Verse 10, He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. And so, when you read verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth, you could say, Jesus, I see you there. Based on John 1, before the mountains are brought forth, there's Christ. There's the host of heaven rejoicing as creation is unfolding. Nice late afternoon. For me, I'm a night owl. And so this time of day is actually kind of nice. I feel a little bit more alive and awake and sharp than sometimes early. But let's open our Bibles to Psalm 90. That's where we're going to be reading from this afternoon. And once you get to Psalm 90, you could join me for a brief word of prayer. Psalm 90. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, for us who have been born again, it is well with our soul. Help us not get used to the fact that we were lost, but now we're found. Lord, we had no interest in the gathering of your saints, the reading of your word, the singing of your praises, the partaking of the Lord's table, no interest on our radar at all. We were strangers to you. And now you've made us your friends. You've brought us in. Us who were far away, you brought us near by the blood. Thank you, Lord. We're glad to be here in this building today, Lord. But we do pray, Father, we're here gathered in the name of Jesus. We know that you're here in the midst of us. But Lord, be near to us in a way that is felt, that the ministry of your spirit through the proclamation of your word, Lord, would feed us in the inner man. We come to you hungry and needy and expectant, Lord God. We know man doesn't live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Lord, we open your word this morning, please. Nothing's wrong with your word. The thing that's wrong is us, Lord. We can be dull to it. We can just have weakness of our flesh and mind. We could be tired. We could be distracted. Lord, I pray right now, we pray, please grant us just clear, attentive minds. Grant us just Lord an expectation not to hear from a man But Lord from you that as your words proclaimed your spirit would quicken it to us that even I as I preach Lord would just have your word Quickened unto me that we would walk away Lord with something of a glimpse of you Lord being changed being brought from glory to glory Lord We it's not just another Sunday. It's another Sunday. It's precious Lord Help us this afternoon, we do pray in Jesus' name we ask it, amen. Well, Psalm 90, Psalm 90, I've got it printed out here so I can see it all. Psalm 90, I'll begin reading and then we'll just dive into it. So Psalm 90, beginning in verse one, if you've got ESV, it'll probably say book four and it'll say from everlasting to everlasting. So verse one, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord. You've 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 70 or even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They're soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So, verse 12, 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. So let's just dive right in. This is a prayer of Moses. I think it's helpful just to reflect on Moses for a little bit. What does the Bible itself say about Moses? In Numbers 12, 3, it says, more than all people who were on the face of the earth. Can you imagine that being your reputation? That you, in divinely inspired scripture, it is recorded of you forever. During that time, no one on the face of the entire planet was more humble than this man, Moses. Don't you want to hear what that guy prays like? Don't you want to learn something from the most humble man on the earth's prayer? We have that recorded for us here in Psalm 90. I find that very intriguing and exciting, that that caliber of man is teaching us, as it were, through this thing that God's recorded for us in His Word, that we could just incline our ear and learn from a humble man's prayer. So it's a prayer of Moses, the man of God, and he's God's man. I'd venture to say that God selected him based on his humility. humbles the proud, and he exalts the humble. And Moses was exalted by God. He had a unique mission in his lifetime. So prayer of Moses, that's who's writing this. And Psalm 90 is actually, in the entire book of Psalms, it's the oldest psalm in the entire book, because obviously Moses was far before David and Asaph and the other authors of the Psalms. So this is the It's ancient. I feel like a sense of reverence when I come to the Word of God in general, but to have something so ancient in your hands, to have perfectly preserved the words, the prayer, the song written by Moses, it's sacred. The oldest psalm that we have recorded for us, and we get to read it right here. But Moses, the man of God, how does he start his prayer? Well, he starts his prayer, a couple of things that we're going to see in this text. I'll just give us the brief kind of helicopter overview. We're going to see God's eternality. God's eternality. That's how Moses starts. big view of God that he brings to prayer, and we want to do that too. I know as Christians, it's like you can get so used to the routine of, okay, I'm going to pray today, I'm going to read the Bible, and a little bit of the sense of the absolute majesty of who it is that we're communicating with. it could get lost a little bit. I know that I'm like that. I could kind of just sort of start talking. And there is a wonderful thing in the New Covenant whereby we are granted access to God and He, in the New Testament, tells us that we could boldly approach His throne of grace. So there's no way in which I want to diminish the fact of boldness, but nor do I want to lose sight of just the the bigness and the reverence created by reflecting on God's eternality. That's how Moses has his prayer start, just reflecting on the person of God and namely this attribute of his, his eternality. So we're going to see