Text: Psalm 90
1 A Prayer Of Moses, A Man Of God
O Lord, you indeed have been our dwelling place in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born,
Or you brought forth the earth and world,
From everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn mortal man back to dust,
Saying, “Return, O sons of men.”
4 For a thousand years in your eyes
Are like yesterday when it passed away,
Or a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away in the sleep of death like a flood,
In the morning they are like grass that sprouts up;
6 In the morning it blooms and sprouts up,
Toward evening it is cut off and dries up.
7 For we are consumed in your wrath,
And in the heat of your anger we are terrified.
8 You place our iniquities before you,
Our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 For all our days slip away in your outpouring of anger,
We finish our years like a brief murmur.
10 The days of our years have in them seventy years --
And if by strength, eighty years.
And the pride of them is heavy labor and vanity,
For it passes swiftly and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of your anger?
And the outpouring of your anger is as great as the respect you deserve.
12 Teach us to number our days well,
And present us a heart of wisdom.
13 Turn about, O Lord! How long will it be?
Have pity upon your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your covenant love,
So we will indeed shout for joy and surely be glad all our days.
15 Gladden us as the days you afflicted us,
The years we have seen calamity.
16 Let your works appear to your servants,
And your majesty upon their children.
17 Let the grace of the Lord our God be upon us;
And let the work of our hands be established for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands.
Sermon:
Suicide is the panacea, the cure-all, of the hopeless. They think it will deliver them from their hopeless situation on earth, but it only plunges them into a worse state of hopeless in hell.
No matter how bad things may seem to us, we Christians are never without hope. Sometimes life can give us a real kick in the pants where it hurts. My early childhood was such a kick in the pants. Don’t let anyone tell you the break-up of a family and home does not devastate the children. It does. I know, because I experienced it after my father deserted my mother and me. Poverty was on our doorstep in the early 1940’s at a time when there were no welfare programs to speak of. For about two years I was shuffled around from place to place as my mother attempted to work to support us and still take care of me. She finally had to put me in a foster home where I could be cared for while she worked.
It is a frightening, hopeless situation to find yourself being shuffled around from place to unfamiliar place and suddenly being thrust into a strange house among people you don’t know when you are about five years old. I felt I didn’t belong there. I didn’t belong to anyone. I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have a home. I didn’t have a future.
During the four and half years in the foster home, even though it was an excellent home to me, I had a recurring nightmare that played out my fears, insecurity, and hopeless feelings. I saw myself hanging by a rope from the roof of the arena. The end of the rope had been cut off below me high above the floor. I didn’t know how I got there; I was just stuck there with no way to get down. I was swinging back and forth at a dizzying height that frightened me. I hung on for as long as I could until I couldn’t hang on anymore and I started to fall. As I was falling helplessly and hopelessly through the air, I would suddenly wake up in the darkness.
Hopelessness because of life’s problems and troubles, whether you are five or fifty, is a horrible, depressing, helpless, scary experience. Life is not a bowl of cherries, and more often than not it gives us a kick in the pants. But it is so for a good reason. And through it all we are never without hope. This is what I want to impress on you today. We who have Christ and his Word are never, ever, without hope. For the Lord is our dwelling place and our hope.
I told you my little story so that you may know I can understand your hopeless, scary feelings. Maybe you are fighting cancer. Maybe you are suffering a prolonged ailment or debilitation. Maybe you have just gone through a tragic experience. Maybe you are a lonely widow or widower. Whatever you are suffering, no matter how bad things may look, you are never without hope. The Lord is our dwelling place and hope.
In this sermon I intend to key on the hope that will carry you through life and death.
Psalm 90 holds out this hope while giving us an overview of our life on this earth under the shadow of death. It explains why life is not a bowl of cherries but is labor, troubles, and sorrows. But through life and death we can be sure of this: “The Lord Is Our Dwelling Place. We Die Under His Wrath Against Our Sin. But We Live In The Hope Of His Merciful Salvation.”
This is the theme of Psalm 90: “O Lord, you indeed have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born, Or you brought forth the earth and world, From everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
Moses, the psalm’s author, literally stated: “O Lord, you, indeed you, are our dwelling place!” Moses declared the Lord, the eternal God, is the refuge of each succeeding generation, whose lives because of death are so very short. Isaac Watts expressed the theme of this psalm in his hymn: “O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.” We always have hope, for the Lord is our dwelling place, our eternal home.
Moses was well qualified to write on the meaning of life and death. He saw that in life we are but in death and that the Lord alone is our refuge and dwelling place. Moses could write about life in the face of death, because he saw the whole generation of Israelites die in the wilderness. He himself was facing death because of his sin.
This is what he saw of the Lord’s hand in man’s life: “You turn mortal man back to dust, Saying, 'Return, O sons of men.' For a thousand years in your eyes Are like yesterday when it passed away, Or a watch in the night. You sweep them away in the sleep of death like a flood, In the morning they are like grass that sprouts up; In the morning it blooms and sprouts up, Toward evening it is cut off and dries up.”
