I appreciate Brother Larry reading
my text for me, and that is what we are going to look at this
morning. This was written, as Brother Larry mentioned to us,
by Moses, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As you look at this, it seems
that Moses writes here to represent two classes of people, the saved
and the lost. He speaks on the behalf of the
church, and then he turns around and speaks on the behalf of the
world. He puts himself in the position of those who are in
Christ, and then he turns and looks at it from the position
of being in this world. And he looks at it honestly from
both positions. Here in verse 1, for instance,
he said, Thou hast been our hiding place. And the church says that. Moses speaks for the church.
You are a hiding place. In all generations, Moses said,
we're hid in Christ. What a hiding place. Your dead
and your life is hid with Christ in God. And then in verse 3,
in verses 8 through verse 10, Moses speaks in general of this
world of humanity that he sees around him. And he says, Thou
turnest man to destruction, and ye say, Return, ye children of
men. And he says, Ye have set our
sins, our secret sins, in the light of thy countenance, and
all our days are passed away in your wrath, and we spend our
years as a tale told. And he speaks here seemingly
on the behalf of this world and gives us the true condition of
this world before God. What is the true state of the
church? It's hidden, hidden in the redeeming
God. What's the true state of the
world? It abides under the awful wrath of God and the power of
God's anger. What is it to be in Christ? Well,
Moses tells us here, it's to be in this dwelling place, this
hiding place, this eternal dwelling place. What is it to be outside
of Christ? He tells us the truth of that
too. It's to be consumed with divine anger. It's to be troubled
with God's wrath. What heart What heart this morning
that's here can think upon these things? The joy of it to be in
Christ? The peace of it in our hearts
to know that we have a safe dwelling place? And yet we turn right
around you at the same time. And whose mind can weigh these
things? What it is to have God in heaven
to be angry with him. and for God's wrath to be upon
us. How could we possibly bear the
experience, even to think of such a thing? But more fitting
Moses' speech here on the behalf of these two classes, and who
better to speak on it than this man Moses? Because as you read
his writings and follow this man through his life, what you
realize, he experienced both the goodness of God and the severity
of God. He knew both of these in their
extremes. Let me give you some examples
of that. It was Moses that saw the Red Sea parted and the redeemed
of the Lord pass safely to the other side. He witnessed the
goodness of the Lord with his own eyes. And he saw the severity
of the Lord because he saw these mighty waters as they came together
and crushed the bodies of Pharaoh's army. He saw the salvation of
the Lord And he saw the wrath of God, both at the same time. He saw the blood of the Lamb
upon those doorposts, then on the houses in Egypt, safely dwelling
in their houses behind the blood. And he at the same time heard
the screams of the people in those houses where there was
no blood. The severity of God and the goodness
of the Lord. He knew what it was like to see
God with His glittering sword and His hand take hold on judgment. He knew what it was to see God
rain down fire from heaven. He knew that. He knew what it
was for God to open up the earth and to swallow men and consume
them. And he knew the God who says,
I am merciful and gracious. long-suffering, plenteous in
mercy and goodness and truth. Here was a man who had witnessed
what every one of us feels at times in our souls, the goodness
of God and the severity of God, the salvation that is in the
Lord Jesus Christ and the awful apprehensions of wrath outside
the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses wrote a book of these things. And brothers and sisters, hear
why it's necessary for you and I to experience and know something
to a degree of what Moses himself knew. Who can know anything of
the rest of being saved but those who have known something of the
labor of being conscious of their guilt before God? Who can experience
the peace that's in the cross of Christ but those who have
experienced the torment of guilt? I came not to call the righteous
but sinners to repentance. It's a broken soul and not a
whole who truly needs the Savior. And who can be still before God
and trust Him for His grace but those who have trembled in His
presence? These things are needful, aren't
they? It's needful to know something about what it is to be in Christ. And it's needful to know something
about what it is to be without Christ in the world. And that's
what this psalm here is about. So Moses looks around him, and
he looks at the church, and he speaks on the church's behalf
here before the Lord. And he says, Lord, you've been
our dwelling place. You have been our permanent retreat. That's what the word means. You've
been our home. You've been our dwelling place
for how long? Ever since there's been a generation.
From the very beginning. Brothers and sisters, you go
back when the church was in her primitive state, and there was
just a few of them. You go back when Adam and Eve
teamed together with their son, Abel. And there they were dressed
in their skins that God had clothed the man. And there Abel came
bringing his lamb in his arms. There was only three of them.