that. Then we're going to see him pivot to man's brevity. Then we're going to see sin's severity. Then we're going to see time's scarcity. And then we're going to see at the end Moses' humble entreaty. And hopefully, as we look at all these things, we're going to have something we could walk away with that will inform our own prayer lives and help us and remind us and refresh us in our own prayer walk and life. So verse 1, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. And again, the author is important here, Moses. He's lived so much of his life just in the wilderness, wandering. So when he says, you've been our dwelling place, that's not insignificant, that's not just poetic language for like, oh yeah, Lord, you're our refuge, you're our protection. Physically, there was the manifestation of this constantly for the children of Israel and Moses. They had that cloud following them and that pillar of fire following them. And he was really their dwelling place, their refuge, their protection, their home. They were wandering. They no longer had a country to call their own. They're in the interim between the time when they leave the Egypt and get to the promised land. And in the middle, it's like, all right, well, Lord, we don't have a home. You're our home. And I'm sure as a Christian, The longer you traverse through this wilderness world, you feel like, man, this place is definitely not my home. Lord, you're my home. You're my dwelling place. I'm looking forward to the new heaven and new earth, because down here, I just don't feel like I belong. I'm a pilgrim. I'm an alien. I'm a stranger. If you're a Christian and you live in Austin, Texas, chances are you feel a little bit Like, I don't quite fit in here, do I? I'm a little bit different here, aren't I? And it's the same anywhere on the face of the whole planet. Even if you were to get dropped into the 1800s in the most conservative corner of America, if you're there and you're regenerate and everyone else isn't, you're gonna feel like a stranger. And so... Moses starts and acknowledges that, Lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations. And this is echoed elsewhere in scripture. Where is it that we see David praying the same thing, I believe? I have it printed out so tiny, so it's hard for me. You know what? We'll just let our cross-references be few, if that's even possible. But you've been our dwelling place in all generations. Verse two, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you would form the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And so I love that he brings us to creation. He's not just anchored in his own day. He has such a big view of God. He's viewing God as being outside of time and before time and not confined by time from everlasting to everlasting. You are God. I think this is cool when you So there's this quote, basically, Old Testament, Christ concealed. New Testament, Christ revealed. So here, We can find Jesus here, and especially if we let the light of the New Testament shine in on verse two. It's like, just listen, listen to John chapter three. This is talking about Jesus. So we could find Jesus immediately right here in verse two. John three, or John one, verse three and verse 10. It says, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Speaking of Jesus, verse 10, he was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. And so when you read verse 2, before the mountains were brought forth, you could say, Jesus, I see you there. Based on John 1, before the mountains are brought forth, there's Christ. There's the host of heaven rejoicing as creation is unfolding. So the eternality of God is in Moses' mind as he just pours out his petition to God here in Psalm 90. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. That can't be said of all the random Canaanite, Egyptian, weird kind of deities that were worshipped by the pagan nations. None of them can say, you created all of this. They're sacrificing their children, they're doing all kinds of absolutely profane, disgusting, demonic kinds of rituals, worshipping literally demons, and not one of those things can claim any kind of power or credit as, oh, I've made this. God alone, Yahweh, the Lord, Jehovah. He's the only one that can sit here and say, I made all of this. He's the one who deserves worship. And I like that this is constantly re-emphasized throughout the Bible, always revisiting. You're the one who made this all. You're the one who made this all. You're the one who made this all. You are beyond time. You're from everlasting to everlasting. And I really like seeing Jesus in this too. If we just listen to Revelation, 1, 17 and 18, Jesus speaking, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. So you see the everlasting to everlasting, and then you hear Jesus saying, I'm the first and the last. He's eternal. The eternality of God is fresh on Moses's mind. But then he, he pivots. And he starts contrasting what we're like compared to him. And verse 3 says, you return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. Makes me think of where it says it's appointed man once to die. And then the judgment reminds me of Ecclesiastes. I think it's 12.7 where it says, and the dust returns to the earth As it was and the spirit returns to God who gave it The moment that God says so that's a wrap. It's over for us We have I saw a mural on the way over here I was remarking to it to my wife. It says uh Your potential is limitless Sounds nice. Encouraging. And then, as we're driving, I'm just going over my notes in the text. It's like I see what the world says. Your potential is limitless. And I see, yeah, well, sounds nice, but... We've got 70 or 80 years. That's a pretty low ceiling on our potential. It's a pretty low ceiling on what we can accomplish. Even when they lived hundreds of years, that's still a