Now, here in March, most of our resolutions from January seem lost to history, gathering dust on our failed hopes and dreams, until next year, when we dust off our resolutions and try again. Well, I propose a redirect. Rather than look to exercise more, lose weight, add this habit, break that one, I propose we adopt new resolutions directly from the Bible, from our passage today. Before we jump into the actual text of the psalm, I just want to notice the subscript right before verse one. We're given the author's name, a prayer of Moses, the man of God. This is one of only three psalms that give us the author in book four. This is significant as it sets up the context and backdrop for the entire psalm. And while there are timeless truths that apply to God's people for all generations, and we'll get into those in a moment, there is a specific people in a specific time that the author Moses was writing in. And we don't know when the psalm was written, but most scholars think that it was after most of the significant and difficult circumstances in Moses' life, the death of his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron, the punishment he received of not being able to enter the promised land, because of his sin and the nearing of his own death. These are all significant factors that, again, provide the backdrop for the psalm, which we'll explore as we go on. As you might have noticed, Psalm 90 has the theme of time woven throughout. But the entire fabric of the psalm is the relationship God has with his people. The main point of the psalm is this. Because God is everlasting and man is finite, we must depend on God to give us an eternal mindset and satisfaction. Because God is everlasting and man is finite, we must depend on God to give us eternal mindset and satisfaction. So in our passage today, we have a marvelous truth, an unavoidable reality, Worst news, and then we end with some hope-filled resolutions from our study together. That's our path forward this morning. So first, let's look at this marvelous truth. What is it? God is everlasting. God is everlasting. Look at verse one. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. This opening sentence sets the foundation for the entire song. The Lord who reigns is a dwelling place. He is home. For Moses and his ancestors, they have been nomads. Hebrews 11 says that Abraham followed the Lord to a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. The nation of Israel spent 400 years living in a land that was not their own, much of that time being spent as slaves. And while he was writing this, Moses and the Israelites had spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness with no place to settle down and call home. So the question comes for Moses, where is home? And the answer is profoundly, Lord, you have been our dwelling place. The Lord is home. Where the cloud by day and fire by night was, that was home. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is home. Listen to Exodus chapter 40. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys. Even as they traversed the wilderness, if they stayed in the presence of the Lord, they had a dwelling place, a place to be. Some translations call it a refuge. This is a place of safety. Look across the page at Psalm 91, verses one and two. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. There is a refuge in the shadow of the Almighty and a shelter in the dwelling place of the Lord Most High. Like Moses and the Israelites, Hebrews and 1 Peter call us sojourners and exiles. Why? Because we are citizens of another kingdom. Listen to Philippians 3, chapter 3, verses 20 and 21. but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. We may be exiles here and treated as such by the rest of the world, but we can hold our head high for the Lord our God is our dwelling place and refuge. When we are lost and weary, God is the stronghold that we run to and are safe. As sojourners on this earth, we have the joy of home. We are in Christ and Christ is in God. He is our dwelling place. He is home. How incredible that is! We have barely gotten started in this psalm, and already we have the marvelous truth that God is the constant, the dwelling place, the home for his people. But it gets even better. As amazing as the truth of God being our dwelling place is, the emphasis for Moses is actually on the phrase that follows in all generations. This is the first reference to time in this psalm. Moses knew the stories of God's faithfulness. He had seen the ways God had been faithful throughout time. He knew the ways that God provided for the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He had watched God take the people across the Red Sea, walking on dry land, right out of the clutches of the Egyptians. He had seen God defend his people. He watched God give manna from heaven. He saw God's patient care for grumbling Israel, and the presence of the Lord guide and encompass their every step. From Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob, and on down to Moses, Moses could confidently say that God is not just a dwelling place, but that he has been a dwelling place for all generations. As far as we can look back, we can see the immense faithfulness of God being the stronghold and refuge for his people, the constant dwelling place for his chosen loved ones. If the suffering you are facing has obstructed your view of God's faithfulness, look back to what we have seen. Just back to yesterday to see God's faithful care. This marvelous truth that God is everlasting is made even more explicit in verse two. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Here's what we see theologians call the eternality of God. God has never not existed. Excusing the bad grammar, the theology is correct. God is outside space and time. One theologian, Wayne Grudem, defines the eternality of God this way. Quote, God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God also sees events in time and acts in time. Before the mountains and the sea, before the beginning, God was. As he declares in Revelation 22, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. This is the sentiment of Moses. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Outside time, God is wholly other. This eternality of God shows that time is below God. God is the one who made time. He is before time, after time, above time, beyond time. Past, present, and future are all the same for him. We see that in verse four. For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. 2 Peter 3, 4 says it similarly, with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. We all have a beginning, a time we were conceived and born, and a time we will end and die. That's not the case with God. God is everlasting. And if you ponder this just for one moment, your mind should start to hurt. Some of the oldest men to ever live, Adam and Methuselah, almost came close to a thousand years of life. But even the furthest lifespan man has ever known is but a dot in time for God. No one is like God. And this eternality is an attribute of divinity. It's what makes God, God. If we stretch the lines of God's existence in either direction, we just have to use those arrows on either side to point to never-ending infinity, and right above one arrow, everlasting, and another, everlasting. The arrows point in a direction that doesn't end on either side. Moses says from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. But this is more than just a sentence for a doctrinal statement. For Moses, the eternality of God is not some distant reality, an attribute of God tucked into a systematic theology textbook for seminary students. Rather, it is intimately connected to God's holy otherness and his almighty faithful care for his people. Almost exactly like Psalm 90, Moses says these words to the people of Israel at the end of Deuteronomy 33. There is none like God, O Jeshurun, who rides through the heavens to your help, through the skies in his majesty. The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy before you and said, destroy, so Israel lived in safety. It's not just that God is our dwelling place, but that the God who has been, is now, and ever shall be is our dwelling place. The arms that hold us, the divine hands that clutch us are everlasting. There is no expiration date on God's care for us. For our dwelling place is the eternal God. God outlasts everyone, and if we are in God's care, then there is no one who can snatch us out of his hand. The refuge in him, the safety he provides, is true for eternity. As 2 Corinthians 5 says, when we experience the suffering of this world, the trials and tragedies of this life, we groan. But we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, and that he has given us the spirit as his guarantee. This is a sure promise, a check issued from the bank of heaven that you cash in on account of God's faithfulness. and he has given us the spirit to guarantee it. How sweet is the dwelling place of God, the shadow of the Almighty. We are held in the everlasting arms of God, and no one can snatch us out of his hand. We rejoice and say with Moses, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. So we now move from the marvelous truth that God is eternal to the unavoidable reality that man is finite. Or another way to say it might be, God is eternal, man ain't. Look at verse three. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man. In contrast to God's eternality and not having a beginning or end, all humans, all mankind have a beginning and will definitely have an end. In Sunday school with the youth, we've been trying to notice the repeat words in the text because they almost always signify importance. It's not like Moses accidentally forgot he repeated a word. So if you look at verse three, what is repeated twice in this verse? Return. In verse three, God returns man to dust, and as he does that, he says, return, O children of man. What does return to dust mean? Well, the phrasing is almost identical to another part of the Bible. And as if to make it even more obvious, the word for man in O children of man can be translated Adam, as in O children of Adam. So we jump back to Genesis three. Genesis three is where Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of good and evil, and then God puts curses on all parties involved as punishment. When he gets to Adam, God says this in verse 19. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. And notice this, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. In short, God is fulfilling the promise he made back in Genesis 2, that the punishment for disobedience was death. God created man, forming him out of the dust, and Adam's punishment is being put back into the dust he was formed out of. God promised death would be a consequence for disobeying his commands, and that is the consequence all mankind from Adam on receives. Romans 5.12 makes this explicit when it says, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sin. Sin brings us all back to the dirt, which then brings us to the significance of man. Because almost all of us, regardless of our station, will end up about the same amount of feet under the dirt. So if man is returning or coming back to his origin of dirt, what does that say about man? He's dirt. The reality is all of us are dirt. This is your morning pep talk. You're dirt. And I am dirt as well. So how do we allow ourselves to think more highly of ourselves than we ought? That doesn't mean we treat others like dirt or go around reminding them of their origin. And it also doesn't mean that we forget that we are made in the almighty image of God. But, while we are made in the image of God, we are made from dirt. And the only significance dirt has is what God does with it. So our significance, our value, only comes from the invaluable God who made us. As children or descendants of Adam, we