If you have your Bibles, turn
back with me to Psalm 90. Psalm 90, the Psalm that Brother
Randy read a few minutes ago. I want to read verses 15 through
17. verses 15 through 17. Before I read, let me say that
Hebrews 11, 6 says that without faith it is impossible to please
Him. For he that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek Him. We must believe God, regardless
of what the circumstances are we find ourselves in. We must
believe God. It's required. You cannot please
God without believing Him. And this, of course, is a big
subject. But faith is the gift of God,
and all believers have the faith of Abraham. And Abraham was a
greatly tried man, but he believed God. And that's what the people
of God have going on in themselves, between themselves and the Lord,
is this faith business. They just believe God, regardless
of what the circumstances are, regardless of what the problems
are that encompass our lives, faith is the victory that overcomes
the world. To overcome the world is through
this believing God, through trusting the Lord, having confidence in
his sovereign power, his leadership, and in his wisdom. He makes no
mistakes. The Lord does not make mistakes. Isn't that wonderful? We don't
know anyone else like that, do we? No one else. Let me read these three verses
here that make up the last three verses of Psalm 90. Make us glad. This is a prayer of Moses. And Moses has been
in the wilderness, and he's been seeing a lot that's been going
on in that desert. And he comes to the place here
where he says, 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 works of our hands,
establish thou it." said one time that the Lord was
going to raise up a prophet likened to him, and that the people should
take heed to him. Now, Moses was a type of Christ
in his intercessory work on the behalf of the children of Israel,
the way Christ is for spiritual Israel. And not only In this,
the work of intercession, but also in the fact that he was
a man of sorrows, like the Redeemer would be, a man who was acquainted
with grief. You remember the sorrows of Moses,
the man who saw a whole generation die in the wilderness and was
himself denied admission to the promised land. He couldn't go
into the promised land. The Lord led him up in the mountains
and took his life. He was able to see over in the
promised land, but he was never able to go in. This man Moses,
if you read carefully and be diligent in your reading, you
will find that he was a greatly afflicted man. And he saw the
desert become a cemetery, for he lived amid forty years of
funerals. Remember that God had pronounced
judgment upon that generation because they had not the same
spirit as Caleb and Joshua. They didn't have the spirit of
faith and was trusting in the Lord as they ought to have been.
And so they died in the wilderness, all of those from twenty years
upward. And so it was one funeral after another in the desert. This 90th Psalm is saturated
with the griefs of what I would call a sentenced generation,
by whom it could truly be said in verse 7, We are consumed by
thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. God's judgment
was upon them because of their unbelief. It is true that the
people of God in any given day are also afflicted and tried.
in their wilderness journey. Oh, how true that is. In the
world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have
overcome the world, saith the Lord Jesus Christ. So there are
many tribulations and sorrows and losses and bereavements and
crosses in the life of a child of God. Many domestic problems,
many church problems. God's people are poor and afflicted
people. They're tested people, and they're
tried. Times of grief and overwhelming
sorrow when we are made to cry out with Moses in verse 13. Return, O Lord, how long, and
let it repent thee concerning thy servants. How long, O Lord,
will we go through these afflictions and these trials in this life?
