So we're going to Psalm 90, and we're going to read verse one. 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 turn'st man to destruction, and say'st, 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. 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 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 labour 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. Amen.

May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word. What a delightful little phrase that is in that final verse. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. May it be so.

Well, I... thought that as we were coming near the end of the year, as we approach the end of the year, that it might be interesting to speak to the young people, we finished that series that we were thinking about last week, to speak to the young people with a few thoughts about time, time in the Bible.

Time. I don't know whether you've thought about this very much, but time is actually a very curious thing. Some people even wonder if time exists and what it means. As I was thinking about this, I thought, well, I better look up Wikipedia and see what it has to say about time. So here is the definition of time that Wikipedia gives to us. It says that it is the continuous progression of existence. The continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present and into the future. So basically it's saying time is the progression of things that happen from the past to the present and into the future.

Another simpler definition that I once saw was that time is what happens when a clock is ticking. I think it's easier to understand that, but it shows you that it isn't easy to define what time actually is. We usually need to have something that we can say it's like this without it ever actually being really the same thing. But even if I can't explain time, what we do know is that it is very important and it is very precious. When we're busy, we say, there's not enough hours in the day, or I don't have a minute to spare. And once time is spent, Well, there's no getting it back. And we should always try to spend our time wisely. Even though we're not really sure what time is, we use all kinds of tools to measure time. From sundials to calendars. It's the movement of the earth and the sun that gave mankind the earliest means of counting or recording time. As the earth rotates, we get day and night. As it goes around the sun, as the world goes around the sun, we measure a full year, which we divide into seasons according to climate and the months with the aid of the moon.

But there are other ways of measuring time, from grandfather clocks to atomic clocks. The time that it takes for a weight to fall and the time that it takes for an atom to vibrate.

But what does the Bible say about time? We tend to think of time in a straight line. That's what the Wikipedia thing said. From past to present to future. We think linearly. We think of time as a continuation in a straight line. The usual idea is that we have a small period of time, that we exist in a small period of time, bounded on one side by eternity past and on the other side by eternity future.

But even this basic picture is really quite inadequate because eternity is ever-present. It is the ever-present now where God dwells. And God doesn't have a past or a future. He is the ever-present God. He is omnipresent. And where God is, is the present.

Time does have a beginning. It began when God created the world. It also has an end. We're told in Revelation 10, verse 6, there shall be time no longer. Before time, or we should perhaps say outside of time, God inhabited eternity alone in his three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But when time ends, angels and men will share eternity with God. some in the blessed place called heaven, some in the fearsome place called hell. The Bible teaches that our response to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ will determine which of those two places each of us shall inhabit.

This time period in which we live It's really very small and very short. In God's sight, we learn from Psalm 90, a thousand years are but as yesterday. And Peter tells us one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

People once lived a lot longer than we do today. The oldest man who ever lived was Methuselah and he lived for 969 years. His grandson was Noah, Noah who built the ark and Noah lived until he was 950 years of age.

The Bible speaks of days in the early chapters of Genesis when God created the earth. It speaks of the evening and the morning, which we understand as a 24-hour period. It also speaks of weeks of seven days. A week was a very early division of time. In the Old Testament, we only have the name of one day of the week, which is the Sabbath, the seventh day, our Saturday. In the New Testament, we do have another name given, but it's kind of relative because the New Testament calls Friday the preparation of the Sabbath, because that was when they got things ready for their worship on the Sabbath day. Otherwise, it seems that the days were just called the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day, etc. The first day of the week is our Sunday or our Lord's Day. What the other days were called, we just don't know. Maybe just first, second, third.

Sometimes the word day is used to speak of a particular time when something important will happen, will occur, not just a 24-hour period. For example, we sometimes speak about the day of the Lord, or in that day, or the day of judgment, when we are looking forward to a time when something special or important will occur. And sometimes we speak about parts of a day, such as the dawn, or the dawning of the day, or the morning, or the evening, or the noon day, or the midnight, or the cock crowing, or the break of day. And all of these phrases we still use today as being rather nonspecific terms for time and the measurement of time.

