in there, it's going to be swept away.
[19:43] It's gone. And God, it says here, is able to sweep away mankind as with a flood. The second image, it says, we are like a dream.
[19:54] Mankind in our years are like a dream. You know, the kind that, it disappears the second that you wake up. You ever have that happen? You can't exactly remember and you're saying, I know I had a dream.
[20:04] It was just moments ago. I can't remember exactly what was going on, what was happening. Right? It's just gone. The third image there is this image of grass.
[20:15] It says, like grass, it's renewed in the morning. In the morning, it flourishes and is renewed. And in the evening, it fades and it withers. In our lives, they seem to spring up and flourish.
[20:26] We're young and green and healthy. The way that grass suddenly in the spring, you know, grows, and it grows quickly, and you have to mow your lawn every few days. It has so much promise, so much potential.
[20:38] But as the summer goes on and you get into late July or into August, well, not this summer, but usually, right? It starts to wither and your lawn goes brown. It's not what it was.
[20:49] It just withers away. And that's our lives. They just wither away. And so because of the fall, our lives are short.
[20:59] They are brief. But as we get to verse 7, we realize there's another consequence to the fall. not just the problem of short life. We are sinners, and we're sinners who are under the wrath of God.
[21:14] You know, as if things were not already bad enough, our lives being so short, we also find ourselves crushed under the weight of God's wrath on our ever-present sin.
[21:27] And we all find ourselves in this condition. This is not just some of us. This is a problem for all of us. Ephesians 2 says that we are all, by nature, objects of God's wrath. All of mankind are in this boat.
[21:41] This psalm was probably written to be a community lament. And so the Israelite community would lament together as they recalled their wanderings through the wilderness. And so Moses may have in mind here, or probably does have in mind here, many of the sins and the rebellions of the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings.
[21:59] You can remember some of them. They complained and they grumbled against God. They built a golden cow and then actually bowed down and worshipped that thing.
[22:10] They showed resentment to their leaders. They failed to trust God's provision of food, not once, not twice, but many times. They failed to trust that God could defeat their enemies in the promised land.
[22:24] Again and again and again, they sinned against God. And as a result, they experienced the wrath of God. They experienced punishment for their sin. And look at verse 7.
[22:36] For we are brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath we are dismayed. Notice the vigor of God's wrath. It brings you to an end. It dismays you.
[22:48] That word dismay has this idea of being overwhelmed, kind of like an inferior army facing a much bigger superior army and they know what's going to happen. They're going to be overwhelmed.
[22:59] They're going to be dismayed. And by your wrath we are dismayed. Verse 8 says, You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins, in the light of your presence.
[23:11] Notice here, God's wrath is just. God's wrath is a just response to our sins. And what an awful position we stand in.
[23:23] Because in the light of God's presence, this is saying, in the light of God's presence, all our sin is exposed. Nothing is hidden. Nothing's hidden. Not even our secret sin.
[23:34] Not those secret sins which we think we got away with. The ones we did in the privacy of our own rooms or maybe even in the privacy of our own minds and thoughts and hearts.
[23:46] No one knows. No one can see. But God, it says here, has set our iniquities before Him. There are no secrets with Him. I remember when I was a teenager reading a book by J.C. Ryle called Thoughts for Young Men.
[24:06] I read it not once, not twice, but if my markings in the front of the book are correct, somewhere in the 90s I read this thing four times. And I remember this book being very powerful to me.
[24:16] There was an older man in our church who gave it to me and my brothers. And I remember reading this thing through and one part in particular was very powerful to me and it was this part where he talked about the eye of God, the all-seeing, ever-present eye of God.
[24:34] And let me just read a bit of this to you. Here's what Ryle says. He says, For another thing, resolve never to forget the eye of God.
[24:45] You may leave your father's house and go away like the prodigal into a far country and think that there is nobody to watch your conduct, but the eye and ear of God are there before you.
[24:56] You may deceive your parents or employers. You may tell them falsehoods and be one thing before their faces and another behind their backs, but you cannot deceive God. He knows you through and through. He heard what you said as you spoke to people today.
[25:09] He knows what you were thinking of at this minute. He has set your most secret sins in the light of his countenance and they will one day come out before the world to your shame unless you take heed.
[25:20] How little is this really felt? How many things are done continually which men would never do if they thought they were seen? How many matters are transacted in the chambers of imagination which would never bear the light of day?
[25:32] Yes, men entertain thoughts in private and say words in private and do acts in private which they would be ashamed and blushed to have exposed before the world. The sound of a footstep coming has stopped many a deed of wickedness.
[25:44] A knock at the door has caused many an evil work to be hastily suspended and hurriedly laid aside. But oh, what miserable dribbling folly is all this. There is an all-seeing witness with us wherever we go.
