Well, Psalm 89 ended with this
verse, Blessed be the Lord forevermore. Amen and amen. And that is where we actually
begin with this Psalm 90. Because you know all of the Word
of God is given to us that we might think on him. Now the problem that we have
as sinners is that we get too caught up in ourself. We get worried about how we're
feeling and all of that and unfortunately most of the preaching that we
hear in this day and time is geared towards that end. It's
really geared towards making people feel good and helping
you out and all that. And we're not against helping
folks, but I believe this is a true thing, that the only true
help that a man will ever find is not going to be in learning
how to do things or how to overcome his problems and that sort of
thing, but is in realizing that the answer to all of his problems
is in the Lord. And He is the one that has the
power, and we have none. And so, you know, the scriptures
always bring us there. You don't ever find the scriptures
exalting men. It doesn't ever do it. because
the scripture is written to exalt the Lord. And this Psalm 90 is
one that a man is called to realize is exactly what he is in reading
this. And there is a, this Psalm sets
forth the great contrast that there is between he who is eternal
The scripture says that he only hath immortality. He only hath
immortality. Now that comes as a shock really
to a lot of people because a lot of people think that men are
immortal. There's nothing about man that's immortal. God alone
is immortal. He alone hath immortality and
the scripture says that he dwells in the light to which no man
can approach. That is, he is totally set apart.
The angels, the creatures that Isaiah beheld flying around the throne said,
holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. And holy means set apart. And
the Lord is in an inapproachable place. And were it not that he
did see fit to come and visit us, taking upon himself human
flesh, and walking among men, we would never have been able
to have known him. We could not have known him.
It's impossible that a man could know God. Now we can know some
things about him, like Job said. You know, I've heard about thee
with the hearing of the ear. But he said, now mine eye seeth
thee. And he says, I repent in dust
and ashes for all the things. You know, men get often puffed
up about the things they know. But the reality is when we come
before Almighty God, we don't really know anything. I mean,
it's time to have our mouths shut. We don't come into the
presence of the Lord telling him how things are going to be
or expressing to him what we know because we really know nothing. as we ought to know, what the
Scripture tells us, what Paul said. And so, we begin here in
Psalm 90. This is a prayer of Moses, the
man of God. We just read about him. You know,
there's a lot of things about Moses that are not exemplary,
just like there are in all the men that are used in Scripture
by the Lord. You know, you can look at them
and they're not really always great heroes. They're not always
good men. But yet the Lord has a people
in the earth who belong to him and he's the one that makes men
what he wants them to be. And so a prayer of Moses, now
we just read one of his prayers there a while ago where he's
asking the Lord to kill him because he couldn't take the pressure.
He said, Lord, you know what in the world did you put me in
this position for? Just go on and take me on out
of here. Elijah was in the same place. He said, Lord, he said,
just take me, I can't take it, I'm the only one left. And the
Lord, now here's a good case of just what I was talking about.
See, old Elijah, he says, I'm the only one left. I said, shut
up, son. He said, I've got 7,000 men that
haven't bowed and need to bow. And so it is that the Lord uses
sinful men. But he begins here and 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. Thou turnest man
to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand
years in thy sight are buddies 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 unto wisdom.
Return, O Lord, how long, and let it repent thee 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. Now, some would read that psalm
and they say, man, that's a pretty dismal view. of man but they
are looking at it again from the wrong perspective because
what Moses is doing is he is just telling man the truth because
you see God is God and man is made from the dust of the earth
and he said there what a little secret right in
verse three said thou turnest man to destruction and sayest
return ye children of men well return what does it mean return
well the flesh is going to return to the dust he's talking about
the fact that man which is created out of the dust of the earth
is going to go back to the dust of the earth that that's really
what a man's got to look forward to in the flesh You know, you go to funerals
and stuff, and you never know that to be true. Because everybody
goes to a better place. It don't matter who they were,
or what they did, or whatever. Everybody is in a better place.
