This morning, we have the privilege of studying what is without doubt the oldest psalm in the Bible. Of all the psalms, it is the oldest, the most ancient, the first written, and that's Psalm 90. And the reason we know it's the oldest of the psalms is because of the inscription that is just above the first line. It says, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Now what this means is that Psalm 90 was composed by Moses. Yes, the very same Moses that God used to deliver Israel from Egypt. The very same Moses who led the children of Israel in their 40 years of wandering. in the wilderness, and yes, the same Moses that God used to give Israel its holy laws, that Moses. And because this particular psalm was written by Moses, this means that it was written, folks, nearly 500 years before the time of David. And David is the one who wrote most of the psalms. In fact, Psalm 90 may be the oldest portion of the Bible. depending on whether or not Moses wrote it before he wrote the Pentateuch and when the book of Job was written. What makes Psalm 90 so significant is not its age, but its message. the message of the psalm. See, the psalm tells us about the importance of being in a right relationship with the Lord by having an eternal perspective on life, to see things in light of eternity. And the way the psalm does it is by making a contrast between the ageless eternality of God and the temporal brevity of man, and by this compelling us to make sure that in light of the fact that our lives are just so brief, and so short, so fleeting. that we are in a right relationship with this everlasting God, so that we don't waste our lives by living for what is merely transitory, merely passing through. Here's how one Bible teacher described what Moses sets out to say in this psalm. He said, this psalm is transcendent, towering over time and eternity, written to remind us that what matters most in life is not the temporal, but the eternal. Not the physical, but the spiritual. Not the visible, but the invisible. In other words, all that matters is eternal. Now think about that. All that matters is eternal. That really sums up what Psalm 90 is about. As I just mentioned, the way that Moses communicates this truth is by making a contrast between the fact that God is eternal Meaning that he has no beginning. He has no end. While man and Moses is using the term man and I'm using the term in a generic sense, meaning all of us. We have lives that are just very brief and fleeting. Notice what Moses. says about God and man in terms of their longevity. Concerning God, in verse 2, he says, before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you're God. But concerning man, in the very next verse, verse 3, he says, you turn back man into dust and say, return, O children of men. In other words, man lives, And then he dies. And in dying, he returns to the dust from which God made him. And the light that he does have from dust to dust By comparison to God's eternality, it's just like a brief moment in time. Consisting, Moses says, of about 70 years or perhaps God gives you a little more time and strength and you have 80 years. Notice he says that in verse 10. As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years or of due to strength 80 years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it's gone and we fly away. Now, I understand there are certainly exceptions to this statement, but it was generally true at the time of Moses, and even in our times, that most people who live out their lives, rather than dying at a young age, they do live into their seventies, and perhaps into their eighties. But notice what Moses says about the quality of their lives, regardless of how long they live. He said it will be filled with labors, and with sorrows. In other words, life will be hard and filled with sadness. Now folks, think about what Moses is telling us. While God is everlasting, He has made man to live about 70 to 80 years, and those 70 to 80 years are filled with difficulty, hard work, sorrow, problems, sadness, disappointments, and then we die. Now, why would Moses write this? Whenever you're studying the word, you have to ask questions, and one of those questions is, why is this written? Why did he pen this? Where did this come from? What's the context? I mean, is Moses trying to depress us with just this gloomy forecast for our lives? No, he's not. Not at all. Because these verses cannot be taken in isolation. You have to see them in the overall context of this psalm and even of all the Word of God. And if you'll look at verse 12, you'll see precisely where Moses is heading with this bleak statement and these statements about how brief and hard our lives are. Notice verse 12. So, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. See, that's the primary point that Moses is making in this psalm by telling us how brief our days are. Moses wants us to be aware that since our days are so few, we need to make sure that we don't waste them on superficial things, inconsequential things, trivial things, things that really don't matter as far as eternity is concerned. Instead, we are to spend our limited time living in a right relationship with this One who is eternal, understanding that since our days are so few that we need to spend them wisely in order to live for the glory of this