Now observe, if you will, that the first word of this psalm
in verse 1 is Lord. Lord. Moses addresses the Lord. He is God. The God that raised
him up. The God that blessed the nation
Israel to remove them from Egyptian bondage through his leadership. Moses knew the Lord. And so immediately
he calls upon the Lord. Now, Moses had been touched by
God's rod But the sufferer remembered his father. He remembered his
father. Well, will the hypocrite always
call upon God? No. He maybe will kick at the
pricks when the providence of God seems to be against him,
but he will not always call upon the Lord. But the child of grace,
the child of God, the child who has the Holy Spirit of God in
them, when he is smitten, he turns to the hand that holds
the rod and cries, Show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Trouble drives away the carnal
man from his pretended religion, but it gathers the true sheep
together, and being aroused and alarmed, they seek the good shepherd,
they cry out, unto their God, the Lord. The more grief we feel,
the more grace we need. Is that not right? The more grace
we need, and the nearer to our Comforter we come, the nearer
to God we draw. Closer to God is the cry of those
afflicted and troubled saints in every generation. Closer to
God. If I can just get a little closer
to my God, to my Lord, and draw up near him, it shall be well. You remember the old psalm that
says, Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee, even though it
be a cross that raiseth me. Still all my cry shall be, Nearer,
my God, to thee, nearer to thee. Now we said that this psalm is
a prayer of Moses. The comfort of the child of God
in the darkness is prayer. It was a prayer of Moses. And
comfort for the child of God in this world is to find a place
to pray and cry out to God, call upon the Lord. Not to bear our
afflictions and trials apart from prayer, no. That's to, as
it were, to exacerbate our griefs and troubles. but to draw up
near the Lord, and to call upon him. Adversity, blessed of the
Spirit of God, calls our attention to the promises of God, and the
promises of God quickens our faith, and faith moves us to
prayer, and God hears and he answers our prayers. This seems
to be the chain of a tried soul. his experience in this world. He has the promise of God in
his soul, and he cries to God, and God is pleased to hear him
and deliver him. So as we suffer the tribulation,
and beloved, that we will, because the scripture says that through
much tribulation we'll enter the kingdom of God. In the world
you shall have tribulation as sparks fly upward. A man is born
into trouble. As we know the promise, let us
immediately experience the faith. Cry to God that we may be able
to lay hold of the promises. Remember the verse I quoted earlier,
Psalm 31, verse 24, Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen
your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. We hope in the promises
of God, the promises that God has made. And if we are said
of praying, We may depend upon it, the Lord is set on blessing
us. Beloved, if you pray and seek
the face of God, those that diligently seek him, the Lord will reward
them. Somebody was saying something
about rewards the other day and made a very astute, I think,
statement saying that The rewards seem to be here in this life.
Don't look for pie in the sky. Look for blessing here. I look
for the Lord to undertake. I look for God to pour out grace.
You remember the people of God in the book of Acts, they experienced
a time when there was great grace upon them. And so we look for
that time when the Lord will be set on blessing. And blessings
are on the way from heaven If there's prayer in our hearts,
if there's prayer in our hearts, let me say it again, blessings
are on the way from heaven. God is going to undertake and
he will bless his people. I want to stir you up to joyful
expectancy this morning, expecting that God is going to do something.
These clouds you so much dread, the poet said, shall burst with
blessings on your head. So may the Lord, by the Divine
Spirit, make the words of our text to be our prayer this morning,
and may Jesus present our supplication before the Lord, His Father,
our Father, God. Now, the petition or prayer of
Moses seems to be, first of all, for proportionate gladness. Proportionate gladness. Think
with me a little bit. Make us glad according to the
days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we
have seen evil. Now, our prayer should be for
proportionate gladness. Would that be alright with you?
Now Moses has been in the wilderness. He's seen God's afflictive hand
upon the people, and the Lord has dealt severely with unbelieving
Israel. And many have departed this life
in a state of unbelief. Their faith was not mixed in
their heart. There was nothing there. There was challah. And so he
asked the Lord that he might have proportionate gladness,
that he might have gladness to equal the days of all the afflictions
that he had experienced in the wilderness, so that the Lord
who has filled one scale with grief and pain would fill the
other scale with grace and glory until they balance out each other. That is what his prayer is about.
He wants the Lord to bless him. He knows God is a blesser of
men, that he blesses. That's been my experience. God
has blessed me. He has blessed me. And I know
that God is a blesser. And I know God is a giver. And
I know God is a forgiver. I know the Lord is a merciful
and gracious God. And we read in Nehemiah chapter
9 that the Lord is ready to pardon. He's ready. He is a merciful
and gracious God. Inasmuch as he has poured out
of his vial certain drops of warm wood and affliction, we
pray him to measure out the like quantity of the consolation of
his love, whereby our hearts shall be comforted. We begin
here by noticing that evidently the prayer desires a gladness
of the same origin as the sadness. This is to be noted. You remember
he's praying to the Lord. Where did the afflictions come
from? The Lord. Where is the gladness going to
come from? The same God. The Lord. You don't look one
way, you know, for this and another way for that. No, the Psalm plainly
ascribes sadness to the Lord, verse 3 and verse 7. Thou turnest
man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For
we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Verse 7. So, plainly, it attributes here,
ascribes sadness, the sadness that they endured. It ascribes
that unto the Lord. It came from God's hand. God
is to be seen in all events. He is to be seen in all events.
