Let us turn again to God's Word
in the Psalm that we were considering this morning. In Psalm 90, this
morning we were considering those words that we find at verse 12.
In his prayer, the prayer of Moses, the man of God, he makes
this particular request. Here is his petition. So teach
us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. We sought to say something with
regards to the finiteness of man and how we need to recognize the
shortness of the time to number our days that we might apply
our hearts, cause our hearts to come to wisdom, that wisdom
that is found in the Lord Jesus Christ who of God is made unto
his people wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Well, I want us now to continue
with the same theme, as it were, but to turn back to the words
that we find in the previous part of the psalm, at verse 3,
where Moses in his prayer acknowledges the doings of God, the works
of God. Thou turnest man to destruction,
and sayest, Return, ye children of men. And so as we thought
about man's finiteness, here we are reminded of his frailty. We come to consider these words
that I've just read in verse 3, to deal with these two points,
the weakness of man and the purpose of God's. Man and God's. We're going to sing as our concluding
praise after the service, the paraphrase of the opening part
of this psalm, the familiar words of Isaac Watts, 1139. And you
will observe how in the heading at the top of that particular
hymn, we find these words, man frail, God eternal. man frail, God's eternal. And as we come to consider these
words in verse 3 in particular to think then of the weakness
of man as a creature and secondly the great purpose the decree
of the eternal gods. That's the division that I want
us to take up for a little while this evening. First of all to
say something then with regards to man's weakness. We see in the psalm that that
weakness is spoken of in terms of man as a creature. Isn't that the context of the verse if we read the previous
second verse and the following fourth verse before the mountains
were brought forth wherever thou hast formed the earth and the
world even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God the
eternity of God thou turnest man to destruction and sayest
return ye 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." Oh, what a contrast. Here is God. Here is God, that
One who is the Eternal. Here is man who is so frail. He is continually experiencing
all the limitations of his mortal life. here upon the earth, all
the limitations of time and of sense. And we said we see that
later in that verse we were looking at earlier, the 12th verse, and
the request that God would teach us. And we do need to be taught
the necessity of numbering our days, weighing up our days, that
we might apply our hearts, we might cause our hearts to come
unto wisdom, to see increasingly our great need of Him who is
the very wisdom of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. In a sense what
we have here in this third verse is parallel statements, that's
quite common of course in the Psalms as we've said previously,
it's a peculiarity really of Hebrew poetry, it's not so much
that we have rhyming verses, but we have verses here with
statements that relate one to the other. Parallel statements. And in this verse it could be
said that we have two statements confirming one another. Moses
says, Thou turnest man to destruction. and sayeth, Return ye children
of men. The one clause confirms the other
clause. God turns man to destruction.
How does God do that? Well, He says to man, Return
ye children of men. And that's how Isaac Watts brings
it out in his paraphrase there in the hymn 1139 and verse 4,
thy words command our flesh to dust. Return ye sons of men. All nations rose from earth at
first and turned to earth again. Or we read the words There in
that 40th chapter of Isaiah, the voice that cries in the wilderness,
of course, prophetically the reference is to the ministry
of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
what is the message? The question is put there in
the passage from verse 6 through to 8. The voice said, cry. And he said, what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the
flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely
the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. Oh, the frailty! of man as a creature. When we
consider what he is, what his body is constituted of, we know
as the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the earth. He
gives him the name of Adam which means red earth. All the Lord
God forms man out of the dust of the earth and embrace into
his nostrils the breath of life, and he becomes a living soul,
that noble part of man. He has a soul, the Spirit of
God has made a soul, as well as a body. But man, of course,
though he comes in that pristine state from the hand of his Great
Creator, alas, how soon he falls, he transgresses the commandment.
The test is put. He is not to partake of one tree
in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In
the day that he eats thereof, God tells him plainly, it will
be death. But man disobeys man's sins. And then there comes the terrible
judgment of God. In the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread till thou return to the ground. For out of it
wast thou taken, for thus thou art. and unto dust shalt thou
return." And what brings it out really in that paraphrase? All nations rose from earth at
first and turned to earth again. Then shall the dust return to
the earth as it was and the spirits to God who gave it. All that separation of body and
soul and the body laid in the earth to see corruption. But the spirit returns to God.