But God was their dwelling place then. And as the church began
to increase, and the Lord told Abraham, your seed would become
as the stars of heaven. I tell you, God was still her
dwelling place. And when her numbers have swaled
that no man can number her, God's her dwelling place still. Moses
looks upon the church and he says, Lord, in all our generations,
wherever you find a man or a woman or a boy or a girl that knows
the Lord and is saved by His grace, and no matter where they're
at, he says, they have a dwelling place. God is our dwelling place. It doesn't matter if a man is
a Jew or a Gentile. It doesn't matter if he's male
or female, bond or free, old or young. Whenever we find ourselves
in the body of Christ, the Church, redeemed by blood, we have this
dwelling place. We have this home. You're dead,
and your life is hid with Christ in God. There's a wonderful verse
I found not long ago, and let me read it to you. If you have
a pen, you want to mark this down. It's in Deuteronomy chapter
33, verses 27 and 28. Listen to this precious verse.
The eternal God is our refuge. Oh, what a hiding place, what
a home, what a retreat. The eternal God is our refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms. He shall thrust out the
enemy from before you and say unto you, Destroy them. Israel
shall dwell in safety alone. The fountain of Jacob shall be
upon the land of corn and wine. Also his heavens shall drop down
with dew. Listen to this. Happy art thou,
O Israel, who is likened to you, O people, saved by the Lord. God is our refuge. But not just
God. The eternal God is our refuge. We have a dwelling place. Now, somebody may be here this
morning and they'll say, Bruce, I'm not interested. I'm not interested
in having God to be my eternal dwelling. I've got a house that
I've built for myself. I'm perfectly content to dwell
in this world. Then, dear soul, I'll say to
you this morning, you don't realize what Moses realized. You've never
been taught of God as His children have been taught of God. There
is no safe place to hide in this world or in the world to come
but in God our Savior. Listen to Isaiah chapter 26 and
verse 20. Here's how the Lord revealed
it unto the church of old. Here's what He says to us this
morning. Come, my people. Come, my people. Where to, Lord? Where to? Enter thou into your chambers. Come, my people, by elected love. Come, my people, by particular
redemption. Come, my people, by effectual
calling. Come, my people, and enter into
your chambers. What is a chamber? It's a safe
place, isn't it? It's a place to hide. It's a
place to dwell. And we're invited as His people
to come and enter into it. What is these chambers? Could
it be the chambers of God's decrees? Could it be the chambers of promise? Could it be the chambers of covenant
mercy? Could it be the chambers of blood
that purged our sins away? Could it be the chambers of the
faithfulness of Christ? The offices of Christ? Oh, what safe chambers. What
a dwelling place. And he says, come, my people.
It's necessary that you enter into these chambers, and when
you come in, shut the doors about you. I don't know about you,
but I've got these deadbolts on all my locks at home. I like
to go home. I want to lock my doors and sit
down and be at peace without fear that someone is going to
break into my house and molest me or my family. And I'm telling
you, when you enter these chambers, lock that door. Lock that door. It's a safe place there. Enter
these chambers and shut the doors about you. Hide yourself, as
it were, for just a little moment until the indignation be overpassed. What is this indignation the
Lord tells us to hide from? He tells us in the very next
portion. Behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the
inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth also
shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain."
You may not need a hiding place now, but you will. You will. God is the Creator
and Judge of every person. And the Scripture says that he
must render to every man according to their deeds. He will save
the righteous by hiding them. He hides them as he did the firstborn
behind the blood down in Egypt. He hides them as he did Noah
when he put him in that ark. He hid him. And he saves his
elect people by putting them in Jesus Christ the Savior. who has borne our sins and satisfied
the wrath of God on our behalf. And heaven has received him safe
and sound, and we are in him. Come, my people, enter in unto
thy chamber." But where does this leave the lost? If the saved
in the Lord are in their chambers, safe and sound, where does this
leave the lost? It leaves them dwelling in their
own house, dwelling in their own mortality, dwelling in their
own nature. And what will that do when the
Lord comes to take vengeance upon the inhabitants of this
earth? They will be swept away. They will be taken away, the
Scripture says, as with a flood. Listen to 1 Corinthians 1, verses
7 and 8. Paul said, You who are trouble,
rest with us. Rest with us. If you're here
this morning and you know the Lord, wouldn't you agree with
me on this? That knowing what you know now
about what's coming upon this earth, When your heart breaked
if you didn't have a good hope through grace. Could you go home
and rest? Could you sleep tonight knowing
what you know is coming? If you didn't have a good hope
in Christ, there would be no rest for us, would there? But
here Paul tells the church that you've got a chamber. You've
got a resting place. To you who are troubled, rest
with us. Rest in Christ. Come unto me
and find rest for your souls. Rest. Enter into His rest. When the Lord Jesus shall be
revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire,
taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not
the gospel, and listen to this, who shall be punished. Who shall
be punished. with everlasting destruction
from the presence of the Lord. A punishment that will endure
forever, everlasting punishment. An everlasting destruction, a
continual destruction that knows no end and knows no moderation. An extreme punishment, an unbearable
punishment, an everlasting punishment on the soul and body. God is
coming out of His chambers, out of His heaven, to punish the
inhabitants of this earth for their iniquity. Aren't you glad,
y'all, of God? You've got Him for your dwelling
place. Aren't you glad you have the
Savior who's already been punished in your stead, on your behalf? What a dwelling place! Here in
Psalms chapter 90 and verse 3, Moses tells us how easy it is
for God to dispose of men. Look at this. Oh, he's not like
us, is he? This everlasting God is not like
us. Moses speaks here now, and he
begins to speak, I think, from the perspective of the world. standing before God, yet in its
sin. And notice what he says in verse
3. Look how easily he says God can
dispose of a man. Thou turnest man to destruction. And how does he do that? When
he's ready to punish a man. When he's ready to destroy a
man. And that concept is taught in the Scripture. The Son of
God came down from heaven and said, don't fear them which is
able to kill the body. And that's all they can do. But
I'll forewarn you who you are to fear. Fear Him that's able
to destroy both soul and body in hell. And it's no trouble
for God to do that. How does He do it? Well, Moses
says, you just speak. All you have to do is speak and
say, return, you children of men, return work, return to the
dust. It's no trouble for God. It takes
no effort on His part to crush a man, to kill a man, to send
him off into utter destruction. The Lord Jesus Christ says of
it on the Day of Judgment when He's got the entire world of
humanity surrounding Him. The Scripture says, he says to
those on his right hand, he just speaks to them, he says, Come,
ye blessed of my Father. And they come into life everlasting. At his word, they do so. And he says to those on his left
hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared
for the devil and his angels. And it's irresistible. He speaks,
and these shall go away into everlasting fire. All of us are here this morning
by God's grace. We're here by God's kind providence.
No man or woman or boy or girl deserves to be here. None of
us have earned the right to be here. We don't merit being here,
hearing these blessed truths. We're here because God has granted
us another day. God awoke us up this morning. He's given us the breath, the
heartbeat, the strength, the provision to get here. You're
here this morning, and you cannot lift the weight of your body
and walk through those doors and go home except God gives
it to you. How easily, without any effort
on His part, He could have touched your life last night, that brittle
thread of life, and cut you loose, and you're gone. It's no effort
on God's part. He owes us nothing. It's of His
mercy that we're not consumed. Saved and lost a life. Moses goes on here in this book
to tell us two ways in which God is different from us. And
they both have to do with a judgment upon lost humanity. He tells
us this in verses 5 and in verse 6. Look at this again. Here's
a way in which God is different than all of us. It has to do
with time. God is not subject to time, as
you and I are. Time is for our sakes. You and
I are subject to time, we're ruled with time, and by time,
and God deals with humanity according to time. Look what he says in
verse 5. Thou carriest them away as with
a flood, and they are as asleep. In the morning they are like
grass which groweth up. And in verse 6 and verse 7, Moses
likens our life to grass. He says, in the morning it flourishes. You see the little babies, little
Brooklyn, come in the door, and their little countenance was
so bright. And she's so healthy and sweet,
just like tender grass of the morning. That's what she's like. And Moses says, your head groweth
up. It groweth up. It won't be long
till little Brooklyn's a teenager. It won't be long till little
Brooklyn's in her twenties, and she's married, and she has children
of her own. She is growing up. But look at
this. It won't be long till little
Brooklyn, like some of us, reaches the old age, the evening of her
life. And the evening, in the evening,
it is cut down and it withers. And he says here in verse 10,
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 it flies away."
It's gone, and then what happens? God deals with us now, all of
us, according to time, on these terms that He's given to us,
on the basis of time. But when this life is over, He'll
cease to deal with us on the basis of time, and He'll deal
with us on the basis of eternity. There's coming a time when time
will be no more. That's why we're told to redeem
it, because we're going to lose time, and we're going to enter
eternity. And for God to punish the world
with everlasting destruction will have no effect upon Him. He will deal with the lost in
that day according to His basis of eternity, not time. And when a person has been in
eternity punished, it will be as though he's only
been punished a day or as a watch in the night. There will be no problem for
God to punish a man for all eternity for his sins. We know nothing
about eternity now. We know about time. We know about
getting ten years in the prison, or fifty years in the prison.