cap. We're man. God is eternal. We're just these little things here for a little while. Moses, being the most humble, meek man on the face of the planet, has a real grip on this thing. And rightfully so, Even more so. I mean, he started humble. I can only imagine he got lower and lower, more and more humble as time progressed in the wilderness, and he just sees just the frame of mankind, the frailty. So vulnerable is the frame of mankind. Just think about how much death Moses had to see unfolding in the wilderness. So Moses lived a really long life. First 40 years of his life, he's just in Egypt, just kind of, you know, observing things, growing up. You know, I'm 37, and so when I look at Moses' life, I feel like I've barely started in life. I've barely been alive. Moses' life was just sort of entering its chapter one. at 40 and then he leaves and he goes to Midian and he's there for 40 years and then he returns to Egypt, gets him out, sees all these plagues and then wanders in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses lives 120 years. So when he says you've been a dwelling place in all generations, yes, he's talking about all of time in general, but you can't help but think of how many generations of people, kinsmen, his countrymen just dying in front of him. dying in the wilderness, dying because of the anger of God. He saw the sons of Korah, he saw Korah swallowed up into the earth. The earth cracked open and swallowed those men alive into Sheol, into hell. He had to watch that kind of death. He had to watch just old age, a generation passing away. He presided probably, one commentator mentioned, how many funeral services do you think Moses had to preside over? And not just random people, people he knew, families, grandmas, grandpas, young people, old people. He had to see just so much death, so intimately acquainted with the frailty of man. You could just hear that sense in verse 3. He's acknowledging before God in humility, smallness. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. We're just dust. You can multiply cross-references of where the Bible uses similar language. It's there as early as Genesis. We're from dust. We're to dust. We're made of dust. He knows our frame that we are but dust. We're dust. So then we go on to verse 4, and he pivots it back again to sort of the eternality. It says, for a thousand years in your sight, our butt is yesterday when it is past. We've only got our 70 or 80, and that feels long, let alone 120. That feels nice. You can get a lot done in 120 years. God sits here, looks at a thousand years. Can you imagine you go to sleep on Saturday, right, last night, and you wake up and it's the year, yesterday was the year 1023. Yesterday. You wake up and just like that, ah, new day. Just the passing of a couple moments and a thousand years has gone by. This is how God's just looking at each successive generation. It's just flying, just flying, flying by Him, and it's just like a watch in the night. Just like a quick night shift, as yesterday when it's passed. And certainly this is in the mind of Peter, in 2 Peter, I think, where is it? 2 Peter 3.8, he says, So certainly Peter was probably referencing this ancient psalm of Moses. when he's quoting that and he's quoting it in reference to return of the Lord and basically saying, guys, don't get it twisted. God's not taking super long. He's just being patient. He's giving people opportunity to repent. So don't think that he's delayed or that he's late or that he's just taking a long time. His time is way different than our time. Thousand years, just like a watch in the night. Verse 5, 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. Now, I heard a commentator say that this was in reference to the years, but given the whole counsel of Scripture and how often Scripture refers to man being like grass, I think he's not talking about the years being like grass, but I think he's talking about mankind and their short lifespans being like grass. Could look at just a couple of little cross-references over here. Psalm 103, 15, and 16 says, As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and his place knows it no more. Again, Isaiah 40, verses 6 and 8. A voice says, Cry! And I said, What shall I cry? Here's the message. Isaiah, cry this. All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows on it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. grass, all the beauty of mankind. I mean, you see the culture's emphasis on beauty and how desperately it tries to maintain, just hold on to beauty for as long as possible. 30, okay, still we're looking all right. 40, all right, let's just keep going to the gym, let's eat good, let's get some interventions. 50, okay, you know, what can we do? What can we do to slow this thing down? But all of man's beauty, try as we may, I don't care what interventions and scientific and technologies and all manner of things, we're not gonna fight it. We're just like grass, we're just like flowers, we fade, we wither. This is by design. It wasn't always like this. Oh, what we lost in the garden. Can you imagine being 4,000 years old and having the vigor of youth and you're just running full speed, not getting exhausted. We lost so much in the fall. This is why culture fights aging so hard because intrinsically, instinctively, we know this death thing, this decay thing, it's just not right. It feels wrong. Why? It's because of sin. That's why. But you sweep them, verse 5 of Psalm 90, you sweep them as away as with a flood. They're like a dream, like grass. We're seeing the brevity of man contrasted with the eternality of God. God's everlasting, and man is just like grass that's, oh, it's green in the morning, and by evening time, boom, it's already burnt up by the noonday sun, and it's withering, it's fading away. And so we get into verse 7, and it gives