No soul sleep. After the death there is a judgment. Anticipating that that will come
on the great day, the general resurrection of the dead, the
last day, the last judgment. But all the frailty of man is
so frail when we think of him as a creature. how his body is constituted of
the earth and those words of the prophet Jeremiah we referred
to them I think this morning there in Jeremiah 22-29 oh earth,
earth, earth he says hear ye the word of the Lord this is
how God's voice comes to us to remind us of what we are as creatures
but then In a sense, looking at the words of our text, I said
that we have these parallel statements, but we don't necessarily have
to accept that the one confirms the other, and the one expounds
the other. We can also consider them as
contrasting statements. What does God say first of all?
Or what does the man of God say, I should say? Thou turnest man
to destruction. Isn't that the way in which God
begins with a man? He brings to that man the conviction
of his sin. He turns him to destruction. And then in the second place,
and here is the contrast, He says, Return ye children of men. He brings him to the end of himself,
we can understand the text as saying, and he does that in order
then to bring that man to the Lord God as the only one who
can save him, and we consider it in that fashion. Thou turnest
man to destruction. Isn't that the beginning really
of the way of the Lord, his dealings with sinners have to be brought
to understand something of themselves. Calvin, in that great work of
the Reformation, the Institute of the Christian Religion, his
systematic theology, we might say, he begins by saying that
there are those two areas of knowledge that we must be brought
to, the knowledge of ourselves and the knowledge of God. And
of course there's a sense in which the knowledge of God is
first. It's as we come to any understanding of God, any knowledge
of God, that we understand the truth concerning ourselves. And
how does God teach us? He teaches us out of His law.
That Lord of Gods is holy. The commandments, says the Apostle,
is holy and just and good. That's what the law is. There's
no fault with the law. But when the law comes to deal
with man in all his weakness now, his weakness not as a creature,
his weakness as one who is a transgressor, a sinner, that law comes then
as administration of death. Or they turn this man to destruction.
Paul says the letter killeth And wasn't that man very much
taught the real purpose of the law of God? He was taught it
and he acknowledges it in the language that we have there in
the 7th chapter of his epistle to the Romans. The words that
we have here at verse 9 he says, I was alive without the law once
but when the commandment came sin revived and I died. and the
commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death
for sin taking occasion by the commandment deceived me and by
it slew me." Well, this is what Paul has to learn, this solemn
lesson. He thought, he thought really and truly that he was
one who was able to keep the law of God. He was a pharisee
and he lived his life in accordance, he thought, with God's commandments. touching the righteousness which
is of the law he acknowledges he was a pharisee and he says as a pharisee he
considered himself to be blameless he thought he kept the law but
he knew nothing of that law and isn't that what he is saying
there in Romans chapter 7 he goes on doesn't he What shall we say then? Is the
law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known
sin, but by the law. For I had not known lust, except
the Lord had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion
by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.
For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law
once. that when the commandment came,
sin revived and I died. Though it wrought in him all
manner of evil desire, it stirred it up. It was there. Oh, it's
by that law that there comes the knowledge of sin. We know
that what thing soever the law said, it said to them who are
under the law, says Paul, that every mouth may be stopped and
all the world become guilty before God by the law. is the knowledge
of sin. No soul is justified by the law
of God. It is a dreadful ministry that
he comes to bear. It kills the man. Kills the man
to all thought of any righteousness in himself. It shuts his mouth. He has nothing that he can boast
of. All his righteousness is like filthy rags in him. That
is in his place. There is no good thing. nor thou
turnest man to destruction and as the Lord is administration
of death remember how Paul also writing in 2nd Corinthians chapter
3 says it's administration of condemnation it doesn't just kill the man
bad enough as that is it condemns the man he feels it he is He's
imprisoned. He's shut up. And he cannot in
any way deliver himself. This is a just condemnation that
is under, as the Apostle says there in Galatians 3, before
the law came we were kept, before faith came we were kept under
the law. Kept under the law, shut up to
the faith which should afterward be revealed. And he speaks of it here in the
psalm. Verse 8, They were set our iniquities before them, 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. All this condemnation that is the lot of man in all
his weakness. He's not, he was weak in his
creation, but he was made in God's image, created after God's
likeness, able to live a life of fellowship with God in the
state of his primeval innocence. But he has sinned. And the consequence
of that, when the law comes, it kills him, it condemns him.
