Our Eternal God in the Brevity of Life

Psalm 90:1-17 “Our Eternal God in the Brevity of Life” 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!" 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! Psalm 90:1-17 Many years before Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, he was a young storekeeper in Salem, Illinois. Abe had a rifle displayed in his store that was one of the most beautiful rifles ever made. The barrel was made from the finest steel, the stock from the best walnut wood; a world-famous gunsmith had assembled the gun and, surprisingly, the price of the gun was extremely reasonable. This attractive gun was displayed next to a rack of ordinary Kentucky long-barrel rifles that were made from ordinary gun steel, and plain wooden stocks, yet they were all priced higher than the extravagant gun. One day a customer entered the store looking for a new rifle. He was impressed by the fine-looking gun, but was confused as to why it was priced much lower than the less attractive rifles. Abe explained that the goodlooking rifle was for show, while the others were for shooting. And so the customer bought a Kentucky rifle instead. A little while later, a rich man who was decorating a room in his mansion came into the store, looking for a rifle to put over his fireplace with his trophies. Abe's fancy gun was exactly what he needed. The fact that good-looking rifle would not shoot was irrelevant. In the rich man’s mind, the purpose of the gun had changed. Our most sovereign God has created each one of us for a purpose also. In fact that “purpose” is the great ultimate question of humanity, in asking, “What is the meaning of life?” The answers of famous people to that question throughout history are varied. Albert Einstein, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama would say the purpose of life is to serve, show compassion and love. Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift believed the purpose of life was struggle. Oscar Wilde believed that the purpose of life was joking and witticism.. Stephen Hawking believed that life is a great unknowable mystery. Sigmund Freud and Bertrand Russell said life has no meaning. Carl Sagan and Carl Jung believed we are to create our own meaning of life. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Sinclair Lewis believed the purpose of life is to enjoy and experience life. But God tells us, in Isaiah 43:7, that the purpose of life is to glorify God: “Everyone who is called by my name, whom I formed and made, I created for my glory." This is the purpose of God that gives our lives meaning. And so we challenged to make a choice between living out our purpose to glorify God or a good-looking decoration, just like a fancy rifle in church, by living out the purpose of life to something other than God. 1 Four weeks ago, in preaching from the gospel of Matthew about the treasures of the Kingdom of God, I told you that God had put it on my heart to preach that message as if it would be my last sermon at Arrowsmith. Well, I am still here. But this past week, as I studied and prayed over the text for today, I sensed God telling me to preach today’s sermon as if I knew I would die today. As negative as that might sound to some of you, the reality is that any one of us in this room could die today. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or next year. The truth is, none of us really knows when we will die, and so if we don’t get the truth about what God is telling us in Psalm 90 this morning, our lives on earth will ultimately have no meaning, and our eternal lives will be at serious risk. Know that this will not be a hell-fire and brimstone sermon, but rather a desperate prayer that we might surrender our self-centered lives to God, so we might then know the humble, glorious, joy-filled, Christ-centered, meaningful life that God promises us through Jesus on earth and in heaven. The heading of Psalm 90 tells us this was written by Moses: “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.” This would make by far the oldest Psalm in the Bible. Moses wrote this psalm, this prayer, during a very bleak time of spiritual darkness in Hebrew history. The Bible tells us that Moses was commissioned by God to lead God’s people out of the bondage of slavery that had been experiencing under the Egyptians. After the miraculous escape through the Red Sea, Moses leads them toward the Promised Land. They stop at a beautiful oasis called Kadesh-Barnea and Moses sends twelve spies into the land to check out the inhabitants there. Ten spies return shaking with fear and report that the people were too big and too strong for the Israelites to try to overcome. But the two others, Joshua and Caleb, encouraged the people of God to try, in believing they could overcome whatever obstacle stood before them because God has promised them the land. He promised He would be with them to help them do what He had told them to do. But the people of Israel decided not to trust God; they did not attack and take the Promised Land; and as a result of their disobedience to God, He allowed them to wander the desert for next 38 years – and during that time over one million people died in the desert. If you do the math, that comes to over 70 funerals a day. This was a disaster on a national scale. Hundreds of thousands of deaths within four decades, all over the age of 20; only Joshua and Caleb of that generation survived. All because they would not trust and obey God. Such a realization of the brevity of life must have caused the people of Israel to wonder about the meaning of life, as the deep pain of death causes us to consider the significance in life. Surrounded by death and despair, Moses sat down and wrote this prayer to God we know as Psalm 90, which speaks of seeking the meaning of life in a fallen world where life is short. Psalm 90 is a prayer of surrender to God of our fallen, finite lives for the eternal life of God so that our lives might have significance today in light of eternity. 