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Well, I wanna thank you for the 
warm welcome that you've given to me and to Dr. Renahan over 
the last few days. It's been a sweet time of study 
and fellowship together, and thrilled to be opening the word 
with you this morning. I'll ask you to turn in your 
Bibles to Psalm 90. Psalm 90, the one Psalm of Moses 
that is in the Psalter, though not the only song that Moses 
wrote, nor the only one that you will ever sing, we're told 
that we will one day sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. And 
even here in this song of Moses, there's an anticipation of the 
Lamb. Psalm 90, we'll read the entirety 
of it and then ask the Lord to bless our consideration of this 
passage. This is the holy and the authoritative 
word of God. So let us give it our careful 
attention. 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, even 
from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn man to 
destruction and say, return, O children of men, for a thousand 
years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past. And 
like a watch in the night, you carry them away like a flood. 
They are like sleep. In the morning, they are like 
grass, which grows up. In the morning, it flourishes 
and grows up. In the evening, it is cut down 
and withers. For we have been consumed by 
your anger, and by your wrath we are terrified. You have set 
our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your 
countenance. For all our days have passed 
away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. 
For the days of our lives are 70 years, and if by reason of 
strength, they are 80 years. Yet their boast is only labor 
and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away. Who knows 
the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is 
your wrath. So teach us to number our days, 
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long? and have compassion on your servants. 
Oh, satisfy us early with your mercy, that we may rejoice and 
be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the 
days in which you have afflicted us, the years in which we have 
seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants and your glory 
to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord 
our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands. Yes, establish 
the work of our hands. Let's ask the Lord to help us 
as we come to his word. Our God in heaven, we do bless 
you and we thank you for this word and even this word of hope 
that you would return. Lord, we bless you that you indeed 
have returned to us in the very person of your son. As we look 
into these words this morning, we pray that you would give us 
eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to receive all that 
your spirit is saying through your servant, Moses. Lord, that 
this word may not be a word of indictment against us, but it 
would be a word of life. Lord, for any who are perishing, 
may this be the word of life that causes them to reach out 
and receive salvation today from Christ Jesus. Lord, for those 
of us who are in Christ Jesus, may this build up our faith in 
more and greater strength. Lord, attend the preaching of 
your word now by the illumination of your spirit, that we might 
behold wonderful things in your law, and that we might rejoice 
in the gospel of your son. We ask this in his strong and 
precious name, amen. You are just a vapor that appears 
for a little while and then vanishes away. These are the words of 
James 4, verse 14, and they're a sobering reminder of the brevity 
of life. And though we often marvel at 
how quickly time passes, we also sometimes live as if we had all 
the time in the world. We waste time, and then we mourn 
how quickly it passes by us. We need frequent reminders of 
how quick and how fleeting life truly is. And this is not meant 
to discourage us. If we're wasting time, it might 
be an indictment against all of our indigents, perhaps, but 
it's not meant to discourage us, but to stir us up to lay 
hold of that which really lasts. It's true that life is passing, 
but that doesn't mean life doesn't have to matter. that it's so 
quickly passing by and so difficult to hold onto might make us think 
that it's all for naught, but it's not all for naught. One day we will give an account 
of ourselves in this little brief breath or vapor of life and every 
vein and empty word we will be called account for. For every 
thought and word and deed, it will all be weighed in the scales 
and we will stand before the one with whom we have to do. 
And this life indeed matters, not just for the moment and the 
day, but for all of eternity. Though life is fleeting and our 
days are, as Job once said, few and full of trouble, It is not 
for that reason unconcerned with eternity. Ecclesiastes 3.11 says 
that God has placed eternity in the heart of every man, that 
everyone knows when honest with himself or herself, that indeed 
we were made for more than this, and that this is but a prelude 
to the reality that will follow hereafter. Man finds his true 
good in his abiding home in something other than this short-lived stint 
on earth. Jesus instructs us to store up 
for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, 
where thieves do not break in and steal. And in fact, we are 
seeking a true home and a lasting treasure even now. In Psalm 90, 
we have the words of Moses, the only of his that are recorded 
in the Psalter for us, written to give counsel to a rootless 
and a ruined people. He writes to people who have 
never really had their own home, so to speak. The middle portion 
of the Psalm is severe. In fact, it is severe, beginning 
in verse three, all the way down through about the beginning of 
verse 12 are some of the grimmest passages in all of Scripture. 
It's designed to heal those who will take it to heart. It's designed 
to warn those who are living frivolously. Death and judgment 
are neither the first word nor the last word in this Psalm. 
That's good news. Rather, Moses begins by directing 
our attention toward the one that endures, namely God himself. 
He then considers how far man has fallen from his original 
dwelling place with God. He shows us through the middle 
portion of the Psalm what real spiritual homelessness and desperation 
and destitution looks like. Finally, he lights the way back 
home, if you will open your eyes to behold this light, that he 
shows a rootless and a ruin and a wandering people, indeed, what 
it is to dwell securely forever. There's a series of hopeful petitions 
that end this Psalm, beginning in verse 12 and all the way through 
the end, hopeful petitions for which the answer has already 
been given. already been given. We'll come 
to that in time. Each of these petitions ultimately 
finds its definitive answer in the person and the work of Christ. 
