This sermon was preached on Sunday
evening, December the 28th, 1980, while the Trinity Church was
still meeting at the Grover Cleveland Junior High School in Caldwell,
New Jersey. Now will you turn please to the
90th psalm, Psalm 90. And follow as I read this psalm
that I trust will become for you an instrument of profitable
New Year's meditation, Psalm 90. You will notice that at the top
of the psalm it is called a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling
place in all generations, before the mountains were brought forth
For ever Thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from
everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God. Thou turnest man to
destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men, for a thousand
years in Thy sight, or but as yesterday when it is past, and
as a watch in the night. Thou turnest them away as with
a flood, Thou carryest them away as with a flood, they are as
asleep, in the morning they are like grass which grows up, in
the morning it flourishes and grows up, in the evening it is
cut down and withers. For we are consumed in thine
anger, and in 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 bring our years
to an end as a sign. The days of our years are threescore
years in ten, that is, seventy, or even by reason of strength
fourscore or eighty years, yet is there pride but labor and
sorrow, for it is soon gone and we fly away. Who knows the power
of thine anger and thy wrath according to the fear that is
due unto So teach us to number our days, that we may get us
a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long, and
let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O, satisfy us in
the morning with thy lovingkindness, 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 upon their children. And let the favor
or the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish
or confirm thou the work of our hands upon us. Yea, the work
of our hands, establish thou it." Now, as I have already suggested,
It is my purpose in directing your attention to this psalm
not to give a detailed exposition of the psalm, which would be
impossible in the light of two realities, my own surface acquaintance
with the psalm and the limitations of the time allotted to one period
of exposition. But I do have a very intensely
pastoral concern in directing your attention to the psalm,
in setting before you something of the structure of the psalm
and an outline of its contents, and that pastoral concern is
simply this. In the first psalm, the blessed
man or woman is described as the one who meditates in the
law of God day and night. And one of the problems that
the true people of God face is that with their desire to meditate
in the Word of God, they often find themselves at a loss as
to how to meditate or precisely where they should meditate on
the Word of God in terms of their present circumstances. Believing
that each one of you who is in Christ and is in any kind of
a healthy state of soul desires to have your perspectives regarding
the passing of this calendar year and the coming of another
year, To have your perspectives regulated by the Scriptures,
I desire to give you at least enough acquaintance or an appetizer
in the Ninetieth Psalm that will whet your appetite for further
reflection and meditation. Now let's notice by way of introduction
just something concerning the author of this psalm. We have
every reason to believe that Moses was indeed the one who
penned this psalm. There is no reason to doubt the
validity of ascribing this psalm to Moses, who is here called
the man of God. And surely among the Old Testament
figures, perhaps none except Abraham stands higher in stature
than does Moses, this great man of God who walked with God, who
spoke with God face to face as God spoke with few men, this
man who was the administrator of the old economy, who was,
according to Hebrews, faithful in all his house. And Moses,
in all likelihood, penned this psalm towards the close of his
own earthly life and ministry. He penned the psalm as one who
could look back over the history of his own life, over the history
of the life of the people of God, both in Egypt, and then
as God brought them out of Egypt, and then perhaps throughout the
great majority of those forty years of wandering, at the end
of which you'll remember that the Lord was pleased to take
the life of Moses and then personally to bury him in a place that was
never revealed to the people of God. Someone has estimated
that during those wilderness wanderings, Moses witnessed approximately
15,000 deaths per year. When we take the record of those
who came out of Egypt and try to calculate the general figures
of how many came out of Egypt, what the normal birth rate would
be, and then the fact that in those 40 years, God says that
entire generation that came out of Egypt died off, Their carcasses
rotted in the wilderness and only Joshua and Galen of that
generation were privileged to go into the land of promise.