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. Psalm 90:1-6 The first thing Moses does here in seeking to know the significance of life is to consider how our lives relate to God. He begins by looking at God and proclaiming the omnipotent power of God as “our dwelling place” – which means God is our home, our refuge. We were created in the image of God so we might live for God for the glory of God. Acts 17:28 tells us for “in him we live and move and have our being.” Moses also declares the power of God as He is the Eternal Creator of all things: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." God created everything that He has always been, is, and will always be. In Colossians 1:17 tells that Jesus, in being God, “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” 2 Next, Moses continues to consider how our lives relate to God by proclaiming the sovereignty of God over our very existence. God providentially controls every aspect of human life; He decides what we can do and when we can do it and how can we do it. And whenever we step outside of the sovereign boundaries of God’s will, God can simply say: "Return, O children of man!" - and “turn” back to “dust.” We read God also sovereignly ordains the limits of the time of all human history, and the limits of the time we will live out our lives: “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.” God knows time much differently that we do. God is not bound by time and He controls time - while we are bound by time and we are controlled by time. King David declares this about his own life and death to God in Psalms 139:16: “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” The contrast is clear here: God is our home, our refuge, our creator. He is providentially in control of every minute detail of our lives. He is omnipotent, sovereign, immortal, and eternal while we are frail, dependent, mortal, and finite. God is the author of all that exists. He is writing all of history. He created us and is writing our story. In considering how our lives relate to God we can clearly see that we must surrender our lives to God - if our lives are to have significance in light of eternity. 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? Psalm 90:7-11 The second thing Moses does here in seeking to know the significance of life - is to consider how we live our lives in opposition to God. No doubt the context of Moses’ words here are reflective in remembering how Israel had felt the wrath of God as a consequence of their rebellion against God in Kadesh-Barnea. It is significant to note that in Numbers 14:11–25 we read, that while God declared He would strike the nation with disease and disinherit them, Moses passionately pled for God’s mercy on the basis of God’s promise to His people. Moses asked God to forgive their rebellion. And God did so. But He also allowed most of them to die in the wilderness during the next 38 years. “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.” Here we read of what happens to our lives when we rebel and oppose God. When sin entered the lives of created humanity so did death. Romans 6:23 tells us that “ the wages of sin is death.” Death is the “wrath” of God’s holy anger in removing the grace of His life-giving presence from the lives of those who refuse to fully yield themselves to Him. God is fully aware of our sin and the shortness of out lives is a proof of that. Even our secret sins, the sins we do not perceive and the sins we have rationalized, are evident before an all-knowing and righteous God. Job 5:7 says: “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." This was true of Job’s life as well as ours. We read here of how sin has brought death (”we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed. . . . all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh”) – and of how sin has shortened our lives (“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty).. Even though Moses wrote these words; he lived to be 120 years old. God blessed him far beyond 80 years. Yet here we are, thousands of years after this was written – and still the span of life averages about 70 to 80 years. While it is true that modern medicine has progress in keeping some of us alive a little longer, the average still remains about the same. What also remains the same, is that regardless of how many years we live, our lives in our fallen world will be a struggle: “yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” 3 The words “toil and trouble” remind us that not only is life shortened by sin, it is also soured by pain and sadness. We see this in God’s judgement of sin and the consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin was not only to return to dust, but also to live with toil and pain. As a consequence of sin Adam would suffer the pain of labor and so did Eve, for it was through pain that her children would be born. Our lives are “short and sour” because we are sinners living under the righteous judgment of God. In Christ we are saints, but we are also still fallen sinners, who live in a fallen, sinful world – and so our lives and our world will be filled with the tragic quality of life that marks the “wrath of God” against sin - in sickness, disease, cancer, brain tumours, strokes, heart attacks, accidents, disasters, calamities, disasters, divorce, violence, rape, murder and death. Though Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins – the consequences of our sins and our sinful nature will still be us while we are here on earth. Moses wrote: “Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?” Though redeemed by God through Christ, we will still feel the reality of God’s wrath against sin and our sinful nature. In Isaiah 45:7 God said: "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.” Though we are saved by the sovereign grace of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ from eternal death - we still also will face physical death in this life. Death is a reality of life. The mortality rate for fallen, sinful human beings is still 100%. And this is where we who claim Jesus should shine. But way too often we do not. If we truly believe heaven is the most glorious place in the universe, then we should not see death as such a great tragedy. J. I. Packer said that in every century before us, Christians saw life on earth as a preparation for the eternity to come; followers of Christ used to believe the axiom that it’s “only when you know how to die, can you then know how to live.” I not so sure we believe that that anymore. We have lost our grip on death; the materialistic culture we live in has taught us that this life is the only life worth enjoying. Sadly, in the busyness of our lives here on earth, we have lost our natural God-created sense that we were made for eternity. Don’t take me wrong here; I am not advocating we should be pursuing death. Death is our enemy. It is not romantic, glamorous or heroic. Bu,t we were not created to die and death has been defeated by Jesus. Physical death is the outward sign of the eternal separation from God that is His judgment – God’s “wrath” - on our sin. But for those who have fully surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ, death’s sting is withdrawn. 