So I want to take this psalm, the entirety of it, in four portions, 
as it were. First, we'll consider an eternal 
dwelling, verses 1 and 2, an eternal dwelling. Secondly, we'll 
consider a brief journey, verses 3 to 6. Thirdly, a hard journey, 
verses seven through 11. And then finally, the way back 
home, verses 12 through 17. Well, let's first begin in the 
first two verses, considering an eternal dwelling. Look with 
me at the text. Moses begins with a prayer to 
God in which believers are reminded of the fact that they are sojourners 
and wanderers upon the earth. Lord, you have been our dwelling 
place in all generations. He talks to a people that by 
all accounts are homeless, and yet they aren't homeless because 
God is their stronghold, their refuge, the place where they 
live. In fact, this is a somewhat strange 
way to speak about a someone, a he, a him, a who. It describes 
him as a somewhere. Lord, you have been our dwelling 
place or our refuge. And we tend to think, well, God's 
not a where, he's a who. It's a someone who is our dwelling 
place. And even if you find that your 
foot, as it were, can't plant itself on this earth and really 
call a place home, and is any place ever really home? And even 
home doesn't stay home. Some of you have grown older 
and you've tried to go home. And it's not there. Or it's there, 
but it's not home anymore. It's not what you remember. And 
perhaps you feel this. Some people say you never really 
do go home. You leave and you return and the tree you climbed 
in as a kid has been cut down. Your room has been turned into 
your mother's sewing room. Things like that. Home is not 
home, as you recall it. And as you grow older, there's 
a sense of fleetingness, there's a sense of temporariness, a sense 
of just stopping for a little while and then moving on. But 
he says to these people, the Israelites at the time of the 
Exodus, who had lived as strangers in a foreign land, a land not 
their own, the land of Goshen in Egypt, who now are wandering 
through a wilderness, who've never really had a place where 
they could say, this is really mine. He says to them, but they've 
not been without a home. God has been their dwelling and 
their strength in all generations. If you're with God, if you're 
with God and he's with you, listen carefully, you are home. Nothing's gonna change it. It's 
not gonna be remodeled. It's not gonna be converted. 
It's not gonna be torn down. It's not gonna be burned down. 
If you have God, you have home, and the home will always be there. These words then would have rung 
especially true for the faithful during the time of Moses. Neither 
they nor their forebearers had ever really possessed a land 
of their own. And even Abraham, who did end up at the land of 
Canaan, dwelt in a tent as a sojourner, as a nomad, a kind of Bedouin, 
just passing through. In fact, we're told that when 
Abraham got to Canaan, that he was still looking for a city. 
This was the promised land. And yet when he got to the promised 
land, it wasn't it in some respect. He lived in the promised land 
as a sojourner. The place that was supposed to 
be his home never really was his home. He was looking for 
a city whose builder and maker is God. a city eternal in the 
heavens. Canaan was a good place, a land 
flowing with milk and honey, but Canaan was like an oasis 
on your journey, but Canaan was not really his eternal home or 
habitation. Some might object and say, ah, 
but the psalm says God is our eternal dwelling place. But Hebrews 
11 says that Abraham was looking for a city whose builder and 
maker is God, which is arguably heaven. And so Abraham was looking 
for a place, but Moses is talking about a person. But I want to 
propose to you that in one respect, those two things coincide. They 
coalesce together. Heaven, indeed, is a created 
realm, and it's the dwelling place of God Most High, and it's 
the most sublime of all the created realms. It's the place where 
His glory shines most resplendently and where our hearts are most 
ravaged and glorified and made joyful. but there's a certain 
sense in which heaven is heaven because it's there that God places 
his most wonderful manifested presence. Consider the words 
of John in his Apocalypse chapter 21, verse 22. John says, and 
I saw no temple in the city, listen to this carefully, for 
its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb. I think 
he gets at what Moses is getting at here. The dwelling place is 
God himself. Not to say there isn't an actual 
place that is, you know, in time, space, so to speak, but the place 
is where God is. That's where home is. To call 
God our dwelling place here and now is to experience a foretaste 
of heaven on earth, a bit of permanence in the midst of impermanence, 
if God is your dwelling place. Now in verse two, Moses enlarges 
on the glory of verse one by explaining just what sort of 
dwelling place God is. We might almost imagine verse 
two as a kind of home inspection. Think of it like a home inspection. 