Time. But God will deal with the lost
on terms of eternity. He's not like us. Moses tells
us something else here, and God is so eternally different from
us in this, when He judges this world. God's anger and His wrath
is not like our anger and our wrath. In general, and I thank
God for this, and you do too, the anger of man has its limits. If we're going to take vengeance
upon someone and we punish them, usually when we see their misery,
what do we do? We have no heart to punish any
longer. Thank God for that. There have
been kings and there have been dictators that made war on their
enemy. And when they saw the misery
of their enemy, they said, we can't punish any more. We can't
afflict anymore. We have no heart to it. We have
no power to do it. But it's not so with God. When
He comes to punish the inhabitants of this earth for their iniquity,
He will not be moved, He will not be deterred by their misery
or by their torment. He will not be deterred by their
cries of mercy. Not one drop of water. Not one
ounce of relief. How could God do such a thing?
Because He's not like us. You and I are weak. We're morally
weak. We're changeable. We're easily
deterred from that which is morally right. What we have a heart for
this morning, we may not have a heart for tomorrow. But it's
not so with God. Look what he says in verse 11.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Oh, the power of your
anger. When God begins to punish the
inhabitants of this earth for their iniquity, that anger will
never be appeased. That anger will never lose its
zeal to do what it's pleased to do. He'll never be discouraged
by the misery of those to whom he's poured his wrath upon. That
same anger which he began to punish the wicked with, that
anger will not diminish. It will not be deterred. World
without end. The smoke of their torment shall
descend up forever and ever and ever. Moses saw this. He felt
this in his soul. He looked around about Ephonim
and he saw this, the anger of God and the wrath of God. He
saw Korah and his crowd swallowed by the earth. And as they went
down in, the earth, the pit, swallowed him up. And here's
what Moses thought in his heart. What they begin to suffer now,
they'll suffer for all eternity. Because that's the power of God's
anger. Who knows it? Nobody but God
Himself. The Scripture says it's a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He goes on
here in verses 7 through verse 10, and look here what he says.
And he's speaking on the behalf of the world. The world won't
admit it, will it? Look here what Moses says. He
puts himself, as it were, in the world, without Christ, without
hope. And here is what he says, we
are consumed by your anger and by your wrath with trouble. You
have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light
of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away
in thy wrath and we spend our years sighing as a tale that
is told. Moses looked around him. He saw
there with the children of Israel in the wilderness, one plague
after another come upon these people. He saw the earth open
up and swallow a bunch of them. He saw these flying serpents
come and bite them, and much people of Israel died. He saw them hating one another.
He saw the armies coming and fighting against them. And Moses gives us the cause
of all the trouble. And what did he say it was? You're
angry. You're angry. Your wrath is upon
us. Brothers and sisters, you and
I live probably in the safest country in the world. I know
we live in the best country in the world. But look around us. Go to the nursing home. Look
in the hospitals. Look in society. It's not even
safe to go there anymore. Look at the hate. Look at the
diseases. Something's wrong. Something's
wrong. The wars? The rumors of wars? There's no peace in this world,
is there? Look at the uncertainty around us. We're not uncertain
what's going to happen today. What about tomorrow? Troubles,
troubles, troubles. What's the cause of it? Why all
the uncertainty? Why the storms and the floods
and the war? Do you know what's wrong? God has set this world's iniquity
in the light of His countenance. And he's angry with it. I know that don't square with
this generation. This generation wants a little God who is seated
up in heaven, and he sort of put things in start, and now
he's waiting to see how it's going to go, and he's just hoping
and praying that somebody will do right, or let him have his
way. And God is concerned with everybody's
plight. And God don't judge anybody.