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 tells us: "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." While we do not know when Jesus will come for us – by death or by rapture – we are to live our lives in preparation for eternity. In the words of the Puritan Prayer: “May I speak each word as if my last word, and walk each step as my final one. If my life should end today, let this be my best day.” Dr. Michael Horton, professor of Westminster Seminary, writes: “We aren’t morbid when we take sin, suffering and death seriously. Rather, we can face these tough realities because we know that they have been decisively confronted by our Captain. These things have not lost their power to harm us, but they have lost their power to destroy us. This biblical piety is not morbid because it doesn’t end at the cross, but it also doesn’t avoid it. It goes through the cross to the resurrection. This is why the Christian gospel alone is capable of refuting both denial and despair. The hope of the gospel gives us freedom to expose the wound of our human condition because it provides the cure.” Jesus said: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him" (John 12:24-26). 4 Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, said that Christians in the early church – “could defy tyrants without fear; they could look into the face of death and say, ‘It is well.’ They knew who they were, and where they were going. They were not afraid of men, of death, or even of hell, because they knew their position in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the result was that these people triumphed.” Romans 8:3539 says: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This reflects one of my favourite prayers of the Puritans, which ends by saying: “I am not afraid to look the king of terrors in the face, for I know I shall be drawn, not driven, out of the world.” Joseph Bayly and his wife lost three of their children – one at eighteen days (after surgery); another at five years (leukemia); a third at eighteen years (haemophilia after a sledding accident). In each case they prayed for God’s intervention – and in each case each wave of death was followed by a giant wave of grief that pounded the shore of their lives. Yet Bayly and his wife remained steadfast in believing in God’s goodness. Joseph knew that unlike today the attitude of New Testament Christians toward impending death was acceptance, not praying for deliverance. He wrote: “Yes, we are to pray for healing – but if such praying obscures the reality of heaven and its joyful prospect for the person who is ill, making it appear that only in prolongation of life on earth may satisfaction be found, it is less than Christian. . . . Our faith is to be in God, not in healing. Whether we live or die does not affect our bedrock faith in Jesus Christ. Remember that death, not healing, is what delivers us from pain and suffering. Healing is only temporary; heaven is forever.” James Walker spoke of this when he said: “We spend more prayer energy trying to keep sick Christians out of heaven than trying to keep lost people out of hell.” The focus of our prayers should be more about lost souls than sick bodies - because ultimately we all will experience “the wages of sin” in sickness and “death.” But in Christ we have nothing to fear! Death has lost its sting! Jesus rose from the dead! Death cannot destroy us! In considering how we live our lives in opposition to God we can clearly see that we must fully surrender our lives to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ - if our lives are to have significance in light of eternity. 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 favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! Psalms 90:12-17 The last thing Moses does here, in seeking to know the significance of life, is to consider how we might live our lives in joyful obedience to God. In light of the omnipotence, sovereignty, immortality, and eternality of God – and in light of our fallen, sinful, rebellious opposition to God – Moses prayed that God would intervene in his life and sovereignly help him realign the priorities of his life toward God. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” As natural born wanderers, we need God to “teach us” how make good use of our time here on earth. “To number our days” is not about time management; this is about life management -- a “heart of wisdom” to live our lives for God rather than ourselves. To “number our days” means seeing and using each day as a precious gift. If you only have $100 to live on in the next month, you’re careful about how you spend it. The same is true for our days on earth. How many days do we have? None of us knows. How would we live out our lives if we did know? If we did know, would that change the purpose and meaning of our lives? If we did know, how would we think of God and how would we view ourselves? 5 The truth is, we can only see ourselves, as we really are, when we come to see God for who He really is. The prophet Isaiah gained an awareness of his desperate need of God when he was granted a vision of the righteousness and holiness of God. It was then that he cried out, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5). Like Isaiah, the first thing that we must acknowledge and understand is the holiness and righteousness of God. Only then will we correctly see our own desperate condition, so we can then live our lives in the light of its limits, as we “number our days.” Most of us in dealing with life tend to focus either on the past or the future. The young usually focus on the future looking forward to the “good life.” Older folks reminisce about the past knowing the future is shorter and less certain. All of us are reluctant to focus on the present. But the reality is that life has its limits and life is short, and we do not have any assurance of tomorrow, nor do