You buy a new home and you have an inspector come. We moved to 
a new home a couple of years ago and did our due diligence 
and had an inspector come and he told us, you know, you have 
new windows, they're efficient, the roof looks new, about three 
years old, it's going to last through several Pennsylvania 
winters and summers and the foundation looks solid and the It's an old 
stone heap. The stone looks, you know, the 
grouting has been redone and this is a solid home. And we 
do a home inspection because what we want to know is that 
the home is not gonna fall down on us and or cost us a lot of 
money to maintain. Listen carefully. If God is your 
dwelling place, no maintenance required. If God is your dwelling 
place, the roof is not sagging and leaky. The windows are not 
inefficient. You don't shiver through the 
winter. It's perfect. no repair needed, 
no maintenance needed, not even by God himself, because he's 
pure act, unchanging, unchangeable, glorious in his being, not wearing 
out or growing old. Look at what he says in verse 
two. or you had given birth, is actually 
how it says, you had given birth to the world. From everlasting 
to everlasting, you are God. There are places in the world 
today that are still standing and in constant use that are 
really very old structures. I think that work began on the 
nave of Westminster Abbey in the year 1050. That's a long 
time ago, and they still have Evensong in that nave every day 
of the week. I've attended an even song in 
that nave in a building that began in 1050. The Pantheon in 
Rome is a domed, is one of the world's oldest domes. The Pantheon 
has been in continuous use for nearly 2,000 years. I'm sure 
that they've already performed several Catholic masses in there 
this morning. I had to wait outside while the 
mass was being finished to go in and stand inside this ancient 
building, which was for a few hundred years, a pagan temple. 
And for about 1700 years has been a Roman church, Catholic 
for much of that, still in continuous use for nearly 2000 years. There 
are people who live in Greece, old Macedonia that currently 
live in houses that are more than 500 years old. People live 
in houses in which the vast majority of the people who ever called 
that house home are long dead. The house I live in, in this 
continent, the vast majority of people who ever called that 
place home are long dead. It stood, it's been there for 
a while. But listen to this language, 
even before the mountains were brought forth and you gave birth 
to earth or the world, the question is, you know, how sturdy is God? How about this, sturdier than 
the world, than the world, not just this or that structure, 
than the world itself. The reason he points to the mountains, 
especially the mountains, is because the mountains tend to 
be the most constant. I mean, if you're a native of 
the Fraser Valley, and you're of any length of age, you've 
probably seen several changes in the cities that you would 
call home. You've seen houses get paint 
jobs, and you've seen houses torn down, and you've seen new 
buildings go up and new roadways be paved, and you've seen lots 
of kind of infrastructural change go on around you. But the mountain 
peaks and the ridgelines, I would lay odds, are almost exactly, 
if not precisely, as you remember them from your youth. It's probably 
about right. And as the buildings of men, 
you know, come and go, we raise them up, we use them, we tear 
them down, we build better ones. Or they crumble and they become 
haunts for jackals. Buildings come, buildings go, 
the landscape down here changes, but the mountains are fairly 
constant. The mountains, as it were, tower above us and they 
keep watch over the changing vicissitudes and affairs of humans. And yet he says, even before 
the mountains were brought forth or you gave birth to the earth 
and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. 
Here's his point. It's a kind of a strange statement. 
His point is this, how old is God? Wrong question. God's not old. God's not young. He certainly doesn't wear out. 
He's actually not even of this world. This world is from him, 
but he's not from it. He made it, but it didn't make 
him. In fact, watch this. You might 
even say, I ask about my house, who built this? I actually know 
the name of the person who built the house. I have it on a record. 
Who built this in the other houses in the township that he built? 
If you ask of God who built this, the answer is no one built this. 
He's not built. He's not that kind of dwelling. 
He has no builder. He has no maker. He's not made 
to be. God just is. From everlasting 
to everlasting, you are God. God is being, not becoming. God 
is fullness of being, the I am that I am. He, the Lord, does 
not change. Men turn, men change, but God 
does not. You have been our dwelling place 
in all generations. And what better dwelling place 
than a dwelling place not even made without hands, watch this, 
not even made at all, just is. This is the glory of our dwelling 
place. And this is the one with whom 
for a short while, Adam and Eve lived in the garden until they 
themselves, as it were, disqualified themselves from that dwelling 
with God. Psalm 102 offers God's immutability as the only hope 
of those who would not be swept away by the world. Of old you 
founded the earth, Psalm 102, 25, and the heavens are the work 
of your hands. Even they will perish, but you 
endure. All of them will wear out like 
a garment, like clothing. You will change them, and they 
will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will 
not come to an end. Consider in the second place, 
a brief journey, verses three to six, a brief journey. If God's 
years will not come to an end, the same cannot be said for yours 
and for mine. Moses now challenges us with 
the reality that each human life is astonishingly short, all illusions 
to the contrary notwithstanding. From the perspective of eternity, 
our lives are an insignificant moment, a breath, a vapor. Verse 
three, you turn man to destruction. Your translation might say you 
turn man or return man to the dust. The word there actually 
means crushings. And so destruction or fine dust 
particles would both kind of get the sense of it. You turn 