Well, the Scripture says that we return to the dust from whence
we were made. And the only way that we're going
to live, Job asked the question, he said, if a man dies, shall
he live again? Now the rhetorical answer to
that question, which Job was saying, is he cannot. He can't. He said, you know a tree might
take root or it might sprout again, but he said a man is dead
when he's dead. He can't come back from it. He
can't do anything to rescue himself. He's not going to naturally overcome
death. But that's how most people look
at it, you know, they just think that they're just gonna go on
because, I mean, they've been thinking like they're thinking
and they just figure their mind's just gonna go on. Only in Christ can a man live. In Christ is life. He that hath
the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God
hath not seen life. That's why the Lord said to Nicodemus,
Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God. And dear brethren, we are at
the mercy of God. I mean, we stand daily trembling
before Him. Now, if a man doesn't fear God,
he doesn't have any idea of who this one is that Moses is speaking
about here. It says, Lord, thou hast been
our dwelling place in all generations. Lord, our life has been in thee.
All of the sons of God in every generation have had their hope
and trust in the Lord. not in themselves. He said, you've been our dwelling
place. You've been that sanctuary, that tower of strength and refuge
that we run to in every generation. Down through the ages, God's
people are all the same in the thing that they desire, the thing
that they long for. We read in the book of Hebrews,
these all died in faith, not having seen the promise. What a blessing we are, have
been given to live on this side of Calvary and the empty tomb. John, I believe the last of the
Old Testament prophets, came and he saw Christ. He saw him
just like Ananias when he held the baby in his hands. He says,
mine eyes have seen the salvation of God. They saw that. John the Baptist saw Christ. He testified that he was the
one that would take away the sins of the world. But he had
no idea how that was going to be accomplished. He never saw
it in its fullness. He never saw Christ rise from
the dead. See, he never saw the ministry
of Christ. But he that's least in the kingdom
of God is greater than John the Baptist. That is because we have
seen a greater light. Now what a glorious thing it
is, dear brethren, to be given eyes to behold him who has been
the dwelling place of God's people in every generation and to see
the mystery which was kept hid from the foundation of the world.
now revealed. See, these things have been shown
to us. Now, surely there are things
that we have not yet seen. We have yet to see through a
glass darkly, but then one day face to face. But the mystery
of God, that thing that God would reveal unto men that He has come
to perform in bringing His people unto Himself, that mystery has
been unfolded. We're not sitting here thinking,
well, now God's going to do something that we never heard of. No, He
told us what He was going to do. And He's done it in the sending
of His Son into the world to redeem His people from their
sins. And so we have now seen not only
that he has accomplished this in his work, but that the stamp
of approval has been placed upon what he did by the fact that
he rose from the dead. Death couldn't hold him. No man
could ever testify to that. Death holds every man. And so
it is. He who formed the earth and world,
even from everlasting to everlasting, Now, that word literally means
vanishing point. Everlasting is vanishing point.
That is, you look as far as you do that till you just can't see
any further, and then you look over there till you can't see
any further that way. There's a vanishing point on
both sides of you, and God is from everlasting to everlasting. And when you get as far as you
can see that way, you know what? you'll see a little bit further,
because you can't get to the end. Though, what a glorious
thing. He's from everlasting to everlasting. Thou art God. He formed the earth
and world. Now, some people think about
the world and the creation of the world as if This is the whole
God can be defined by the creation of the world. Now I don't know
what God has done. And there's plenty of stuff that
we'll never know. Because again, He's eternal.
We had a beginning. He hadn't had a beginning. That's
something man can't fathom. See, I believe that which sets
God apart from men is what's spoken of by Moses right here.
He is eternal. He's from everlasting to everlasting. You and I, everything we know
of has a beginning, does it not? I mean, and an end as far as
we can see. I mean, you know, something starts
and it stops. I don't know of anything that
has gone on forever. I mean, men create great buildings. You know, you think about the
Empire State Building, or you think about those twin towers
that were built. I mean, those were monumental
things. And when they built them, they
built them to last for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of
years. I don't know what the engineers, what their calculations
are and all of those things. But they are no more. And you
look at New York City and you think, well, man, that place
will be there forever. No, one day it'll just be a plain,
it won't be nothing there. If the Lord, you know, causes
the world to endure, I mean, all the things that we see in
this world pass away. But God is from everlasting to
everlasting. Thou art God. Now, you know,
we think of how important man is. David said, what is man that
thou art mindful of him? And the son of man that thou
dost visit him. I mean, the Lord may have 10,000
worlds. I don't know. I don't want to
speculate. All I know about is the one I'm
in. And the Lord made us according to the good pleasure of his will.