In the Old Testament, the months had names. And for the Jews, the new year began in the autumn, around September time. We're about to start our new year at the beginning of January. For the Old Testament Jews, it was in autumn. It was the appearance of the new moon that marked the beginning of the months for the Jews. These months followed that lunar cycle. So the Jews had 12 months just like us, but because they limited that to a 28 day lunar cycle, they often had to insert a 13th month to realign the lunar calendar that they calculated by the moon to the solar calendar, which brought the different seasons around.

There also seems to have been a calendar for religious feasts and festivals and another for civil government purposes. The Hebrews of the Old Testament had agricultural seasons as well, which began and ended according to changes in the climate. So they did their ploughing and their sowing when the early rains came and harvest took place when the crops had ripened after the summer. And longer periods of time were usually marked according to the lifetime of a particular king who was on a throne or a particular event that took place.

So, for example, in Daniel's prophecy, I think a few weeks ago, we read that Daniel's prophecy occurred in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia. So it was by aligning these events with something that would have been well-known. Here's another interesting one. In 1 Kings 6, verse 1, we read that the date of the temple building was recorded like this. It came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziph, in the second month that he began to build the house of the Lord. So all of these things coming together as an attempt, an effort to specify the date and the time when a particular event took place.

But I want to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to turn our attention to the Lord Jesus Christ because, as we might expect, the Lord has a lot to say about time. Time past, time present and time future. Daniel calls the Lord Jesus the Ancient of Days. because as we read in Psalm 90, he is from everlasting. From everlasting to everlasting thou art God. And though the Lord Jesus came into the world as a man and he was bound by time and space when he came in in his physical human body, yet he was always and is always God Almighty. ever-present and transcending time and space.

So that Isaiah, speaking of him, in Isaiah 57 verse 15 says, Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy. And in Deuteronomy 33, we read, the eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. Jesus says of himself, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. And Christ dwells both in time and outside of time in eternity as God. Time is Christ's creation. He made time. Our Lord Jesus was creator of the universe that contains the sun and the earth and the moon and the stars. He created time and he supplied us with the means to measure and calculate the passage of time. And he taught us to number our days.

Psalm 90 verse 12 says, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. The Lord Jesus will bring time to its conclusion. Interestingly, in heaven right now, we are told there are martyrs beneath the throne of God. And they're shouting out, they're crying out, they're asking the Lord Jesus how long it will be before he comes again to judge this world and avenge their martyrdom, bring the world to an end.

Our God is Lord. of heaven and earth, and he is Lord also of time and eternity. It is his creation to do with as he pleases, and he has told us what he plans to do. His purpose of salvation was settled in eternity before time began. And Paul says in Ephesians 1, verse 4, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.

God in Christ chose a people to make them holy and without blame before him in love that he might spend eternity with them. And saving grace and eternal life was promised to God's elect in Jesus Christ before the world began. Now because we are fallen sinful creatures of time and space, the Lord Jesus took our flesh. That was what we were thinking about at the time of the incarnation and Isaiah's prophetic words where he had all those different names for the Lord.

The Lord had to take our flesh. and become subject to the constraints of this world when he came into the world at God's appointed time. He came at the acceptable time. That means Christ came to do the acceptable will of his Father. and to accomplish an eternal work of grace and mercy by his timely work on earth. He came into the world to do a job that would have eternal consequences.

Do you remember the picture of Jacob's ladder? Jacob had a dream and he dreamt that he saw a ladder and its footing was on the earth and it extended into heaven. And he could see angels coming up and down. Well, that ladder that reached from the earth to heaven is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.

came down, Christ came down in order to, as it were, put his feet upon the ground, but open a way of access into the eternal realm. He came in order to gather to himself earthbound men and women, boys and girls, and fit us for eternity and carry us to glory. and every part of the work of salvation transcends time and space.

The covenant of peace is an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things unsure. The gospel is an everlasting gospel, Revelation 14 verse 6. Our redemption is said to be an eternal redemption, Hebrews 9 verse 12. Consequently, all the blessings and achievements of grace and salvation bring eternal life for all those for whom Christ died and for whom they were obtained.

May the Lord give us grace to trust in the Saviour who came into the world to save sinners. And as we begin this new year, may we do so with faith in the one who truly makes all things new. Amen.