And yet, God has a gracious end in view. Oh, doesn't that stand
out in the text? God turns them unto destruction,
but there's a purpose. I know the thoughts that I think
towards thee, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you
an expected end. Oh, there is such a thing as
a lawful use of the law. The law is good. says Paul, if
a man use it lawfully, all this lawful use, it's not made for
a righteous man, he says there in the opening chapter of 1st
Timothy. It's not made for that sinner
who has felt the deadness of his sin and the condemnation
of the Lord of God, that man who has been brought to look
to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith and has known what it is to stand
before God justified by faith in Christ, accounted righteous
because all his trust is placed now not in himself and anything
that he has done which was the case with Paul when he was a
self-righteous pharisee. His religion simply centered
in himself and went no further than himself.
But it was a useless religion Oh, but that man who is righteous,
truly righteous, is the justified sinner, justified by faith in
Christ. And the law is good if a man
use it lawfully, knowing that the law is not made for the righteous
man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly
and for sinners. Oh, that's the blessed end that
God has in view, to bring the sinner to see where He is and
what He is. And then, to utter those words,
return you children of men. Return you children of men. All
restoration, the being reconciled to God and brought back to God,
delivered from that state of enmity and alienation, Paul says
we have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not
trust in ourselves but in God that raises the dead here is
a contrast you see on the one hand there's the conviction of
the sinner the man turned to destruction to see what he is
on the other hand the great deliverance And what do we see in this deliverance?
We see two things. We see the power of God and we
see the priority of the gospel of the grace of God. And just
for a little while to consider those two things, the power of
God. Look at the words that we have here in the in the context in verse 4 the
following verse a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday
when it is past and as a watch in the night a thousand years is it not some allusion to those words
when we consider the language of Peter when he writes there
in his second epistle. Remember what Peter says in the third chapter of that particular
epistle. 2 Peter 3, verse 8, he says,
Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Those are the words of Psalm
90 and verse 4. And then Peter continues, The
Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count
slackness. But he is longsuffering to Oswald, not willing that any
should repent, but that all should come to repentance. oh this is God's design you see
that man should be brought to repentance the great work that the Lord
Jesus Christ has been exalted to accomplish in the souls of
sinners the words that we have there
in Acts chapter 5 how He has exalted a Prince and a Saviour
to give repentance to Israel and the forgiveness of sins and
what is involved in coming to that repentance? well a man has to be brought
to the end of himself If we're going to know anything
of the salvation of God, anything of saving faith, anything of
true evangelical repentance, a man is brought to the end of
himself. This is what Job has to confess. He's shut up a man. He says,
and there can be no opening when a man is shut up to what he is
and made to feel. his utter weakness, his impotence,
his inability his total depravity what he is as a sinner we have
to learn these truths not just because they stand before us
on the page of God's word we have to learn them in our soul's
experience we have to experience in that sense the awful doctrine
of the sinner's total depravity not thinking to the depths of
every sin, of course not but learning what it is in the sense
of our inability that we are not sufficient of ourselves to
think anything as of ourselves how the Lord humbles his people
We have to believe what God says here in his word concerning the
fall of man. The record that we have there
in Genesis chapter 3, we have to believe it in the sense that
we're made to feel it. David certainly felt it. David
very much felt it. David, the man after God's own
heart, and David speaks of his feelings so many of the Psalms
but there in Psalm 38 look at the language of David the Psalm
of David to bring to remembrance oh David remembers these things
there is no soundness in my flesh he says because of thine anger
neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin For
mine iniquities are gone over mine head, As an heavy burden
they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and are corrupt
because of my foolishness. I am troubled, I am bowed down
greatly, I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled
with a loathsome disease, And there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore-broken,
I have wrought by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Oh
how God turns a man to destruction and how the power of God is in
this. It is the work of God. It's that faith that fills the
truth as God applies his words to the man's conscience. He has
to confess the truth of it, the natural man. or the natural man
receive, if not the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness
to him. Neither can he know them, they
are spiritually discerned. What hope is there in self? None
at all. Thou turnest man to destruction. Now we need then a faith that
can only come by the operation of God and that's the faith that
we read of, isn't it? Colossians 2.12 faith of the
operation of God that's not duty faith that's not something that
a man can do of himself that a man can weave out of his own
bowels as it were and exercise faith no, he feels the impossibility
of it Or could I but believe, then all would easy be I would,
but cannot, Lord relieve, my help must come from Thee. God
must save the world's return, ye children of men. Oh, this is how God works. It's faith that doesn't stand
in the wisdom of men, as Paul says. It's faith that stands
in the power of God. And is that the faith that we
have? We feel our utter dependence upon God. Upon God as He has
revealed Himself in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We feel our need of Christ for everything. We know that salvation
by faith doesn't mean that the exercise of faith is what saves
us. It's the object. and the object
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it's that looking onto
Jesus. And as we look, he is the author
and the finisher of our faith. This is the strange paradox,
isn't it, of the believer's experience. Everything that he has of salvation
comes from the Saviour. Where does his faith come from?