And that's all we need to know. But he's from everlasting. And
he who's from everlasting, he formed something that has a point
in time. It's something that he just holds
in his hand, just like that. Oh, what a glorious God he is.
And he said, thou turnest man to destruction. The Lord said,
I kill and I make alive. He said, I form the light, create
the darkness. I make peace and I create evil.
I the Lord do all these things. Now, I don't have an explanation
for all of those things, but all that we can do is fall on
our faces and worship Him, who is the Eternal God. he said that
he would do according to his will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth and nobody could stay his
hand. David said, our God's in the
heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath
pleased. Now that makes some men angry.
It sure does. It really does because things
don't go just like they think they ought to and they say, well
who does he think he is? Well, I'll tell you who he is.
It doesn't matter who you think he is. He is the God that rules
over all things. And he's the one who, that shall
the thing form, say to him that formed it, why is thou made me
thus? I mean, if God wanted to create a world and send all of
its inhabitants to utter destruction in a pit of hell, what could
we say? What could we do? I mean, you
know, there's nothing. I mean, the Lord is that One
who holds all things in the palm of His hand, and He says He turns
man to destruction. It's appointed unto man wants
to die. And of course, you know, all
these smart people, a lot of them, they'll have their head
cut off and freeze it, because they think they're going to live
somewhere, you know. All those crazy things that men
do to what? Escape death, but they can't
do it. Because when God said the time's up, that's it. Thou
turnest man to destruction and sayest, return ye children of
men back to the dust from which you were made. For a thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past, and
as a watch in the night. You know, I'm often carried away
in my mind with the poetic nature of the scriptures. A thousand
years in thy sight are but as yesterday. What's yesterday? It's a memory. I mean, it's past. And a thousand
years to the Lord is just It's just like a memory. It's just
nothing to it. And time has no meaning. See, we are creatures of time. Everything that we know is related
to time. Even in the Scripture describes
the state in which we will dwell as in the ages to come. Now as far as God is concerned,
there are no ages. It's kind of like I've thought
of this as an illustration before. If you painted a picture and
you put it on the wall and it was a picture with all these
different things going on in it, I mean that's really and
truly how the creation of God is to him. He's painted every
stroke on that painting. It's just exactly like he wants
it. Now to the people that's involved, if you could animate
that painting, they're just, you've probably seen movies before
where they'll start off with a picture and then all of a sudden
you know it kind of morphs into people moving around and stuff.
And that's how it is with us, that's how we see it. To the Lord, there is no such
thing as passing of time. For a thousand years in thy sight
are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the
night. You know, a watch in the night,
generally the night was divided up into three parts. And the
watchman on the wall, there would be a four hour shift. They would
go up on the wall for four hours and then somebody else would
come and relieve them. And he said that yesterday, he said
that a thousand years is as that watch in the night. I mean, four
hours to us is a thousand years unto the Lord. Of course, it's
not measuring time, but what it is is showing us the contrast
between how the Lord would regard that A thousand years as a day
and a day as a thousand years. Thou carry'st 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 we are
troubled. Thou set our iniquities before
thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. Now,
for all of our days are passed away in thy wrath, we spend our
years as a tale that is told." Now think about that for a minute.
We spend our years as a tale that is told. That was our life. is marked out and it's like it's
already set it's already told and that's how we spend it and
when we look back on it you know when a man's young and he's looking
at his life out there in front of him but when he gets older
he realizes well my life is a tale that's told I can't go back and
change it it's already just like it was and you know he says here
In the morning it flourishes and groweth up. In the morning
they're like grass which grow up. You know, that's the way
it is in youth. It flourishes. Our life flourishes at the beginning,
does it not? And buddy, everything's new and
fresh and we got all these plans and hopes and dreams and all
these things and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that.