[25:56] Lock the door. Draw down the blinds. Close the shutters. Put out the light. It does not matter. It makes no difference. God is everywhere. You cannot shut him out or prevent his seeing. So live as in the sight of God.
[26:09] Do nothing you would not like God to see. Say nothing you would not like God to hear. Write nothing you would not like God to read. Go to no place where you would not like God to find you. Read no book of which you would not like God to say, show it to me.
[26:23] Never spend your time in such a way that you would not like to have God say, what are you doing? And that was powerful to me. The all-seeing eye of God.
[26:34] God knows all of our secret sin. He knows even the ones that are secret to me. I'm not even aware that it's a sin problem. And God is aware of it.
[26:46] Well, verse 9 says our lives just kind of fizzle out. All our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. Nothing great.
[26:57] Nothing momentous. They just fizzle out. And it's going to happen. Look at verse 10. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength, 80.
[27:07] Right? So even if you live a full life, let's say you make it to 70 or 80 or 90. Maybe you make it into your hundreds. You still die. You can't put it off for very long.
[27:21] He says, their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. And the psalmist goes on to say, while we know we will die and that our sins deserve the wrath of God, we don't even give it much thought.
[27:34] We don't think about it. Verse 11 seems to ask this kind of rhetorical question. Who considers your anger? Who considers the power of your anger? And the answer is no one.
[27:44] We don't give it much thought. We don't really think about the power of God's anger. Who considers your wrath according to the fear of you? That's kind of, who considers that the measure of wrath we receive is inversely proportional to the measure of our fear of you?
[27:58] That didn't help you at all, did it? Who considers that the less we fear you, the more wrath we receive is kind of the question. And the answer is no one.
[28:10] No one really gives it thought. We ignore it. We act like we're invincible. We act like we're going to live forever. And Moses here in this psalm forces our eyes open and he asks us to look at what's true.
[28:22] What's true about man? What's true about God? And then he asks us to respond in the right way. And that brings us to our third major point. Thirdly, we must have a right response.
[28:35] Once we've corrected our view of God and our view of man, how should we respond? We must have a right response. I want to give you three responses to think about.
[28:46] And they're just three things taken from the latter half of Psalm 90. Three right responses. First, learn to number your days.
[29:00] Verse 12 says, so teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Teach us to number our days. At the very least, this means I must live in light of the sobering reality that my days are numbered.
[29:14] I will not always exist. I will not always be there. Or I will not always have the strength that I need to accomplish what I hope to accomplish. You have dreams. You have dreams for what you're going to accomplish this week.
[29:27] It's already in your mind and on your calendar. You have dreams for what you're going to have done by next year, perhaps by the time you turn 65. Lord, teach us to number our days. It means we undertake projects with this mindset of, here's what I want to do if the Lord wills.
[29:43] My days are numbered. But this verse may also mean use those days wisely. In numbering your days, use those days wisely. Your days are numbered.
[29:54] So be careful with your use of them. Don't waste them. Don't squander them. And so the question here is, how can you maximize your days? Now your biggest concern ought to be the kingdom of God.
[30:07] How can you maximize your time and your resources for the kingdom of God? Where are you distracted? Where are you wasting time? Where are you wasting precious hours?
[30:19] How can you number your days? How can you number your hours and your minutes to produce the best investment in that which is eternal? And think of those different spheres of your lives, your family, your local church, your job, your recreational time.
[30:36] How can you invest in the eternal component of each of these? It is God's kingdom that's eternal. That's where the investment really pays off.
[30:48] You'll remember 2 Corinthians 4. Starting in verse 16, it says this, it says, So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away.
[30:59] Man's life is brief. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.
[31:14] For the things that are seen are transient. They're fading. They're short-lived. But the things that are unseen are eternal.
[31:25] And so let's invest in those things, those things which are eternal. Lord, teach us to number our days. But secondly, a second right response, prayerfully depend on God.
[31:40] Prayerfully depend on God. You'll remember Psalm 90 is a prayer. You see that at the very top, a prayer of Moses. You see it clearly in verse 13, where Moses says, Return, O Lord.
[31:54] How long? Have pity on your servants. He's praying. And there's this recognition here. If man's life is brief and God is eternal, then we are in utter need of God's help.
[32:08] And so Moses says, Return. Don't give us your wrath. We've had enough of your wrath. Have pity. Come. Help us. Return. That word return there ought to remind you of verse 3.
[32:22] Remember verse 3. In verse 3, we've got God speaking to man. And God says, Return to the dust. Part of the curse. Return to the dust. And here, man cries out to God for mercy and says, O Lord, uses the word Yahweh.
[32:38] O Lord, return to us. Come to us. Now, that's an awfully bold request. That's an awfully bold request.