some of the reason for all this. You probably already have a guess, but it says in verse 7, for we are brought to an end, we're fading and withering and dying like this, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath we are dismayed. Verse 8, 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. This emphasis on wrath, again it says it in verse 11, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you. So Moses is emphasizing the severity of sin, that God's angry about this, and put yourself in his shoes. You're the leader of Israel and you see absolute marvelous displays of power. Given for the benefit of this helpless people and they're delivered. They see the Egyptian armies drowned Moses just dips away for a little while to commune with God on the Mount Sinai receive the commandments and while they're gone They're like, huh? It's been gone for a little while You guys want to make a golden Canaanite statue and worship it a little bit I He's been a little while. Let's just, I mean, we got to do something to pass the time, right? They erect a golden idol and they They rose to play. If you're an adult, you know what this means. Profound carnality and idolatry. I can't get over it. I'll probably sound like a broken record for every time I revisit that, because it's absolutely astonishing to me. But we're not too different from it. Even if we could see big, marvelous displays of God's power, we might still, at the next couple of moments, a month later, gaze upon sin and have some attraction to it and fall right for it. But Moses comes down, and what's he see? He's the man of God. His face is probably glowing a little bit. He comes down, and he sees this, and he's angry. If God... If Moses, as the man of God, is angry, what do you think God feels? This is the cause that Moses puts to all the perishing and all the, it says, verse 7, for we are brought to an end by your anger. He's praying to God. He's not even asking anything for like the first 10 or 11 verses. He's just stating facts. He's like, God, you're eternal. God, we are not. God, our sin is so serious, you're so angry about it, you see it, we're brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath, we're dismayed for, or because, in verse 8 it says, you've set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. So it's not just the big obvious displays of the, you know, in a New Testament it says some people's sins, they're conspicuous. They show up. You see it written all over their face. It's like, this is the way that I sin. Other people, they're not so conspicuous. It's hidden sin. But it says here, are secret sins. You've said our iniquities before. You are secret sins in the light of your presence. So God is seeing not just their blatant displays of idolatry and carnality, sexual immorality, but he's also seeing just the thing that Hebrews talks about. It's their unbelief. all of these big displays of power and still resting in their heart. I'm going to read it real quick, just so I could kind of ground this in scripture in Hebrews three, starting in verse seven. You don't got to turn there if you don't want, but it says, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your father's put me to the test and saw They put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation and said, they always go astray in their heart. They have not known my ways. As I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." So it says unbelief, unbelief. That's one of those hidden sins that were seen God was not Sweeping that one under the rug. It's like alright the idolatry. That's the big deal But you know the the unbelief thing in your heart at least you're not putting it all out there No, this was the very reason that they they perished in the wilderness. There was this persistent unbelief. That's a good pause moment for just self-reflection. Is there any way in which we, as the people of God, who have seen his power in many ways, maybe not like they did in that miraculous fashion, but we've seen enough good stuff of God, and yet we could still, even as Christians, harbor just this low-grade, tucked-away unbelief, doubting God. Lord, are you really going to show up in this way? In that way? You know what you struggle with. For me, I'll just be candid and just put out, I get discouraged and tempted toward unbelief with regard to evangelism. There's a big evangelistic emphasis over at GCC San Antonio, and I've been there about four years, and you just... You scatter good seed. You share the gospel so much. And you're just waiting. Just waiting. Where's the conversions? Where's the people getting saved? Where's the harvest? Jesus, you said the harvest is plenty, the labors are few. Go out! They're white, they're ready, and we're here sewing expectantly, and my heart can be impatient as I just wait to see where's the power of God put on display? Where's all the conversions? Why is this room not full of people worshiping the king? Why so few? My heart I have to check myself real hard there. I'd say Don't don't do that. Don't be tempted towards unbelief. God's time is perfect. God's ways are perfect So you might just ask your own self. Where is it for you that unbelief? doubt being tempted towards thinking, God, why are you doing it this way? Why is it taking this amount of time for this thing or that thing? Ask God to help you with that and acknowledge it for what it is. It's not just a small sin. It's a big deal, unbelief. But our secret sins, getting back to our text, we see there, Verse eight, you have said our iniquities before you are secret sins in the light of your presence. Verse nine, for all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh, just a kind of a sigh, just sounds like a defeated thing, just like an exhale, like, just like that. There's that hymn that says, from life's