I appreciate your prayers for our family. So take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 90. And we're gonna read the Psalms through. It's got 17 verses and then I'll pray. And then we will, I will seek to unpack what the Lord has here in Psalm 90. Give you a second to find that there. Let's actually switch and let's take a moment and pray and then we'll read the psalm this morning. Father, I come asking for you to work because I can't do that. And I'm asking that you would take this psalm and open our hearts, first of all, to see you, maybe in a new way, maybe with new eyes or a new angle. And then to see ourselves, up against this tremendous picture of your eternal nature. And then last of all, to be able to see the wisdom of the counsel that you give so beautifully and powerfully in this psalm about how we live in this world. And so, I pray that your Holy Spirit would work Give me freedom and language and being able to communicate and that you would set these truths deep into our hearts and bear fruit all this week as we mull over these things throughout the week. In Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 90 says a prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, forever you had formed the earth and the world. From everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Verse three, 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. and 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 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. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? Verse 12, 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 and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Verse 17, 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. So I understand that this month you're going through looking at different names of God and though we're not going to look specifically this morning at a name of God, I want to take a specific attribute of God. point you to that, try to see what that is, and then how the psalm interacts with that. Looking at that attribute of God, how we stack up next to it, and then how we ought to respond to that. So I hope that by the end of today, and really by the end of this month, as you take maybe a fresh look at God and His attributes, His names, His titles, that you would come to trust Him more because that should be the end. In other words, you should get to the end of the month with a deeper confidence, a deeper trust in God. So what is the attribute of God on display in this psalm? There's a couple different ways we could put it. You could put it this way, it's the eternality of God. The fact that God is eternal. When we say that, when we're talking about the fact that God is eternal, we are saying that God has no beginning nor end. He has always existed and he will always exist. So another way to put it would be the timelessness of God. That God stands outside of time. Or if you like, he stands above time. So how does the scripture begin? In the beginning, Moses, the same author that wrote this Psalm says, in the beginning, in other words, at the beginning of recorded time, God. It was when time began, God was already there. He was ready. He was prepared to begin something. So look at verse two of, excuse me, of Psalm 90. Before the mountains were brought forth, so in other words, before anything was created or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting, from before recorded time, to everlasting, to the end of time, You are, notice the present tense, you are God. So, the crux of the Psalm is that there is a God who stands outside of time. But then the Psalm very quickly shifts to the fact that we, On the contrary, live trapped within time. So see it for a second with me. First, God outside of time. Verse 2, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. That's God standing outside of time looking in. Look at verse 4. for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." That's God standing outside of time. A thousand years go by, it's like a couple of hours in the night for God. There's no way for us to fathom that outside of understanding that that is God standing outside of time looking in. Now look at all the references now to numbers and days and things related to counting time. Verses 9 and 10, for all our days So God's looking in, thousand years like a watch in the night, but what about our days? Our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sign. The years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Maybe today with medical advances, you get 90 or 100. Yet their span is but toil. and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. It's this marked contrast. God standing outside of time and us, we are trapped in time. We get 70, we get 80, maybe 90, toil and trouble and then it's done. Look at verse 15. Make us glad for as many days. He can't stop thinking about days and time and numbers. It's make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Now look at verse 12. So teach us. The whole center of the psalm, it all hinges on verse 12. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. The whole psalm, you can see it, it's God standing outside of time and Moses saying, here I am, here we are, trapped within the confines of time. What does that mean for us? Well, we never seem to have enough time, do we? That's part, an aspect of what it means to be trapped within time. Do you know that God never, ever feels that? He never experiences that. As life goes on, we feel like we haven't done anything that has real permanent value. Don't you feel that? When you're young, you don't really feel that because it's all ahead of you. You haven't done anything. If you're in your 20s, you haven't done anything yet, trust me. And so as life goes on, it's all vision, it's all future, it's all dreams. And as you go on, what sets in, sadly, not to discourage you about, say, the next 50 years of your life, but what sets in is the sense that am I doing anything that has permanent value? Everything that God does has eternal value, and it produces eternally significant results. But we, on the other hand, we don't feel that. It's not the way it comes out in our experience. Look at verse 17. This is the way the psalm ends, and look at what Moses is saying. 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. He doesn't say the work of your hands. He actually says the work of our hands. What is he expressing? He's saying, God, You're eternal and we are not, but we have this deep longing for permanence. We long for the work of our hands to be established. By the way, that word established, the Hebrew word behind it, is a word used to describe the keeping of a building or of a dynasty unshaken. Think of a dynasty in the ancient times of empires, and it was hereditary, and it was king passed it to his son, and so forth, and you wanted a dynasty that was unshaken, that was established, or they built these magnificent buildings, and they were established, and that's the Hebrew word they would have used, and that's the word Moses uses when he talks about, oh God, establish, the work of our hands. Give us something permanent here. There's no question that's what Moses is expressing as he ends the psalm. It's a longing for permanence. So you have the God who is eternal. We who live within the confines of time longing for permanence. and yet feeling like there's never enough time and we always come up short. So what does Moses do in the psalm? And it is amazing. He actually shows us the secret to living contentedly within the confines and the constraints of time. You say, really? He does that? Let me show you. There's three things to guide us today. One, the God who stands outside of time. So we're gonna begin with God, just like Moses does. Two, I want you to see us, we who live within time. And then we'll finish with God's wisdom for all of time. So let's begin with the God who stands outside of time. Just a quick review, verses two, verse two and verse four from everlasting to everlasting. It's again, God standing outside of time. Verse four, thousand years in your sight, but as yesterday, like a watch in the night, God is not under the normal constraints of time. So he's never in a hurry. He never lacks time to accomplish his purposes. This is interesting, he never has too much time. Have you noticed? You either have not enough time or you have too much time, not enough to accomplish what you want to accomplish, or suddenly you have too much time and time's passing too slowly to keep your interest. And so we live constantly with that conflict and God never feels that because he stands outside of time. It's the timelessness of God. That's what the eternality of God expresses. But there's one other aspect to this, before we move from God to us, that I want you to see. Look at verse one. Lord, you have been our dwelling. place in all generations. So the last phrase, in all generations, that's again, that's a reference to the timelessness of God, generation after generation after generation. And what Moses is affirming is that within that context of the timelessness of God, he says, you have been our dwelling place. So what is that? It is that the eternally existent God chose to step into time so that he could dwell with us, with humanity. This was his intention from the beginning. Do you understand that God existed before time, before creation, in Trinitarian form? He existed as one God in three persons. There was the Father. He was there in his existence before time but not alone because there was the Son who was begotten of the Father and the Father pouring his love out on the Son, the Son responding in love to an obedient love to the Father and somehow in ways that we can't fathom the Spirit moving like in creation He was moving above the waters and He was moving within that realm of love and that love in the Trinity overflowed and that's why God created. That's, how do you explain, how do you answer the question, why did God choose to create anything in the first place? And the only thing that makes sense to me from my study of scripture is that God's love experienced before time in the Trinity overflowed and God wanted to share it with those creatures that he would make in his image. And so, God chose to dwell with us. And it worked beautifully until Genesis 3. And then Adam and Eve fell into sin and immediately a barrier came up and there was this great chasm now between God and those he had made in his image. And so All through the story of the Bible, one way to understand the story of the Bible is to see that God is in the process, He is taking specific actions to restore the fact that He wants to dwell with humanity. He wants to, so what was the tabernacle all about? It was about God who is holy saying, I can't dwell with you because you're too sinful. And so I'm going to set up a systems called the tabernacle and there's going to be priests. and they're gonna have all these rituals, and it's about creating a way