[32:51] Return to us? I mean, think of verse 7. Verse 7 says, We're brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath, we're dismayed. Think of verse 8. Verse 8 says, That our iniquities are before you.
[33:04] Our secret sins are in the light of your presence. Think of verse 9 that says, All our days pass away under your wrath. If that's true, why would you then ask God to return?
[33:16] Isn't that a death wish? God, return? God of wrath, return to me? I'm a sinner. You're a God of wrath. To ask for God to return, what's going on here?
[33:28] How can Moses and the Israelites pray a prayer like that? The answer, I think, is found in verse 14. Read the next verse.
[33:39] Verse 14 says, Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
[33:50] Can I read that with a New Testament reality? Let me read it again. Satisfy us in the morning with Jesus, the one who is chesed, steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
[34:09] You see, how can I invite God to return, as it says in verse 13? How can I invite God to return to me? I can only do that because of God's steadfast love.
[34:21] I can only do that because of Jesus, because Jesus absorbed the wrath of God for me. Jesus, if you look back at verse 7, it was Jesus who was brought to an end by God's anger.
[34:41] It was Jesus, verse 7, who was dismayed by God's wrath. Jesus suffered and died for our, look at verse 8, for our secret sins so that we could enjoy, verse 8, the light of God's presence.
[34:56] satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days, 70, 80, 90, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
[35:09] Make us glad for as many days as you've afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Notice, notice here the need to be prayerfully dependent on God.
[35:25] Prayerfully dependent on God. We need Him. We cry out to Him. And so I encourage you, do that. He loves to fill His children with His presence, with His Holy Spirit for all their days. A third right response, invest in eternal work.
[35:42] Invest in eternal work. Look at the word work. It shows up in verses 16 and 17. In verse 16, we see, let your work, God, be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children.
[35:57] Notice here, God's work is eternal. It can be shown to our children and they can show it to their children. Those of you in the room, as you've done parenting, you've done this, right?
[36:09] Showing the works of God to your children. Some of you have seen the blessing of your children showing the works of God to their children. And so, God has this work that is eternal. And then you get to verse 17.
[36:21] And 17 says, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
[36:32] The prayer here is that God would make our work firm and secure and eternal. You see, if all we had in Psalm 90 was this kind of, hey, life is short, life is brief, we all die, right?
[36:47] Life is short, play hard. If that's all we had, what would be the use of their, for us, in doing anything? Why should we do anything? Might as well just kind of eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
[37:03] But, if our short lives are under the mighty hand of an eternal God, and if he's superintending my work and establishing my work, then I'd better get to work with him.
[37:17] There's something I need to do. Ephesians 2 says this, it says, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has prepared beforehand for us to walk in them.
[37:31] We're designed by God to work. God wants me to do good works. In fact, God has prepared them for me. He's prepared them in advance for me to do. And so, in Psalm 90, I pray, oh Lord, establish the work of my hands.
[37:46] You've called me to do this. Establish the work of my hands, which is, verse 16, God's work. Lord, establish my work that is your work. So, what's the work that you're involved in that needs that prayer?
[37:59] Where you pray, Lord, here's what I'm doing. Would you establish it for your kingdom? Maybe it's your job. Maybe it's your work in raising your children. Maybe it's your work in this church.
[38:11] And we pray, Lord, establish the work of our hands. We've got our hands in this, but it's your work and it's our work and would you establish it? In closing, our lives, our lives are brief.
[38:28] We've got this, we've got brief lives, but we've got this eternal God. You see what great assurance and comfort that can bring to us? But some of you, hearing these things, it ought to bring you dread.
[38:45] I mean, tonight's message should be disturbing to you because what we've said is that my secret sins are known by a wrathful, eternal God who's able to return me to the dust.
[38:58] 2 Peter 3. In 2 Peter 3, we find Peter kind of borrowing some of the language of Psalm 90. And so Peter says in verse 8, he says, remember that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day and that kind of reminds us of what we saw in Psalm 90.
[39:19] And Peter then goes on basically to say this, he basically says because God's timing is different than what you expect, don't assume that he's slow to exercise his wrath on you.
[39:32] He will do it, Peter says. He's going to do it and he's going to do it in his own good time. And so he says, in the meantime, consider this, perhaps God is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
[39:47] Maybe God's being patient with you. God has not yet returned any of you to the dust and you don't know when that will be and maybe it'll be when you're 70, maybe it'll be when you're 80, maybe it'll be tomorrow.
[40:02] But for now, he has not. And consider how patient God is being. He's giving you a chance to repent, to trust that on the cross, Christ absorbed God's wrath for you.
[40:21] So trust in Christ. Turn to God and you'll find yourself satisfied in the morning with his steadfast love. Let's pray.