first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny. That one has more victorious ring to it. But there is a sense in which there's an Ecclesiastes kind of feel of like, oh, it's just a mist, it's a vapor, it's so quick. You just breathe in, you got the vigor of youth, you're like green grass, and then, Just as quickly as an exhale, your whole life summed up in just one little breath and our years are brought to an end like a sigh. Verse 10, the years of our life aren't 70 or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They're soon gone, and we fly away. I do love the victorious ring of so many of the hymns, the I'll fly away song. It's not in a minor chord. It's like, yeah, for the Christian, we have a way of flying away that doesn't just feel like a defeated sigh, because to be absent from the body is present with the Lord. But you just feel the flavor of Moses' sort of lament. He's just looking at God's anger. man's brevity, how short life is. Now granted, I mean, Moses, he had a good setup. In Genesis, God puts a cap on how long men live, and he basically says, like, my spirit will not always contend with man. They're going to live 120 years, like, tops, as a basic cap, because Aaron, Moses' brother, lived to 123. But Moses died at that full ceiling. He's like, all right, if that's as long as men live, then Moses is going to live that long. So he lived a really peculiarly long life. But he's saying the norm, the kind of average here, 70, 80. Now there is a kind of trend in mortality, like we're living a little bit longer, our health, our quality of life is getting a little bit better with medical advances, but No matter what, you fast forward, if the Lord tarries for this long, you fast forward a thousand years, and we ain't going to be surpassing that 120 cap. It's not, I don't care how far, I don't care if Elon Musk gets his Neuralink thing absolutely perfected, and we're sitting here all cyborg-like, transhumanism vibes, we're still not going to get past that 120 cap. It's just not going to happen. Verse 10, 70, 80, And during that time, there's so much toil and trouble. Moses feels this. He sees it. He sees probably the sickness. I mean, he's had to see some wild stuff go on in the wilderness. Imagine just seeing the earth split open and then swallow all these people for their rebellion, seeing fiery serpents. having just such a vulnerability. I mean, we can relate to it. We're extremely vulnerable. Our span is toil and trouble. We feel the curse encroaching around us all the time. The span of our lives is marked with plenty of toil and trouble, and then we fly away, then we're dead. But Moses does not stay in this brevity of man thing. Frankly, I'm surprised and super encouraged by the direction that he starts going after he takes this long musing and meditation on the brevity of man. And I think So there's speculation about when Moses wrote this, and I think if we sympathize with Moses and when he might have wrote this, we can see why he's speaking this way. But I think it's Numbers 20. So much happens in Numbers 20. You got Moses' sister Miriam, dies. You got Moses' brother Aaron, dies. And you got him told by God, you just disobeyed me in a way that's super big. You didn't honor me as holy in the sight of the people. And so you are not entering the promised land. So he's seeing just huge things happen. And so to write this way after losing your brother and your sister and being told you're not going in, Moses, that's pretty heavy. So you could sympathize with him a little bit and feel why he's writing with such a, such a zoomed-in focus on the brevity of man and the seriousness of God's anger towards sin. But he pivots. Well, verse 11, we can't pivot just yet. He then asks, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? He's looking and he's like surveying and asking the question, who's got the right mindset? Who has the fear of God? He's looking out and he's like, Maybe he feels a little bit alone. Does anyone else fear God? Why is there still such pervasive sin and grumbling and unbelief and doubting? And he just, I feel like you could almost picture him just throwing his hands up. He's like, who even considers? Is anyone looking at this? Is anyone considering the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? And so maybe I'm reading that in a little bit, but if I was Moses, I might be tempted to feel like, oh Lord, they're so stubborn. Why aren't they fearing you? And then verse 12, he finally gets to his petitions, his asking. All the way from verse 1 to verse 11, he really is just stating facts. I think that's actually very great and instructive for us as Christians that we don't need to launch directly into, Lord, I need this. Now, I'm not saying that there's not moments where urgency grips you and you're just saying, Lord, I really do. I need you right now, please. But as a general practice, I think this is super instructive. Moses spends lots of time just meditating on and praying back to God about who he is, his eternality, meditating on his attributes and character, and just looking at himself rightly. The most humble man on the earth is praying a certain way, and in that prayer, there's lots of time given to just confession of weakness. His own, sure, but also just general, like, Lord, who am I? Who are men? Who are we that you're mindful of us? Just looking at the brevity of man in light of the eternality of God. But finally, in verse 12, he gets to his petitions. And what's he going to ask in light of all this? So, teach us, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. The psalmist also prays very similar to this. You don't have to turn there, but Psalm 39, verse 4 and 5. David, he says, Make me know my end and what is the measure of my days. Let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Selah. So this is a consistent theme with the