man back into crushings. You turn him to destruction or 
to dust. And you say, Return Oh children 
of men now, here's the point. I want to make about this briefly 
I'll return to this in just a moment, but it's not the point here is 
not just the law of entropy, you know things break down Have 
you heard people say this about death the deaths just a part 
of life? That's stupid It's exactly exactly 
not that Death is not a part of life. Death is the termination 
of life. Death is exactly what I'm trying 
to avoid as I try to, but death is the reason that I eat my broccoli 
and look both ways before I cross the street, because I prefer 
life to it. It's not a part of life. It's 
not just the natural way of things. Death is not natural. We tend 
to think that because death is common, it must be natural. It's common, I grant, but not 
natural. It's unnatural. you Death is 
actually the destruction of our nature, not the development and 
the flourishing of our nature. And the reason is because God 
himself says, return to dust. It's not just that, well, men 
naturally tend toward the grave. Humans don't naturally tend toward 
the grave. They naturally are built for 
and tend toward life. And if they tend toward the grave, 
it's because of something unnatural that has intruded itself into 
our history that has brought about the consequence that God 
says, return to the dust. For you are dust and to dust 
you shall return, Genesis 319. Charles Spurgeon says, the frailty 
of man is thus forcibly set forth. God creates him out of the dust 
and back to the dust he goes at the word of his creator. God 
resolves and man dissolves. A word created, a word destroys. Return, O children of men. Verse 
four then colorfully amplifies this. And what we learn right 
away is it's not just the individual life of each one of us that is 
astonishingly short. It's actually the entire history 
of the world that is astonishingly short. Look at verse four. For 
a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is 
past, like a watch in the night. To God, the world is not old. To God, the world is not old. The entire history of from the 
beginning and in the beginning until this moment is but a vapor 
and a breath. A thousand years is something 
that just occurred, a day that just passed. Of course, with 
God being eternal, there is no past and future, properly speaking, 
but the Psalm speaks this way probably because to us, the moments 
that are past seem much shorter than the moments that are yet 
to come. Again, look at this. A thousand years in your sight 
are like yesterday when it is past. If you think about tomorrow, 
I would lay odds that in your imagination or anticipation, 
tomorrow seems longer than your memory of yesterday seems to 
you. Maybe I could illustrate this by stretching it out a little 
bit. You plan a one-week vacation, and there's a lot of fun in the 
planning. You plan the activities and what you're going to see 
and what you're going to do. And as you're planning that vacation, 
anticipating that week, it feels like that week is just gonna 
be long and full and rich. Then you go on the vacation, 
you enjoy it. And then you're driving home at the end of the 
week. And it feels as if you just blinked and all of your 
planning and all of your anticipation that looked like it was stretched 
out for miles in front of you is now just but a already fading 
memory. The world seems short. Your life 
seems brief to you in retrospect. In fact, the older you get, the 
shorter your life seems to have been to you. This seems to be 
the common experience of most people. He then says, it's like 
a watch in the night. A watch in the night is something 
like three to four hours. That would be a night watch. 
Most of us sleep through watches in the night. And the watch in 
the night, for those of us that are sleeping at any rate, goes 
by very quickly. If you can't sleep, it tends 
to drag on for hours. But if you can sleep, it goes 
by quickly. I woke up this morning, I'm still on East Coast time 
and a little discombobulated, but I woke up this morning and 
I was sort of rested, but I thought I could really use some more 
sleep. But there was a, felt like maybe it was getting light 
and I wasn't sure. And I turned over and I looked at my and it 
said 3.30. It's just great. I love that. It's always when 
it's 12 minutes before your alarm goes off that it's just, you 
know, 3.30. Perfect. Rolled over and closed 
my eyes, opened them, felt like three seconds, 6.30. That's a watch in the night. 
You ready for this? That's not just happening in 
the nighttime. That's how your whole life is going by. It's 
like you blink and 20 years are gone or 70 or 80. This is your life. God says your 
life is going by at blinding speed like a watch in the night. 
It passes you by. The point here of a thousand 
years to a day is not meant to be an exact ratio. It's not a 
kind of God years to human years kind of measurement or ratio. 
Listen to Matthew Henry. He says, betwixt a minute and 
a million of years, there is some proportion, but betwixt 
time and eternity, there is none. The long lives of the patriarchs 
were nothing to God, so much as the life of a child that is 
born and dies the same day is to theirs. In verse 5 and then 
to verse 6, verse 5, he says, you carry them away like a flood. 
They are like sleep. Time picks us up and carries 
us off. I don't know if you've ever watched 
those videos on YouTube of a flash flood where somebody's looking 
out their own office building and then suddenly a river just 
turns the corner, picks up all the cars in the parking lot and 
takes them away. You just think, this is a car, 
this is 2,000 pounds. And a river, a flood just comes 
and picks it up and carries it away. Once upon a time, a flood 
came and carried away the entire human race in a moment, except 
for eight souls saved alive in an arc. Time is doing this. Time is like a flood that picks 
you up and carries you away, and you can fight the flood, 
but you won't prevail. He says they're like sleep, like 
a sleep. A couple thoughts here. Your 
life is like a flood and it's just picking up everything and 
carrying it on to its destination at a blinding and alarming speed. 