Here was a man who had seen something of the ravaging effects of death
upon the nation he loved, to which he had given himself as
God's appointed leader approximately 15,000 times a year. He had either seen some of the
wail of those who had lost or heard the wail of those who had
lost loved ones, had witnessed the burial of different members
of the nation, of the children of Israel. And it's out of that
very realistic perspective of an old man who has constantly
lived in the midst of death, as the leader of God's people
that he writes this psalm in which, as we have the title in
the 1901 edition, sets forth God's eternity and man's transitoriness. Now as you seek, I trust, to
use the psalm as a basis of meditation in your own reflections upon
life as you stand on the threshold of a new year, Let me suggest
that you view the psalm, first of all, in terms of the first
two verses as constituting the initial unit of the psalm. And in verses one and two, we
have what I am calling Moses' fundamental confession of faith. The first element of that confession
is that God has been the habitation of his people in all periods
of their pilgrimage. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling
place in all generations. Now imagine what this meant to
a man like Moses. He knows the history of his people. From the time Abraham was 75
years old, he was a sojourner, he was a pilgrim, he was a wanderer,
he was a nomad with no certain dwelling place. Following Abraham
was Isaac, and Jacob, and then the sons of Jacob, and the four
hundred years down in Egypt, and now the majority of the years
of the wandering in the wilderness, and during that entire span of
time covering hundreds of years, the people of God have had no
piece of real estate that they could call their own. There was
no sense of the permanence and settledness and security that
comes with being able to point to a place and say, that's my
house, that's my home, that's my dwelling place. But Moses
makes this wonderful confession of his own experience and the
experience of all of the people of God, that the Lord Himself
has been the dwelling place of His people in all generations,
from one generation to another. God has come in covenant faithfulness
and pledged Himself in that crowning promise and blessing of the covenant
that He would be the God of His people. He would be theirs and
they would be His. And so he begins the psalm with
this fundamental confession of faith that focuses upon God himself
in covenant faithfulness as the habitation of his people. And
then the second aspect of his confession of faith is that which
pertains to God as the Eternal and the Unchangeable One. Verse
2, this God who is the dwelling place of His people is a predictable
God because He is the Eternal, Unchangeable God. Before the
mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the
earth and the world, even from everlasting too everlasting,
thou art God." The moment we try to use human language to
express eternity, we feel both the impoverished nature of language
and the limitations of a creature of time trying to think in terms
of timelessness. And perhaps there is no more
eloquent and simple expression of this great reality than is
found in verse 2 of Psalm 90. Before mountains were brought
forth, mountains in Scripture always representing that which
is permanent and unchangeable. You remember in the 46th Psalm,
though the mountains, the very symbol of permanence, should
skip and jump into the sea, We will not be afraid. So Moses
is asserting that before the mountains were brought forth,
those constant reminders of that which from the standpoint of
creation is permanent and stable, before they were brought forth,
forever God had formed the earth and the world from everlasting,
that is, from eternity past to eternity, if we may use the term
eternity future. Thou art God. And you see, if
there was any change whatsoever in God, what had been from eternity
would not be the same as what now is or what shall be. And
in this very simple but eloquent way, we have testimony to what
the theologians call the immutability, the changelessness of God. And because He is changeless,
He is predictable in terms of His covenant commitment. And
that God, of course, who has been supremely and finally revealed
in the Lord Jesus of that very Christ, it can be said, Jesus
Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the writer to
Hebrews ascribes to our Lord the very qualities that are here
attributed to God. So then Moses, as he comes to
the end of his days, Having been forced by the realism of constant
interaction with death, constant manifestations of the tragedies
of life, begins on this very positive confession of his faith,