godly. Moses, David, this is also seen in Ephesians 5. It says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. So you got wisdom associated with having a right budgeting of your time and a right sense of your brevity, of how your days, you've just got a couple of them, they're going to fly by extremely quickly. I blinked my eyes and I'm 37. It's like, it doesn't feel like 17 was that far away or 27 was that far away, but I'm gonna blink my eyes again, I'm gonna be 47. I'm gonna blink my eyes again, I'm gonna be 57. I'm gonna blink my eyes again, I'm gonna be 77. And that's if I get to live What's typical? I don't know how much I have. You don't know how much I have. How many people do you know? Family members, friends. It was abrupt. It was unexpected. It was what? They were so young. I could point to multiple people in my own family. What? Your 20s? Your teens? You're 30s? You're 40s? You're 50s? Plenty of people I could think of that didn't get that 70 or 80. It's just going so, so, so fast. And so wisdom dictates. This is Moses' prayer. Could be our prayer. Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. This is not morbid. This is not nihilistic. This is not depressing. This is biblical wisdom to have a healthy introspection and budgeting of your time as, whoa, it's super short. Whoa, and it's gonna help you walk as wise not as unwise in these evil days It's not gonna make you like a slug of I'm just gonna die anyway That's the way the world kind of does it when I was very young I came across a movie and one of the quotes in the movie. It says this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time Now, that's true. It's 100% true. But what do you do with that? Do you walk as wise and not as unwise? Or do you say, all right, YOLO, let's just live for the day and seize life for all the pleasure that we can get from it. That's basically what the world does when they say, OK, my days are limited. If they're even willing to look at it, most people are just like, la, la, la, la, la, I do not want to think about my death. I do not want to think about my death. I'm going to be young forever. It's not going to be that way. But when they do have the bravery to look at it, the response is not right. But Moses is praying, Lord, teach us to number our days. And he says, us. He's not just saying, Lord, all right, help me have the right perspective. He's concerned for the entirety of Israel. He's concerned for God's people that we would have a right, sober estimation of our brevity because this is going to make us wise people. And then you see what, in my mind, I perceive this as like a mood shift. It's like all this heaviness, all this just death and years ending like a sigh in God's wrath. And then, verse 13, he starts, return, O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants, verse 14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Wait! Verse 10, Moses, you just said that, yet their span is but toil and trouble. You said, for all our days pass away under your wrath, and then you're here with such a drastic, for me it feels like such a pivot, it feels unexpected. Verse 14, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. I am so encouraged by this because Moses' perspective is, it's so real and yet staring in the face of the limits of man and his soon approaching death, he says, yeah, but if I'm going to be here and I only got a couple decades, make me glad. Let me rejoice. I find that to be astonishing optimism in light of man's brevity. And this is his prayer. This is fought for. This is not just like a kind of whimsical, careless, all right, well, don't worry, be happy. He's fighting for joy in the midst of all this. And he's saying, Lord, here's my prayer in the midst of this landscape of my fleetingness of my life. Satisfy us. Thirteen, he says, return, O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants. When I hear return, I can't help but think of the Lord's Prayer. Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. I can't help but think of Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus, come. How long? Have pity on your servants. Come back. Come back. Don't you long for the return of the Lord? It's the same in every generation for those who are God's people. They're pilgrims. They just want the homeland. They don't have an abiding country here. Moses, praying in verse 13, return, Lord. Oh, I just want to be near you. I don't want you to be far away. I don't want to feel like you've left. I don't want to feel like you're hiding your face from us. Return. Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Again, he's just, he's so realistic. He's like, yes, Life's hard, but Lord give us some gladness visit us here in the midst of all our frame is dust Our life is hard the span of it is toil and trouble but Lord Visit us be near us comfort us walk with us be our dwelling place in all generations It's very encouraging to hear Moses pray this way for all of no one is here has seen as much death and as much, he saw so much evil for the very people that ought to have the most reason to have total reverence and obedience to God. And yet, in spite of all this, seemingly undaunted by the The sad landscape of the condition of man, he still has a prayer of just what looks to me like just swelling, overwhelming optimism. 