great eternal God who is like no one else. All this is summed up in the very first verse of Psalm 90, which is really the key, the key verse that unlocks the door to understanding the rest of the Psalm. Notice verse 1, Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Now, in order to understand what this statement means, we need to just take a step back and we need to think about who's writing these words and when is he writing them. See, these words were written by, as we said, Moses at the very time when the children of Israel were in the midst of wandering about in the wilderness for 40 years. It couldn't have been written after that because he died. It had to be written during that time. And why were the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness all those years? Because at the very beginning of their exodus from Egypt, Moses had sent out 12 spies, 12 men to spy out the land of Canaan, which had been promised to the Jewish people. But he sent these 12 men out to spy out the land and check it out and bring back a report. And when these men returned after spending, note this, they spent 40 days in Canaan 10 out of the 12 gave a negative, very negative report saying how strong the people in the land were and their cities were large and they were fortified. And they said, and some of the inhabitants of the land are descendants from a race of giants. In spite of the fact that two of these spies, Caleb and Joshua, urged the people, just trust the Lord to protect us. Don't fear. God will defeat our enemies. The people did give in to their fears and they didn't have the heart to obey God by trying to conquer the people of Canaan. It was unbelief It was disobedience, it was rebellion, and God allowed them, the children of Israel, to suffer the consequences of their sinful decision by condemning them to wander about in the wilderness for about 40 years. Why 40 years? A year for every day the 12 spies were in the lands. And he disciplined that entire generation of Israelites for their unbelief by condemning every one of them, note this, 20 years of age or older, to perish in the wilderness and to never settle in the land promised to them. The only exceptions were Caleb and Joshua. Here's what the Lord said to Israel in response to their rebellion. I'm reading from Numbers 14, starting in verse 26. The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, Aaron being his brother, saying, How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel which they are making against me. Say to them, As I live, says the Lord, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number, from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land which I swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Your children, however, whom you said would become a prey, I'll bring them in, and they'll know the Lamb which you have rejected. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness until your corpses lie in the wilderness. according to the number of days which you spied out the land forty days for every day you shall bear your guilt a year even forty years and you'll know my opposition I the Lord have spoken surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who have gathered together against me in this wilderness they shall be destroyed and there they will die now listen carefully it's because of this judgment upon the Israelites of of that generation, 20 years of age and older, that Moses writes this wonderful psalm saying that God is our dwelling place. Folks, that's a powerful message. God is our dwelling place. These people had no permanent dwelling place. These people are wandering aimlessly for 40 years. They have no country. They have no home. They're condemned to just travel about in the wilderness, unable to settle down or rest for very long. They're always moving about without any permanent place to dwell. And it's in light of not having a piece of land to dwell on and call home that Moses pens these magnificent words, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Now, do you realize what this man of God is saying? He's saying that even as he and the children of Israel wander aimlessly in this desert wilderness, having no permanent physical dwelling place of their own. In every generation, though, there have been certain individuals who knew God as their dwelling place." In other words, he's saying that although this older generation of Israelites have been unfaithful to God, in every generation of their nation, There have been certain faithful individuals who did believe God, like Abraham and Sarah, like Isaac, like Jacob, like Joseph. These individuals and others made the Lord their dwelling place. Now that's the point that Moses is making, that in the past God has been the dwelling place of some men and women and he can be their dwelling place right now too. So the question is what exactly does Moses mean when he says the Lord is a dwelling place? Obviously it's not physical. So what does he mean? Well, the Hebrew word for dwelling also means refuge. You could translate it that way. In fact, that's the way it's translated, the exact Hebrew word. In Deuteronomy 33, verse 27, when we read this, the eternal God is a dwelling place and underneath are the everlasting arms. The eternal God is a refuge, a dwelling place. Underneath are the everlasting arms to support you. This word dwelling though, it also carries with it the thoughts of being our home. God is our home. He's the one who comforts, he preserves, he cares for us, he shelters us, he's our protector. In fact, in the very next psalm, Psalm 91, which some scholars actually believe that it was also written by Moses, we don't know that for sure because there's no heading above the psalm to verify this, but it tells us, in that psalm, whether Moses wrote it or not, it does tell us something of what it means for God to be our dwelling place. Notice, in Psalm 91, how it opens up. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. For it is he who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you may seek refuge. His faithfulness is a shield and a bulwark. You will not be afraid of the terror by night or of the arrow that flies by day, of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you. You only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, for you have made the Lord my refuge, even the Most High your dwelling place." Now, we're not going to cover these verses in depth, but just a quick glance at these statements, it gives you a sense of what it means to dwell in God. It means to trust Him as your fortress, your refuge. to trust Him as the one who protects you, your divine caregiver. It means to rest in Him for your stability and your security, regardless of all the dangers around you. That's what it means. So what Moses is telling us in these opening verses, going back to Psalm 90, is that in every generation of people, there are some, not all, but some, who trust in the Lord, and rest in Him, and live in Him, and abide in Him, and look to Him to give them security and protection. And He's telling us this as a way of exhorting us to become those faithful men and women. This is why he'll say in verse 12, this is an exhortation, teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. That's where he's going with this. Do something in light of these truths. And look at verse 14, which I didn't read to you, but it's so important. Oh, satisfy us in the morning with your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all of our days. See, even as others are dying, all around them, corpses every day in the wilderness, This generation of rebellious Jewish people were passing away. Moses is calling for individuals to be faithful to the Lord, to rest in Him. He's calling us to be satisfied, to find our satisfaction in God, to have hearts of wisdom that will dwell in God, will abide in God. In other words, he's exhorting us to have the right priorities, to make sure That we don't waste our lives by living for the fleeting things of this world. See folks, this is an old, old psalm, but its message is quite contemporary. and very relevant because it addresses an issue that all of us have to face. How will we spend our lives? What's most important to us? What are our priorities? Will we spend our lives on ourselves pursuing selfish, trivial, nothing interests that have no bearing on eternity? Or will we live for the glory of our eternal God? That's really the issue. Will we have a relationship with Him that is meaningful and has eternal consequences? As someone who so wisely put it, what is truly important in the present is that which will be important 10,000 years from today. Whatever you're doing in the present If it's not valuable, if it won't be important 10,000 years from today, it's foolishness. It's a waste of time. So this is why Moses penned this psalm. It's an exhortation of this man of God to make God our dwelling place because we realize that only He is eternal and we're not. We're momentary beings, here today, gone tomorrow. So we have to use our limited time to gain a heart of wisdom so that we could live for the Lord and not for ourselves. Now, with this as our background, we're ready now to plunge into this psalm. And the way that Moses presents his case, and that's what he's doing, he is presenting a case that we should make God our dwelling place, our place of refuge, our security, our trust, is by understanding certain truths, what I call certain realities in life. He gives us three of them. This morning we'll look at the first two. The first reality being this. God is eternal. God is eternal. Verse 2. Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Now, having told us that God has been the dwelling place of some people, just a few from every generation, Moses now begins to argue his point that God should be our dwelling place by telling us that as creator God existed before he made the mountains, the earth, and the universe. However, although he made all things, his existence goes further back than just creation. Because notice, Moses tells us that God is from, and these are the words of this verse, from everlasting to everlasting. What does that mean? It means that there was never a time in the past that God did not exist. And there will never be a time in the future that God will not exist. He is the self-sufficient one. Now, why is Moses telling us that God is timeless and unending? Well, listen closely. He's telling us this because he wants us to understand that only the eternal God, who has no beginning and no end, only He is a suitable dwelling place for us. Only the eternal God, who has always been there and