all receive the curse of Adam's sin. Not only that, but we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3.23 tells us. And therefore, death is doubly so our punishment on account of our own sins. The penalty of Adam's sin is death. Back, and, and toil. Back in Psalm 90, verse 10 expounds that even further. Verse 10, the years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone, and we fly away. Just like Adam had to till the ground, and through toil and the sweat of his brow get food, so the years of our life are filled with toil and trouble. Some of you can attest to that quite well. But even beyond the suffering and trouble we face in life, our years are over in a moment. They are soon gone and we fly away. Look at verses five and six. Moses describes our years like a dream. You sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. It flourishes in the morning and is renewed, and in the evening it fades and withers. Our lives are just as short, just as brief and momentary as a mist or a vapor in the morning. The life we live isn't that long. We barely clear 70, or as Moses says, by reason of strength, 80. For some of you, that's right now. For others, it's around the corner. But the point is, the longevity some of us might have isn't really that impressive. Compared to the eternal God, 80 years is barely a dot in time. It's smaller than the speck of dust we return to. We don't live long on this earth, and we all die. The statistics are in, finalized and definitive. 10 out of 10 people die. 100%. And yet, so many people try to avoid the reality of death by pretending it's not impending. If you ask my grandma how old she is, she's 39. Grandma has been 39 for over 40 years. And in some ways, the technological feats of modern medicine have made us feel invincible. There's some part of us that believes we just might cheat death. Diseases that chimed the death knell in the heart of any human being for centuries, like measles, malaria, tuberculosis, diabetes, polio, chicken pox, or others, now are next to nothing for us. Doctors can perform open-heart surgeries with large success. Pregnancies with complications that were impossible to detect and meant the death for both mother and baby can be noticed and prevented. But still, Even despite all these improvements and advancements in modern medicine, the statistics are still the same. Ten out of ten people die. We only need to look back on the last few months to be reminded of the human frailty we all have. COVID has wiped out millions of lives without any attempt at pleasantries. Despite the best safety precautions, car crashes take thousands of lives consistently every year. Suicides have skyrocketed in the past couple of years. Homicides and war ravage the earth. Hurricanes and tornadoes and other natural disasters dwarf man in his size and wipe away with death. And even if we somehow avoid all of these death traps that fill our world, we will simply grow weary and old, wear out, fall apart, and then die. And many of us keep living like we think it won't happen to us. But we are all finite beings who will all eventually die. And the truth is, you have no idea when that is. This could be your last month, your last week. This morning could be the last morning you woke up. You have no idea when you're going to die. It may be hard to hear, but this is the unavoidable reality. And it gets worse. We move from the unavoidable point that man is finite to the worst news that man is under the wrath of God. Man is under the wrath of God. As we contemplate the shortness of our time on earth, we might be led to the question, why? Why do we die? Well, look at verse seven. 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. All our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. We've touched on this a little bit already, but death is the result of God's wrath on sin. And as verse eight says, none of those sins are hidden from God. Moses experienced this firsthand. When the Israelites were sexually immoral, 23,000 of them died in one day. When they put God to the test, many of them were destroyed with serpents. And when they grumbled constantly and doubted God's faithful care, they were forced to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until they all died off, almost all of them. And this is personal for Moses. When he disobeyed God, clear instructions that God gave, he received the punishment of not being able to enter the land and his own death. As he nears the end of his life, he knows that his death is a result of God's punishment of his sin. We are brought to an end by your anger, in verse seven. Verse three says, you return man to dust. Referring to our lives, verse five says, you sweep them away like a flood. Verse nine, all our days pass away under your wrath. The cause of man being finite is the wrath of an infinite God bringing the punishment promised of death. This punishment is both a physical death and a spiritual one. Revelation 22.8 says that all who are without Christ will face not only death in this life, but a second death in hell, the lake of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth. If you have not trusted in Jesus as your savior, as the one who takes away your sin and bore your punishment of death and your sins, then you face the punishment yourself of hell for all eternity. I'm not trying to be a fiery, angry, brimstone preacher, but I would be a bad friend if I didn't warn you of the impending doom. You can sit in church and listen to sermons, give to the poor, be the best person you can ever be, not kick the dog this week, and you will still be facing the inevitable death that God promises. Without Christ taking your punishment, you face the wrath of an almighty, eternal God who is holy. And this drives the question in verse 11. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? Moses asked, who actually stops to ponder the reality of God's anger toward our sin or the fear that God pours out on our wrath? When was the last time someone came up to you and said, hey, I've been thinking about God's wrath on my sin? The reality is most people don't. Not only do they not consider it, they avoid it. Pause, contemplate the reality of your position before God. The point is, if our lives are fleeting, and death is imminent, and the wrath of God is being poured out on this life and even more in the life to come for all eternity, where do you stand? Christian, when you look at the wrath of God, do you see what it cost to save you from your sin? Do you see the holiness of God in full display? Well, it is not a cause for fear, it is the reality of what it took for God to ransom and save us. God's wrath was satisfied when Christ bore the full weight of His wrath and our sin on the cross. He has paid for all of our transgressions, past, present, and future, once for all. So while we still feel the effects of death on our lives on this earth, this will not always be so. One day, death and tears will be no more. While we groan in this tent, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, waiting for the redemption of our bodies, we are already experiencing the joy of the reality of being radically rescued. We want to be delivered from the body of death physically, but we have already been delivered from the eternal effects of our sin and its consequence of death spiritually. So we rejoice in hope now as we look to the hope that is to come. So we have the marvelous truth that God is eternal. the unavoidable reality that man is finite, and the worst news that man is under the wrath of God. Now we turn to the last part of the psalm, the hope-filled requests, the pleas. Moses is building to a crescendo from his first three points to the requests that follow. After acknowledging the state of God's wrath, he then says, so, in verse 12. Here's the conclusion, the so what that Moses poses from all the realities he's stated. So, teach us to number our days. Notice the language that Moses uses is passive. He doesn't say, I'm going to learn to number my days. No, he says, teach us. His point is simply this. If there is going to be any change in the bad news, it has to be God. This is why in verse 13 he says, return, O Lord, how long have pity on your servants. The wrath that Israel feels, the punishment that those without Christ face, and the reality of death that we are all confronted with should drive us to the same conclusion. It is only God who can do anything about our sorry plight. Because God is everlasting and man is finite, we must depend on God to give us an eternal mindset and satisfaction. The responses and pleas that follow are all dependent on one thing, humility. Humility should drive us to say with Moses, teach us, Lord. Not only do we not have the right mindset, we can't even learn this perspective without God being our instructor. Too often people, especially Americans, develop a can-do attitude of independence and power. Moses and all Christians should have a can't-do attitude. I don't mean that we should all be defeatists with hanging heads and debilitating self-esteem. What I do mean is that man on his own is powerless. We can't even breathe without God letting air into our lungs. So how can we arrogantly live our days without thought of God sustaining work? It's mind-boggling. We are like the tiny chihuahua that yips at anyone and everyone, demanding all bow before its ferocious power and authority and dominating power. And you just look at that little tiny dog and go, what is wrong with me? Get off of me, you silly little dog. But then we go and we live our lives without a single thought in our day about the ultimate way that we ought to live. Our own lives are filled with to-do lists and responsibilities and triage of addressing the next thing in front of us that blinds our vision that we rarely ponder what it means to live the way God wants us to. It's hard. We need a teacher. We ought to be readily aware that what God calls us to is an impossible task. And without the wisdom from above and his teaching us the right perspective, it's impossible. And that's what I mean. A can't do attitude says, I cannot do this. And acknowledges that God is the only one who makes the impossible possible. He is the only one who can give us an eternal perspective of wisdom regarding our days. God is the eternal one. We are finite. The conclusion then must be, teach us, Lord. We need humility to recognize our needs. Again, because God is everlasting and man is finite, we must depend on God to give us the eternal perspective and our satisfaction. From this humility, follow the other, please. Moses says, teach us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom. The result of God being your instructor is you become wise. Now, numbering our days does not mean we just stare at a calendar and check them off as they go by. Rather, it is a sober-mindedness, an understanding, a recognition that our days are short, that we aren't promised tomorrow, and living in light of that understanding. In other words, because we have no idea when death will come knocking, We number our days means focusing on what matters. It means being mindful of our vanishing missed life and making the most of it, not by chasing riches or sex or self-medicating pleasures or any of the other pleasures and temptations that afflict us. And even the good things like work or family or love are not what we live for. Rather, we learn how God wants us to live our lives by seeking his kingdom first and his righteousness. Moses asks the eternal God to teach him to number his days because when the eternal God is your teacher, you learn the eternal perspective of time from the God who created it. Ask yourself this question. How much of what seems so important to me right now will matter for eternity? If you're anything like me, we spend far too much time on things that won't count when we die. We must number our days by asking