Moses saw that in life the everlasting, unchanging Lord sweeps generation after generation away in a flood of death that washes over all mankind and destroys each one. Whether a person dies in his sleep, or dies in an accident, or is killed in a war, or is murdered on the street, he dies by the Lord’s command, “Return to dust, O sons of men.” The Lord initiated this command to return to dust with Adam. To each one of Adam’s descendants in each successive generation the Lord literally commands, “Return to dust, O sons of Adam.” As Adam died, so each of his descendants die.
The Lord did not create the human race to die but to live. Death, however, cuts man’s life short. In comparison to the eternal God, man is like the desert grass. It springs up in the morning; it dies by evening in the fierce heat that burns it up.
The Lord’s burning anger against sin commands each person to return to dust. Moses wrote: “For we are consumed in your wrath, And in the heat of your anger we are terrified. You place our iniquities before you, Our secret sins in the light of your presence.” In Eden the Lord told Adam that when he ate the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. Adam ate it; so he died. All his descendants after him sinned. To them the Lord also proclaims: “The wages of sin is death.” “The soul who sins will die.” Throughout history the wrath of God has been revealed against sin and turns men back to dust.
Moses saw this wrath of God clearly in the short-lived lives of men. He literally wrote: “For all our days slip away in your outpouring of anger, We finish our years like a brief murmur. The days of our years have in them seventy years --And if by strength, eighty years. And the pride of them is heavy labor and vanity, For it passes swiftly and we fly away.”
Because of his fierce anger against sin, the Lord cuts men down in death. They live only a short time, and even the best years of their lives are nothing but heavy labors, troubles, vanity, and sorrow. The Lord’s anger afflicts the days of men’s lives with hard labors and troubles to teach them the seriousness of their sins and the horrible consequences sin brings.
Were we and this world without sin, our day to day lives would be a dream. No toilsome labors. No troubles. No hardships. No sickness. No death. Only life, sweet everlasting life.
Like myself, you know day to day life is anything but a dream. This past week: Did you find yourself wishing you didn’t have to go to work in the salt mines? Did you find yourself tired and worn out by day’s end? Did you find yourself disgusted with the troubles you had to deal with? Did you find yourself frustrated by all the things that went wrong? Did you find yourself feeling sick and under the weather? Did you find your aging body was stiff and sore? If you found one or all of these, or other disheartening things I failed to mention, then you saw the Lord’s anger with sin. His anger afflicts our lives and makes us miserable to teach us the seriousness of our sins and the punishment we deserve for them.
This anger of the Lord that we see is only the tip of the iceberg of his terrible wrath against sin. Moses wrote: “Who knows the power of your anger? And the outpouring of your anger is as great as the respect you deserve.” None of us knows the full fury of the Lord’s anger against sin, for we have not seen it. Hell will reveal the horrible, unrelenting wrath of God against sin, an anger we deserve but surely don’t want to experience.
Moses saw the all important lesson we need to learn during our short life. He prayed for it: “Teach us to number our days well, And present us a heart of wisdom.” Since our lives are short, afflicted by the wrath of God, with a worse wrath in hell still to come, we need the Lord to teach us to count our days rightly. We will not live on earth forever. We would be foolish to live as though we would. We must be prepared if we are to escape the worst that is still to come. We need the Lord to present us with a heart of wisdom that understands the very Lord, who is angry with our sins, is also our dwelling place, our refuge, from his very anger that would otherwise consume us forever. We need the Lord to give us a heart that takes refuge in him and lives in the hope of his merciful salvation.
For his mercy and gift of eternal salvation Moses prayed: “Turn about, O Lord! How long will it be? Have pity upon your servants!” How long will we continue to wince under the Lord’s fierce anger at our sin before he turns from it to show us his pity and compassion? His pity and compassion are our only hope. His merciful forgiveness of our many sins is our only hope of being saved from his everlasting wrath in hell.
Seeing this Moses prayed: “Satisfy us in the morning with your covenant love,
So we will indeed shout for joy and surely be glad all our days. Gladden us as the days you afflicted us, The years we have seen calamity.” The unfailing love of which Moses wrote in this prayer is the Lord’s covenant of love that he made with us in Christ Jesus our Savior. For the sake of Jesus’ suffering his fierce anger against our sins and dying for our sins, the Lord declared our sins forgiven and that we are righteous. In other words, he justified us through Jesus Christ.
This is the great truth that the Lord brought to us through the Reformation. Through Martin Luther and the Reformers the Lord gave us the truth of his Word and brought to light once again the gospel that the Lord of wrath is our Lord of love. In his great mercy he saved us from death and punishment through the atoning sacrifice of his Son, Jesus. This gospel truth gives us hope through life’s troubles and in death. We shall not perish but live and be delivered from all that troubles us in this life. For the everlasting Lord of mercy is our eternal dwelling place and home.
Like Moses, we pray that each day the Lord will satisfy us with the hope and confidence that we shall not die in his anger but live in his glory. This hope gives us something to live for. This hope makes us glad all our days. For ourselves and our children we pray: “Let your works appear to your servants, And your majesty upon their children.” Yes, Lord, reveal to us your gracious works in Christ Jesus by which you saved us.
This the Lord does through his gospel. Let us cherish the life and hope it gives us. For of this we can be most certain: We always have hope, for the Lord is our eternal dwelling place. Amen.