God has been the habitation of his people, and this God is eternal
and unchangeable. May I say by way of application,
that here Moses sets a wonderful example for us as the people
of God. As we would seek to meditate
to our prophet, as we stand at the close of this present year
and on the threshold of a new year, upon what should we focus
our meditation as a starting point? Well, you do not focus
it upon man in all of his changeableness. upon yourself in all of your
changeableness, upon your failures, upon the failures of your fellow
creatures. But you must begin where Moses
began. Begin not with God in abstraction,
but God in the wonder and in the glory of His covenant commitments
to His people. He is the dwelling place of His
people. From one generation to another,
He has manifested Himself to His people as He did to Abraham,
as the God of grace. the God who says, I will be their
God and they shall be my people. And because this God is from
everlasting to everlasting, we can count on His unchangeable
faithfulness. And it is there that we must
begin our meditations. It is upon this reality that
we must ground every other consideration. Then the second unit of the psalm,
and this is not an absolute division, again it's one that I hope you
will find workable, begins with verse 3 and concludes with verse
11, and it's what I'm calling Moses' accurate assessment of
man's experience. From his confession of faith
In God as the dwelling of his people and the unchangeableness
of God, he now takes up the subject of man and God's dealings with
him. Thou turnest man to destruction,
and sayest, Return, ye children of men. And even though men should
live a very lengthy life as they did, you remember, in those days
early in the history of the world when it was not uncommon for
men to live seven, eight hundred, and then some even into nine
hundred years, yet before God this is nothing. For a thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and
as a watch The Hebrews divided up the night into three watch
periods. And he says a thousand years
are but as one segment of the night, one watch in the night. You carry them away as with a
flood. They are as asleep in the morning. They are like grass which grows
up in the morning. It flourishes. It grows up. It
is cut down. We are consumed in thine anger.
He brings together a number of lines of imagery various analogies
in which he accurately accesses man's experience. And we can
perhaps summarize what he says under three simple statements.
First of all, under the sovereign will of God, man is a transitory
creature. Thou turnest man to destruction. Thou turnest man back to the
dust from which he came. Now here Moses gives an accurate
assessment of man's experience. He had seen again and again and
again people who in the flush of their youth were vigorous
and full of all of the vision and energy of youth. He had seen
them mellow with the passing of the years. He had seen their
faces become lined with age, and their bodies weak, and he
had seen them die. And he says, behind this process
is the activity of this God who is the dwelling place of his
people, this God who is the changeless, eternal God, thou turnest man
to destruction. He sees in operation the sovereign
will of God, in constituting man in his present condition
a transitory creature. And then secondly, one of the
motifs that runs through verses 3 to 11 is that he sees man as
existing under the wrath of God. And there are several references
to this. We are consumed in thine anger,
verse 7, and in thy wrath are we troubled. Furthermore, verse
10, the days of our years, threescore and ten, if by reason of strength,
fourscore years, yet we fly away, why? Verse 11, who knoweth the
power of thine anger and thy wrath? And the obvious cause
of that anger and wrath is the sin of man. Thou hast set our
sins before thee, our secret sins, in the light of thy countenance. Moses was not a humanist. He did not believe in the ultimate
goodness of man. He had lived too long with himself,
and he had lived too long with the people of God to have any
dreamy notions that every day, in every way, we're getting better
and better and better. No, no. Moses himself knew to
the bitterness of his own soul how that in a moment of weakness,
though he had talked face to face with God and though he had
been commended for his meekness and his forbearance, yet in a
moment of weakness he disobeyed God, you remember, and struck
the rock and spoke abusively of the people of God and God
said, for this cause you will see the land But you will never
enter it. And before he died, he was given
the privilege of going to a place where he could view the land
from afar. But he never entered it. And
