well this morning i invite you to turn in your bibles to psalm 90 psalm 90 well-known psalm 90 the psalm of moses begins the fourth book of the psalter this is found on page 630 in your bibles page 630 and we'll consider the entirety of the psalm this morning psalm 90 by moses you'll notice the man of God. Let's give our attention to the Lord's wonderful word. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers. For we are brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life for 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. And there it's the reading of God's word. Well, as we come to the close here of another year, I felt as a pastor, Psalm 90 is so appropriate to consider the Psalm of Moses that we have. It's important because it helps us to reflect, to remember, to consider what the scriptures are telling us about life under the sun, about its brevity, and about the fleeting passage of how fast time goes and how short we are here. The scriptures are constantly calling us to think about what is most important in life. That's not what society does. That's not what we're taught to do. We're often running busy here and there, not thinking about what is most important. And the scriptures constantly press us to the most important questions of life, to think about what matters the most. That's not what we do. The Lord has told us this, that even though we suppress this, the Lord has set eternity in all of our hearts. We know this. We know the truth of the matter, that we are going to die. And even though we don't know the time that we have under the sun, the scriptures tell us that it is very brief in the big picture very brief in the big scheme of things the shocking thing is is that this this truth this reality that the lord has put eternity in our hearts and put tickers in our chest right that can stop any time it doesn't seem to bother too many people it doesn't seem to trouble too many people that even among those who who know this reality or understand this reality it doesn't seem to bother. So few seem to be thinking about it. We're more consumed about the cares of the world than we are about eternal things, lasting things, things that matter the most. Most of the time we're not thinking about what is most important. But life has this strange way of confronting us. God's providence does in the twists and the turns and the things that happen so that we're forced here. We're pressed here. We have to go here. We can't just be nonchalant about it all. We can't just avoid it. It's in front of us all the time. And it's one great enemy that we have, one great pain that we know, one thing that looms over all of us, and it is impending death. Impending death. You know the pain of this if you've had a loved one very close to you who's died death has the effect of stopping us all in our in our tracks it has the effect of a very bringing a very sobering moment to life and confronting us all especially with as it should our own mortality things get quick serious quickly in the face of death the trivial things go away in the face of death what i love about psalm 90 is that we have here the good the bad and the ugly of all of this i was thinking of a good sermon title and so i went to my wife and i said i really want to title my sermon the good the bad and the ugly and she said don't do it don't do it but i'm going to use those three points and and i really mean that working in reverse we're going to look at the ugly and then we're going to look at the bad and then we're going to look at the good of this, because that's exactly what Moses is doing. The Lord has answered us here, and it's something through Moses's experience that we should study, and we should reflect on, and see how Moses came to this point of finding hope in all of this. Moses came to the point of finding comfort in all of this struggle of life, in not just the brevity of life, but the affliction of life, the hardship of life as he described it for us. It's one of the most intensely personal and experiential psalms, if you will, of Moses, the only psalm we have of Moses which is interesting. It's a psalm that reads like no other. It stands alone. Psalm 39 is close, but nothing that really when you think of who wrote this and what the man had experienced, it stands out in a special kind of way. This morning it has the goal of helping us. It has the goal of helping us as we come to the end of a year and begin a new one. Because what Moses is doing here is something very beautiful and something very helpful in that he is contrasting God's eternity with the frailty of man. Our frailty. Our short time under the sun. And as he does this, it's a wonderful psalm to consider everything that we're supposed to be thinking about and what is most important as we look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of life, how Moses got through it, and how this sort of psalm changed his perspective by the end of it on how we are to look at life. We'll begin in reverse, and I want to begin here then with the ugly here as Moses is describing the vanity of life, if you will. Moses had come firsthand to understand human frailty you'll notice that this is the beginning of of the first psalm of book four after there was a great crisis at the end of the third book of the psalter book four begins with this and i believe the intention is to go back and consider how moses got out of crisis how moses was answered in his crisis for his was one of the greatest crises that ever had been known under the sun in old testament israel what makes it interesting is the time frame when he wrote it many have realized that this psalm was primarily written for the tribes of israel in the wilderness you have to ask the question when you come to a psalm like this well what happened that that drove moses by the inspiration of the spirit to to write a psalm like this what was it that drove him to this kind of psalm you'll remember that moses's life comes to us in three sort of periods three 40s he died at 120 the first 40 years of his life were preparation you remember to go and lead israel out of the wilderness the second 40 was a period of confrontation but the last 40 was the wilderness dwelling time the time that israel walked around and mulled around in the wilderness. Moses is at the end of his life. There is something that happens to people when