Strange if you would sleep through the flood. Some of you are sleeping 
through the flood and you don't even realize it is a flood. Your 
life is few of days and full of trouble and you need to wake 
up. You need to wake up. People sleep through a life that's 
just flying by. This is what sin does. It stupefies 
us. It dulls us. It makes us unaware 
of actually how quickly life is fleeing by. He then changes 
the imagery once again, end of verse five into six. In the morning, 
they're like grass, which grows up. In the morning, it flourishes 
and grows up. In the evening, it's cut down and it withers. 
Charles Spurgeon unpacks this little section with very memorable 
words. He says, blooming with abounding beauty, till the meadows 
are all bespent with gems, the grass has a golden hour, even 
as a man in his youth has a heyday of flowery glory. I interrupt 
Spurgeon for a moment. Some of you are right now in 
what he calls the heyday of flowery glory. You're young, you're strong, 
the world is your oyster, many roads lie before you, Everything's 
going your way and the wind is at your back. Just a quick warning 
for males, that's up to about 25 years of age typically. Then the slow breakdown sets 
in and then it speeds up and back to Spurgeon. The scythe 
ends the blooming of field flowers and the dews at night weep their 
fall. Listen to this carefully. Here 
is the history of grass. Here is the history of grass, 
sown, grown, blown, mown, gone. I give you the history of grass 
once more. Sown, grown, blown, mown, gone, he goes on, and the 
history of man is not much more. Natural decay would put an end 
to both of us in the grass in due time. Few, however, are left 
to experience the full result of age, for death comes with 
his scythe and removes our life in the midst of its verdure. 
How great a change and how short a time. The morning saw the blooming, 
the evening sees the withering. A short journey. Thirdly, a hard 
journey, already indicated, but a hard journey. Lest we think 
that all this hastening on to death is merely the result of 
our created nature, a kind of things break down, entropy as 
it were. The psalmist stresses that our 
mortal condition is a judgment executed upon us by God himself. 
It's not just that you're going to die, it's going to die, you're 
going to die because God's your enemy. It's a hard journey. It's not just a short one. It's 
one in which we are born enemies of the very God of all creation. 
We are born dead in trespasses and sins. We are born under a 
curse and under condemnation. Look at verse seven, for we have 
been consumed by your anger. None of these. None of these 
false little statements, death's just a part of life, that is 
a lie straight out of hell designed as a coping mechanism for people 
that don't wanna face the reality that we die and it's because 
of sin that we do so. Face it, face it. We've been consumed by your anger 
and by your wrath, we've been terrified. You can imagine Moses 
saying this in the wilderness in which sometimes 15 and sometimes 
20,000 people were cut down by the angel of death in a day. 
If you think of the number of people that died in the wilderness, 
all of the ones 20 years and older, except for Caleb and Joshua, 
failed to enter the land of Canaan. In a 40-year window, every single 
one of those died. You were literally digging hundreds, 
if not thousands, of graves every single day over that 40-year 
period, if our estimations of the population are even roughly 
accurate. Death was a daily thing. And it was punishment. It was 
because they refused to go into the promised land and believe 
God. When they went in, they listened to the 10 spies and 
they didn't listen to Caleb and Joshua. Then everyone 20 and 
over was cut down and laid into a sandy grave in a wilderness 
of wandering. For we have been consumed by 
your anger and by your wrath, we've been terrified. It's true 
that God does not change. This is true. But God does change 
his dealings with us, that he does set his eyes for evil against 
those whose hearts are against him, against those that reject 
his rule, against those that defy his anointed. He does set 
themselves against them and he deals with them in justice. It's 
not just Israel though. When Adam fell, God's way toward 
man was generally turned into one of hostility. Return to dust, 
he says, not just to Adam, but to all who are in Adam. Moses 
certainly thinking of all those that died in the wilderness in 
so many breakings forth of God's wrath, extraordinary ways, but 
then also the ordinary breaking forth of his wrath in the day 
to day of death. Hebrews chapter eight, verse 
nine says that of God's old covenant, that those who were in it did 
not continue. And it says, God says, and I 
did not care for them. Listen, this is mankind in Adam, 
that they were with God in the garden, happy, holy, dwelling 
with Him in His special dwelling place. And when they sinned, 
they were exiled east of the garden, as it were, without God 
in the world. We'll talk about grace in a moment, 
don't despair. But this is man born outside of the holy, happy 
dwelling place of God, not cared for, as it were, uprooted and 
thrown out. Psalm 130, verse three, the psalmist 
asked this question, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, 
O Lord, who could stand? Look at verse 10 of our verse 
eight of our passage. You have set our iniquities before 
you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. Hebrews 
4 says that all things are naked and laid bare before the eyes 
of Him with whom we have to do. That there is no hiding from 
God as we might hide from each other, that everything is as 
it were done in broad daylight. What we do in darkness, God deals 
with in light. What is exposed by his light 
is the depravity sometimes that even we ourselves do not know. 
