Number Your Days
Notes
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
There is a day that you are born and it is written on a birth certificate.
There is a day that you die that is written on a different type of certificate.
In between there is this little hyphen that encapsulates your entire life.
And none of us know how long that time will be.
Only the Lord knows.
In Psalm 90, the great prophet Moses writes about this.
Here is what he says:
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.
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.
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.
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;
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
GOD IS ETERNAL
GOD IS ETERNAL
Moses probably wrote this Psalm after a sentence of judgment was passed on Israel in Numbers 14.
They were a grumbling nation.
The opposite of the man that we are laying to rest today, for I never heard him complain once about anything.
But Israel had a gratefulness issue and God told them that they would not enter into the Promised Land, in light of their rebellious hearts toward Him.
Moses seems to be reflecting on the difference between God and man and shortness of life.
The Psalm begins with a consideration of how God is eternal.
“From everlasting to everlasting You are God.” (v. 2)
We can sum up our finite lives with a hyphen between two dates, but we cannot do this with God.
He has always been and He will always be.
No one made God.
No one can add to His greatness and improve Him.
No one can take away from His glory and decrease Him.
No one gave life to God.
He has life in Himself and He is the First Cause behind everything.
Before He spoke the mountains into existence with the Word of His power and before He formed the earth and filled it with people, He was God.
And after time as we know it comes to a close, He will still be God.
He is a King whose reign has no beginning. He has no predecessor.
He is a King with no successor.
He is the Alpha—the first letter of the Greek alphabet.
He is the Omega—the final letter of the Greek alphabet.
He is the First and the Last.
He is the Great I AM who lives from eternity to eternity.
And He is the holder of all time.
A thousand years is like yesterday to Him.
A millenium goes by like a night’s watch. (v. 4)
And as our eternal Maker who brought us from the dust, He deserves the praise of of our mouths and our movements.
He deserves honor in our living and being.
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
WE ARE NOT ETERNAL
WE ARE NOT ETERNAL
On days like this, we remember that we are not eternal.
We are not like God who is from everlasting to everlasting.
We are men of dust.
And He returns us to the dust that He brought us forth from.
When He says to return to the dust, we return to the dust (v. 3).
We are like grass that is here in the morning and withered by night.
We are like a garden bed that is sewn in the Spring, flourishes in the sunshine of the warm seasons and then passes away with the winter.
In this Psalm, Moses says we get 70 or 80 years at best and again—we are reminded today that even this is not always true:
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.
Moses sounds a bit like King Solomon here:
And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Charles Spurgeon, commenting on the brevity of our lives, said:
Gone! is the greatest part of our history. Scarcely have we time enough to tell the story. Ere it comes to its finish.
Charles Spurgeon
We are a like a flood after a hard rain that rises and then dissipates and evaporates in a number of days.
We are like a dream that comes and goes in the night. (v. 5)
We live and work and strive and then, in the end, our years end in a sigh.
A relieving breath escaping the mouth and then disappearing.
I don’t say these things about our finite lives to depress you today.
Moses does not write of these things to devastate you further as your mourn.
Instead, these are simply observable realities.
And on days like this, we are faced with them.
And if we compare ourselves to God, there is a great gap between our finiteness and His infinity.
We get seventy to eighty.
He is from everlasting to everlasting.
We are like grass that withers.
He brings forth mountains.
We are like a quick, passing dream.
He sees a thousand calendar years like one calendar day.
THE HOLY AND THE SINFUL
THE HOLY AND THE SINFUL
And yet, we must look at this Psalm and say that the gap between God’s eternity and our short lives is not even the most alarming gap in the text.
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.
Just as the sins of Moses’ generation were on display before God, so are our sins.
They are all out in the open before Him.
There is no secrecy with God, for He not only sees what we have done in public, but what we have done in private.
He even sees past our behavior, and looks right down to the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
If have broken God’s laws in any way, we are sinners.
His law is like a mirror. If you break it at one point, the whole thing will shatter.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
God has not simply existed for all of eternity. He has existed as a good, loving, righteous God.
And so, when we are grumbling and ungrateful and rebellious, like Moses’ generation in the wilderness of Sinai, we are at odds with Him.
And just as Moses states in Psalm 90:7, God has anger toward our sin.
We should not be surprised at that.
Good earthly fathers have righteous anger toward their children who rebel against them.
Why would it be different with God who is a perfect Father?
2 Chronicles 6:36 (ESV)
“If they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you are angry with them and give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to a land far or near,
Micah 7:2 (ESV)
The godly has perished from the earth,
and there is no one upright among mankind;
they all lie in wait for blood,
and each hunts the other with a net.
And we are born in this sin, inheriting a sinful nature from Adam and Eve, our first parents who rebelled against God in the Garden.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
So from birth, we are God’s children in a general sense, but we respond to His creation and care by rebelling against Him.
It is sin’s presence in the world and our lives that turns our days to toil and trouble (v. 10).
It is sin’s curse that takes us back to the dust.
And it is sin that leaves us guilty before God.
And one day, when our little hyphen is over and the end date is placed on the opposite side of our birth date, we will stand before God.
And we will be judged for how we have lived our lives.
The holy Judge will give justice to sinful man.
THE LORD JESUS
THE LORD JESUS
But this is where I get to give you some good news on this difficult day.
This is where I get to tell you about my brother’s Savior.
Moses asks for God’s pity (v. 13).
He recognizes that God is not just a God of holy anger, but of holy love. Steadfast, promise-keeping love.
God showed this love and pity to His people by providing them a solution for the sin that soaks the little hyphen of their lives.
He came to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.
For centuries, the prophets and Scriptures had predicted that He would come and then He did.
He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, so He didn’t have a sin-nature like us.