we dare waste today. We must live wisely, understanding life’s limitations and its brevity. God has given us the gracious opportunity and divine ability to love Him and treasure Him and live for Him and serve Him for the season of our lives. We do not know about tomorrow. We should not presume upon an uncertain future and thus procrastinate with respect to our present obligations and future blessings.. “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.” The “steadfast love” here is the Hebrew word “hesed” – God’s covenant-keeping love towards us, His never-giving-up, always-and-forever faithful love that is better than everything in life. This is the unconditional love of God that does not change – in spite of what we might ever think, say or do. This is the “steadfast love” of God that joyfully satisfies the biblical command to pursue our present and eternal joy in God, “that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 32:11: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; And shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” Psalm 33:1: “Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.” Psalm 67:4: “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.” Psalm 100:1–2: “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing.” Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” These words also desperately cry out to God for the power of His steadfast to enable us to pursue joy in God over any and every other joy in life. In Deuteronomy 28:47-48 Moses declared to God’s people: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you.” Jeremiah 2:12–13 says: “Be appalled, O heavens, at this, And shudder, be very desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” In John 6:35 Jesus said: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.” Jesus Christ is the “steadfast love” of God that joyfully satisfies the deepest hunger, thirsting and yearning of our souls. “Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Moses prays for God’s work to be done through God’s people and that “their children” would joyfully know the “glorious power” of God in the future. He also prays that God would bless the work of God’s people – always acknowledging all good work comes from God: “Your work . . . the work of our hands” and “Your glorious power . . . the favour of the Lord our God upon us.” The word “favour” literally means “beauty, delight, splendour.” The prayer Moses is writing here is a prayer to God asking that our work for God, our efforts for God – and the lives that we live for God - would be joyful, beautiful, attractive and impressive as well as meaningful, enduring and eternally significant. 6 Psalm 90 tells us when we consider how our lives relate to God and how we live in opposition to God, we will then joyfully live in obedience to God - as we see the significance of our lives in God in light of eternity. When we surrender our lives to God, we will then receive the life of God – even in the face of death. One of my favourite writers is Nate Wilson, and in one of his books he writes of this. “We have been born into a grand story, a narrative written by God – and we have been given the freedom to live for God until the last page of the final chapter . . . There was a time when men and women understood death more fully, when mortality was never ignored. Men and women executed their endings better then. Some even planned for it – letters from the grave, long-winded last words like characters from Dickens. Those men, good and bad, heroes and villains, knew their final scenes would come, and they knew they would be scenes. They, like Solomon, knew that we are but a vapour, that we are here for but a little while. We must exit the stage, down through traps, and let others traipse and sing, love and lose, fight and struggle above us. “Every last material creature on this globe will come to an end. If God has the authority to invent . . . DNA; if He has the authority to choose me out of a near infinite number of possible human combinations and call me into existence out of nothing; if He has the authority to choose my parents, my race, my birthplace, my height, my intelligence, the size of my tonsils; if He has the authority to design my teeth from scratch, then He has the authority to choose my end. . . . God has the authority to shape a soul with His voice, bind it to matter, and send it into history. And He has the authority to sever my soul from my body and call it to another part of the stage. He has the authority to reuse the matter from my flesh in daffodils . . . When we die, wherever or whenever that might be, there will be other characters in the story with us, evil characters, good characters . . . But God is also there, shaping the story, off the stage and on the stage, closing a chapter as a turtle bounces, smiling while it does. To His eyes, you never leave the stage. You do not choose to exist. It is a chapter ending, an act, not the play itself. Look to Him. Walk to Him. The cocoon is a death, but not the final death. The coffin can be a tragedy, but not for long. . . . I will die, and when I do – whether it be in my bed as age creeps over me, or struck by lightning, a meteor or a UPS truck – when my body and soul find their divorce, His hand will be the one that cuts the thread and shows me the path He blazed through tragedy. His finger will point to the parade.” May we be ready for the day when Jesus points us toward the glorious parade that leads us to the immeasurable joy of eternity with God – knowing that when we consider how our lives relate to God, and how we live our lives in opposition to God, and how we might live our lives in joyful obedience to God, by fully surrendering our lives to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior - our lives here on earth in this fallen world will be joyful, beautiful, attractive and impressive as well as meaningful, enduring and eternally significant. God tells us that the purpose of our lives is to glorify Him. This is reflected in the well known the old tradition which says “the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.” In other words - God is most glorified in us when we are the most satisfied in Him! “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. . . . 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.” Amen? Amen! 2018-07-15 Pastor Leland Botzet Arrowsmith Baptist Church 7