for mankind to have some kind of access to God, though it would be very limited and very, very step-by-step and very specific within the rituals. It was God saying, I want to dwell with you, but it's not gonna work. You can't just waltz into my presence as sinners. So all through the Bible, God takes these different steps. It all culminates, of course, in Jesus Christ, who, as Hebrews explains, opened the way for us to actually have full access to the throne of God by the Holy Spirit. And you see just a reference to this theme in verse one, you have been our dwelling place. And so God, who stands outside of time, is not looking down, wanting to keep that distance. All through Scripture he is taking these steps to restore. what there once was, God dwelling face-to-face, walking face-to-face, side-by-side with man, and no longer, and him seeking to restore that. So the God who stands outside of time is the same God who is committed to restoring the possibility that he could one day again dwell with humanity. So that's That's what we see of God here. Now, what about us? We who live within time. And essentially, the aspect of our humanity that the psalmist, that Moses highlights here, is our finiteness. It's up against God's infinite nature, his timelessness, his eternality, that the light shines down on us. And what does it show? It shows that we are Very much the opposite, we are very finite. But let's dig in for a moment, look at verses three to six, because there you see the physical aspect of our finiteness. We don't need to spend much time here, because it's very obvious to us, we already know this. Verse three, you return man to dust, and say return, oh children of man, when a person dies, the body goes into the ground, and it just begins to return to its original form, to dust. Verse 4, a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, there is a watch in the night, there's the contrast with the eternal nature of God. Verse 5, you sweep them away so those thousand years which for God are nothing, For us, there are years that are swept away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. It thinks, yes, I've arrived, yes, and there's nothing permanent about it. It's renewed in the morning, in the evening it fades and withers. That's a description of us, of our finiteness as humans. Verse six, in the evening it fades and withers. Now look at verse 10. The years of our life are 70. It's like he's summarizing what in verses three to six he highlighted. The years of our life are 70, even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. We all get the physical aspect of our finiteness, but there's another aspect that we actually don't think about nearly as often. But Moses does, because in verse seven, that's exactly where he goes. And it is to the moral aspect of our finiteness. Look at verse 7. For we are brought to an end. Remember verse 3 he says you return man to dust. He's talking about death. Verse 7 he's talking about death again but it's not just our human frailty that's in play it's actually the moral side of the equation. For we are brought to an end by your anger. See most people For example, I've never been to a funeral where the pastor used this verse to talk about that person's death to say, we are brought to an end by your anger and therefore, that wouldn't go over too well in a funeral, would it? But yet that's what Moses is talking about. 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. Look at verse nine. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. Why the sigh? Because Even though, as Christians, there is the new life and the new heart within us, we want to do right. And yet, like Paul, we constantly find ourselves doing the things we didn't really want to do. In the new nature, we don't want to do these things, and yet the flesh is very active, and we find ourselves doing them. And our years are brought to an end like a sign. For just a moment, think. When was the last time that you did something or said something, or if you're really spiritually minded, let's add, you thought something that later on or maybe immediately or after a few minutes or the next day you thought, why did I do that? Or why did I say that? Has that happened in the last few hours? Probably, maybe, if we go back to the last few days, almost certainly, if we say in the last month, I think we're probably all, it's just, that is life. There is a moral aspect to our finiteness that is so difficult. And when you put us up against the God who stands outside of time and is holy, we, We stand there like verse seven, we are brought to an end by your anger. In other words, when Moses looked up to consider the glory of the timelessness of God, he had the sense to see in contrast, not just our physical weakness, but our moral weakness as well. We live the short years of our life continually sinning against God. Think about Moses who was writing this. one moral failure. He struck the rock. Why was that such a moral failure? In essence it was because in a moment of pressure before the people of God. He should have honored God. He should have lifted up the glory of God. Instead, in exasperation, he struck the rock. And God said, you're not going into the promised land. So Moses, in ways that I don't even totally fathom, in a depth that I don't totally grasp, he understood what it is to be morally weak. And death. Keep this thought in your mind. When Adam and Eve sin and God said, the consequence is death. You read Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin is, continues to be death. When God established that, it was in His justice and His righteousness and the upholding of His holiness that that was established. But do you realize that there was also a touch of mercy in that? The mercy was that we don't have to live eternally in this state of moral weakness? I mean, really, do you really want to live 1,000 years? Really? Think about how you feel when you get to 70 and 80, physical weakness and moral weakness, and just the constant battle against sin and your own thinking. I find myself, I'm not that old, 47, I find myself, I don't think I'm that old, I find myself Struggling at times with attitudes and things, and I'm thinking, oh, God, have mercy on me, because 20 years from now, it's probably going to be harder. I know that, and I don't want to be a grouchy old guy. But that's hard not to be, isn't it? Because of the moral and physical weakness altogether. You want to live 1,000 years? I don't want to live 1,000 years. And so there's a touch of mercy. And God saying, I will not let them live that long. Even you look back at when they did live that long and God said, no, I'm gonna shorten man's days, maybe 100, 120 and today 80, 90. So how do we live then within the confines of our finiteness? Are we relegated to living all our days frustrated? Is it inevitable that we get to the end of our days with a sense that our lives have been in vain? That there's no real permanence to our lives or our story? And the psalmist has an answer. It may surprise you, but it is God's answer. It is that wonderful secret in the psalm. I want you to see it. So let's look at, lastly here, God's wisdom for all of time. Look at verse 12. That's the hinge, and it's the key in the psalm. Verse 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. So teach us to number our days. What is he saying? What is the command? In other words, how do you number your days? First of all, I think it, you can summarize it, it's a call to embrace your finiteness. In one sense, he's saying, stop fighting it. I guess if someone were preaching this in Hollywood, California, you'd say, stop doing all the plastic surgeries, all right? Just stop fighting your finiteness. Accept graciously the reality of your specific finiteness. What am I talking about? Health issues, weaknesses, inabilities, All of us in different ways under the curse live with different weaknesses, different things that cause us to feel our humanness, our finiteness, physical weakness, even specific temptations and struggles. It's also a call to take a serious view of life. So to number your days is, yes, it's embrace your finiteness, but it's also stop playing around. Take a serious view of life. Yes, we live in a world that is marked by our finiteness, but within those 70 or 80 years or whatever that God gives you, take it seriously. Number your days. You don't have that many. and give yourself to the things that really do matter. Look at the second half of it. The second half of verse 12. that we may get a heart of wisdom. So what does it look like to trust God's wisdom? Number one, we find our satisfaction in genuine fellowship with God. Look at verse 13, return, O Lord. How long? Have mercy, have pity on your servants. Verse 14, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. In other words, to embrace God's wisdom, verse 12, to number your days, take that serious view of life and seek God's wisdom on the days that God does give you is to say, God, I don't want to live frustrated. It's not your will that I live continually struggling with frustration. To number your days is not to finish every day exasperated, it's actually the opposite. It is to take such a serious view of life that you say, I'm gonna give myself to the things that matter. And I'm gonna rest in God, in his wisdom. That heart of wisdom has to do with resting in God. And it is finding your satisfaction. In him, verse 14, that's where Moses turns. Satisfy us in the morning. Why in the morning? Because yesterday was rough. Right? So you sleep. That's a gift of God. And you wake up in the morning, you say, God, it's a new day. I want to be satisfied in you today. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that faithful covenant love of God. That we may rejoice and be glad all our days. In other words, day after day, it's in the morning, waking up, and God, I wanna find satisfaction in you, in your grace, in your mercy in my life. Verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil. Verse 16, Let your work be shown to your servants, we'll move there in just a second. So it's find your satisfaction in God, that is part of the wisdom. Secondly, we find our sense of purpose and permanence within the framework of God's great work through the ages. Again, we find our sense of purpose and permanence within the framework of God's great work through the ages. Verse 16, let your work. Do you remember when I referenced a few minutes ago, verse 17, establish the work of our hands, but in verse 16, and the order makes a difference, verse 16, it's let your work be shown to your servants, to us, and your glorious power to their children, to us, and to our children. Well, what is Moses saying? He's saying, God, you have a work. There is something that you are doing. And we, and it's powerful. And it's glorious. And we want to see it. And we want to be part of it. And we want to understand it. We want to be able to see it and embrace it and join