He lived a perfect life without sin, so He didn’t break His covenant with God like Adam did and like we have.
And then, on a day in which we are grappling with an unthinkable death, we have an even more unthinkable death to consider.
The perfect Son of God, who never disobeyed His Father, died on the Cross like a common criminal.
He was around 33. Not 70 or 80.
It was not peaceful.
Instead, the cross of His death was an altar.
He was a sacrifice.
He became a righteous offering for the unrighteous.
And the anger that God rightfully has toward our sin was poured out on Jesus, who died in our place.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Christ was judged at the Cross like He had committed our sin.
But this is not the end of the story of the Gospel.
On a day where we hate death, which came into the world as a result of sin, we rejoice in knowing that Jesus did not stay dead.
He overcame death by resurrecting from the grave.
He died on a Friday and resurrected on a Sunday.
He crushed sin and death.
Then He ascended to the right hand of the Father. He received the name of Lord. He rules and reigns as we speak.
And one day, He will return to this world and He will judge it and He will set up His eternal Kingdom.
FAITH
FAITH
This Psalm talks about:
Being satisfied by the love of God in the morning (v. 14)
It talks of rejoicing all our days (v. 14)
It speaks of being glad in the midst of affliction (v. 15)
It speaks of seeing the works of God and having the favor of the Lord (v. 16-17)
It talks of the work of our hands being established by God (v. 17).
How can he talk like this? How can he speak of such joy and satisfaction in the same breath as talk about our short lives and our sin and God’s anger?
How can he even dare to ask for such things as a man of dust?
How can he even address the eternal God?
The answer to these questions is found at the beginning of the Psalm.
Moses has God as his dwelling place.
He has faith. He trusts in the Lord.
Moses was just as guilty before the law of God as the rest of us.
But He made sacrifices and looked forward to a Messiah to come.
Now, on the other side of life and death and resurrection of Christ, we don’t need to make sacrifices.
We must trust in the sacrifice that has been given.
God gave His Son to die in your place.
God gave His Son to rise again and overcome death for you.
God have His Son to be your Savior now and forever.
When we turn away from our sin and agree with God that it is evil and we turn to Him in faith and trust in His Son’s life and death to save us, we will be forgiven of our sin.
God will look upon you as His child of faith and He will not even see your sin.
He will only see the righteous life of His Son.
See—when you believe in Christ, an exchange is made.
Christ spent His life weaving a robe of righteousness with every obedient moment.
But in His death, He takes off that robe and puts on the ragged robe of your sin.
He gives your His righteous robe so that when His Father looks on you, He just sees perfection.
This means the gap between sinful men of dust and the holy, eternal God is closed.
It means that by faith, the Lord becomes your dwelling place.
TURN TO THE LORD
TURN TO THE LORD
There are some funerals that I have to remain silent at when it comes to eternity.
I don’t always know a person or I do know a person and I can’t assure a family of their eternal destiny.
Today is not that day.
Our brother was a man who believed the Lord.
At some point in Rick’s life, he looked on Jesus and said, “My sin slayed Him. I hate that sin.”
And he looked at the Lord Jesus and said, “I trust in God’s Son for salvation. His life, His death, His resurrection—this is my only hope of heaven.”
And then, he committed the work of his hands to God.
The Lord became his dwelling place through faith in Christ.
And while he wasn’t perfect, his sin was atoned for and the Father looked on him as if he was.
My wife and I felt the faith of Rick Whitley as soon as we stepped foot in Yorktown.
Rick and Karen opened their home to us for a number of days as we candidated at this church.
Rick had a fridge full of soda ready for me and I remember sitting with him and drinking a Dr. Pepper after I preached my trial sermon on a Wednesday night.
He was confident I would be voted in.
His hospitality was like sweet nectar from the greatest of flowers.
We could tell the Spirit of God owned that house in Dandy.
Rick has left us suddenly. When the nurse from Riverside called me, I told her it couldn’t be. She had to hand the phone to Karen for me to believe it.
Karen didn’t even think it was her pastor because my voice was so high-pitch as I was in the panic of shock.
I was feeling a sliver of what my sister was feeling. A sliver of what his children and grandchildren must have felt upon receiving the news.
But I want to look at you all and tell you that I am so sure that Rick is with Jesus.
I am so sure that as his life slipped away like the grass of winter, he went from life to life.
His untimely passing looks like an accident to us, but in truth, God had numbered his days.
December 30th, 2023—the Lord knew that was the date on the other side of Rick’s hyphen.
And He called him home.
The truth is that my number could be up tomorrow.
I recently say with a 94 year old saint and we both agreed that if God has appointed for me to die in the next couple of days, then I am much older than her.
And so it is with all of us.
We never know when this life will end.
In light of that, we must follow in Rick’s footsteps and gain a heart of wisdom.
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
If we would do anything today as we mourn, we must resolve to use whatever time we have to live wisely.
Have you been holding grudges? Good heavens my friend, let it go.
Are you spending all your minutes on hobbies and pleasure, but you never give a thought to God, His Word or His Son? We cannot afford to live so foolishly.
Are you working yourself to death, missing your family and friends and ignoring faith for the sake of paychecks and promotions? Is this really the best we can do with these lives of dust?
Are you living a double-life, entrenched in shameful secrets that eat at your conscience? It doesn’t have to be this way. God has an abundant life He longs to give you in love.
Turn away from sin. Turn to the Lord Jesus.
Ask Him to teach you to number your days, that you may gain a heart of wisdom.
For there is no wiser life than the one that is lived by faith in Christ, to the glory of the eternal God.
All of eternity hangs on that little hyphen. It is time to give it to the Lord, that you may go from life to life, like our dear brother.