But as time goes on, those things become fewer and fewer. And in
the evening, it is cut down and withered. That which was so promising
is all of a sudden cut down and it withers. It doesn't sprout
again, but it withers. You know, if a man dies, shall
he live again? Not unless he's in Christ. The
only profession in which a man can live again Thou said our
iniquities before thee, our secret sins are in the light of thy
countenance. The Lord sees everything that
we do. Now that's a little thing we,
you know, a lot of parents tell their children that the Lord
sees everything they do in order to try to get them to be scared
and, you know, do right. It doesn't work. You know, because
You know, unless a man is born again, he has no fear of God. Even a small child, now he's
fearful because he doesn't know a lot of stuff, but he has no
natural fear of God because he doesn't know anything about God.
But if the Lord gives a man to know and understand Him, then
And only then can he fear this secret sins. He says, thou hast
set our iniquities before thee, and the Lord knows all these
things. Some men take great delight, and they say, oh, well, the Lord
looks on our hearts. Well, brother, if anything ought
to give you, cause you to fear, it would be that. That ought
not to give you any comfort. I mean, you think about that.
I mean, the Lord looks on your heart. Now, if you can take comfort
in that, then you don't understand the wickedness of your own heart,
because the Lord knows exactly what you are, and he knows what
you would be if it was not for his mercy and kindness to snatch
you as a brand from the burning. All our days are passed away
in thy wrath, and we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and 10, 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. Now, you know, we live in a day
and age when they say that 60 is the new 40 or something like
that and all that. But age is a relative thing,
and some people live beyond 70 years. Now, the scripture's not
saying here that you're gonna live to be 70 years old, because
some people die much earlier than that, and some people live
a lot longer than that. But you can be sure of this one
thing, that when a man reaches 70 years old, the best years
of his life is behind him. He's not increasing, he's diminishing. And that's what Dave is getting
at here. A man has most of his faculties
and stuff in general, when he's coming up to that age, but then
when he gets to that age, he's going to go downhill. He might
not go downhill right then, but we're going to go downhill. Now,
70 is not the halfway point, is it? I mean, you don't know
anybody that's 140, do you? I mean, so it's definitely reaching
the kind of a pinnacle, you know, and it's gonna go down from there.
And that's what David's saying here. He said, the days of our
years are 70 years, and if by reason of strength they be 80.
He said, even if you get to be 80 years old, He said, their
strength, labor and sorrow. There's going to be heartache
and there's going to be pain and trouble and aches and pains
and things are not going to be like they always were. That's
just the nature of the flesh. We pass away. And may the Lord
give us, in verse 12, I'll end with this. So teach us to number
our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. That's the
whole purpose of why the Lord teaches His people that they
are dust. That we are indeed face-to-face with Him who is
a consuming fire. And all things, Scripture says,
are going to melt with the fervent heat. And only those who are
found in Christ shall survive it. May the Lord help us to number
our days. Be reminded that we're dust,
but He is our dwelling place in all generations. And He has
given us, He has revealed to us the promise in His Son, Jesus
Christ, as He came into the world to die for sinners. I mean, what
if we had to, what if there was no Savior? and we were going to just pass
right on out of this world into the presence of God, what would
it be? I mean, we'd be without hope. But in Christ, there is hope. And that's what the message of
the gospel, that's what we're sent into the world to preach
the gospel, to give light to those that sit in darkness. May the Lord give us light. May
he give us a heart to seek that light while he may yet be found. He may yet be found. Now David
said when they came and told him that his son by Bathsheba
had died, he rose up and he washed his face and he said while he
was alive there was yet hope. And so there is hope. I mean,
we don't tell men that there's no hope, because there is hope
in Christ. He's the only one where there
is hope. I can't give it to you, but he can. Blind Bartimaeus
didn't know anybody else to go to to help, but he cried out,
Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And if we know God
to be a consuming fire, would we not cry out to him? I mean,
can a man who's been given the fear of God do anything less
than seek the mercy of God in Jesus Christ? I don't think he
can. I don't believe there's any way
it can happen. The Lord stirs His people and
moves His people to seek after Him. May He do so with us.