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, this is verse 16, Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children." I feel that. That's my prayer as I was meditating on this this week. It's like, yes, Lord, let your work be shown to your church. You can just see the ebbs and flows of history and undoubtedly we are in times of declension. As a church, as a country, we're in sad condition and the prayer of verse 16 for me it just rings so so true and so it's an alive request. Let your work be shown to your servants or you might say let your work be shown to your church. Lord, visit your church with power. Give us new converts. Give us a sense of your presence. Do you ever expect to come in Sunday and feel like you're glued to your seat and you just can't go home? Because you just want to abide. The presence of God is there in such a way that you don't want to leave. Time melts. In times of revival in the past, it was like that. hours melted away, just not even melted. It was just like the people were supernaturally upheld by such a sweet and near presence of God, sometimes a fearful presence of God, that they just, they just stayed put. They just kept singing. The preacher just kept preaching. Now, if we do that now, we might see some people fall asleep. But in times of revival, That's what I think of when I see verse 16, Moses is praying this in times that, I mean, perhaps he could have perceived when he looks out amongst the host of Israel and feels like, Lord, where are the people that fear you? He's praying, let your work be shown to your servants. We can pray that today too. Lord, show us something. Show us more. I think there's a right contentment to feel about what you have in Christ, in salvation. It's like, yes, hallelujah, praise God, I'm not what I was, but Lord, bring me higher. Bring me from glory to glory. I want to see more. I want to know more. I want to be more holy. I want your church to look more beautiful, more spotless, more white, more pure. Can't you pray that? Just like verse 16 says, Lord, Let your work be shown to your servants, to your church. And you see Moses' multi-generational view here. He's at the end of his life. I'm persuaded that he wrote this close to the end of his 120 years prior to his death. And he has concern for the next generation. He's asking, Lord, let your glorious power be seen, be shown to your servants' children. Maybe I don't get to live to see some big outpouring of the Spirit of God and times of refreshing from the Lord in a way like I've read about in the accounts of revival, but maybe my kids get to see. Pray that, because if it doesn't, unless a move of God occurs, it's just gonna get, I can't imagine that it's gonna get better. I think it's just gonna get darker, and so the prayer can be Lord. Let our kids see your glorious power. Let them see some brighter, shining, beaming witness of the power of God on display in His church, where the gates of Hades do not prevail against it, and where instead of just playing defense and just trying not to get crushed by the culture and by the toil of life, she's victorious, and she's marching forward, and she's advancing, and she's winning souls, and they're coming in, and the church is growing instead of just holding on for dear life. Don't you want that? I do. Moses does in spite of his perhaps exposure to what could be perceived as times of declension within the people of Israel. He's definitely got faith. He's praying this way in spite of seeing so much rebellion. He's saying, oh yeah, but Lord make us glad all our days. Let our children see your glorious power. And then verse 17, 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. We sang that first song about unless the Lord builds a house, in vain the builders strive. It's the Lord who builds his church. We've got to see kind of front row seats to the seeker-sensitive movement unfold over the past decades in America, and it's basically the attempt of man to build God's church without God. There is, and that's, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, I think there's probably some well-intentioned people that have employed the whole seeker-sensitive model, but I think there is an underlying sense in which there's just been a lot of arm of flesh and vain striving to try to build this thing with gimmicks and appealing to flesh. There was some account of, I think it was like a Chinese missionary who came over to visit America for a while and the impression that was left in his mouth, the flavor that he had, he remarks, he says, I am just amazed by how much you can do without God. And I think he's referencing Christians and churchgoers and just American Christians. Like, I'm amazed by how much you guys do just by yourself. You're not depending on God. But verse 17 is saying, let the favor of the Lord God be upon us and establish the work of our hands. Lord, you do it. You, Lord, let us build what you're building. We're not just asking him, Lord, make my my job my nine to five. But the work of our hands is encompassed by far more than just what we do for a career. So it's our life's work. It's like what we read in in in First Corinthians 313. Each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it. Judgment Day. Dave, Lord, because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. Is it wood, is it hay, or is it stubble? Moses is praying, saying, Lord, establish the work of our hands. Let what we put our hands to be the things that you are about. Laboring in the, when Jesus came here, he had to be about his father's business. How much of our business is still just our business? It's a good pause point. Am I working for what the Lord's working for? Am I building what he's interested to build? Still, so much, I feel like I just do stuff that I have to question, Lord, are you even interested in this? Is this going to last? Am I going to get there on Judgment Day? And you're going to be like, yeah, that was worthwhile. The day is going to reveal so much of what we've done is just wood, hay, stubble, not lasting value. But Moses is praying here. He's on his way out. I think he's on his way to Depart from his work in his generation. He's saying all let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us Israel God's people all of God's people Let your favor be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. So what are some of the