so Moses, as he assesses the realities of life, comes to the
conclusion not only that in the sovereign will of God, man is
a transitory creature, but man is a creature under the wrath
of God. And then he concludes with a
question which brings these two things together. Who knows the
power of thine anger and thy wrath according to the fear that
is due unto thee? He says, in the light of these
realities, who among the sons of men has a due appreciation
of this reality? It's a question, of course, that
is not answered in the passage. But surely the answer is implied
in the very way he asked the question, that one of the tragedies
of our sin is that our sin has blinded us to the very realities
that our sin has brought upon us. It's unthinkable that men
living in this generation could have high, lofty, confident views
of man's ability to sort himself out. Surely the history of the
past fifty years and the conditions of our own nation in the past
twenty years would convince any man who had half an eye, one
third open, that any notion that man is either getting better
or has the ability to make himself better is sheer folly. Yet Moses
must have felt something of that even in his own day. And in the
light of these realities, he says, who knows the power of
thine anger and thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto
thee? May I urge you as you meditate
upon this psalm, as you find occasion, not only to begin where
Moses began, but go where Moses went from that beginning. beginning with the great reality
that God is the dwelling place of His people, He is the changeless,
eternal, immutable God, then look out from that perspective
upon man. Man, as he is, turned again and
again to destruction. Man, as he is, obviously under
the wrath of God, as Paul so clearly articulates in Romans
1.18. The wrath of God is already being
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men who suppress the truth. in unrighteousness, and then
he describes the manifestations of the wrath of God. And you
see the tragedy. In our own society, the very
things that are an indication of the wrath of God are being
spoken up as indications that man is finally coming to his
own. What a tragedy. The wrath of
God is revealed when God gives men up to perversions. In terms
of human relationships, when there are covenant breakers at
every level of human relationships, when there is a reversal of the
sexual roles and there is homosexuality, When there is the covenant breaking
of all sacred ties that bind men together, Paul says this
is an indication that God has given men up because they have
so set their hearts upon sin that God says, if that's what
you want, I'll give it to you. Moses had witnessed that in his
own day. He had seen them turn to idolatry. He had seen them turn to all
forms of perversion. He had seen them in their rebellion
against the law of God and against the leadership that God had instituted. Moses had observed these realities. And I urge you to take a long,
hard, sober, realistic view of man's experience. and come to
grips with the fact that God is turning man back to destruction,
that man is living out his life now in a situation conditioned
by the wrath of God. God grant that as you reflect
upon this, you will come to the question of verse 11. If you
are looking at things as they really are, the test will be
that you will cry out with Moses, Who knows the power of thine
anger and thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto
thee? Well then, from his confession
of faith and his accurate assessment of man's experience, the psalm
concludes with Moses' petitions appropriate to these facts. In
the light of what God is to his people, their dwelling place,
what He is in Himself, the eternal, unchangeable God, in the light
of what man is, a transitory creature, under or existing in
a condition in which the wrath of God is manifested. In the light of those things,
Moses frames some petitions that are most appropriate to those
realities. The first is a simple plea for
a sane reaction to those realities. Look at verse 12. A simple plea
for a sane reaction to those realities. So teach us to number
our days that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Facing those realities,
he prays for himself and the people of God who yet live, O
God, give us a heart of wisdom that we may number our days. Now think of it. No one can dispute
the fact that the allotted time span for the average man or woman
is seventy or eighty years. No one can dispute that. And
yet most men live as though they were going to live forever. They
do not number their days. They can calculate the distances
between galaxies in terms of numbers that blow our minds.
When people start talking about expanses that involve a number
and then 25 or 30 zeros after it, I find I'm staggered when
they start quoting these figures. Men can calculate in every realm
but in the realm that counts the most. Moses had lived to
see people squandering away their days as though they had an unlimited
supply of them. And he says, we don't have an
unlimited supply. Even if we are given our full
allotment of 70 or 80 years, there is a fixed number to our
days. Help us, he says, to number our
days. So teach us to number our days. That is, to realistically come
to grips with the fact that man is transitory. He is like the
grass that is growing up and shall be cut down. He is like
the watch in the night that passes so quickly. And he says, in the
light of that, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. And what
is a heart of wisdom in the context? It is a heart that dictates a
pattern of life commensurate with the brevity of life. And
anything else is falling. Anything else is folly, because
it is living out of touch with reality. Be not unwise, Paul
says, but understand what the will of the Lord is, redeeming
the time, buying up the opportunity, for the days are evil. There is a New Testament parallel
to this very prayer. Now for you children, It's hard
for you to think that your days are numbered, but they are. If
you're ten years old, you've already used up one-seventh of
your allotted time if God gives you your full seventy. Think
of it! One-seventh! And before long it'll be one-sixth,
and then before long it'll be one-fifth. and one-fourth and
one-third and one-half and two-thirds and three-quarters, I shall never
forget. I'll never forget to my dying
day, as long as God gives me my memory, the trauma of my fortieth
birthday some six and three-quarters years ago, because I had thought
in terms of the history of longevity in my bloodlines and without
presuming upon the goodness of God, assuming that by heredity,
if God is pleased to use the genes that went into what made
me me and these other factors, that perhaps I would be given
my eighty years, the thought that on the first day after my
fortieth birthday, I was starting down the other side of the hill
to go through that door that only swings one way. I tell you,
I was struck and sobered like I've never been sobered. As long
as I was in my twenties and thirties, though I trust I lived in the
light of the fact that God could take me at any time, it was always
the thought, I'm still climbing up that hill. You see, I haven't
reached the halfway point, but suddenly you're there and you've
reached it. And I had heard others tell me
this, and now I know by experience, once you reach that, You don't
go down the same rate you came up. You go down a hill a lot
faster than you went up. And time seems to crawl when
you're 10, 11, and 12. You wonder if you'll ever be
a teenager. And then you remember that 13th birthday. And then
for a girl, there's something special about her 16th. And for
a boy, his 18th. Now he's supposed to be a man.
He's got six whiskers on his chin. And he has to shave twice
a month. And then he can't wait till he's
21, and it seems like time drags. And then as you begin to take
on life's responsibility, time begins to gather momentum, and
no longer does it drag. It begins to walk, and then it
begins to briskly walk, and then it begins to run. There's something
about that 40th birthday, it begins to take wings and fly.
And I'm told that after the 50th or 60th, it kicks in the afterburner
and breaks the sound barrier. Now when Moses prayed, so teach
us to number our days, he's saying, Lord, apart from your grace working
in our hearts, we'll be fools. We'll act as though our days
have no number. Teach us to number our days that
we may get us a heart of wisdom. And so Moses' petition appropriate
to the facts that he's laid out in the previous part of the psalm.
First of all, there is the simple plea for a sane reaction to these
realities. And then there is a series of
petitions appropriate to those concerns. And some have suggested
that you have six specific petitions. Some may be parallelisms in which
you have one petition enlarged from a little differing perspective,
but try to catch something of the overall thrust and burden
of those petitions. Return, O Lord, how long, and
let it repent thee concerning thy servants. Now that plea for
God to return is not as though God had forsaken his people and
he's asking them to come back. He began in Psalm 1, Lord, You've
been the dwelling place of Your people. No, but it has to do
with God being propitious to His people, God returning in
the sense of looking upon them again with favor by pardoning
their sins and thereby repenting once again, manifesting His favor
and His smile upon His people. O, satisfy us in the morning
with thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all
our days. He asked that he may know the
presence of God in favor, and then, as one of the wonderful
fruits of that presence, will be rejoicing and gladness all
the days that yet remain. Make us glad according to the
days wherein you have afflicted us and the years wherein we have
seen evil. Lord, as you have shown your
wrath and displeasure upon our sins, now come with singular
tokens that are just as evident with respect to your mercy and
your goodness. Let thy work appear unto thy
servants and thy glory upon their children. You see, the plea his
heart now enlarges. And he longs that God would come
forth to the bearing of his arm, not only to himself, but there
is this broader concern. He prays for the servants of
God. And then he thinks of the upcoming
generation, that the glory of God, seen in the mighty works
of God, would be manifested to the children of the people of
God. And let the favor or 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." And so we see that the great concerns of these specific petitions,
having prayed that he would have that wisdom that takes due account
of the brevity of life, of the allotment of days given by God
and does not go on in the madness of thinking life will exist forever,
what kind of life does he want? You see, almost anyone would
request a lengthening of his life simply on the basis of that
innate desire to preserve life. But now the question I press
upon you is this. What kind of life do you want
in the extension of that life? Is it that you might have more
days upon which to squander God's gifts? More days in which to
carry out a life of rebellion and indifference to the claims
of God in His law and in the gospel? Not so with Moses. He asks for wisdom to number
his days, and then he asks that those days will be filled with
the sense of the presence of God, the favor of God, the blessing
of God, the manifestation of the glory of God in the works
of God, and that he might be useful in the work which he performs
until his task is done. You see, again in scripture,
there is no warrant for the thought that serious reflection upon
the issues of life and death produce a kind of detached and
impractical mysticism. No, no. Moses draws aside long
enough to meditate and to reflect in order that when he goes back
to his task with his sleeves rolled up and sweat upon his
brow, he may attack that task with all the vigor of a man who
knows his days are numbered. And he longs that in those tasks
he may know the presence and the blessing of the God who is
his dwelling place. Well, I suggest to you who are
the people of God, surely this psalm provides a wonderful framework
for prayer and meditation as we stand on the threshold of
a new year. But I would be foolish to think
that all of you here tonight can be rightly addressed as the
people of God. There are some of you who perhaps
can parrot the words of verse one, but you cannot say them
in truth. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling
place. God is not your dwelling place
until you know that God, as He is revealed in His covenant promises
and in His saving activity in the Lord Jesus Christ. God is
not your dwelling place until you have fled for refuge to the
Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And all that is said in verses
3 through 11 is eminently true of you. You are in the process
of being turned back to destruction. Each indication of the seeds
of death in your body, whether it is in the appearance of another
crow's foot at the eyes, or a wrinkle in the folds of the chin, or
in the falling of a hair from your temples, Whatever is an
index of the passing of time and the advancement of age and
the seeds of death, these are constant and eloquent preachers
to you, my friend, saying God is turning you back to destruction. And that physical death which
will overtake you is just a frightening preview of that death of deaths
which is separation of the soul and body from the presence of
God in that place that the Bible calls Gehenna, hell, the lake
of fire, outer darkness. And oh, my friend, that God has
been merciful to you and brought you through another year. Don't
you realize what a burden you've been to God and to His world?
Taking the gift of life and squandering it upon the pursuit of your own
carnal passions, the earth itself groans beneath your feet. While
you live on God's earth in defiance of His law and indifferent to
His glory, and above all, indifferent to the gospel of His Son, oh,
do you not know that the goodness of God is intended to lead you
to repentance? Don't despise that goodness. Pray with Moses, O God, teach
me to number my days. Help me to bring near that hour
when I must be summoned out of this life, when I, like the grass,
shall be cut down and wither. And having died, I must go to
judgment. O God, help me to number my days. You see, this is no attempt to
try to scare people into getting serious about the gospel. These are facts, my friend. You
can't argue with them. You're on your way to death. You may have some kind of a carnal
hope when you hear a talk show that some brash physician says
we are now unlocking the mystery of aging and in another 50 years
we may be able to obliterate death. I simply laugh at the
poor fools. poor, educated, brilliant fools. My friend, all those secret hopes
you may cherish, there is no substance to them. God is turning
man to destruction, because man is a sinner, and the wages of
sin is death, and it is appointed unto man once to die. May God grant that if you stand
on the threshold of this new year out of Christ, the living
God is not your dwelling place. My friend, God offers himself
to be the dwelling place of every poor, helpless sinner, no matter
what your sin has been, if you will come through the door that
he has appointed, and that door is his Son. No sinner has ever
been turned away because he sinned too much or sinned too greatly.
He invites every sinner to come. Oh, that this new year would
find you saying for the first time in truth, Lord, You are
my dwelling place. And then, in the confidence that
He is your God, You then can begin to live with the great
passion that Moses expressed in his prayer, that it might
be life lived in communion with God, life lived under the blessing
of God, in the joy of God, with the presence and power of God
upon your labors. I realize I'm speaking to many
young mothers. Parents of little ones who seem
to be absolutely hemmed in with the pressures of just meeting
the bills from week to week and responding to the cries for help,
Mommy this, Mommy that, Daddy this, Daddy that. You wonder
at times, is there ever going to be an end to it, any meaning
to it? My friend, the end will come very, very quickly. You'll
sit there at family worship a few years from now and say, how in
the world did all three of my kids become teenagers? How did
that happen? I love that song from Fiddle
Around the Roof. I don't remember growing old, dear. Sunrise, sunset,
time passing so swiftly. Oh, dear young mother, young
father, listen. Take this 90th song. Make this
your prayer, Lord, as I face a new day. You may not even have
time to go away and kneel and pray it. Your hands may be busy
while you're praying it. Lord, establish the work of my
hands upon me. Establish the work of my hands
Upon us, the work of our hands, establish thou it, Lord. May every service performed in
the care of these little ones be an offering unto you as I
fulfill my God-appointed role as a mother, as a God-appointed
role of a father and provider and organizer and administrator
of the household. Lord, in the midst of all of
this, May your glory be manifested in your works, not only to us,
me, my wife, my husband, and me, but, O Lord, upon our children. You see how much fuel there is
here for fruitful prayer. I trust that God, by the Holy
Spirit, will take this very simple and cursory overview of this
psalm that has been my companion for many years And be pleased
to make it profitable for each one of us as we seek to do what
the Scripture says the blessed man or woman does. He meditates
in the law of God day and night. Take the prayer of Moses, the
man of God. Make it yours. Be sure to begin
where he began with that great confession of faith. Then look
out and view life realistically as he viewed it in verses 3 through
11. And then make that earnest prayer
your prayer, that you would number your days and have a heart of
wisdom. And then those specific petitions
which he prayed, make them yours. Flesh them out with the particulars
that apply to your situation as they apply to no one else's.
God delights when we do that as His children. And I believe
if we do, under the blessing of the Spirit of God, we will
find that we have not entered the new year in vain. Amidst
all of the time that you legitimately spend with loved ones, feasting
and laughter, and some of you no doubt watching football games
and all of the rest, may God grant that you'll make time to
sneak away and sit down with Moses, the man of God, and meditate
upon his prayer. to the prophet of your own soul. Let us pray together. Our Father, we are so grateful
that you are the changeless, the eternal God. We praise you
that you are the dwelling place of your people in all generations. We marvel that we can take into
our hands and set before our ears and eyes the words of a
man who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and yet they speak
to us with a burning and present relevance that convinces us afresh
that we are not seeing and hearing the words of a mere fellow mortal,
but your living words given to us through Moses, the man of
God. O Lord, we do make his prayer
our prayer. So teach us to number our days
that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Forgive us for the folly
of wasted hours and wasted days. Forgive us for squandering that
most precious commodity given to us, one which all the wealth
in the world cannot buy, having lost it, even that commodity
of time. O Lord, help us to number our
days. Help us to live wisely. Help us to live under your favor. May we live in the consciousness
of the manifestation of Your works and Your glory, not only
upon us, but upon all of Your servants, and, O God, upon our
children as well. Establish the work of our hands
as a congregation in the coming year as we move into this new
situation. And by Your grace, desire to
do what You've commanded us to do as a church. Lord, unless
You build the house They labor in vain that build it. Unless
you keep the city, the watchman wakes, but in vain. O Lord, we
cry to you to be our help, to be our strength, to be our portion. Grant that in that manner in
which only you can do, the words of this psalm will be written
upon all of our hearts with personal and pressing urgency and application. We pray for those who are strangers
to Your grace, who, having come through another day, are one
day closer to death and to judgment. O God, have mercy upon such that
they may seek You while You may be found and call upon You while
You are near. Hear our prayer and be with us
as we leave this place. Grant that our lives may adorn
the doctrine of God our Savior in all things, and to your name
be praise and honor and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.