God to teach us, and then secondly, asking God to satisfy us. Look at verse 14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Here's the crux of learning to number our days. The only way to live a life for God is living in such a way that God is our sole satisfaction and the satisfaction of our souls. The only way to live a life for God is living in such a way that God is our sole satisfaction and the satisfaction of our souls. If you have tasted the living water, you will never be satisfied with the putrid sugar water. If you have eaten the manna from heaven, you won't be wanting to taste the food of the Canaanites. So Moses says, satisfy us. Make us so full that we won't want anything else. What does Moses want to be satisfied with? Your steadfast love. This is the Hebrew word chesed, and it refers to God's covenant love with his people, his overflowing, everlasting, never-ending, always faithful, no matter what, love. Moses has seen what happens. When people aren't satisfied with God's love, they make golden calves to worship, to fill their desire to be satisfied with lust. Moses recognizes that the only way he can be satisfied is if God does the satisfying, because God is the only one who can make him glad. So he asks God, satisfy us with your steadfast love. We ought to join Moses in this request because our souls depend on it. If we are not eating the bread of life, we are like the child stuffing chocolate into his mouth and it just gets all over him. It may taste good and make us feel full, but it will leave us empty and unsatisfied, longing for more. We need God to satisfy us so that whatever idols and lusts that attempt to lure our hearts would be seen for what they are, mirages of satisfaction and mere illusions of what God offers, the Savior's love brings. We have tasted the king's food, his steadfast love, so we will let the world spoon feed themselves on the ashes of lust. When we are satisfied in the steadfast love of God, all other passions and pleasures of this world hold nothing for us, and we cannot be tempted by their fading enticement. Notice when Moses asks God to satisfy his people. Satisfy us in the morning. much like the manna that arrived each morning that filled every Israelite's belly for the rest of the day. Moses says, satisfy us in the morning, Lord. Satisfy us in the morning. Christian, is that your prayer? Do you awake and start your day needing more of the bread of life, Jesus Christ? Do you start with an awareness of your desperate need of God's sustaining grace in the morning? You start there. So often I find myself rolling over in my bed to reach my phone or stumbling out to start my day without even a thought of how much I need God. I start with this pseudo self-reliance and don't even bother to ask God to satisfy me. Oh, that we would be a people that recognize our need for God to satisfy us, rescue us from ourselves, and give us the wisdom of heavenly perspective. The world starts its day with a little thought for God. We must start it with a total reliance on him. If we are true citizens of our heaven, then our crime must be, Psalm 73, whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides you. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, O Lord. When I wake up in the morning, even before my head has lifted from my pillow and sometimes before my eyes have even opened, I am trying to say a simple prayer. God, I need you today. Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love. Moses asks to be satisfied in the morning, but look at the result of that satisfying morning. We may rejoice and be glad all our days. Rejoicing and gladness for as many days as God gives us starts with God satisfying us each morning. When we are focused on God satisfying us with his love each morning, the mornings add up to being glad all our days. This is why Moses asked God to satisfy us, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as you have seen evil. This is the essence of the plea that is also in verse 13, for God to return and bring relief. The beauty of the gospel is that while we pray this part of Moses' request, we have already had the promise that God will return. He already returned to make us his and he will return to bring us home and make us new. We will not just be glad for as many days as we have borne the affliction and suffering of our lives on this earth. but for all eternity we shall rejoice and be glad in the lamb that was slain. No more tears, no more death or sorrow, but rejoicing and gladness forevermore. In each of these pleas we see a reality of already now as well as longing for the not yet. We must be taught to number our days and get a heart of wisdom now, but we long for the return of the Lord as he promised that has not yet happened. We must be satisfied in the morning now so that we may be glad each day God gives, but we await the gladness of eternity that God has promised. We have already seen God's work and power of the cross, but we look to see the final completion of the work that comes. So Moses says, Lord, teach us, satisfy us, and lastly, establish our work and bring glory. Verses 16 through 17. 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. We know we can achieve nothing on our own. Moses understood the fleetingness of life, and if God does not give purpose to our actions, then like the preacher in Ecclesiastes says, all is vanity, a chasing after the wind. Jesus talks about this vanity in Luke chapter 12, starting in verse 13. Someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbiter over you? And he said to them, take care and be a guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. We don't want to be like that. We must desire to do more than establish storehouses for ourselves, build lives for ourselves, relax, eat, drink, and be merry, get ourselves what we want, achieve our version of the American dream. Retirement is nice, but retirement is a means to pursue God's kingdom. Work is good, but it is a means to seek His righteousness. Suffering is hard, but it is the means by which we live for Christ. We live in light of eternity. As Paul said, to live is Christ, to die is gain. So whether we live or whether we die, we make it our aim to please Him. This world may pursue pretty trinkets. We have the pearl of great price. They can chase after fool's gold. We have the treasure of Jesus. And while nations rage and empires fall, we live for a kingdom that reigns eternally above all. We live in light of eternity. We need God to display his power and work in our lives and establish our works, the work of our hands. First Corinthians 15, 58 promises, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. It is only in the Lord that our labor is not in vain. It is only if God establishes the work of our hands that it will have lasting impact for eternity. We must have the eternal perspective that God is the one who directs our steps, that we understand the fleeting nature of our lives and then live out of that perspective and pursue labor in the Lord. Whatever we do, whether we eat or drink, we do it all for the glory of God. Whether you're an accountant or a construction worker, whether you're a stay-at-home mom or a student, a retiree or a lawyer, whether you serve in the nursery or evangelism or music or whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord, with a plea that asks the Lord to establish the work of your hands and make it count for eternity. So we come back to where we started. having gone a full journey through a marvelous truth that God is eternal, an unavoidable reality that man is finite, the worst news that mankind is under the wrath of God, and the three hope-filled requests that God teach us, satisfy us, and establish our work and bring glory. Because God is everlasting and man is finite, we must depend on God to give us an eternal perspective and satisfaction. You remember I talked about resolutions in the beginning. Whatever resolutions you did or didn't make this year, here are the two I suggest from this text that we should adopt each and every day of our lives. Number one, depend on God. The beauty of this resolution is that it doesn't depend on you to complete. It simply requires the incredibly difficult task of admitting our need for God and asking Him to teach us to number our days, satisfy us, and establish our work. And the wonderful reality is, He's promised to do just that. And all the promises of God are true, yes and amen, in Him. When we humble ourselves and rely on Him, He will never let us down. He will sustain us, hold us firm to the end, because He is faithful and true to the very end. Number two, resolve while we depend on God to sustain us and establish our work, to labor as unto the Lord. We number our days by using the few short breaths God has given us, doing everything we can to advance his kingdom and his righteousness. We proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light, first to our own souls, then our families, and our church family, our coworkers, and anyone who will listen. We take each task we face, however simple or mundane, and do it with a delight in Christ and his grace to us, and a purpose to bring God glory through it all. Whatever your task is, whatever God calls you to, it doesn't need to be flashy or big or large, just simply being faithful with what God has given you, relying on Him and depending on Him for it all. In the late 19th century, C.T. Studd was a big name. I'm sure you've all heard of it. He was a famous cricket player, well-known throughout England, son of a wealthy family. He was the captain of his cricket team by 19, had already beaten multiple records, and was set on future glory. He was a rising star. But while he was still ascending to great things, in the middle of his career, he left it and sailed to China with six other men. What happened? T.T. Studd met Jesus. God took a man consumed with nothing but sports and the life he knew and radically changed him so that he became a new creature in Christ who wanted nothing more than to reach the nations with the gospel. Many people were confused and asked him why he gave up cricket and the rich life of ease that he had always known. Here's what he wrote. Only one life, a few brief years, each with its burdens, hopes, and fears. Each with its days I must fulfill, living for self or in His will. Only one life, it will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last. When this bright world would tempt me sore, when Satan would a victory score, when self would seek to have its way, then help me, Lord, with joy to say, only one life, it will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. Only one life, yes, only one. Now let me say, thy will be done. And when at last I'll hear the call, I know I'll say, t'was worth it all. Only one life, t'will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last. Brothers and sisters, may that be the heart cry of our souls that God gives us each day until the day he takes us home, a desire to live and depend and be satisfied in him. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, We thank you that you are the eternal God. You are a dwelling place in all generations. You have saved us from your wrath, though we are ever so deserving of it. You carry us and sustain us. And so, Lord, we ask that you would teach us to number our days, that we would be a people mindful of our citizenship, that we would live in light of eternity. God, satisfy us in the morning. May we be so full that we abandon any idols we are clinging to, that the distractions of this world would not blind us from the joy that you offer and give. And Lord, until that day when you come to take us home, we ask that you would establish the work of our hands. Yes, establish the work of our hands. For the sake of your name and the praise of your glory, we pray all these things in Jesus' mighty, everlasting name. Amen.