always will be there, is a proper anchor for our souls. Because everything else and everyone else is unreliable. As the song we sang just said, it is like shifting sand. Remember, Moses is writing this to people who have no permanent dwelling, no permanent address. They're always on the move. They're traveling about, think about this, for 40 years in endless circles in the desert, going nowhere, only to see their loved ones die in the wilderness before reaching their destination of the promised land. What a futile way of life! Empty, bleak, gloomy. just a hollow kind of existence. And that's why Moses is offering them an alternative life, a better life, a life that has meaning, a life that has purpose, because it's a life that's attached to the only one who can give meaning and can give purpose to our lives, the eternal God, the one who has always been there, the one who will continue to always be there in a world where these people did not have a permanent home, and conditions were always changing, He, the Eternal One, could be, if they trust Him, their permanent dwelling place. He would give them the security that they sorely lacked. He would give them the stability that they did not have. Folks, that holds true for us. You don't have to be wandering around aimlessly in the wilderness in the Middle East to know that God is still the only One who can give stability. and security in your life. There are many today who are still wandering aimlessly in life. I'm not simply talking about young people. They have no significant purpose in their lives. They're just going around in circles, just trying to find themselves, trying to find some meaning. to their existence. But you'll never find any valued purpose, any meaning to your lives outside of a relationship, a healthy relationship with God through Jesus Christ as your refuge. Because everything else in this world is constantly changing and there is nothing that you can depend upon to be there for you in your time of crisis except God. I love what John tells us in his first letter, 1 John 2, 15 through 17. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, it's not from the Father, but it's from the world. The world, John said, is passing away. And also it's lust. But he who does the will of God lives forever. And God lives forever. In 2 Corinthians 4, 18, Paul said, the things that you see, the things that you can see visually, right now, only temporary, transitory, fleeting. Because only God is truly everlasting, and therefore only He can be counted upon to be there for you, to give you comfort, and hope, and protection, and security, and grace in your time of need. Only God can. Listen, every one of us is faced with a decision as to whether or not we're going to live for the passing pleasures of this world or for the glory of God who is eternal and will never pass away. Will we live for ourselves or for the everlasting God? Will we be our own place of refuge or will we make God our place of refuge? See, the issue boils down to this. what or who will we trust in life? Ourselves or God? And the argument that Moses is putting forth is that God is the only one we should trust by dwelling in Him, by abiding in Him, by resting in Him, by placing all of our hope and confidence in Him, because He alone is the everlasting one. He never changes. He's dependable. He isn't going anywhere. He's not changing in his character. He's the rock of ages that we can bank our lives upon and our eternal destiny upon. But that can't be said of us. Never. We would be fools to place our trust in ourselves. Because as Moses continues with this psalm, presenting his case that God should be our place of dwelling, he gives us another reality. He's just given us the first one. The first one is that God is eternal. Now he gives us a second reality that flows out of the first reality, and it's this, man is transitory, man is temporal, man is fleeting. He says in verse 3, you turn back man into dust and say return, O children of men. Now what does he mean by this? Well, in contrast to God, who's before all things and is unending, Moses says that men and women's lives have a starting point and they have an ending point. He tells us that we are turned back into dust by God as He returns us to the ground from which He made us. You see this statement in verse 3, you turn back man into dust and say, return, O children of man. That's a reference to two verses in Genesis. Genesis 2, verse 7, which is about the creation of man. And Genesis 3, verse 19, which is about the death of man. In Genesis 2, 7, and remember Moses wrote these words too. In Genesis 2, 7, we read, then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. Then, in Genesis 3, 19, after Adam sinned, we read of God telling him the consequences of his sin, which also are the consequences that all of us have as well, all of his descendants. It says, by the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken for your dust, and to dust you shall return. Now Moses, as I said, who also wrote those words in Genesis, is reminding us here in Psalm 90, verse 3, that man is nothing but created dust, dirt. upon which God breathed into him and gave him life. And at the end of his life, God will take that breath away and he will return him to the dust and the dirt and the earth from which he came." He's