The psalmist elsewhere prays, equip me of hidden faults. You're 
worse than you know, and if we shine a light onto the dark corners 
of your soul, what we'll actually find out is motives more perverse 
than we might even have imagined. You have set our iniquities before 
you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. What's the 
consequence? The wages of sin, we all know 
very well, are death. Verse nine, for all of our days 
have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. A sigh is a kind of breathing 
out without a breathing in, a kind of, we call it expiring. To inspire 
is to breathe in, to expire is to breathe out. If it doesn't 
get followed by another inspire, that's it, right? You know, you pull a breath in 
afterward, but one day you're just gonna... And borrowing the 
return of Christ before that day comes, that will be it. We 
end our years like a sigh. Thomas Watson says, we come into 
the world with a cry. We go out of it with a groan. Death, the last enemy, seems 
to prevail incessantly over us. Verse 10 says that even our years 
are cut short. The days of our lives are 70 
years, if by strength they are 80. That's the three score in 
10 of the old King James. You remember that Moses lived 
to 120, Methuselah lived to 969. God, as it were, curtails the 
days. By the time we get to the time 
of David, 70 is the new 120, and 80 is ancient. Some of you in this room might 
be a little beyond that, perhaps. You're the ancient ones, according 
to this Psalm. Our years are but few. Short compared to the ancients 
who lived long ago. His life and his place, forget 
him. Look at verse 10 again. For their boast or their pride 
is only labor and sorrow. It's soon cut off and they fly 
away. I don't even know that verse 10 necessarily means, by 
boast and pride, I don't think it necessarily even means sinful 
boasting or sinful pride, but like what it's saying is all 
of your achievements, all the things that you did. I told you 
the middle section will be grim, so here's a little bit more. Not a perfect prediction, but 
I'm going to hazard a guess. Time and place will forget you, 
and it will forget me. It will forget you, and it will 
forget me. I told you that I live in this old house. It was first 
owned by a guy named Watson, who then sold it to his son. 
I know how much he sold it for, because it's in the record. 100 
pounds gold in hand is what it says. That's not what I paid 
for it. I don't know what that even means. I don't know if Mr. Watson was a Christian. Our house 
in the 19th century was called the Fulmer House. The Fulmer 
family was a prominent family in our little township. I don't 
know if the Fulmers are in heaven or not. I don't know what Mr. 
Fulmer's favorite color was or whether he liked music or, you 
know, enjoyed watching the foxes run around the creek like I do. 
I have no idea. I'm living in his house that 
was even named after him. It's not going to be named after 
me. It's not going to be the Dalzell house when I'm gone. 
In fact, when I'm gone, it will forget me. Do you know the names 
of your great, great, great grandfathers? You actually have quite a few 
of them. Do you know their names? I would lay odds that most of 
you don't. A few of you did that research thing and you paid for 
the access so the Mormons told you where you came from. So some 
of you know the names. I found out recently that two 
of my great, great, great grandfathers, one an immigrant from Sweden, 
one from England, both fought in the Civil War, one for the 
militia in Indiana and one for the one in Illinois. I know the 
battle in which one of them was. I even know the name of one of 
them because my great grandmother grew up with him in her home 
when she was born in 1896, so I have a little bit of a connection. 
I don't know whether great-great-great-grandpa Greenberg was a Christian. I 
don't know if he's in heaven or not. I know almost nothing 
about him. He's my blood, and it's not that 
far back. Your time and your place will 
forget you. Your life, which seems so important and so memorable, 
and you want there to be a sort of lasting monument and memorial 
to you, so little about you is remembered, if anything at all, 
our lives are brief, momentary, and soon to be forgotten. Even 
Even your great-grandchildren may not even know your name. 
My children might know the names of my grandparents, but they'd 
have to even think about it, and they know very little else 
about them. They never met them. Its boast is only for labor and 
sorrow, soon cut off and they fly away. Verse 11, to finish 
up this portion. Who knows the power of your anger? As the fear of you, so is your 
wrath. The point is this, as the fear of you. As the greatness 
and the glory of God, so is his wrath. Who can understand this 
wrath under which we stand? Spurgeon once more. Good men 
dread that wrath beyond conception, but they never ascribe too much 
terror to it. Again, I interrupt him. You cannot 
exaggerate the holy opposition of God to sin. If somebody says, 
oh, surely God's not that angry at sin. He sends people to an 
eternal condemnation. He is a consuming fire of holiness. 
It is his nature to be wholly opposed to wickedness. To understand 
his opposition to wickedness, you would almost need to actually 
comprehend his very being itself. Who can know? Bad men, Spurgeon 
says, are dreadfully convulsed when they're awake to a sense 
of it, but their whore is not greater than it had need be. 
I interrupt him again. Sometimes people say, don't, 
you're just, you know, people are, I'm under the wrath of God, 
and everyone else says, chill out. Don't chill out. If you 
feel yourself under the wrath of God, don't convince yourself 
it's not so bad, or God's just gonna kind of shrug his shoulders 
at it. He's not a God who can indulge sin. For it is a fearful 
thing to fall into the hands of an angry God. Holy Scripture, 
Spurgeon says, when it depicts God's wrath against sin, never 
uses it hyperbole. Scripture never exaggerates God's 
wrath against sin. He goes on, it would be impossible 
to exaggerate it. Whatever feelings of pious awe 
and holy trembling may move the tender heart, it is never too 
much moved. Apart from other considerations, 
the great truth of the divine anger, when most powerfully felt, 
would never impress the mind with a solemnity in excess of 
the legitimate result of such a contemplation." Brothers and sisters, this is 
not the last word in the psalm. And I come to our final consideration, 
the way back home, the way back home. For all of this, a hopeful 
note is struck in verse 12. I struggle where to put verse 
12 in a sermon outline because, literarily, it really is a conclusion 
to the section from 7 down through 12. But in terms of a transition, 
it moves us into a series of petitions that really are the 
hope in this psalm. So teach us to number our days 
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. And here is a little note of 
hope. In the middle of all this grim devastation, the possibility 
that you could gain a heart of wisdom or bring in a heart of 
wisdom is now suggested to us. Lord, give us, help us number 
our days that we might bring in a heart of wisdom. And here's 
what I wanna say. Your life might be short and your life might 
be hard, but you don't have to be a fool about it. Your life 
might be short and hard, but that doesn't mean you gotta be 
a fool. You could actually live well and wisely through these 
few days and full of trouble. It's possible to pass this short 
life well. First begins with a prayer. Teach 
us to number our days. It begins here. He asked God 
to help him number his days in such a way that he gains or brings 
in a heart of wisdom. This might seem odd, given that 
in verse 10, he's already said, our days are few, 70 if due to 
strength, perhaps 80. So why in verse 12 does he say, 
teach us to number our days? Hasn't he already numbered them 
for us? But there's numbering and there's 
numbering. There's counting and there's 
taking account. And they're not quite the same 
thing. Calvin rather says that because 
of our shameful stupidity, his words, we fail to take the brevity 
of life to heart. We know the number, but we don't 
take account of the number. We don't even really know the 
number, do we? But we have a rough idea of the average lifespan 
of the North American male, 77. If you make it past that, you're 
borrowed time, as they say. Actually, it's all borrowed time. 
Spurge Calvin says this, it's surely a monstrous thing that 
men can measure all distances without themselves, that they 
know how many feet the moon is distant from the center of the 
earth, what space there is between different planets, and in short, 
they can measure all the dimensions of both heaven and earth, and 
yet they cannot number three score and 10 years in their own 
case. That we could, as it were, begin to fathom the visible cosmos, 
but not really take an account of the perhaps 70 years given 
to us. No man sets out living rightly 
unless he knows his end. And barring Christ's return, 
your end is death. Take that into account when you 
plan your life. I don't mean the big plans. I 
mean like the next words you say, the actions you undertake, 
that kind of planning of your life. This should lead us to 
seek a better end, a prize of the heavenly calling. Numbering 
our days soberly and realistically should cause us to live wisely. 
Jesus speaks about a man who sought to be rich in this life. 
And he imagined that he had many years of pleasure ahead of him. 
And yet he said in the parable, you fool, this night, your soul 
is required of you. Listen, you don't know how much 
time you have. Start living wisely right now. If that man had known how to 
number his days, he would have sought to be rich toward God 
rather than rich in the things of this world. Verse three told 
us, he says to man, return, O children of men. This is an interesting 
turn here now in verse 13. The psalmist says, return, O 
Lord. And there's a bit of a play here 
going on. Verse three, the Lord says to us, return to dust. And here the psalmist cries out, 
O Lord, return to us. Now, with God, there's no variation 
or shadow due to turning, but in terms of his manifested presence, 
his presence can go and the manifestation of his presence can come. And 
what he's saying is, Lord, come to me, shine your face upon me, 
make me feel your presence, your favor, your power, the consolation, 
the joy of knowing you and being with you. Come back to me, O 
Lord. In Isaiah 63 verse 10, I won't turn there, but just 
mention it. We're told that in response to Israel's sin, it 
says of God, therefore he turned to be their enemy and he himself 
fought against them. Verse three is an example of 
that. He said, return to dust, O children of men. It's a picture 
of how God is toward all of us who have rebelled in Adam. In 
Isaiah 63, verse 17, the prophet phrased this, return for the 
sake of your servants. So he turned himself to become 
their enemy. Now he says, return for the sake of your servants. 
And in Isaiah 64, verse one, the prophet says this, oh, that 
you would rend the heavens and come down. Lord, come and get 
us. And in the context, he says, 
we were your children, but now it's as if we never were called 
by your name. And what he's actually saying is, come again, Lord, 
open the heavens and call me son and call me daughter and 
dwell with me again. What a petition. That should be the cry of everyone 
who feels himself alienated from God. Listen carefully, very carefully 
to this. That prayer has been answered. Matthew. Chapter three, Jesus 
goes to the waters of baptism. to be baptized of his relative, 
John the Baptist. And we read in verse 13, when 
he came there, John tried to prevent him. Verse 14, saying, 
I have need to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me? 
And Jesus answered and said to him, permit it at this time, 
for in this way it's fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And so he allowed him. And when 
he was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water. Now 
listen carefully to these words. And behold, the heavens were 
opened, Isaiah 64, one, oh, that you would rend the heavens. It's 
Matthew three, verse 16. And the heavens were opened and 
he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon 
him. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. Isaiah 
64, one. Matthew three, yes. And so it is, verse 17, and suddenly 
a voice came from heaven. And the voice did not say, I 
never knew you, depart from me. It will say that to many, don't 
be that one. The voice said, this is my beloved 
son in whom I am well pleased. Heaven has been opened and God 
has returned. And as it were, pitched his tent 
among men again. And God has said, come, dwell 
with me, live with me. Listen to Jesus's words, John 
14, 23. If anyone loves me, he will keep 
my word and my father will love him and we will come to him, 
listen carefully, and make our abode with him. God is pleased 
having once dwelt with man, an exiled man from his presence, 
he is pleased to dwell with man again. The eternal dwelling place 
is still there and he still beckons people to come and live with 
him in peace, prosperity, and happiness. Oh, satisfy us, verse 
14, with your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our 
days. The prospect that you could be glad all your days, even though 
verses three through 11 are still true, the idea that you could 
walk through this brief, hard sojourn, but with joy in your 
heart, hope and anticipation, with gladness, is a real prospect, 
that we would be glad, visit us with mercy, that we would 
be glad all of our days. Make us glad according to the 
days in which you've afflicted us, the years in which we've 
seen evil. And God does one much better than that. How about this? 
Few days full of trouble, endless life full of joy. He doesn't 
give you one for one. For your little sorrows, He gives 
you boundless joy. For your few years of difficulty, 
He gives you endless years of bliss. Come back. If you have wandered and are 
without God in the world and are far from Him, come back. 
He's an eternal dwelling place. He didn't fall down. He didn't 
wear out. You can go home. You can go home. Come to Him. Verse 16, we finish with a finale. Let your work appear to your 
servants and your glory to their children. And let the beauty 
of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our 
hands. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Matthew Henry says, 
God's servants cannot work for Him unless He works upon them 
and works in them both to will and to do. And then we may hope 
the operations of God's providence will be apparent for us when 
the operations of His grace are apparent upon us. When God's 
face shines upon you, when the beauty of God, as it were, brings 
that peace that passes all understanding and that joy that can't be just 
explained by the circumstances of your life. When He gives that 
to you, and when He works in you powerfully by His Spirit, 
He actually makes you to live a life worth living, and to desire 
desires worth desiring. To want what is good, and to 
do what is good, and to work now, whatever it is that is your 
work or calling, heartily unto the Lord, knowing that your reward 
in heaven is eternal. Your work here is short, and 
He gives you joy and happiness in that work. Establish the work 
of our hands. This might be a strange way to 
end the psalm. It feels like we're talking about grand and 
eternal things, and he ends with the work of our hands. Establish 
it. But here's the feeling of our lives. It feels like our 
lives, like our works, are just all for naught, all for nothing. 
Maybe some of you work in those kinds of jobs where you work, 
work, work, work, and then the next guy undoes it. How do you have 
value and meaning in this life day by day? Our labor is in the 
Lord, and our labor is unto Him, and it is to Him that we give 
an account, not as men-pleasers, but as those that live in the 
joy of His presence and the approval we seek and the name that we 
seek is from Him and before Him, not before men. If you have a 
good name among men for good reason, it's good and not wrong 
to seek, but to have a good name in heaven given by God's grace, 
that's the name and that's the work worth working. 1 Corinthians 
15 58. Therefore, my beloved brethren, 
be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the 
Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain, so key, in the 
Lord. I can actually go to work, whatever 
my work is, and I can do it heartily as unto the Lord, knowing that 
my heavenly Father, as it were, smiles upon my work and gives 
value to my labor, to my life, to my breath, even now. A final 
text, Revelation 14, 13. And I heard a voice from heaven 
saying, right, blessed are the dead who die on the Lord from 
now on. Yes, says the spirit, so that 
they may rest from their labors for their deeds follow with them. Today's work, as it were, if 
in the Lord and unto the Lord follows with us, not to justify 
us, but by way of reward and to beautify this life of grace 
that we receive. May God's favor rest upon us 
as we pass through this little life with joy of eternal glory 
already begun in us. Let's pray. God, you're good 
and you do good, and you have done good. You have opened heaven, 
you've come down, you've pitched your tent among men. You, our 
eternal dwelling place, have called us to again dwell with 
you in peace through the blood of your son's cross, through 
the power of his resurrection, through the gift of adoption 
given through your Holy Spirit. Lord, for all of these things, 
we are profoundly grateful. For those who have not received 
it, may this be the day. And for those who have, Lord, 
may we take inventory and careful account of all that is ours, 
that we would be glad and not sad, that we would be full of 
joy, even in a world full of trouble, because we have a joy 
that the trouble of this world cannot touch. We bless you for 
the gospel of your son, seal it to our hearts and increase 
our love. We pray, oh God, in Christ's name, amen.