Do you see God in everything going on? You know, Paul said
in Philippians, I believe it is chapter 2, it is God which
worketh in you both to will and do of his good pleasure. It's
the Lord. So do all things without murmuring
and complaining. God works in his people to will
and do of his good pleasure. working in you. It's the Lord
that's working. God is to be seen in all events. And this is so important because
we, you know, look to second causes all the time. We're constantly looking to second
causes. And we ought to have learned
by now that that's wrong. for the people of God to be looking
all the time at second causes. It gets a lot of people in trouble,
friend. I mean to tell you it can bring
you to the end of yourself and you'll do something that's so
stupid that you will not get over it the rest of your life.
And nobody that you know will ever get over it. Because this
business of believing in second causes. So-and-so caused my problem. No, they didn't. If you're a
child of God You must wait before God and your sentence will come
from Him. Whatever becomes in your life,
it's Him. It's Him. And we've got to keep
our eyes on the Lord. That, my friend, will help you
to handle the deal, the various things that come to you under
chastisement. We beg for divine comfort under
divine chastisement. We beg for the blessing of God
under the hand of God. We wouldn't want any healing
any other way. We wouldn't want any blessing
any other way, except it come from the hand of our God. The words of the prayer are simple
and childlike. Make us glad. Make us glad. They seem to say, Father, thou
hast made us sad now. make us glad. Thou hast saddened
us grievously, now therefore, Lord, most heartily rejoice us. The prayer as good as cries,
Lord, no one but Thyself can make us glad under such affliction,
but Thou can bring us up from the lowest depths. Now the wound
goes too near the heart for any human physician to heal us. You ever had a wound like that? too near the heart for any human
physician to heal us. Cannot heal us, but God can heal
us, even to the making of us glad. You know in the Psalms
it talks about the Lord healing all of our diseases, and by His
stripes we are healed, Isaiah 53. Isaiah again said that we shall
not say we're sick. God's people shall not say they're
sick. He said, don't feel healed. You may not feel healed, but
you're healed. In the Lord Jesus Christ, you're healed. And we'll
know something more about the healing down the pike. After
a while, we'll know something more about it. When we get to
glory, we'll be healed. But the pledge is, He's healed
us. He healed us by his stripes. Yes, sir. And so, praise be unto
God. The prayer is full of hope, for
it does not merely say comfort us, bear us up, keep our heads
above the water, prevent us from sinking in despair, no, but make
us glad and reverse our state and lift us up from the depths
to the height of gladness. Here is the music of hope drowning
out the discord of fear, the songs of a joyous faith rising
above the mournful dredges of grief. So is the appeal. So the appeal is to the Lord
alone. If God makes us glad, we may
take our fill of the delight and fear no ill consequences. The wine of the kingdom cheers
but it never intoxicates. Neither pride, nor willingness,
nor carelessness comes of feasting at the table of the Lord. Brother,
sister, come then, let us pray this prayer. Make us glad. There
is no harm in what the Lord is going to do. God can bless a
man until he can't take any more of it. It is not going to hurt
him. It is healings in that. Healings in that. I was talking
the other day to my son Mark. And we were talking about the
visitations of the Lord, and I don't know a whole lot about
it. I believe the Lord appeared to me four times, and I believe
there's been healing in it every time. And I'm looking for another
visit from heaven, from the Lord, that the Lord might visit. There's healing in the visitation
of God. You'd never been here today if
it hadn't been for the visitations of the Lord. The Lord's good
to visit His people. The Lord will make this worn
out, much polluted earth He is going to make us and restore
the joy of our salvation as he willed this worn out and polluted
earth. Be a new heaven and a new earth, won't there? Now notice
that a proportion is insisted upon, make us glide according
to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us. I read sometime
years ago from Scotland, where my ancestors all came from, that
the depths of the lakes there are almost always the same as
the height of the surrounding hills to that lake. I have heard
that the same is true of the ocean, so that the greatest depth
is probably the same as the greatest height. Doubtless, the law of
equilibrium is manifest in a thousand ways in this world, the days
I was telling Brother Mitch before the meeting, my brother was stationed
in Thule, Greenland, back during the, well, in the fifties, my
older brother, and he was telling me about it being
dark six months out of the year, daylight six months out of the
year. And he would, he said it was so depressing during the
winter because you'd have a couple of hours about like it is here
at dusk. You would just get, you know,
just about like it is at dusk. And then, then in the years,
or in the six months when If it was daylight, it'd only get back about like
it is here at dusk. As far as dark, then it'd be
sunnyshine again. Excuse me just a moment. Well, we have our changes. But beloved, somebody said this and I think
it's true. In our life, the Lord measures
out the dark and the light in due proportions. And the result
is life sad enough to be safe and glad enough to be desirable.