takeaways from all of these musings on God's eternality, man's brevity, sin's severity, time's scarcity, and Moses' ending humble injury? It's just life's short. Live accordingly. Number those days. Redeem the time. Ask yourself a simple question. I've found benefit to this. If I knew that I was dying soon, what would I do differently? What would I subtract? What would I stop doing? What would I start doing? And the question is really sort of already answered. What would I do if I knew I was dying soon? But according to this, For every single person in this room, we are dying soon. And so whatever that question is, if you had five years, what would you do different? Five years or 15 years, it doesn't matter. The question is, what would you do differently? What would you get rid of? What would you add on? So that's one application for us is just to take inventory and just look. Yeah, just take inventory. I'll leave it at that. So life short, one application is plan humbly in James 4. It was again in that first song. That song was excellent. I don't know if you knew the text I was taking, but did you? I like when the Lord does that. Yeah, that was a perfect song, but it references James 4. And let me just pull up that little verse real quick so I can get it just right. It says, Yet, you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. So walk accordingly, take inventory, and plan humbly. Have a sense of, I mean, some people got five-year plans, and that's, you should plan. There's wisdom in planning. But there needs to be an attendant humility there as well, like, Lord, if you will, if I even live, having a recognition of that even in plans, like, Lord, I might not even live there. That's biblical. That is not overly pessimistic or nihilistic. It is just biblical humility. If I live and if it's your will, Lord, I'll go do this or that. Another application here is to, in light of all these things, do like verses 14 and 15 and just pray for gladness in the face of all of it. Listen, I know it's a wearying place, this world, especially for Christians. some ways I view my Christianity as like well if I'm an ostrich and I just bury my head in the sand then you know you got some Netflix with your head in the ground you got you got all manner of distractions and you could kind of just zone out and be in the tunnel of Non-reality virtual reality distracted reality and you might be able to be a little bit happy in there but to have your your face out of the ground and see the blinding just, there's so much grossness. It could get so discouraging and not just out there. In here, you're awake and aware and alive to the reality of your own shortcomings and sins and flaws and how you have so much left until you're conformed to the image and likeness of Christ. You say, that's what Jesus looks like and this is what I still look like. It hurts. But pray like Moses is praising the Lord. Make us glad. Moses is not willing to just lay down and embrace nihilism and pessimism and just let the brevity of life slam him into just having a face that's totally downcast. I want to read something just real quick. You know what? I won't because but It says at the end of Moses' life, his vigor was like unabated. He died as a 120-year-old old man, and there was something about him that was still just full of life. That's what I want. And he had that only by the grace of God. You can probably point to plenty of older people that you've seen and just It is the fading and withering imagery is more fitting of a description than the full of vigor imagery. But by God's grace, they who wait upon the Lord renew their strength. You could die with just a gust. Maybe your body is just hobbling along, but in your inner man, there's just a gladness. That's the posture Moses had in spite of all of what he saw. And so that's one of our applications as well, is that we could just pray, Lord, Do this for me. Make me glad in the face of all the decay and the curse and the perishing and the brevity of life. Just keep me afloat, and not just afloat, but rejoicing and victorious and optimistic and expectant. And there's more here, but I don't know how long my time has been, but let's just conclude with a word of prayer, and then we will partake of the elements and sing our way out. Heavenly Father, thank you for the words of your servant Moses recorded for us. All scriptures God breathed, it's profitable for us to reflect on these things, to consider our brevity, our frailty, our fleetingness. Teach us to number our days, Lord. Only by your spirit can this word be applied to us in any way that has a measurable difference whereby we actually Change the way we live and behave and think otherwise it's just a guy up here talking but Lord quicken your word to us and change us and help us have just a humble estimation of ourself a big grand view of you in prayer and an expectancy and optimism in light of your character and your steadfast love Lord and Satisfy us with your steadfast love. Give us gladness for all the years that we've had toil and hardship. Give us gladness in you. And Lord, let your servants see your work. Let our children see your work. Establish the work of our hands. Let us be building what you're interested in building. Lord, build up this church and your church at large in this country. Let all the schemes of man and devices of man just be blown out. And Lord, that you would just, by your own spirit, stir in your people to build your church with a sincere, spiritual, powerful, effectual building that the gates of Hades can't prevail against. We love you. We thank you for this time to look at your word. We pray that you bless us as we leave this place, as we sing, as we partake of the elements, and oh Lord, we're just thankful that you've given us such reason to hope. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen.