Tonight we're in Psalm 90, and I want to read through this with you. Psalm 90 is a familiar psalm. It's the only psalm, I think, that Moses is credited for being the author of. And so as we look through this psalm, keep that in mind. It helps us to understand the background to this psalm.

Psalm 90, I love these first two verses. I've read them enough that they have become part of those things of scripture that I've actually committed to memory, and not so much on purpose as because they were dear as we read through it, and you'll see that as we read through this, too.

So Psalm chapter 90. It says in verse one, Lord, thou has been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, you children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight, are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood. They are as asleep in the morning. They are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins, in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath. We spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long, and let it repent Thee according concerning Thy servants. O, satisfy us early with Thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children, and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

All right, so in these verses here, as I said, in the beginning of this psalm, just before the first verse, it says a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Now, Moses definitely was a man of God, but why was he a man of God? And what does it mean to be a man of God?

Well, it says in Hebrews 11 that by faith, Moses, and it goes on to describe what he did by faith. And without reading that, I just want to point out that what a believer does, they do in faith. They do it by faith. We live our lives depending upon Christ. And because of what God has said in his word, we trust the Lord Jesus Christ. We trust Him to be the covering for all of our sins and the clothing for all of our righteousness. We trust Him to be our life. We trust Him to deliver us from our sins to the uttermost. We trust Him to bring us to Himself and to make Himself known to us. We trust Him for all of the providence of life. We trust Him for our children. We trust Him for everything. And because we trust Him, we go to Him. We go to Him in our hearts. We go to Him in our hearts in prayer. We make our supplications to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so that constitutes a person of God. Someone who lives by the life of Christ in them, by faith upon Christ who died for them. And that's what the Apostle Paul says, I live by the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So the Lord Jesus Christ is the one we trust. And that's the definition of godliness.

Godliness. In 1 Timothy 3.16 it says, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. And then it goes on to describe that mystery by saying, God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels. are preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. So I don't have that in the right order, but you remember that verse? All those things were what Christ did. That's the mystery of godliness. And that's what Moses believed. So he was a man of God. He was a godly man.

Every believer is a person of God because they trust Christ. God has made them his own. and He has sanctified them by His Spirit to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the evidence that we've been sanctified by God is that we look to Christ. And so that constitutes, that's what comprises being a person of God, a godly person. We live by faith upon Christ.

Now, there's a definition of godliness that's different. It's a morality. Morality is good. We want to do what's right in the church. in terms of how we act towards others, in terms of our thoughts and words and our actions towards God and towards others. But godliness really is living upon Christ. And we can see that in many ways. But without getting into that, I want to go on here in the context of this psalm. What is the context of this psalm? Well, in Moses' words, he says in verse 3, starting at verse 3 and going through verse 11, he says, Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, you children of men.

Now, what this is talking about is what God told Adam. in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 19. He says, you will earn your, or you will get your living, you will get your bread out of the ground by your sweat, the sweat of your brow, by the sweat of your brow you will I've got to go read it. Genesis 3, 19. Let me read what I was trying to say, and I forgot exactly how it was worded, so I was messing it up. He says in Genesis 3 and verse 19, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return. unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." So what Moses is saying in Psalm 90 and verse 3, thou turnest man to dust, to destruction, and sayest, return, you children of men. So this is talking about God bringing every person to death in their bodies, every person. I mean, sorry, by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. Adam's one transgression brought all people under the sentence of death. Therefore all die because God counted what Adam did to them and the guilt of his sin passed on all of Adam's children. That was God's doing. That's why people die. And we sin because we're sinners.

And so, when Moses speaks here, he's talking about man returning to the dust by God's appointment. Now, in God's hand, he holds the day of our birth and the day of our death. It's in God's hand. He kills and he makes alive. So this is scripture. We know this is true. It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment. And this is a sobering fact, but this is true. And he goes on to talk about this in a pictorial language. In verse four, he says, a thousand years in thy sight are but yesterday as when it's past and as a watch in the night. In the Bible, and even in our day, I think, people sometimes post watchmen, people who watch during the night while others sleep. Not everybody has to stay up and watch, so they appoint a few people to do that, maybe one person. And in the Bible, there were four watches during the night, and the last one was called the fourth watch of the night, for example, so there were four watches.

And God is saying here that In his sight, a thousand years is like yesterday when it's passed. And it's like a watch, just a portion of the night. It's that short. To God, time, it's really insignificant. Our lives are insignificant. Thousand years, insignificant in that sense. It's just so brief and so short. And we have to come to grips with this. And this is one thing that I think that as you get older, hopefully, at least, as you get older, you realize the shortness, the brevity of our lives. And this psalm is written concerning that.

He goes on in verse five, Thou carriest them away as with a flood. They are as asleep in the morning. They are like grass which groweth up in the morning. It flourishes and groweth up in the evening. It is cut down and withereth. So grass growing up, grass getting cut, grass blowing away. That's what a man's life is like. It's just like grass. Clay Curtis was, at one point in his life, used to write lyrics to songs as part of his income. And he seems to have a talent for that. He said about this verse, he said, like grass, we are sown, We groan. I'm sorry, I'm misquoting Clay. He said, like grass, we're sown, groan, moan, blown, and gone. Gone. So with a southern accent, it rhymes. But that's true, isn't it? We're like grass, just temporary.

And 1 Peter 1, verse 24, he says, all flesh is as grass. That's how temporal our life is. It's very short. I just cut the grass a couple of days ago. I hadn't cut it for a long time. All that grass I dumped into something to be taken away. I was glad to get rid of it. because it's just to be thrown away. And that's the way our life is. It's just short. And he goes on, he says in verse 7, we are consumed by thine anger, by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast said our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance, for all our days are passed away in thy wrath. We spend our years as a tale that is told.

Think about someone you knew who has passed away, who has gone home to be with the Lord perhaps, or others who we don't know whether they were believers or not. We don't know whether they're with the Lord or not. And what do we remember about their lives? We can sum up their lives. Sometimes we do, in a few short statements. We think about certain segments of their lives. We have memories. But really, if we were to condense it all, we could write maybe a few paragraphs, maybe an essay or a book. But it would just be a tale that is told, isn't it? It's gone.

When I die, and all the people who depend upon me have died, I don't think people will remember my life at all. It'll be gone. And when I look back at my life and I think about all that has gone on during my life, I think, really, it's so insignificant. It's so insignificant. I mean, there are people who love me by God's grace and depend upon me. They don't think that. because they depend upon me. But still, our lives really seem insignificant in the larger scheme of things, don't they?

And that's what Moses is talking about here, because he says, it's, all our days are passed away in thy wrath. We spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years, in verse 10, are threescore and 10, 70. And if by reason of strength they'd be foursquare or 80 years, yet is there strength, labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away? It's discouraging, isn't it? If we live to be old, maybe 80. The last years of our life, they're struggling. We struggle, don't we? The strength we had, just doing basic things, walking around, bending over, things like that, get more difficult. Things we took for granted, now we think about. We're very careful. about how we lift things and move our arms and shoulders and things like that because we can throw ourselves out of whatever. I mean, our muscles get tweaked and we're down for days and we can hurt ourselves. It's just easy to do.

So my sister was saying how she fell out of the chair because she was twisting around quickly, fell on her knee and she's been dealing with that for months. So it's easy to do and you don't have to be very old to get hurt.

So the Lord is saying that our body, our body is going to return to the dust. You can count on it. There's a day appointed, a day of judgment appointed. Each one of us, each one of us has to stand before God in judgment. And that is supposed to sober us up.

He says this in verse 11, who knoweth the power of thine anger, even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. Now these are verses that seem discouraging, don't they? But this is the middle of this psalm. And this helps us to understand the context of this psalm.

And here's the context, Moses. Moses with the children of Israel. Remember, he was 40 when he left Egypt. He was 80 when God called him and sent him back to Pharaoh and to Egypt. And he was 120 years old when he died. And so for 40 years, he was with those children of Israel after they were brought out of Egypt by God. And they were in the wilderness the last 40 years of his life, 40 years with those people.

And remember what happened? The first couple of years they went from Egypt through the wilderness and they came to the land of Canaan. And they were there at the border of coming into God's promised land. And what happened? The people of Israel said, well, let's go send some spies in. Let's see if the land is really like God said it was. Let's verify with our own senses that God's promise is as good as he said it was. And also, let's see if we could actually overcome, let's see if by the measure of our own strength, we can overcome the enemies so that we can actually take possession of this land that God promised.

So what they were doing then, even before they went in, the spies went in, they were depending upon their own understanding, their own strength. They were not trusting God. And when the spies came back and said, well, it is really good, it's really good. I mean, it's amazing. Two of us, it required two of us to carry one bunch of grapes. But there's some bad people in the land, they're giants. And we were like, in their eyes, we were grasshoppers.

How did they know that in their eyes they were grasshoppers? Because they were looking at things through the eyes of their enemies. They were sizing up their own ability. That's called unbelief. And so 10 of the 12 spies that went in brought that report back, the perspective of man. We can do it or we can't do it. It's good or it's not good. They didn't even say, this is what the Lord said, let's go through this. Let's do this because God said he's gonna do it. They didn't say that at all. That's called unbelief.

And because of their unbelief, God says in Hebrews chapter three, because of their unbelief, They perished in the wilderness. Their carcasses fell in the wilderness. That's what God said. So this was Moses' experience. What happened? The people, because of their unbelief, did what? They perished. And what is Moses talking about here? Perishing because of God's wrath. He's talking about being consumed. He says in verse seven, we're consumed by thine anger. By thy wrath are we troubled.

Imagine how many thousands of people that Moses left Egypt with, that he was talking to and conversing with, who stood before him and asked him questions, and he gave them the wisdom of God, and he counted them. He knew their names and gave them instruction, and he spoke to them. year in and year out, delivered them from so many things. He brought water out of the rock, and manna from heaven, and quail, and all this stuff that Moses did by God directing him to do it in the power of God. And yet these people perished. Thousands of people, he saw them dying in the wilderness because of their unbelief. That's the context here.

Now look at verse one of this psalm. He says, Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. What is Moses saying here? Well, one of the things he's saying is that God promised them this land of Canaan. It was an inheritance. He was going to give it to them. He was going to dispossess their enemies from that land. He was going to bring them in. He was going to sustain them through the wilderness, and he did. And yet Moses says, hold on, hold on. There's something much more significant here.

Moses never went into Canaan. And yet notice this verse, Lord, thou has been our dwelling place, not Canaan, not an earthly inheritance. Moses looked not at the things that were visible, but at the things that were invisible. He looked for eternal glory. And when Moses brought the children of Israel to Canaan and he had to die Mount Pisgah, I can't remember where he died, and then Joshua led them in. When those people went into Canaan, what did they realize if they were believers? as a believer receiving the land of Canaan and understanding God's message in that physical land and the promise that he made and how he brought them in and by Joshua delivered them from their enemies and gave them that land. What were they supposed to understand by all of that? That when they arrived at Canaan, they were supposed to understand this, that their inheritance was Christ. and that arriving in glory, when they arrive in glory in heaven itself. that they would understand that Christ is their heaven, and that they were always in heaven with Christ. That's what they're to understand. That's what Moses is saying here.

Verse one, Lord, thou has been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou has formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Did God create mountains? Yes, he did. He spoke and everything was created. He brought the dry land out of the waters. It took him six days. In six days he made heaven and earth. He says so in Exodus chapter 20. In six days. Six 24-hour periods. six evening mornings. There's no doubt in my mind, God did it in six days. Why would we say thousands or millions or billions of years? Because someone wants to remove God so far away from them that they don't have to be accountable to Him. But God did it in six days because man doesn't want to receive God's Word. It's plain. Six days God created the heavens and the earth.

By faith we understand that the things which were made were not made of things which do appear, God did it, out of nothing, by his word. That's God. God who calls those things which be not as though they were. We dwell in him. That's what Moses is saying. Our inheritance is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Moses looked for. And that's what he's saying. And we've been in him. We're coming to Canaan. We're coming to glory. We're gonna pass from this world. Our body will return to the dust, but from eternity, we have been in our Savior. That's what he's saying in these two verses.

Amazing grace. Let me take you to a couple verses to show you this. In John chapter six, In John chapter six, notice the way the Lord Jesus says this. He says in John six, verse 33, the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world. What world? The world of his people. He says in verse 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that, underscore, believeth on me shall never thirst. Okay, so it's believing Christ, that's the way we eat, that's the way we drink. And notice in verse 56, John 6, verse 56, he says, he that eateth my flesh, and replace the word eateth with believing, he that believes, taking into himself Christ's broken body, and drinketh my blood and his shed blood, the blood of the New Testament, dwelleth in me, and I in him." Christ dwells in every believer, and every believer dwells in Christ. We believe him because we were in him by God's appointment. by God's election.

There are several ways by which we know that we were in Christ from eternity.

Number one, God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, Ephesians 1 verse 4.
Number two, Christ was our surety In Hebrews 7, verse 22, it says, he's the surety of a better testament, a better covenant. The surety is the one that the governor in Genesis 44, Joseph, or the one who was the creditor we owed a debt to, the surety is the one they would go to in order to receive from the one they were a surety for. Judah was a surety for Benjamin to his father Jacob. Christ is a surety for his people to his father. And he said in John 18, verse 8, if you seek me, let these go their way. He said that to the soldiers who came to take him in the Garden of Gethsemane. If you seek me, let these go their way. He's the surety.
And the second way, besides God's eternal election and Christ being our surety, is in this covenant, this everlasting covenant. In that covenant, Christ made himself, he engaged as our surety and pledged himself to fulfill everything God demanded, and he said he would fulfill it in himself. The answer of himself to God in blood for us, for our sins, and the fulfillment of all that God required from us in his own obedience, in shedding his blood, in everything that he did for his people. He did it for them. So, he is the surety, and he is the one who is the covenant, and he is the husband of his people. And he is the second and the last Adam. He gave himself for the church. He loved and gave himself for the church.

And as the second and last Adam, all in Christ shall be made alive. This union with Christ, as he says in John 6, 56, the believer dwells in Christ and Christ dwells in him, this union therefore is an eternal union. God chose us in Him. He engaged with His Father in an eternal covenant to be our surety, and He became the one who would stand as Adam stood for all of his people.

He would come in his own incarnation after Adam, but he was the second and the last Adam in that he stood for his people, and he's the husband of his people. All that the head does as the husband, the body does in him. And this is the way that this union with Christ is what Moses is speaking about, and the evidence of it is that we believe on him who died for us to take away our sins and to establish for us our righteousness in him.

In Adam we sinned, in Adam we were condemned, in Adam we died. In Christ our sins are taken away and we're justified. He's the object of our faith. Those who are in Christ believe Christ. Those who are in Adam they trust to their own righteousness, they think about what they can do in order to make God happy, and they can do nothing, because it has to be done by Christ alone.

So this is being told to us here in Psalm 90. Christ is not only the one who acts for us in everything God requires, but he is our refuge, we hide in him, and he is our inheritance, we receive him. All of this is included when God says, Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. What a beautiful statement, isn't it?

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Does God change? No. God is from everlasting to everlasting, and he's unchangeable. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. The things that the Lord has made, he says he's going to fold them up as a vesture, but he changes not. He cannot change. He cannot lie. He can't change. Therefore, everything God determined to do, His will and His works He determined to do, are also eternal. Everything. All God's works are known from eternity. He works everything in time according to the counsel of His own will. Nothing influences Him but His own eternal will, which was established before anything was created.

And so, because God himself is everlasting and unchanging, because the covenant God made with Christ is everlasting, therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is everlasting, and he was set up from eternity, and he is our surety, he is our covenant, he's our head, he's our husband, he's all these things to us from everlasting. And in him we have dwelt, we have already been in him, and when we arrive in glory, we'll know We were in Him from eternity. And we will see, and He is our eternal inheritance. What a blessing that is.

Now, in this Psalm, after verse 11, where Moses was describing the woe of the children of Israel and all people because of their sin and because of God's wrath, and because every person has got to answer God for his wrath, he speaks in the verses that follow, beginning at verse 12, of redemption. He says in verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. What is wisdom? In Colossians 2.3 it says, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in the Lord Jesus Christ. In 2 Peter chapter one, I think it's verse three, he says that we have all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him. of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Lord Jesus Christ is the summation. He is the sum total of all wisdom. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Him.

So to give our hearts to wisdom means to give our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ, to know Him. And that's what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3. Oh, that I might be found in Him, that I might know Him and be found in Him. Let me read that to you from Philippians chapter 3. so that I get the words just right. He says, verse 8, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

What is Paul saying when he says, I count all things but loss, all things but loss, but for the excellency, I'm sorry, I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. The knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, that's the wisdom. And what do I count loss? Everything else. Everything else that's not Christ, I just count it loss. And that most especially includes everything that I thought I had or was or knew before I found Him, before the Lord made Himself known.

Do you realize that in order to be saved, we have to realize that everything we knew before was wrong? Everything I believed before was wrong? Until I came to know Christ, everything was wrong. And we have this, that's why the Bible says, repent and believe the gospel. Because everything we thought before was wrong. We have to change our mind. We have to, by faith, we have to embrace the truth of what God has said concerning Christ.

And what is that truth? He says here, I count all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. Gladly, by the way, and to count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law."

Do you realize that you're going to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ before the judgment seat of Christ. Each one of us have to do that. No one's going to stand there for us. We each one are going to have to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know what that examination is going to determine? Were you in Christ or were you not? Did you believe Him or did you not? What did you really think? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh." What did you really think? What did God do in persuading you of the truth of Christ?

Did He convince you that Jesus Christ and His blood and His righteousness are your only hope before God? That you don't have any merit to stand on, no works to stand on? That all that you formerly knew is wrong and that you can only trust Christ? Before God, you know in your heart that you are nothing but sin and that the only one and the only thing that God can accept and that glorifies God and answers His law and fulfills His will is what Christ has done, Him, the Lord Jesus.

Are you persuaded of that? Do you rely on that in your daily thoughts and in your conscience and in your prayers? Is the judgment seat of Christ occurring as you think about these things? So that the thought, the prospect of God's wrath, as Moses describes here, and his anger, the prospect of that comes upon your conscience and you flee in refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ. Does that happen? Is judgment being held in your conscience through your life? Are you trusting Christ? Are you looking to Him? Are you coming to that awareness that unless the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the judge of all, the righteous judge of all, unless He stood under the judgment of God and answered God's justice and fulfilled His righteousness by His own blood, that that's all your hope and if God doesn't receive you for Christ's sake, if Christ doesn't answer God for you as your advocate with his own blood, that you have no hope and that you will receive what you duly deserve. Is that your attitude? Are you convinced of that? because that's what faith is.

Faith is finding everything that God requires in Christ, and being glad, just like God is glad that that's where it is, and coming to rest there. You see, the Israelites didn't enter Canaan because they didn't believe, and Canaan was called the rest of God, the rest, R-E-S-T, meaning it was the place where all of the work was done, and the promise was fulfilled. That's the land of salvation. And the captain of our salvation, pictured by Joshua, is the one who brought us into that land. And rest, because we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we trust His work, we do enter into rest. We've ceased from our own works as God did from His. We have sided with God, that Christ is everything. everything to God, everything to God and for his people. We're convinced of that. Our only hope is that God would look to him and his wrath would be answered by all that he received from Christ in the offering he gave to God of himself for our sins. Isn't that true? That's what the gospel teaches us. That's what the spirit of God teaches us by the gospel. That's what faith is.

And when we confess this in our prayers and to one another, that's the evidence that this is the abundance of what's in our heart. And that's what the judgment seat of Christ is going to do. It's going to determine this. That's what Moses is talking about here. He goes on in verse 12. Verse 13, return, O Lord, how long, and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. In other words, his wrath, his anger, he would destroy them for their unbelief. And Moses is praying, concerning your servants, concerning your chosen ones, those in Christ, turn yourself from your anger. Don't turn us over like Pharaoh to the hardness of our hearts. Save us from our sins. Save us to the uttermost. Bring us to yourself. That's what he's saying. Return, O Lord. How long? And let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

Oh, verse four. He's going to ask several things here. Notice verse 14. Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy." Do you know the only thing that will satisfy a sinner is that if God shows us mercy in Christ on the basis of His shed blood, that it's mercy that we don't deserve, and yet God, for Christ's sake, Glorifying himself in this has saved his people by the Lord Jesus Christ by himself. He goes on, satisfies early, not a long time from now, soon, right now, I need grace now. that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. That's what faith does. We have joy and peace in believing. Verse 15, make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us and the years wherein we have seen evil. That's our life, isn't it? And our life is just from one day to the next, it seems like sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. But do you know what he's saying here? Make us glad.

Do you know what the greatest privilege that a person can have on this earth is? The greatest privilege that a person on this earth can have. You know what it is? To live by faith upon Christ in the light of all other things, whether it be temptations, fall, in sin, trouble, afflictions, bodily, emotional, persecutions, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, is to lay hold by God's word on the truth that is in the Lord Jesus Christ and going to God at all times, looking to Him through the blood of Jesus, living by faith against the world.

That's the great privilege God has given us, is to live a life of faith on Christ. Because faith is what glorifies God. Faith is what honors God's law by God's own truth convincing us that it's Christ who has done it all. Faith points away from self and points to Christ. That's why faith is not a work. It's all Christ.

He goes on in verse 16. Isn't that the gospel? It's the declaration of God's work and His Son. The Lord Jesus Christ does the work of God. It's finished. And let your glory appear unto their children. Our servants, the servants of God, are God's people. Their children are those God has given to them as their children. We want our children to see Christ's work, don't we? We want them to see the glory of God in his work.

By himself he purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty of the throne of God. That's what we want them to see. to find all of God and his truth and all of God's glory in what Christ has done.

He says in verse 17, and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. The beauty, what is the beauty? Well, it's all that attracts us to him. It's the beauty of his righteousness. He says in Isaiah 61 in verse 10, let me read that to you. Isaiah 61 verse 10, if I can get to that. He says, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments. and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels."

These are the jewels described in Revelation 21, the jewels of the city of God. Christ's righteousness, that's what matters. That's what matters when you stand before judgment. What's the one thing that matters? Did God receive from Christ for me? Will Christ answer for me? That's it, isn't it? Everything else won't matter. Everything in my life, at the end of it, will only matter. The only thing in my life that will matter is what God has done for His glory.

Notice the rest of this verse in Psalm 90. Verse 17, the last verse, he says, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands, establish thou it. Everything we do in life, as Hebrews 11 says, as believers, we do by faith. Yes, we sin. Yes, we have unbelief mixed with faith. Our faith is never perfect, it's far from it. But what we do, In the low bottom of our heart, as Bruce Crabtree once said, the low bottom of our heart, we do it trusting that God provided and received Christ and Christ offered himself to God for our sins in order to bring us to God. And so that all we do, we want it to be for God's glory. If it's for God's glory, then God will establish it, won't he? In 1 Corinthians 15, I want to read this to you. A couple of verses from 1 Corinthians 15 and we'll quit here. He says in verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 15, notice this. He says, I am the least, this is the Apostle Paul, I am the least of the apostles that am not meet, I'm not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace, which was bestowed upon me, was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me." Don't you love that?

Look at the same chapter. 1 Corinthians 15, he says, verse 54, so when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, which is what Moses was talking about, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Notice, the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, which giveth us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ over what? Sin and death.

Notice, therefore, because Christ gives us victory over sin and death by his own. Sin atoning death and resurrection. He says, therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast. unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord, in Christ, in faith, in Christ, your labor is not in vain.

In 1 Peter chapter 2, he says that our thanksgiving is accepted by God through Jesus Christ. By Jesus Christ, our thanksgiving is made acceptable to God. And if our thanksgiving is made acceptable, how much more everything else that we do has to be made acceptable to God by Jesus Christ? We never presume. We never even think. In fact, we repudiate and loathe any thought that our works bring merit to us from God. No, we never would do that. We don't do anything in order to earn a reward. We look to Christ knowing that God is going to give us all things with him because God delivered him up and did not spare his son. Can anything more be given? No. No, nothing more can be given than what God gives us by grace for Christ's sake.

This life that we live, we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. And this is the greatest privilege. And this is what we do in life, anticipating eternal glory, that when we get to glory, when we see the Lord Jesus, we'll realize we've always been there in Him. He is our heaven.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for the psalm you've given to us from Moses, your servant. Thank you that someone so humble would be provided for our benefit to teach us that in the Lord Jesus Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found because in him he has justified his people by knowing what was required and doing what was required. He was able One who is mighty, all the help we need has been laid on Him, and everything from Him has been received by God for us, and so we bring all help from Him and bring it to God in our prayers, asking to be received for His sake and trusting Him only. We have none other, and He is all sufficient. In His name we pray, amen.