talking about his body. Now, that's a humbling truth, isn't it? A very humbling truth about us. In contrast to the majestic, eternal, everlasting Creator God, we're simply frail, created beings who at the end of our days have our bodies go back into the dirt from which we were made. And this is the very cycle of our existence. Our years come, our years go, we're born, we live out our lives, and then we die. And Moses seems to accentuate just how frail and temporary we really are by making a statement in verse 4 concerning how the eternal God views time. Verse four, a well-known verse, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by or as a watch in the night. As I said, this is a rather well-known statement, certainly well-known to Christians. And the reason it's well-known, because in the New Testament, the apostle Peter uses this verse to speak of the Lord's patience in returning to the earth, meaning the second coming. Here's what Peter said in 2 Peter 3, Do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. Now, Peter's point is to say that God is not slow, He's not slack, in keeping his promise concerning the return of Jesus Christ. The reason Christ has not returned yet is not due to slowness, it's due to God's patience. Because when he does return, when Christ returns, he is returning to execute judgment. So, God is being very patient right now, waiting for the time when all the elect, he says, patient towards you, you believers, you who are the elect in this age, waiting for all the elect to have accepted Christ so that none of the elect will perish, but all of them will come to repentance. And because one day to the Lord is like a thousand years, meaning that as far as God is concerned, it's as if Jesus promised just two days ago that he would return. That's how God views time. Now, that is the point that Peter is making in his second letter. But when Moses says that to God a thousand years are like yesterday, he means that as far as God is concerned, this eternal God is concerned, a thousand years are comparatively nothing. as far as time, as far as time going by. They're just like yesterday, just a day gone by, or, he says, like a brief watch in the night, which, in Jewish thinking, was a four-hour period of time. So, what Moses is saying is, what is a thousand years to one who is everlasting? What is a thousand years to one who is eternal? It's a brief speck of time. It's just like a mere few hours in the night. That's all. Listen, just to put a thousand years in some perspective, how long that really is to us. A thousand years ago, our nation, the United States of America, did not exist. For those of you who are British buffs, a thousand years ago, William the Conqueror hadn't even reached the shores of Great Britain with the Normans. Lots of things have happened over the last 1,000 years. Yet to God, these last 1,000 years are just like one day. Just like one day. In fact, even less than a day, he says. Just a four-hour period in the night. That's all. Listen closely though, because here's the point that Moses is making and telling us about how God views time. In that same time span of a thousand years, in what seems to God such a brief period of time, think about the multitudes of men and women who have lived out their lives and passed away. Think of all the millions and millions of people who have died in the last 1,000 years. See, what Moses is telling us is that while God is everlasting, man is not. His life is brief, it's momentary, it's fleeting. He lives for only a short while and then God takes his life and his body returns to dust. Now, we know this is the point that Moses is making because of what he goes on to say in the next couple of verses, verses five and six. You've swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep in the morning. They're like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew. Toward evening it fades and withers away. Now he's continuing on the thought of God returning men to the dust of the ground. And what Moses is now stressing is how very brief and very transitory a man's life really is. He says that God sweeps away our lives in death. He compares it to a powerful flood of water that just sweeps over an area and it's gone, over land and it's gone, takes everything in its path. We're alive one moment and then we're gone the next moment as we fall, as Moses puts it, asleep in death. We close our eyes and we're gone. He compares our lives to the small bits of grass that grow in the morning in the desert after the nightly rains, that is what happens. It sprouts up, but by the time that evening comes, that very night falls, after the sun has scorched this grass in the daytime, it fades away, it withers away, it dies. So what Moses is teaching us is that our lives are so momentary, and that death comes to all of us because God, he says, takes our lives. It's not by accident. It's not by some medical issue that we have. God takes our lives. That's important to understand. This everlasting God is in control of our very lives. The Bible is very clear about that. God is the one who orders our deaths. Even the timing of our deaths has been ordained by God down to the very moment when we leave this world. I may use, and He does use, disease and illness, but there is nothing we can do or stop it because God has ordained it. Many verses speak on this, but Deuteronomy 32 verse 39 says this, ìSee now that I, I am He, and there is no God besides Me. It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded, and it is I who heal. And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.î What heís saying is this, when God says itís our turn to die, no one can stop Him. He's the one who gives us life. He's the one who ultimately takes our lives. Job said in Job 14 verse 5, since his days are determined, the number of his months is with you and his limits you've set so that he cannot pass. He's saying God is the one who determines the numbers of our days. There are limits on our lifespan and we can't pass those. Now we don't know when those are, but they're very limited. It's a fact that life is brief, death is certain, but why is this the case? Why don't we live forever? Why do we have to die? Why does God sweep over men in death like the floodwaters sweep over land? Well, Moses gives us the answer in the next few verses as to why death is the universal experience of men and why so many Israelites in particular were dying in the wilderness. They're related to each other. Verses 7-11, For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins, in the light of your presence. For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh, just a whisper. As for the days of our lives, they contain seventy years, or due to strength, eighty years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it's gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? Now, in order to understand what these verses are talking about, we need to first understand what the Bible has to say concerning death in general as the experience for all human beings. Why do all people die. It goes back to the sin of the very first man, Adam. Adam's sin brought death into the world. It caused it to enter the world, as Paul teaches in Romans 5. And we experience death. Why? Because we share in Adam's sin. Though we were not physically there, he was the head of the human race. He was our representative. What he did, the Bible says, we did in him. And in case you're thinking, oh, if I were there, I would not have done that. That's not true. You would have. You would have. We sinned in Adam. He acted as our head, our representative of the race when he disobeyed God. And we continue to commit our own sins. We don't even need Adam's sin. We have our own. And because of that, because of Adam, we have inherited a fallen sin nature, and we sin. Romans 5, 12 says, therefore, just as through one man's sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, meaning we all sinned in Adam, and so we all die. Now, while it's true that death comes upon all men because of Adam, the first man's sin, I want you to understand the primary thing that Moses is saying in these verses is that the deaths that the Jewish people of his day were experiencing as they just died off, their corpses laying there in the wilderness, one by one, It was because of their specific sin of disobeying God, unbelief, rebellion, disobedience, and refusing to enter the promised land. God said, go up and take the land. And they said, no, we're afraid of those giants, and the people are strong, and the cities are fortified. We're not going to trust you to do that. And God judged them. The result was that God disciplined them. by having every one of them, as I said, 20 years or older, die in the wilderness as they just traveled around in aimless circles. In addition, Moses tells us that God had seen all their secret sins. I mean, the other one was out in the open, but the secret sins, their murmurings, their disobedience, their rebellion in their hearts, and therefore they had lived under His constant wrath as their lives declined. And then finally, he says, ends in a sigh. It means a whisper. The last words are just like a whisper and then gone. Strength is gone and then we're gone. Moses tells us in verse 10 that the normal lifespan of a Jewish man's life in those days was about 70, maybe 80 if he was strong. But regardless of how long he would live, his days were filled with hard work and with sorrow. And the reason for all of this Moses is telling us is because God was angry with Israel for their sin. Now we're not Israel and we're not guilty of their sin of rebelling against God by his command to conquer the land of Canaan. However, all of us are still guilty before God. We're still guilty before God. All of us have disobeyed his word. All of us have rebelled against his authority in our lives. It's really the essence of sin, rebelling against his rightful authority over us. And as a result of our sin, we will die. And all the days that we are alive are filled with difficulties and sorrows. That is the universal experience of all of us in this culture and in every culture. Listen, no one can escape this harsh reality that life is brief and it's hard and then you die I have never met one person who has a stress-free life and I've met a lot of people never one I've never met anyone who says they they absolutely have no problems now they may say they're doing fine but if you talk to them no one has a problem free existence it is a given that life is difficult Very brief, and then death is a reality. The only question that's really important is what are you going to do with your difficult, brief, and death-certain life? What are you going to do with those 70 to 80 years that you have? And that's really why Moses ends this section with one of the most profound prayers and statements in all the Word of God. Verse 12, he says this, so this becomes his prayer. This becomes his request to God in light of these truths. So, teach us, we Israelites who have not rested in you like we should, teach us to number our days that we may present to you or gain, the thought is, or get a heart of wisdom. In light of the fact that our days on earth are so few, Moses asked God to teach us to consider how little time we actually have left, so that we can gain a heart of wisdom. In other words, he's saying, Lord, help us to think about the brevity of our lives. Help us in the midst of living every day to just stop and think about how few days we have left, so that we will learn to spend those few days wisely. And what does it mean to spend our days wisely? In essence it means that we make the eternal God our dwelling place. That's what it means. So what Moses is teaching us is to make sure in light of how few days on earth we really have, that we not waste those days, waste them on ourselves, but make sure that God is the one we trust, the one we cling to, the one we anchor our souls to, The one we live for. Why? Because He's the only one who's eternal. And if you want your lives to count for eternity, you need to be in a right relationship with Him. This morning, I want you to take a good look at your life and ask yourself a tough question. Am I wasting my life pursuing temporary stuff that will all pass away? Or am I investing my life in those things that will count for eternity? What is it that will count for eternity? What is it? Our service for others? People are eternal. Though our bodies die, our souls live on for eternity. Investing our lives in serving others, that's what counts for eternity. Our investment in their lives, especially for God's glory, that's what counts for eternity. Our obedience to the Word of God, the Word of God is eternal. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. how we use the Word of God to help other people, to minister to them, that is dwelling in the eternal God. That's using our lives to count for eternity. So, how you answer this will tell you if you're dwelling in God or chasing pursuits that mean nothing, just chasing after the wind. The only way to enter into this meaningful life of dwelling in God is first, it's by having faith in Jesus Christ. Not God in general, but faith in Christ, the Son of God. Trusting His death on the cross for your salvation, your personal salvation. Jesus in John chapter 15, He compels us to abide in Him. That's what He said, abide in Me and I'll abide in you. Abide means to remain in Him. to stay in Him, but there has to be a starting point, and that starting point is you come to Him in repentance, seeing your sin, hating your sin, turning from your sin, and you turn to Him, and in faith, you trust Him to be your Savior and your Lord, believing that when He died, He was dying for your sins, paying the penalty of your sins, and you trust Him. and when you trust His death for you alone, God not only forgives your sin, God not only starts changing your life, but God credits your account with His righteousness, Christ's righteousness. That's been your experience. If you do know Christ already, then make sure that you're following Him. Make sure that you haven't gone off track. Make sure that you're obeying his word. This is the only kind of life that is worth living. I'm going to close us in prayer, but right after that, we're going to close our service with a magnificent song. It is the song by Isaac Watts, Oh God, Our Help in Ages Past. I looked at the song this week. I sang it to the Lord. It is based on Psalm 90. So afterwards, I want all of us to sing this to the Lord, meaning it as our song of worship and dedication. But let me close in prayer, and then Joel and Daniel are going to come and lead us in this. Father, we thank you for this ancient, ancient Psalm. But because it is the Word of God, it is living, and it is practical, and it is teaching, and convicting, and exhorting us all at the same time, and rebuking us, instructing us in righteousness. Lord, help us to make you our dwelling place. Life is too brief to waste it on ourselves. Help us, Lord. to make sure that we have a heart of wisdom, that we number our days and we realize that we don't have that much time. Help us to turn from our selfishness, our pursuits of money and happiness and the good life Lord, may there be a work of grace in all of our hearts this morning that we would turn to you and say, I only want what's right for eternity. I only want to live for what is eternal. I want to invest my life in people and I want to invest it by taking the Word of God and obeying it personally and helping others to understand and obey it. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in every generation, faithful people. May we be those faithful people in this generation. And if there's some here, Lord, without you, we pray that you'll open their hearts to the gospel, that they'll see that dwelling in you begins by repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This we pray in his name. Amen.