SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to thank you for the warm welcome that you've given me this morning, and it really is a pleasure to be here and open the word with you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll ask you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 90.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 90.
SPEAKER_00: As you're turning there, I'll make an observation or two.
SPEAKER_00: This is a psalm written by Moses, the only psalm of Moses that we have in the Psalter.
SPEAKER_00: And also for that reason, probably the oldest of all the psalms in our Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 90.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read the entirety and then we'll ask the Lord to instruct us and give us understanding as we look into his word together.
SPEAKER_00: This is the holy and the inerrant word of God, so let us give it our full and careful attention.
SPEAKER_00: A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
SPEAKER_00: Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
SPEAKER_00: You turn man back into dust and say, Return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.
SPEAKER_00: You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning they're like grass which sprouts anew, in the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew, toward evening it fades and withers away.
SPEAKER_00: For we have been consumed by your anger, by your wrath we have been dismayed.
SPEAKER_00: You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins, and the light of your presence.
SPEAKER_00: For all our days have declined, and your fury we have finished our years like a sigh.
SPEAKER_00: As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years.
SPEAKER_00: Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, and soon it is gone, and we fly away.
SPEAKER_00: Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due to you?
SPEAKER_00: So teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: Do return, O Lord, how long will it be, and be sorrow sorry for your servants?
SPEAKER_00: O satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
SPEAKER_00: Make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil.
SPEAKER_00: Let your work appear to your servants and your majesty to their children.
SPEAKER_00: Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and confirm for us the work of our hands.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we do come to you cognizant that we are slow to understand and to take to heart the things that are written.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pray now that you would quicken us with your Spirit, that you would give us your Spirit as our teacher, that we might behold wonderful things in your word, that we might take them to heart and believe them, that we might, even as we gaze into this text and we contemplate your eternal power and goodness, and as we contemplate our plight as sinners, that we would even have a fuller view of your Son Christ Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we ask now that you would give us understanding, that we might take to heart all that we see and hear in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: We pray it in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Your life is just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
SPEAKER_00: These are the words spoken in James chapter 4, verse 14, and they're a sobering reminder of the brevity of life.
SPEAKER_00: That your life is like a puff of vapor smoke.
SPEAKER_00: And though we often marvel at how quickly time flies by, and perhaps we even remark on how quickly time seems to fly, it also seems at the same time as if we have all the time in the world.
SPEAKER_00: That time drags on when you're in the doctor's office, and yet when you're on vacation, time flies by, and there's this tension.
SPEAKER_00: Is time passing slowly or is time passing quickly?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to resolve that tension for you this morning on the side of brevity and say, it's flying by.
SPEAKER_00: If it seems long, that's a delusion.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it is but a puff of vapor smoke.
SPEAKER_00: We need frequent reminders of how quickly life passes us by so that we can lay hold of that which really abides and remains.
SPEAKER_00: The temptation of fleeting life is to try to find permanence in the very things that themselves are fleeting and passing away.
SPEAKER_00: Job says in Job 14, 1 that his days are few and full of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that life is short, life is often difficult, and we are soon, barring the return of Jesus Christ, going to die.
SPEAKER_00: But I was once asked by my financial advisor when we sat down and he was trying to build a risk tolerance profile on me, and he asked me the question: When do you plan to die?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I said to him, uh, I'm a Calvinist, and the Lord has appointed the day of my birth and the day of my death, and you know, before there was yet one of them, and I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And his response was, I'm a Calvinist too, but I have to fill in the box, so when do you plan to die?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I understand his point.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to plan the day of my death so that I can end well and not end up blindsided and destitute, not having prepared for it.
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 3.11 says that God has placed eternity in the heart of every man, and whether your life is comparatively long or short, compared to eternity, it's short, and the eternity is not just the eternity of God, but even the eternity of the human soul, and yes, even the human body.
SPEAKER_00: And so how to live in this short and hard life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gives us instruction in Matthew 6.20.
SPEAKER_00: He says that we should store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal.
SPEAKER_00: That we are trying to live this life and grab hold of something that lasts.
SPEAKER_00: We want our name to last, we want our works to last, we want our stuff to last, and the reality is that we don't have a promise in Scripture that these things are going to remain.
SPEAKER_00: They come and they go.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 90, Moses writes about a dwelling place to a people that, somewhat strangely, never really had a home of their own.
SPEAKER_00: He writes to a rootless and to a ruined people, people that had lived their whole lives in a foreign land as strangers, in borrowed houses and on borrowed land.
SPEAKER_00: Never could an Israelite point to his house or to his land and say, That's my home, that's my land.
SPEAKER_00: He was living there by the leave and the pleasure of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Moses tells them, though, that they are not for all that homeless, that God has been their dwelling place, even while they haven't had really a permanent dwelling place upon earth.
SPEAKER_00: But as he moves from a consideration of God as our dwelling place, he then descends, and this kind of comes through the middle section of the Psalm, into some to face us with some really grim realities, namely that life is short and that life is hard, and that we are all hastening on toward the grave, and that very soon.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, he lights the way back home, that we can in fact dwell with God in this life and the next, if we will take to heart the counsel that he gives to us.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to follow out Moses' Psalm in four observations, and these will form an outline for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: First, an eternal dwelling, verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, a brief journey, verses three through six.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, a hard journey, verses seven through eleven, and then finally, the way back home, verses twelve to seventeen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's begin where the psalmist himself begins with an eternal dwelling, verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: David begins, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking now to God, and he's affirming that God has in fact been their dwelling place, that these people who were pilgrims upon the earth were not homeless people, God was their home.
SPEAKER_00: Now, right out the gate, that's a somewhat strange way to speak about a home.
SPEAKER_00: Normally a home is a somewhere, but here he says, for God's people, home is a someone.
SPEAKER_00: It's not as much a what as it is a who.
SPEAKER_00: You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
SPEAKER_00: We have a quaint saying that home is where the heart is, and people that are particularly rooted in a place they've been their whole life understand perhaps the meaning of this.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the reality: no matter how tumultuous your life in this world is, if your heart is with God, you have a home that cannot be taken away.
SPEAKER_00: Now it might seem somewhat strange, the language of the psalmist here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You have been our home, our dwelling place in all generations.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, when we think about the patriarchs, for instance, we think of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and it seems to us that they had a home, namely in Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, in Hebrews 11, verses 8 and following, we're told that even in Canaan, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not really home.
SPEAKER_00: When they got to Canaan, having left Ur of the Chaldees, they didn't get to Canaan and say, hey, everybody, this is it.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a passage where Abraham says to his household, hey everyone, this is home.
SPEAKER_00: We're finally here.
SPEAKER_00: They do get to the end of a journey on earth, but when they get to the end of the journey, they live like they're still traveling.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the uh hotel where I stayed the last uh two nights, just here in Springfield, tried to deceive me, not high handedly.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not gonna write a letter of complaint, but they they named the hotel Homewood Suites.
SPEAKER_00: But we had to check out this morning.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's not much of a home.
SPEAKER_00: Two nights, less than 48 hours, and I wouldn't point to it and say that's home.
SPEAKER_00: I would say that's where I'm staying.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing, we should say that about our houses as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's just where we're staying.
SPEAKER_00: That's how day that's how the patriarchs thought about the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this language from Hebrews 11.
SPEAKER_00: By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.
SPEAKER_00: By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll pause for one second.
SPEAKER_00: He gets to Canaan and he continues to live like a nomad, like a Bedouin, like he's on his way to somewhere else, because the reality is he is on his way to somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a place in this world, there's not a place on planet Earth that he can point to and say, That's my forever home.
SPEAKER_00: Anywhere he happens to lay his head is just the place he's sleeping that night, even in Canaan.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, we're told, for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
SPEAKER_00: So we might think to ourselves, was he looking for God or was he looking for a city?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to propose, in one respect, that those two questions really aren't at odds with each other.
SPEAKER_00: When you read in Revelation 21, verse 22, John describes his vision of heaven, and this is what he says I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain sense in which heaven, that most exquisite dwelling place of God with man, is only heaven because God is there.
SPEAKER_00: I think it was the Puritan Richard Aline who said, if God were not in heaven, I would not want to go.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven's an interesting place in terms of its decor.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you like earth tones, and heaven offers you shimmery translucence.
SPEAKER_00: If I came to your house, I doubt that, well, some of you might have that kind of taste, but I doubt that most of you have that exact taste.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, it's not about taste, it's about amplifying the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven is where we go to glorify and bask in his presence and in his glory, and it is designed to amplify the enjoyment of that holy presence.
SPEAKER_00: So the question, you have been our dwelling place, it's not a question of God or heaven.
SPEAKER_00: They, as it were, come together as a package.
SPEAKER_00: Back to our text.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place, and he says, not just for a while, but for all generations.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps some of you live in a house that you inherited from parents, and so you're living now as adults in the house in which you grew up.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you even inherited a family home.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're living in a house that your grandfather built.
SPEAKER_00: Recently, last year, we made a house move in the Philadelphia area where we live, and we we bought a very old home in which most of the occupants of that home have been long dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's that kind of house.
SPEAKER_00: And the homeowners were selling because they were moving a mile away to move into a family home that was fifth generation.
SPEAKER_00: Fifth generation under the same roof.
SPEAKER_00: A sturdy house built to last.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the thing about God.
SPEAKER_00: God is not God for a generation or two, or three or four, or five.
SPEAKER_00: God is a habitation for all generations.
SPEAKER_00: He is a house, a protection, a refuge that actually is the only one that permanently endures, that is sufficient to give refuge and comfort and accommodation to every generation.
SPEAKER_00: And so in verse two, staying with this thought of an eternal dwelling for a moment, he invites us to, in a certain sense, investigate our home.
SPEAKER_00: When you buy a home, it's customary to contract a home inspector to come and poke around at the home.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that the home inspector is going to ask is how old it is.
SPEAKER_00: That might tell him, in a comparative state of disrepair, how much work needs to be done.
SPEAKER_00: When we bought this older house, because it was the one that was in our price point and it was available, and we bought the old house.
SPEAKER_00: Almost the first question everyone got when they heard how old it is is, is it in any what kind of shape is it in?
SPEAKER_00: They were alarmed almost at the age of it.
SPEAKER_00: So he wants to know how old it is.
SPEAKER_00: And then they usually ask, when did it get its new roof?
SPEAKER_00: When were the windows replaced?
SPEAKER_00: Then they get down to the foundations and they recommend that you move some of the foliage away from the house a little bit because that brings pests, and then they look for termites, and then where we are, they test for radon to see whether it's leaking up into the house.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know, is this house habitable and is it going to fall down?
SPEAKER_00: Is a, you know, is someone gonna come and hoff and puff and blow it over?
SPEAKER_00: How sturdy is this thing?
SPEAKER_00: When you buy a house, you want to know that you're buying something that's gonna last, that isn't gonna fall down on your head a day or two or ten years later.
SPEAKER_00: So what about God?
SPEAKER_00: Humans live in some old places.
SPEAKER_00: I thought last year when we moved into this house that we'd moved into something that was immovable.
SPEAKER_00: I have never felt that house move with a big gust of wind.
SPEAKER_00: The storms haven't touched it, the rain hasn't moved it.
SPEAKER_00: On Friday morning at 1023, that's two days ago, I stood in my living room in the Philadelphia suburbs, and my house, the one that doesn't move, was moving and making noises.
SPEAKER_00: The floors creak in this house.
SPEAKER_00: But the house doesn't make a sound, the house structure itself doesn't make a sound until Friday morning at 1023.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know why.
SPEAKER_00: About 50 miles away from us, there was a 4.8 earthquake in New Jersey, which I'm told is the biggest earthquake in New Jersey since the 1750s, which is well before my house was built.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what happened to my house on Friday is that it just went through the biggest earthquake that we know of in its existence.
SPEAKER_00: And I have to tell you, my confidence factor dropped a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, this house could come down.
SPEAKER_00: This house really could.
SPEAKER_00: It's been here a long time, but you know, it occurred to me, it struck me, I just don't have any guarantees.
SPEAKER_00: I went and I checked all four floors.
SPEAKER_00: I went to the basement, checked for a gas leak.
SPEAKER_00: When I get back after this weekend, I'll probably just do another walk around to see if we've got any cracks or what's happened to this house.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing about these houses, they don't last forever.
SPEAKER_00: There are some that have lasted a long time.
SPEAKER_00: The Westminster Abbey, the nave of the Westminster Abbey, has been standing since 1050.
SPEAKER_00: The pantheon in Rome was constructed over 2,000 years ago and has been in continuous use, first as a pagan temple and then as a Roman Catholic Church, to this very day.
SPEAKER_00: This calendar date in Rome, there were Catholic services in the Pantheon, which has been standing as a dome for 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of marvel at this, especially in our in us here in the frontiers of America.
SPEAKER_00: We marvel at these houses and these things that last, but even they come down.
SPEAKER_00: Even they fall.
SPEAKER_00: What about this one?
SPEAKER_00: If God is your dwelling place, how sturdy is it?
SPEAKER_00: I want to say a couple things about him.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want to say about him is this if God is your dwelling place, your house is not well built.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me carefully.
SPEAKER_00: Because your house isn't built.
SPEAKER_00: Your house just is.
SPEAKER_00: If God is your dwelling place, he's not well made.
SPEAKER_00: God isn't made.
SPEAKER_00: God is the maker of all, not the one who's made to be.
SPEAKER_00: If you invest your heart in God and you call him your dwelling place, you are not talking about a house that is made, a house that comes and a house that goes.
SPEAKER_00: You're rather talking about one that is eternal, timeless.
SPEAKER_00: It's even a strange question to say about God.
SPEAKER_00: How old is he?
SPEAKER_00: God isn't, I guess I want to say he's not that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: He's not new and he's not old.
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel calls him the ancient of days, but I think that has more to do with he's revered above all ages, is more the idea.
SPEAKER_00: God isn't aged, time doesn't pass with God.
SPEAKER_00: God isn't moving along some kind of chronology or time frame.
SPEAKER_00: God just is.
SPEAKER_00: The mountains are old, but even they began to be.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
SPEAKER_00: How durable, so to speak, is your home if your home is God?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is completely, completely immutable, unchangeable, and eternal.
SPEAKER_00: If you want permanence amidst impermanence, if you want that which is going to last that isn't going to come and go, then listen, get hold of God, invest your heart in Him, seek Him as your home and dwelling place, and you will have a dwelling place that will not fade away.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 102, verse 25 and following, the psalmist writes this Of old you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands, even they will perish, but you endure.
SPEAKER_00: All of them will wear out like a garment, like clothing, you will change them, and they will be changed, but you are the same, your years will not come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to our second observation, a brief journey, verses three to six, a brief journey.
SPEAKER_00: If it's the case that God's years will not come to an end, the same cannot be said of your years.
SPEAKER_00: God's years don't begin, they don't end, God just is, but that's not how it is with us.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, our years are hastening by as we move toward the grave.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, you turn man back into dust and say, Return, O children of men.
SPEAKER_00: Return, O children of men.
SPEAKER_00: We hear an echo of the curse in this.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 3.19, God says, Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of reversal going on in this curse.
SPEAKER_00: Adam was given the job to cultivate and to keep the garden.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he was supposed to subdue the ground and bring forth life from the ground, but because of his sin, the ground will now subdue him and take his life from him.
SPEAKER_00: So rather than subdue the ground and bring forth life from it, the ground will subdue him and take his life from him.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: The wages of sin, Romans 6 says, is death.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, return, O children of men, or children of Adam, would be another way of putting it.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people say to console themselves in the face of death, you know, death's just a part of life.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's exactly not that.
SPEAKER_00: If I can be so bold.
SPEAKER_00: Death is exactly not a part of life, it's the cessation of life, it's the end of life, it's life you wanted that doesn't go on.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is not because things break down.
SPEAKER_00: We try to console ourselves by thinking that death is somehow natural.
SPEAKER_00: Just because it's universal doesn't mean it's natural.
SPEAKER_00: Death is because God has consigned man to a grave on account of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: The reason we go to funerals is because someone sinned.
SPEAKER_00: But the reason that we mo mourn at a graveside is because there's sin in the world and there are consequences for it.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon says the frailty of man is thus forcibly set forth.
SPEAKER_00: God creates him out of the dust, and back to the dust he goes at the word of his creator.
SPEAKER_00: God resolves and man dissolves, a word created and a word destroys.
SPEAKER_00: Now he opens this up in three illustrations, just uh compactly put together here in the next few verses.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at verse 4, there he says, For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes, or as a watch in the night.
SPEAKER_00: A millennia to God is like what yesterday is to you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the and I think the reason he uses this retrospective knowledge is because when we think about times past as opposed to the times that we anticipate in the future, the past seems to us shorter than the future does.
SPEAKER_00: If you could just go back.
SPEAKER_00: Two days to Friday, I'll bet Friday, I'll bet Saturday the 6th seem longer to you from Friday the 5th than it does in memory to you on Sunday the 7th.
SPEAKER_00: Monday feels like it's going to be a longer stretch of time than the Saturday that just passed us.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, while memory tends to compress the past, it's not actually shorter than the past.
SPEAKER_00: The future is also that short.
SPEAKER_00: You plan a week's vacation and it feels like it's going to be a long week, and then Saturday, at the end of vacation, you're driving home, and somebody almost imbarriably says, Boy, that week sure flew by.
SPEAKER_00: And the point here is, actually, it's your whole life.
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life is just flying by.
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life is like the compressed memory of yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, or as a watch in the night.
SPEAKER_00: A watch in the night could be something like three to four hours of the nighttime.
SPEAKER_00: And you know how time passes when you sleep, or perhaps you don't.
SPEAKER_00: The perception of time's passage when you sleep is very strange.
SPEAKER_00: You lay your head down on the pillow at 11 p.m.
SPEAKER_00: and you toss and turn a little bit and you think to yourself, you know, I've been laying here for 10 minutes and I can't fall asleep.
SPEAKER_00: And you look over at the clock and it's 3 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: You close your eyes, you open them, and 25% of the day is gone.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying it's actually your whole life that's like that.
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life is like a watch in the night.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, not just your life, a millennia.
SPEAKER_00: Many lives are like a watch in the night.
SPEAKER_00: Such as the question, when do you plan to die?
SPEAKER_00: Let's return to that briefly.
SPEAKER_00: Your answer should be, very soon.
SPEAKER_00: Like blinking my eyes very soon.
SPEAKER_00: He changes the illustration then in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Here, what he is saying is this that God sends judgment and God sends a flood, and this is actually your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that your life has moments of upheaval, your whole life is like a flash flood.
SPEAKER_00: From cradle to grave, from forceps to stone, your life is passing by like a flash flood.
SPEAKER_00: In a flash flood, the things that seem to remain don't.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you've watched YouTube videos of a flash flood, and you know, around the corner, the water comes tearing around the corner, carrying a car or the roof of a house.
SPEAKER_00: And you think to yourself, cars are the sort of things that are pretty, I mean, go into the parking lot and try to lift a car, it's pretty hard, but put enough water under it, and it can be in the Atlantic Ocean by early afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: Same thing is true of the houses that we build.
SPEAKER_00: The water comes and takes them away.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he's saying to us.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, you're living in the middle of a flash flood of divine judgment, and that flash flood is called your life.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, they have swept away like a flood, they fall asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Now it could be that they fall asleep at the end of the flood, or it could be that they're sleeping through the flood.
SPEAKER_00: If we can take the second point as a possibility, I want to say this your life is a flash flood.
SPEAKER_00: Are you awake?
SPEAKER_00: If you're not alarmed, I want you to be a little bit alarmed right now.
SPEAKER_00: You're about to die.
SPEAKER_00: Wake up.
SPEAKER_00: Wait, now hold on, there's a lifeline coming.
SPEAKER_00: But still, before we get to the lifeline, wake up.
SPEAKER_00: This life, that this thing you call life that feels like it's dragging by, it's actually just a vapor before you stand in the day of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Eternity is about to dawn upon you.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got to do something about it right now, and right now is a flash flood of judgment under the hand of God.
SPEAKER_00: You will wake up.
SPEAKER_00: You will wake up from this, and you will wake up from it right now by hearing the word of the gospel, or you will wake up when you stand in front of God and are dismayed.
SPEAKER_00: We'll come to that text in a second.
SPEAKER_00: He changes the illustration once more to keep them coming.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, they're like grass which sprouts anew.
SPEAKER_00: In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew.
SPEAKER_00: Toward evening it fades and withers away.
SPEAKER_00: This is an illustration that for those of us on the East Coast doesn't quite have the same connection for us when the grass comes up and turns green about this time of year.
SPEAKER_00: We expect there to be enough rain to keep the grass green until well into the fall.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in this part of the world in which Moses is living, green grass might spring up in March, but it's dead and gone by June.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to California and you get green grass in March, it's crispy golden brown by the middle of June.
SPEAKER_00: It comes and it goes, and it's also quick.
SPEAKER_00: It's also quick.
SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon says this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, blooming with abounding beauty, till the meadows are all bespent with gems.
SPEAKER_00: The grass has a golden hour.
SPEAKER_00: Even as a man in his youth has a heyday of flowery glory, the scythe ends the blossoming of field flowers, and the dews at night weep their fall, and then Spurgeon says, Here is the history of grass.
SPEAKER_00: You came to church this morning for the history of grass, so here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the history of grass, sown, grown, blown, moan, gone.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's a pretty quick history.
SPEAKER_00: Sown grown, blown, moan, gone.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that's actually not just the history of grass.
SPEAKER_00: That's the history of you.
SPEAKER_00: You just got here.
SPEAKER_00: You were just a youth.
SPEAKER_00: You just had, you know, your children just went off to college.
SPEAKER_00: You just finally paid off your mortgage.
SPEAKER_00: You just, and now we're saying farewell.
SPEAKER_00: Sown, groan, blown, moan, gone.
SPEAKER_00: Spurgeon goes on, the history of man is not much more.
SPEAKER_00: Natural decay would put an end to both of us in the grass in due time.
SPEAKER_00: Few, however, are left to experience the full result of age, for death comes with his scythe and removes our life in the midst of its verder.
SPEAKER_00: How great a change in how short a time.
SPEAKER_00: The morning saw the blooming, the evening sees the withering.
SPEAKER_00: With that, we come to our third observation that this is a hard journey.
SPEAKER_00: A short journey, and also a hard journey.
SPEAKER_00: Job's words again from Job 14.
SPEAKER_00: My days have been few and full of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Short days, hard days.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me at verse 7, if you would.
SPEAKER_00: For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we've been dismayed.
SPEAKER_00: You have placed our iniquities before you and our secret sins in the light of your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take those verses for a few moments.
SPEAKER_00: Moses seems to be turning his attention now to the plight of the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You can see that in verse 7, where he says, We have been consumed in your anger, and he's probably referring to himself and the generation of Israelites that he led up out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think about the history of the Israelites during the wilderness sojourn, it's a history of death.
SPEAKER_00: It's a history of sometimes cataclysmic deaths.
SPEAKER_00: It's a history of divine judgment sporadically breaking out against the people of Israel, following one rebellion after another.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, as Israel waits for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai, just literally a few months after they had left Egypt, they're camped at the bottom of Sinai.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you remember this, and the Lord asks them in Exodus 19 whether they will do all that God commands, and they say, Yes, we're going to wait here and do all that God says.
SPEAKER_00: You know, go get the law.
SPEAKER_00: And he's gone for a few days, and they become very impatient.
SPEAKER_00: The time is hastening on.
SPEAKER_00: This Moses, we don't know what's become of him.
SPEAKER_00: They fashion a golden calf, they say, This is your God, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and they play the harlot with the golden calf.
SPEAKER_00: It's an act of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Moses comes down, you remember the event, he breaks the tablets.
SPEAKER_00: The Levites rally to his cause and they put thousands of their fellow countrymen to death by the sword that day because of their idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the only time this happens.
SPEAKER_00: Later on, just shortly after this, they're about to enter the promised land, and they send in twelve spies, and ten come back and say, basically, the walls are too high and the people are too big, there's no hope.
SPEAKER_00: And they lead the people to distrust the promise and the power of the Lord, and the people will not believe Yahweh, and Yahweh says that he's going to judge them, that every person, 20 years and older except Caleb and Joshua, are going to die in the next 40 years before they enter the land.
SPEAKER_00: This is a time when people live to 120, and the 20-year-olds are being told that they're not going to make it past 60.
SPEAKER_00: God, as it were, cuts the lifespan of most of the population in half.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the only time, other times as well.
SPEAKER_00: You think of Korah's rebellion, in which the ground opened and swallowed whole families alive with all of their belongings down into the belly of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Another time in which 20,000 were killed by a plague in one day because of their idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: Israel grumbling, Israel complaining, Israel's sins open in the face of God, Israel dismayed at the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: A short journey and a hard journey, consumed by your anger, dismayed or terrified in your wrath.
SPEAKER_00: In the baptism that we witnessed just a few moments ago, these words were read from Psalm 130, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: It's fitting, these words.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says here.
SPEAKER_00: You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
SPEAKER_00: The things that we thought were secrets, God deals with openly.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 4 says that the word of God is active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and God is the one before whom we stand naked and laid bare, before the eyes of him with whom we have to do, and God is dealing with their sin, and their days are being shortened as a result of it.
SPEAKER_00: Hidden faults aren't hidden to him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, it continues, stay with us a few moments.
SPEAKER_00: For all our days have declined in your fury.
SPEAKER_00: Stop there for just one moment.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine the number of funerals that were being conducted every single day over that 40-year journey in which literally millions of people were laid into graves in the wilderness and never entered the promised land?
SPEAKER_00: It was almost like a culture of death.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, We have finished our years like a sigh.
SPEAKER_00: The Puritan Thomas Watson says, We come into the world with a cry, we go out of it with a groan.
SPEAKER_00: I think we have perhaps in our Western culture tried to shield ourselves from the brutality both of birth and of death.
SPEAKER_00: In older generations, previous to our own, it would not have been uncommon, not only for parents, but even other family members to have witnessed a live birth and the violence of it, and the first cry of a child, which is not a quiet coup, as I recall, having been there a few times with my wife, the cry of birth and then the sigh at the end of life.
SPEAKER_00: And what we have done is we tend to just sort of console ourselves to not look at sort of the precariousness of human life.
SPEAKER_00: We pull a curtain over it and we say, family only, and we don't look it square in the face.
SPEAKER_00: Born in hospitals, dying in hospitals, out of sight, out of mind, living for now.
SPEAKER_00: He says, but we go out with a sigh.
SPEAKER_00: There's a breath, actually we have the word for it, expire.
SPEAKER_00: To inspire means to breathe in, to expire means to breathe out.
SPEAKER_00: And when you expire and it doesn't get followed by an inspire, you're done.
SPEAKER_00: You know how this goes.
SPEAKER_00: I know milk has an expiration date, but that's just a metaphor because milk doesn't breathe.
SPEAKER_00: But you do.
SPEAKER_00: You literally have an expiration date, borrowing the return of Christ Jesus, in which the last breath will leave your body.
SPEAKER_00: The last breath will leave your body.
SPEAKER_00: Cue the sigh.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: And then he reckons with this in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, if due to strength, 80, but their pride is labor and sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: People think, I'm gonna live a long life and I'm gonna live a happy life, and so you work hard and you save up and you plan to have your golden years of leisure and retirement, and perhaps you don't even make it to your golden years, or if you do, something happens to your body.
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain, there's something about the pleasures of life, you know, as they there's something about the pleasures of life that are more suitable to youthful bodies.
SPEAKER_00: I guess I want to put it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Um, your body begins to fall apart before you die.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like kind of like getting you ready for the real decomposition when soul leaves body.
SPEAKER_00: The body begins to sort of break down.
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, about eight years ago, I was in Rome and I went to a Capuchin crypt, which is a Franciscan order of friars, and in the Capuchin crypt they have these ossuary rooms which are decorated with the skeletal remains of thousands of dead Capuchin friars.
SPEAKER_00: Morbid is the only word to describe it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a fitting word.
SPEAKER_00: And as you move through room after room, which are all ornamented with the configurations of human remains, you are just moving through room after room of death.
SPEAKER_00: And then you come to the end of the uh ossuary, the bonehouse, and there's a saying over the door just before you exit, and it says, As you are now, we once were, as we are now, you soon will be.
SPEAKER_00: It's my family can attest to this.
SPEAKER_00: I do have a thing with graveyards and just thinking about death.
SPEAKER_00: It's quite a grim reminder.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the exit into the gift shop wasn't so fitting coming under that sign, but up to that up to that point, it's you're looking at it and you're thinking, these were humans who lived a life who spoke and loved and lived like I did, and they were here and they're gone.
SPEAKER_00: And listen, far more have died than are currently living.
SPEAKER_00: Life coming, life going, declining.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, when I get old, it's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_00: Have you talked to old people?
SPEAKER_00: It's it can be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you cannot have the joy of the Lord, and I want to come there in just a moment, so hold on.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a readiness to leave this body of death.
SPEAKER_00: The body breaks down, and the ability even to enjoy the pleasures, the God-given pleasures of this life, begins to decline.
SPEAKER_00: And you think, boy, when I'm old, I'm gonna be king, and when you're old, you're laying on a bed, you know, with a heated mattress, eating soup, wondering, when am I leaving?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, look at what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Their pride, I think he means their old age, is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away.
SPEAKER_00: Your place and your people probably won't remember you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna tell you how it is.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone thinks, my name's gonna last forever.
SPEAKER_00: It's on a wall, it's on a book, it's on a tombstone.
SPEAKER_00: It's there are graveyards, it's very hard to read the tombstones, the names are gone.
SPEAKER_00: And even if you knew the names, you wouldn't really know the man or the woman buried there.
SPEAKER_00: You could put the question to you this way.
SPEAKER_00: You're soon gonna be gone and forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: Your people and place will forget you.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is this do you know the names of your great-great-great-grandfathers or grandmothers?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to say probably a few of you do because you paid Ancestry.com to get you get you into the records, and you know that it, well, fine.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know anything about them beside their names?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know whether they had a sense of humor?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know whether they were Christians?
SPEAKER_00: Rich, poor, you might know the country of their birth when they immigrated.
SPEAKER_00: I have discovered in the last couple of years that I had two great-great-great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War.
SPEAKER_00: Both were immigrants, one from Sweden, one from England, and they got conscripted into the war, and one fought for Illinois and one fought for Indiana.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know their names, my brother would know.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know which of their children are actually the one from whom I'm descended.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether I will see them in heaven or not.
SPEAKER_00: And that was just the 1800s.
SPEAKER_00: That's recent history.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, your life is fleeting, it's a vapor.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus doesn't come back, we're not going to remember you, or when I say we, whoever's here then is not going to remember you.
SPEAKER_00: What's your life worth?
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to discourage you, but not leave you discouraged for a moment here.
SPEAKER_00: What's your life worth?
SPEAKER_00: Quickly, what's your answer to this?
SPEAKER_00: Hedonism?
SPEAKER_00: Hedonism will put you to shame.
SPEAKER_00: If you live for pleasure, you will stand and give an account before the God who made you and you will be put to shame in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: You think you will be dismayed, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: He concludes this section with a question.
SPEAKER_00: I'll conclude it there as well.
SPEAKER_00: Who understands your power, or who knows your power according of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due to you?
SPEAKER_00: His question is basically this Does anyone fear God too much?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot exaggerate the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: Just visit a cemetery.
SPEAKER_00: You can't exaggerate the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: There wouldn't have been a cemetery if there were not a holy God and sinners who violated his holy law.
SPEAKER_00: Who can exaggerate it?
SPEAKER_00: Who can understand your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you?
SPEAKER_00: And now we come to the fourth and final place, and a note of hope is struck here.
SPEAKER_00: And we should hear it distinctly.
SPEAKER_00: It comes in verse 12, but it really answers the question of verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: Who understands?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: But verse 12 begins this way, and this is what I'm calling the way back home.
SPEAKER_00: It's a prayer, it's a petition.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist, Moses says, So teach us to number our days.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: The question is this how do I live, how do I live with God wisely, given that my life is few of days and full of trouble and hastening by?
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is a prayer.
SPEAKER_00: So teach us.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that's your prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I hope your prayer this morning is so teach us.
SPEAKER_00: My days are short, they are few, they're full of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing about it, and I just I want to make this point to you, but you don't have to be a fool.
SPEAKER_00: Your days are few, they're full of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: I grant, we're all living through this pilgrimage and this sojourn.
SPEAKER_00: But you don't have to be a fool and you don't have to be morose.
SPEAKER_00: Your days can be few and full of trouble, and yet you can have hope and confidence and joy, and you can actually live well and live wisely.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us to number our days that we might present to you a heart of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's possible, even in this vapor of a life, to live wisely and to live well.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's an interesting request.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us to number our days.
SPEAKER_00: Now you might be thinking to yourself, well, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 10, didn't he already number them for us?
SPEAKER_00: 70 or maybe 80.
SPEAKER_00: And so then why does he then turn around in verse 12 and pray, teach me to number my days?
SPEAKER_00: When it seems like he just did number his days, but that's, I think that's the rub.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between counting your days and taking account of your days.
SPEAKER_00: Say it again.
SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between counting your days and taking account of your days, between knowing how many and then knowing the worth of them.
SPEAKER_00: Quantity is not the main issue.
SPEAKER_00: Quality.
SPEAKER_00: That's a kind of counting.
SPEAKER_00: John Calvin says this.
SPEAKER_00: It is surely a monstrous thing that men can measure all distances without themselves, that they know how many feet the moon is distant from the center of the earth, what space there is between the different planets, and in short, that they can measure all the dimensions of both heaven and earth, and yet they cannot number three score in ten years in their own case.
SPEAKER_00: He even calls it shameful stupidity.
SPEAKER_00: Does that describe you?
SPEAKER_00: Are you living your life like it's never going to end?
SPEAKER_00: Are you living your life like you don't have to give an account to God?
SPEAKER_00: Listen, consider your end and take account of your heart, that you may gain a heart of wisdom, that for the short time that God gives you, you might live well and you might live wisely.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13 extends this into a request.
SPEAKER_00: First, teach me to number my days, and then secondly, he prays in verse 13, Do ret O return, or do return, O Lord, how long will it be?
SPEAKER_00: And be sorry for your servants.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting request.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 3, if you look back at that, he says, You turn man back to dust.
SPEAKER_00: So you have, as it were, driven us away from your presence in, not just to the east, but downward into the dust.
SPEAKER_00: You have driven us from your presence into the dust.
SPEAKER_00: Return to the dust, O children of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: And now the psalmist says, Oh Lord, as it were almost crying out from the dust, oh Lord, return, you turn to me.
SPEAKER_00: You've turned me away from yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, turn yourself to me.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what he's saying is this Lord, you have told me, return to dust.
SPEAKER_00: Come and get me.
SPEAKER_00: What's he hope?
SPEAKER_00: His hope here is this.
SPEAKER_00: His hope is the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Come and get me out of this grave.
SPEAKER_00: Of this darkness, come and get me out of this distress.
SPEAKER_00: Come and get me out of my dismay.
SPEAKER_00: Come and get me out of my decline.
SPEAKER_00: Give me joy for sighing.
SPEAKER_00: Come and get me.
SPEAKER_00: Return, O Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: And then when he says, how long?
SPEAKER_00: That's really just a way of saying, Now, come quickly, Lord Jesus, Maranatha.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the prayer is.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, come and get me, and come and get me now.
SPEAKER_00: And when he says, be sorry for your servants, we're told that the Lord is not a man or a son of man that he should lie or have regret.
SPEAKER_00: But the point, but we're told that in the Pentateuch, but the point here is something like this.
SPEAKER_00: Change your dealings with me.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I've been under the heavy hand of your judgment.
SPEAKER_00: But I pray, Lord, that the eyes that were set against me for evil, like Amos 9 speaks of, would in fact be transformed to the countenance shining upon me for good and for blessedness.
SPEAKER_00: Return and satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness.
SPEAKER_00: There's a question about this prayer, because all the hope rides on this prayer.
SPEAKER_00: If God doesn't answer this prayer, we're ruined.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through 11 are the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: So the question that we should ask is this Has He done it?
SPEAKER_00: This is a prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Return, O Lord, quickly and be sorry for your servants.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what we're told.
SPEAKER_00: We're told that in the fullness of time, Galatians 4, God sent forth his own son.
SPEAKER_00: That God who had turned away from sinners turns himself again to them to dwell with them and to pitch his tent among them and to tabernacle among them, as John 1.14 says, to dwell with people again.
SPEAKER_00: People that were strangers, wanderers, far from God, without God in this world, as Ephesians 2 says, are people who are brought near to dwell with God.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't say, hey, come on up.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says, oh, please come down, please return to us.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, that's exactly what he does.
SPEAKER_00: There's a text, in the interest of time, I won't read it, but in Isaiah 63, there's a parallel to this turning, returning dynamic that we see here, in which we're told that God turned himself against Israel to become their enemy earlier in the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of chapter 63, Isaiah says, Oh, that you would return to us.
SPEAKER_00: Return to us.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, dwell with us again.
SPEAKER_00: Give us your temple presence again.
SPEAKER_00: And then in Isaiah 64.1, he says, Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.
SPEAKER_00: And the context of Isaiah 64.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, verse 16, after being baptized, came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, Isaiah 64, 1, that's the return.
SPEAKER_00: When he says here, Oh, return to us, O Lord, satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may sing for joy all our days.
SPEAKER_00: The answer to this prayer is already yes.
SPEAKER_00: I have done it.
SPEAKER_00: God sent his son that he might pitch his tent among men again, that men who are exiles from his presence and wandering far from him and without him in the world might indeed again be his sons and daughters, that we might say, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says these words in John 14, verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: The one who dwelt with man in the garden kicked man out of the garden, the east door to be precise, and told him, Go away, return.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't just say, Go east, young man.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Go down, young man, return to dust, O children of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: And the one who sent us to the dust has now sent his own son to the dust to get us.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is God the Son coming forth in the fullness of time, taking on flesh, burying our sins in his body on the tree, tasting death for every man, buried in that grave, that he might conquer that grave, that he might go down into the dust and get us out of the dust, and bring us again to himself and make his habitation with us again.
SPEAKER_00: We dwelt with God for a time, our race did, and then we dwelt in the dust, and God has come down into the dust to get a people for himself.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the result of this?
SPEAKER_00: Satisfaction in the morning is one answer to it.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you aren't mourning people, but there is a spiritual mourning person you should be.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: David at the end of Psalm 17, the last verse.
SPEAKER_00: As for me, I will behold your face in righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: I shall be satisfied with your likeness when I awake.
SPEAKER_00: Something about this.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, said that Christ is the day star from on high that is dawned.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist here says, Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness.
SPEAKER_00: Make us glad according to all the days that you've afflicted us.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing, your life may be full of trouble, but you don't have to, you can be glad.
SPEAKER_00: You can, even in this journey, have joy.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 3.19, Paul prays that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
SPEAKER_00: In the final part of this section, he turns to the question of work, and he says, Let your work appear to your servants, and your majesty to their children.
SPEAKER_00: Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands, confirm the work of our hands.
SPEAKER_00: So he speaks about your work and our work, and he prays that God would confirm the work of our hands, which might seem like a sort of inauspicious ending.
SPEAKER_00: The beginning is, you have been our dwelling place in all generations, and the end is daily work.
SPEAKER_00: And the point about the middle section of the Psalm, about your life hastening by, your life being a vapor, few and few of days full of trouble and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: The point, though, is this that in these few days, we can actually work heartily as unto the Lord so as to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You can live now in this brief life in a way that counts for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Your life, short as it is, matters.
SPEAKER_00: If you trust Christ and you are in him, then he imbues your work with a quality and with a worth that lasts forever.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: This is how transformative it is.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just make your spiritual work, you know, feeding the poor and clothing the naked.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that work that actually remains.
SPEAKER_00: He says that whatever you do, 1 Corinthians 10, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all the glory of God so that you can actually live in a Godward way that gives him glory, and that stuff remains.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven doesn't forget works of piety and devotion to God.
SPEAKER_00: He stores them up and writes them in a book.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 15, 58.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Short life, hard life, listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: Valuable life, joyful life, if you are trusting the gospel of Christ Jesus crucified and raised, it gives a worth and a meaning and a purpose to your life that gives glory to God and joy to your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 14, 13 says this.
SPEAKER_00: I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to interrupt the text for one second here.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You think cursed are the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Blessed are the dead, the very curse that you're trying to avoid.
SPEAKER_00: And I know you're trying to avoid it.
SPEAKER_00: Death.
SPEAKER_00: You eat your vegetables, you go jogging, you look both ways before you cross the street.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing these things, I hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're trying to hold off death.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing about death for the Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Death for the Christian is no longer a curse.
SPEAKER_00: God takes the curse and he makes it but an entryway into glory.
SPEAKER_00: To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and that is very much better, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the dead who die, but it's not just blessed are the dead who die, who die in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in the Lord, if you are trusting Christ to save you from your sins, because of his death in your place, and because of his resurrection conquering the grave, then you can be happy now, and you can say, even now, I have an eternal habitation, and it is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to how it ends in Revelation 14, 13.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, says the Spirit, so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them.
SPEAKER_00: Your short life, such as it is, does matter.
SPEAKER_00: The things that we do, speaking the glory of God, showing his glory through our words, through our contemplations, through our actions to others, these things are so many treasures that are being laid up, and these are the things that remain.
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything in this world that abides?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in this world, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Love of God, honoring and glorifying God, that abides, that remains.
SPEAKER_00: Houses, property, health, these things pass.
SPEAKER_00: May God's favor rest upon us as we pass through this little life, and may we pass through it with the joy of an eternal glory already begun in us.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray that he would do that in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for your Son, and we thank you for the great love with which he loved us.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that he even came down into the very dust where we had been consigned in judgment to rescue us from judgment, that our days few might now be full of joy, that our days, be they few, may just be but an entryway, a prelude to glory.
SPEAKER_00: Our little life here would just be an anticipation of the great life that is ours in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God, I pray for each one in this place that we would hate sin, we would hate the world, the flesh, the devil, and that we would love you, that we would dwell with you in faith through your Son Christ Jesus, and by the gift of your Holy Spirit, I pray that you would do that work in each one here that you might receive all blessing and praise, glory and adoration.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ Jesus we ask it.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_01: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_01: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_01: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.