His faith comes from Christ. He is the author of faith. He
is the finisher of faith. Where does his repentance come
from? It comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. He is exalted to
give repentance to Israel. And with that gift of repentance
there comes the forgiveness of his sin. It's all by the grace of God. It's all in and through the power
of God. And God should have such gracious
thoughts to a man as to do these things for him. I know the thoughts
that I think towards you, He says. Thoughts of peace and not
of evil. To give you an expected end.
Or we feel the evil of sin. We live to prove our weakness,
our mortality. We trust that the passing of
the days and the flowing of time and God bringing us into another
year serves to remind us how fleeting our lives are, how quickly
time flies. We are but creatures. and weak
in that but alas our weakness so compounded because we are
those who in our very natures are fallen creatures those who
sinned in that of those who were conceived in sin and shapen in
iniquity those who sin in many things oh alas in
many things we do offend all We barely a full day into this
new year and yet can any of us say that this day we've been
free from any sin? And we honestly say that before
God, we've not sinned once today. No sooner does the day come than
we're guilty alas of offending God, falling short of the glory
of God, We riddle with it. What a mercy
when God shows us what we are by nature. There's the power
of God here. God turns man to destruction.
There's a blessed end in view. You will save that man, return
you children of men. But what do we see also here
in the second place? We see the priority of the Gospel.
The priority of the Gospel. I said that In turning man to
destruction, we have to learn those lessons that come by the
law of God. By the law is the knowledge of
sin. It's administration of death, it's administration of condemnation. But, the Gospel has the priority over
the law. Paul asks, wherefore then serveth
the law? It was added because of transgressions
until the seed shall come to whom the promise was made. And
who is the seed? There in Galatians 3 is speaking
much of Abraham, the father of all them that believe, and he
speaks of the seed of Abraham. Historically, that seed of Abraham
we see is the son of promise. Sarah is with child. Sarah is
going to have a son but what does it say thy seed
which is Christ Isaac the type of the Lord Jesus Christ and
there in that chapter Paul so clearly shows how the gospel
is first and foremost It's surely as the principal
place. How the covenant was confirmed before of God in
Christ. And then he says the law which
was 430 years after cannot dis-annul Or the gospel has a priority
over the law. The law cannot disannoy the gospel
that it should make the promise of non-effect. Read through that
great third chapter in Galatians. I know there are difficulties
sometimes reading these portions. He speaks at one time of the
promise being 400 years before the giving of the law. Another
time we read of the promise being 430 years before the giving of
the law. Dr. Gill helps us in some measure,
he explains things, he says, does Dr. Gill that the Jews reckon
430 years from God's covenant with Abraham
recorded in Genesis 15 to the deliverance from Egypt. And then
he says the Jews reckon 400 years from the birth of Isaac in Genesis
21 to the deliverance from Egypt. So they're different time scales.
But it's basically a period of 400 years before the giving of the law
on Mount Sinai, that God gave that promise to Abraham, who
is the father of all them that believe. And so the gospel has
the priority. And the law that follows cannot
in any sense disannull it. What is the ministry of the law?
Why is it given? Well, the law is a schoolmaster.
Galatians 3.24, it says the law is our schoolmaster to bring
us unto Christ. That's what we have in the text.
O turnest man to destruction and sayest return ye children
of men. We see it also in that chapter
that we read, Isaiah 4. where the voice cries out, all
flesh is as grass. All the goodliness thereof is
as the flower of the field, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth.
Because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it, surely the people
is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. And what
is the words that he goes on to say? Be not afraid. Say unto the cities
of Judah, Behold your God, behold the Lord God will come with strong
hands and his arms shall rule for him. Behold his reward is
with him and his work before him. He shall feed his flock
like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with
his arm and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those
that are with young. Now we see preparation made as
it were. Men learning their complete and
utter weakness that they might see that all their salvation
is in Him who is the Good Shepherd. And that Good Shepherd who is
also the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. All we learn then is our sinful
weakness in order that we might see that great salvation that
is in the Gospel. And Peter, Peter again takes
it up there in the opening chapter of his first epistle. It's not
closed. with these words of the Apostle
the end of that opening chapter in his first epistle he says
all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower
of grass the grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth
away but the word of the Lord endureth forever and this is
the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Amen.