You think about that a little bit. Beloved, we have our changes,
but the preponderance of life is not misery. Do you believe
that? The preponderance of life is
not misery. Rainy days are many, and yet
in the long run they are outnumbered by the seasons of fair weather.
So God makes us glad according to the days wherein he has afflicted
us and the years wherein we have seen evil. It may not be said
of God's children that we are a wretched company. God's people
are glad. They rejoice in the Lord. Though
if in this life only we had hope, we should be of all men most
miserable, yet since that hope is sure, we are of all men most
happy because of that sure hope. We shall not say when life has
ended here below that it was an evil thing, to have lived. I don't think a person who's
lived in this world and experienced the grace of God in their heart
and regeneration of the Spirit of God, I think that they will
always be eternally grateful that they were able to live in
this world and experience that, don't you? Regardless of the
afflictions that we experience. There will be first to us even as there was to Israel the
sound of Egypt's chariots' wheels, and the cry of her horsemen,
and a descent into the depths of the sea, and then shall come
the far-resounding, never-forgotten shout of victory. The rage of
Pharaoh in the darkness of the night, and the march through
the Red Sea, must prepare the way for Miriam's tremble." I
think that's true. I really believe that. Yes, Israel
must make bricks with straw before Moses shall come. If I'd been
a little child among the Israelites, I think I should have known that
when the father set the bitter herbs on the table, that the
lamb was roasting somewhere and would soon be set out. With bitter
herbs shall ye eat it, brother, sister, with bitter herbs. Job did not know it, he would
never have guessed, but you listen to what I'm saying. He would
have never guessed it, but in the light of the book of Job
we ought to know that the preparation for making a man twice as rich
as he was before is to first take away all that he has. Now you think about that. What
are we most interested in? Being rich toward God? Or are
we interested in this vain world, this empty world? Sorrow then is the outrider of
joy. Sorrow often prepares us for
joy. Your adversities in this life
are meant to teach you the worthlessness of earthly things so that when
you have them you may not be tempted to make idols of them.
The preparation for eternal heaven is temporary affliction. Think
of it. You could not enjoy the rest
of paradise if you had not first known the labors of pilgrimage.
You could not understand the boundless felicity of heaven
if your by the endurance of tribulation. Let this be understood, then,
that our troubles build a house and spread a table for our joys. The path of sorrow, the poet
said, and that path alone leads to the place where sorrow is
unknown. Once more the day will come when
all the sorrows of God's sending will be looked upon as joys. By some strange way, no one only,
but they will all be forgotten in the joy that will come of
them. Be of good courage, O tried, storm-tossed child of God. Before we enter heaven, we shall
thank God for most of our sorrows, and where once in glory, we'll
thank Him for the rest. Now, I wanted to speak on the
rest of this prayer, but I think I'm going to wait until the next
time I'm favored to preach to finish this up. I think if we
could simulate what's already been set out that we would have
a full plate, and then we can take up the rest of the prayer
the next time that God allows us to. I asked Mitch if he could find
a