they realize they're up next. Of course, it could happen at any time. But when you see things and you experience life at old age, as he did, there's something that happens when you realize your number's up next. The time is coming for you. God had raised up Moses to do something wonderful. God had raised up Moses to deliver Israel out of Egypt, out of their bondage, out of their affliction from under the tyranny of Pharaoh. And everything that we've studied from that, it was Moses, the man of God, whom the Lord raised up to do it. Many realize that this particular psalm was written against the backdrop of Numbers 20. And Moses in Numbers 20, it's a fascinating time. He lived with the pain of one great problem that had happened to Israel. Remember? They all were dying. We don't think enough about this. Imagine how devastating it would be to be the great deliverer, to be the one whom God called to save the people out of the land of Egypt, only to see that entire generation die in the wilderness. I can't imagine it. I really can't. There's something about living to 100 years old that's not pleasant, by the way. You've seen everyone die of your generation. You remember what happened, that it was distressing. Israel had broke the covenant. This is why I read Jeremiah 31. They did not keep my covenant. They broke the Sinai covenant. They had been so rebellious in the wilderness, Do you remember what happened in Numbers 32? We read, So the Lord's anger was aroused against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness 40 years until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was gone. I can't imagine being the pastor of this church and watching everyone 20 years and older die. It's hard. You know, we have how many deaths on this list? Eight. What we have recorded for us is that the Lord in His wrath made them wander around the wilderness until all that generation was gone 20 years and older. You were 20 years old when you came out of the land of Egypt. You never saw the promised land. Now imagine you're the leader. You're seeing all of God's people die off like flies. In Numbers 20, you have three significant events. By this point, all that was left was Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Caleb, and Joshua. Well, in Numbers 20, Miriam dies. And Aaron dies. His brother and his sister, he loved them. He loved them tremendously. Think of all the history, all the pain of this. Psalm 90, as this is written, it has to come against this kind of backdrop that he witnessed an entire generation, a 20 and older, perish under God's anger. All the generation he knew. You'll notice in verse 3-6, now it makes sense, doesn't it? Where it says, You return man to dust, and say, Return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight but as yesterday when it has passed. There's a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and it withers. What's on his mind is this. He's living it. I'm amazed at some of the language here that is given to us. Turning them to destruction, it means to dust. You return man to dust. You remember, what he is thinking on is one great thing, one great problem, and it's curse. It's curse of Genesis, of sin in the fall. It's the curse of from dust you will take in to dust you shall return. And you're living it, you're seeing it. He says, like a watch in the night, like sleep, morning grass that grows up, in the evening it withers and it's gone. That is our lives, Moses says. when Paul said that Israel broke the covenant, remember that that was all teaching us the truth of what creation, of what had happened at creation with the fall and sin, of what the consequences were so we would have a clear understanding of the consequences of sin and death, that the wages of sin or death is death. As I was writing this sermon, this is before, earlier in the week as I was working on this sermon, I wrote this down. Isn't this interesting? That Richard Arvin Overton, does anyone know that name? He is, he was born on May 11, 1906. He's the oldest surviving U.S. war veteran and the oldest man living in the United States. By Friday, he was dead. It's just stunning. I'm reading this man. there's a video of him on YouTube and I'm watching. And in a few days, he's gone. It's over. You look at the deaths here that are in front of us. Howard Faber, 79 years old. Thelma Joe Horton, 93 years old. Peter Nella Kesting, 102 years old. William Brower, 85 years old. Henrietta DeGroat, 99 years old. Garrett Hofstie, 100 years old. Norma Cook, 93 years old. Gertie Dykstra, 95 years old. Moses says in verse 10, we finish our years like a sigh. The days of our life are 70, if by reason of strength 80, yet their boast is labor and sorrow. A thousand years in God's sight are like a day. We are like a blade of grass that is here and gone. Psalm 39, make me know the end. What is the measure of my days? Let me know how fleeting I am. Behold, you made my days as a few hand breaths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. All mankind stands before you as a mere breath. Surely a man goes about as a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil. Man heaps up wealth and does not know who's going to get it. That's the ugly. That's the ugly. You feel Moses' pain? See, I do. I watched my dad die this year. And I could preach this sermon years ago, but not the same way. It's totally different now. When you see a loved one at 67 waste away the way he did, the empty feeling, the experience, the pain of death, the hardship of it all, the reality, to dust you shall return, is so set in front of you. When you feel the pain of losing the one that you love, It has this very sobering, awakening, serious effect on your life. All the jokes stop. All the silliness comes to an end for a moment. And you're faced with your own mortality and you're thinking. Here and gone. Here and gone. Here and gone. God floods them away, it says. You see that? You flood them away. Billions upon billions of people gone. Imagery is really strong here in the psalm. I remember when I was in high school, we would go out to this little town next to Hanford called Armona. And high school kids do weird things. But we would go out there and we'd look at the graves. And I remember this one grave, still to this day. The last name was Medlin. And on the grave, it said, it said, remember, friend, as you pass by. As you are now, so once was I. And as I am now, so you shall be. So prepare for death to be like me. We would just stand there and just chill us, right? High school kids like that stuff. I don't know why. For it is soon cut off and we fly away. We finish our years like a sigh. Why so morbid, Moses? This is not what I want to hear today. This is depressing, isn't it? What has it done? Something very healthy for you. Nothing that, sometimes things that hurt, you know, are the best things for you. It's like the bad-tasting medicine in the back of the cabinet that you have to take before your colonoscopy, right? And you have to take that, and it's awful. But it's good for you, and you know it's good for you. This has made you irritated. And it's supposed to. It's supposed to. Because now we have to get to the bad before we get to the good. Moses has the bad. What is the bad? The bad is Moses did something really wrong in the wilderness. Moses in anger struck the rock and remember what happened to Moses because of his sin. The Lord said to Moses, because you didn't hallow me in front of Israel, you will not bring Israel into the promised land. So you're going to die for this, Moses. Your sin has caused this. Moses is of this generation that dies. Moses. furthermore the lord said to moses aaron won't enter the land because you rebelled against my word at the water of meribah so now aaron's gonna die so moses knows he's next and moses is wrestling with this he's wrestling with the bad and here's the bad that's verse seven four we have been brought to an end by your anger and by your wrath we are dismayed you have set our iniquities before you our secret sins in the light of your presence that's the bad imagine that every last sin everything that we've ever done against god is it right in front of his presence your years are 70 to 80 years and we sin we sin we sin this is what i i learned in the wilderness this is what i experienced in the wilderness is what i came face to face with says moses in the wilderness, the ugliness of the pain of death all around me of my loved ones, and then the reality of my own sin. And you know what happens with your own sin. It brings great discouragement. It brings great guilt. It brings great pain. It makes you feel like a total and complete failure, and there's no way God can love you. Is there? And I think this is where you stop and you realize that this psalm, what is amazing about it is Moses is brutally honest about life. Moses is so honest. He's not doing the American thing of covering up death so we don't even have to experience it. That's why we don't have to deal with death in our culture. We don't see bodies anymore. Moses saw bodies. And so he's wrestling with the question, well, what is the great good in all of this? Where is good? where is an answer in this i think now you're ready for the good which is really where he started moses cries out in verse one some of the most beautiful words i think in all of the psalter and in all of the scripture lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth or wherever you had formed the earth and the world even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. This was the ultimate comfort for Moses. This was the ultimate consolation amidst all the tragedies of life, that there's one outside of time. That there's one with eternity as his attribute. Notice he even describes creation as a birth. He says, you gave birth to the mountains. Wherever you had formed the earth and the world, You are God, as if to say, the earth was just born yesterday. With you, there's no beginning or end. With you, you will always be God. You never die. He found absolute comfort in the truth of God's eternity. What that means is with him, he has always been and he always will be. But you see, it's that truth, that overarching reality that provides strength for Moses in all his affliction. Here's where the rubber really meets the road. What's remarkable about the psalm, like the other psalms, like Psalm 139, where the psalm that says, Lord, you know me. You search me and know me. You know all my ways. You know my going out. You know, you know, you know. And the psalmist is not distressed about that. The psalmist is not looking at the attributes of God as weapons against him. if death is a result of sin, our mortality is set before the immortal, what that says is he is the one who is in control of everything. The remarkable truth here is that Moses sees eternity of God, the outside of time of God, that there's no beginning or end as something that is ultimate comfort for him. And you stop and you say, well, how? How is that possible? Well, none of the sorrows, none of the pains, not even death, can remove us, says Moses, from the abiding presence of the one who is from everlasting to everlasting. The word for dwelling place means refuge. Moses understood that the Lord is his refuge. The Lord is his strength. And this has changed his whole perspective of how to deal with the enemy of death and all of this pain and sorrow and hardship and affliction and tests that we're under under the sun how did he do it is there any way to have hope and the answer is yes is there any way to live out life in the years we have so that it actually has meaning so that there actually is fulfillment so there actually is real joy even with this impending death over our lives and it's a resounding yes in the song after painting the dim picture of reality he describes the way of true joy and the way of true happiness. Listen to this. Moses says, in the light of the fact that our lives are a mist and our lives are like a flower that is here one day and gone the next, there's one overarching word here that should stand out in the psalm. There's one beautiful word that should stand out in the psalm as the highlight of the psalm after all this darkness. And it's found in verse 14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. Some translations use mercy, but this is the covenant word. This is the covenant word of His faithfulness. A love that cannot be broken or a love that cannot be taken. Satisfy us with that mercy, that love. It's a remarkable thing. Is steadfast love, a love that never changes, a love that doesn't go away, is that something that's possible for us to enjoy? All of you have been subject and seen loved ones die, and some of you are facing your own bodies breaking down, and you may be next in this coming year. How do we have joy in this darkness? How do we have happiness in this darkness? I'm not talking about the kind of false happiness that people have as they ignore the coming death. I'm talking about the kind of happiness that we have knowing that we're going to die. What is your only comfort in life and in death? Says Heidelberg 1. You know what we confess as Christians. Why do we still have to die if Jesus loves us? If Jesus has died for us? And the answer is this. Our death does not pay the debt of our sins. Rather, it puts an end to our sinning and is an entrance into eternal life. If I'm clinging to that truth, that's changing the whole way I'm looking at everything. You see, what Moses asks here is a question in the heart of this psalm that is probably the most important question that needs to be asked and needs to be answered. Did you see it in verse 11? Who considers, who knows the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? Who knows that? Moses has a great request of the Lord that the Lord would return to him. Return, O Lord, how long? That's not come back. It is return a sense of your favor upon us now. Let us enjoy your favor after this severe chastisement now in life let us have a sense of real joy and happiness in this life return that to us oh lord well i have a question for you who has known the power of his anger none of you none of you none of you have known the power of his anger none of you want to know the power of his anger who has known the power of his anger well isn't it remarkable that moses dies in the wilderness and a man named joshua leads them in you know what the name joshua means right the lord is salvation all of that's preparation for somebody to come who's going to lead us in he's going to bring us through the waters and lead us in who himself would know death for us and taste the full wrath of God so that you'll never know the power of His anger. And you know who that is. It's Jesus. It's Jesus. Moses is looking to Him. Moses is thinking about Him. It is this truth that you celebrate in the new covenant. Think of this today. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, when Moses says, return, oh Lord, how long? He has. He's returned the year of his favor, the acceptable year when his son proclaimed it. And today, you have every purpose in the world to live. You have every reason to live under the sun while God has you here. And Moses anticipated this, and Moses tasted that, and Moses knew that. For he says in verse 12, Lord, my great request then with fullness of joy is that you would teach me to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. That should be a great New Year's request of the Lord. this is a great resolution that in the days that the Lord has given us under the sun to live in the midst of all this hardship, all this sorrow, all this affliction, that we would take the life he's given us and have real meaning and real purpose with it and use it for God's glory and the service of others in his kingdom. That we would guard our hearts from wasting our life on the vanities and trivialities of life. That we would guard our lives. I mean, I'm just watching this pastor in china preach what a fiery preacher under the face of persecution what he's saying we don't care about all this let goods and kindred go this mortal life also the body they may kill god's truth abides still it's that kind of life that is driving them guarding our lives and neglecting here, refusing in all of the struggles of life to so get caught up in what this world is offering and all the things that it pulls us with. The pride of life, the vanities of life, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, all of that. And Lord, let your beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, he says. Let your work be shown, verse 16, to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Would you give real meaning in life to our children? Would you give them this perspective in life to our children? Would your favor fall upon all of us, O Lord? And in all of our works, in all that we're doing, establish our works of our hands. Make us useful for the Master, thoroughly prepared for every good work. Jesus has given you this kind of life. He's given you this kind of perspective. I have no idea how blessed you are. What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I'm not my own, but I belong, body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. What has he done for me? He's fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood. He set me free from the tyranny of the devil, and he's guarding my whole life, watching over me in such a way that not even the hairs of my head that fall, He loves me. He's keeping me. He's using me. And by His Holy Spirit, the works that I'm doing are for His glory. If you have fled to Christ this day, be comforted to know that in the years to come, you have one in whom is your dwelling place, whom you're hidden and lodged in. He is your home. He is your rest. He is your happiness. So that when your eyes close in death, You will awake in the arms of the one who is from everlasting to everlasting, seeing your Savior face to face. You believe that? This is the perspective that the psalm leaves us with. This is the joy that the psalm announces to us that in Jesus we have everything. Believe Him. Trust Him. And may this be your perspective that guides us through 2019, another year of His favor that we would glorify our God and our King. That's pretty. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word to us this morning. Thank You for such a beautiful psalm that confronts us with reality but then lifts us up with such an answer. Thank You that our Lord Jesus Christ has come to pay the debt, to go to the cross, to rise victorious, to lead us into the promised land, our Joshua. And we are so thankful, Lord, that You've given us victory over the grave through Him. So then may we use our lives and watch our lives and guard our lives and number our days and understand the importance that every breath comes from You, that the works of our hands would be established and that our children and their children would know and serve and love the Lord. Thank You for Your salvation. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.