it. Let your work be shown to us. Your glorious power. to us. And again, the order makes all the difference. He doesn't say, God, what really matters is establish the work of our hands. He says it. But before he says it, he says, give us a vision of your work. And this, I believe, has the possibility of a paradigm shift in your thinking. Because what is so natural for us, it is to wake up every morning and instead of saying, satisfies with you, with the vision of what you want to do, it's, oh, God, help me with this and that and that problem and this situation. And we're so wrapped up in us and me. we lose the vision we don't have the vision of what God's actually doing. So as I was this morning meditating on this before coming here my mind ran to Ephesians 1 verses 9 and 10 where Paul says he asked God says God I want you to make known to us the mystery of or the secret of your will, he says, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose. It's Paul saying, God, help us to see what you're doing. And then in verse 10, essentially, he summarizes what God is doing. Ephesians 1 verse 10, this secret, this plan, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time. to unite all things in Him. You say, what is God doing in the world? What has He been doing from everlasting to everlasting? And it is to unite all things in Him. Now to unite, in one sense, it means that God is taking things that are not together, that should be together, things that are not in unity, that should be in unity, and he is going to bring them into unity. Well, what are those things? Verse 10 of Ephesians 1 says there's two categories. There's things in heaven and there's things in earth. And so When were all things on earth united in harmony with God? They haven't been that way since before Genesis 3, Genesis 1 and 2. Since Genesis 3, they haven't been. What is God doing? He is in this tremendous, wonderful, glorious plan of redemption. He is bringing those together in Christ. through his death and his resurrection so that one day we will live in an earth, a new earth, where all things on earth will be united in unity. But it's not just on earth. He says in heaven. And since when have things not been in unity in heaven? Since Satan fell. And there's the demonic beings who resist God's plan continually, and they have been since they fell. And what is God doing on that sphere, in that sphere? He is, again, through Christ, is going to bring all of those into submission to His will, so that one day, we're gonna spend eternity, and all of those things will be united in Christ. That's what God's doing, and you ought to wake up every morning and remind yourself of that, because what will it do? It will set Your finite weakness, the moral struggles, in other words, the things that because of your sinful nature are constantly at war in your heart, and because of the physical aspect of your weakness that are struggle, a struggle for you, it will put those in the right light. I hope that Sunday after Sunday here, that there are reminders of God's great plan so that you can go out the rest of the week and have your sights set straight. So what have we seen? God's timelessness. He stands above time, outside of time, our finiteness within time and the secret, which is to number our days, to take that serious view, to get our wisdom from God. which is to find our satisfaction in Him and to let His purposes be really what we seek. So when you as a mom take time with your young children to teach them the Word of God, it's not in vain. You are communicating God's ways to them, the preschool teachers who are here. It's not in vain. It is a part of that great kingdom that God is building, that great plan for the fullness of time. When you... very difficult day, say no to a temptation, and nobody knows it, only you and God. It is a way for you to honor God, to say to God, I love you, and I'm not going to do this, because I trust you and I love you, and I could go on and on, but I won't. It's finding, finding, in God's great purposes, how you ought to live day by day. And you know, maybe today you stand outside of those blessings still. In other words, you haven't come to Christ. And I trust that today would be the day that you see Jesus and realize that the God who stands outside of time is real. He is the God who created all that we see. And he did send his son, Jesus Christ, who really did die. And when he died, God the Father placed our sins on him. And when he rose from the dead, he really did rise from the dead as the first fruits. In other words, for God to say to you, I will give you new life. And the proof is that I gave it to my son. And I hope that you would come into Christ so that you can find not an answer to all of your issues primarily, but to find what God is doing and be a part of that through receiving Christ, believing on Him, finding your salvation in Him. Father, your word is so good because it sets us straight, sets us thinking straight, it sets us to see our world right and our own hearts right and our daily life right. So God, just give us grace to not forget this and to live seeking to understand your purposes and your will and finding our purposes and the establishing of our work within the framework of your work. And God, you are so gracious to us, so good, and for anyone today that stands outside of all of this, outside of Christ, help him, help her to have their eyes open today, to run to Christ and find their salvation in him. Thank you, Christ.