And He wants everybody to have fun and be happy and just get
along. Moses had no idea of such a concept. He said, I look around me in
this world with all the plagues and the hell that's here, and
I've come to this conclusion that God is angry. My friends, there's but one hiding
place. There's but one place we can know God's love, and that's
in Jesus Christ. There's only one place we can
get near to God without Him consuming us, and that's in the person
of His blessed Son. And don't go home today and sit
down, or go to bed tonight and rest yourself if you don't have
Jesus Christ as your dwelling place, because the wrath of God
abides upon your soul, and He is indeed angry with you. Now,
that's the truth. That's the truth. Moses said
the world don't want to hear this. The world is asleep, he
said. The world is asleep. But he said,
I'm going to come over here and take my place in the world and
speak on its behalf. And I'm going to recognize, oh
God, we've sinned and come short of your glory. And you're not
a God who can be indifferent to it. You're wrath is upon us
now. And you've appointed the day
that you're coming to punish us for our iniquity. And then he comes here to verse
12, and here's what he says, O Lord, O Lord, I've considered
my case from the standpoint of being in the church, the body
of Christ. What a dwelling place, what joy
and peace. I've looked at myself standing
in the world without God and without hope, and I've experienced
your anger, your wrath. And he said, right here is what
I take out of it. And here is what I want us to
take out of it this morning. So, teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Oh, don't let us hear
what Moses teaches in this psalm without learning from it and
making us wise to salvation. And he says here in verse 13,
he pleads with the Lord to return, O Lord, how long? And let it
repent thee concerning thy service. And then he mentions these four
things. Here are four things that he
requests of the Lord in the light of what you and I have been talking
about this morning. The first thing is in verse 14.
Notice this. O, satisfy us. Oh, satisfy us early. Satisfy us. If you had one request
of the Lord this morning, what would it be? If it could be,
Lord, satisfy me, with what? Do you want a better job, perhaps?
Do you want more money, maybe? Do you want a longer life? and
good health? Would that satisfy you? If you
know anything and have any sense of what we've been talking about
this morning, Moses said, here is the only thing that will satisfy
a soul that is conscience of these spiritual things. Oh, satisfy
us early with thy mercy. Mercy. I tell you, I don't care if I
lived a thousand years, and I never had a headache, and I had all
of this world that I could desire, to live and die without mercy,
I'd be better off never to have been born at all. Do you feel
that way? Paul said, I was a blasphemer.
I was injurious, but I obtained mercy. looking for the mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Keep yourselves
in the love of God, looking for mercy. A sense of mercy here
now and a hope of mercy yonder will satisfy the soul. It will rejoice a man's heart. It will make him glad within. When he looks around at this
sorry, devilish, hellish world, One thing will satisfy him. Mercy. He goes on in verse 16 and he
makes this request. He's seen the works of man. He
saw his own works. He knows something about that.
Now he must see this. Let thy work, O Lord, let thy
works appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. Oh, let Thy redeeming work. I want to know something about
God's work in creation. I want to know something about
our Lord's work in providence. But I tell you what our hearts
must know. It's His work in redemption. My need is to do the will of
Him that sent me and to finish His work. That's what Moses wanted
to say. He longed to see that. He prayed
for that. He longed to hear that voice
upon Calvary's tree. It is finished. That's what he
longed to see. Jesus by Himself has purged our
sin. Oh, Lord, let me see it. Let
me see it. He ever lives to make intercessions
for us. He's able to save to the uttermost
those who come to God by Him. That's His work. Let me see it. He will change
our vile body and change it like unto His glorious body with a
working whereby He is able. Let thy work appear unto our
servant. Not only let it appear unto us,
but let it appear in us. I not only want to know, brothers
and sisters, that He did a work on our behalf. We've got to know
He's done a work in us. It's God who worketh in you to
will and to do. I don't want to live in nature.
I don't want to believe God with my head. I want the Spirit to
do a work in my heart. Faith, true faith, a God-given
faith that's been worked in my heart by the Holy Spirit. Oh,
grace to believe, grace to cleave, grace to know, grace to love,
grace to hope, grace to be patient. Lord, work in me. Let me see
your work in me. I know whom I have believed.
That's the work. That's it. And notice what he
asks in verse 17. Two more things quickly, and
we'll close. Here's another request. O Lord,
let the beauty, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. The beauty. What would that be,
do you think? I know what the Scripture tells
us. Be ye clothed with Christ. Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's beautiful, ain't He? Oh,
He's not beautiful to the world, I know that, but He's beautiful
to you who know Him. And you desire no other righteousness
but His, no other role of salvation but that that's in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Thy renown went forth among all
nations, and you were perfect through my comings that I put
upon you. Oh, clothe me in Christ. Clothe
me in Christ. Put Him upon me. When He sees
me, He sees the blood of the Lamb. And the last portion of
that verse, look at this. And establish thou the work of
our hands upon us. Yea, the work of our hands, establish
thou it. And you know what Moses means
by this. He just simply means this. We're going to gather to
worship tonight. Receive our worship. Lord, we're going to give a portion
of what you give to us. Lord, receive it. Lord, receive
us. Lord, receive what we do for
your glory. Make our preaching effectual.
When we take your word, O Lord, take it to the heart of the people. Establish us. Don't let us fall. Don't let us bring shame on your
holy name and hurt to one another. Establish thou the work of our
hands. God bless His Word. Let's pray.