November 9, 2014

The Lord is Our Home - Nov 9, 2014

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SERMON:

When Moses was 80 years old, God called him to lead the nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

When Moses was 82, he and the liberated people of Israel stood on the border of the land God had promised to give them. A small detachment of Israelites scouted the land for 40 days. When they returned they reported that the land was indeed a rich place, but it was also filled with strong people, and fortified cities. Even though God had brought them to where they were through obvious miracles, and even though Yahweh had promised to fight for them, 10 out of 12 scouts advised against going into the Promised Land.

The people of Israel had complained against God ever since he came to rescue them. They had complained about their increased workload in Egypt. They had complained about food on the way to Mt. Sinai. At the Mt.  Sinai they had rebelled against Yahweh by making a Golden Calf to worship. They had complained all the way to the border of the Promised Land. And now, they were talking about stoning the faithful followers of God, and choosing a leader who would guide them back to Egypt.

For Yahweh, this was enough.

He told them, fine. You will not go up into the Promised Land. Not anymore. You will wander around in this wilderness one year for each day the scouts were gone. For forty years altogether you will wander, until the ever complaining generation is dead and buried. And then, your children, whom you said would be taken as plunder, they will go up into the land, and enjoy what you have rejected.

And so, wander they did. For 40 years. In the wilderness. From camp to camp they moved, God providing food and water. And slowly, the older generation was laid to rest in the dusty soil of the Sinai Peninsula.

At some point toward the end of this forty years, Moses wrote the Psalm we’re going to mediate on today, Psalm 90.

This wasn’t he young and foolish Moses who murdered an Egyptian slave driver to rescue his countryman from a beating. This was a wiser, more seasoned Moses. A Moses who was creeping closer and closer to his 120th birthday. A Moses who had seen a lifetime of God’s interaction with his people, and had learned from it.

This is his prayer.

Psalm 90 (NASB)

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.
   1             Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
   2             Before the mountains were born
Or You gave birth to the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
   3             You turn man back into dust
And say, “Return, O children of men.”
   4             For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it passes by,
Or as a watch in the night.
   5             You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep;
In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.
   6             In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew;
Toward evening it fades and withers away.
   7             For we have been consumed by Your anger
And by Your wrath we have been dismayed.
   8             You have placed our iniquities before You,
Our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
   9             For all our days have declined in Your fury;
We have finished our years like a sigh.
10             As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
11             Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
12             So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
13             Do return, O Lord; how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
14             O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15             Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us,
And the years we have seen evil.
16             Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
17             Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
You can almost see Moses sitting there in the arid wilderness. Maybe somewhere on the edge of the camp, pondering. Thinking over his life.

Here in the city we’re surrounded by everything manmade. Streets and businesses, power lines and cell phone towers, highways and homes. Being surrounded by such things gives us a sense of safety and security. But out there in the wilderness it was more obvious to Moses that the Lord is the one who provides. Yahweh is the real shelter which stands over his people. It has been this way since the beginning.
In the distance Moses could see the mountains looming tall. Some day in the near future, the Lord would lead Moses up into those mountains one last time. He would get to see the Promised Land from a afar, but he would never enter it.

And it occurred to Moses that before any of this existed, Yahweh had been there. He alone was eternal. From everlasting to everlasting, he was God.

Looking downward, Moses saw the dust of the ground at his feet. This was what he would be soon. Dust. When his spirit heard the Lord’s command it would leave his body, and God himself would lay Moses’s physical remains the ground. In this way Moses was like every one of us. Destined to die.

It all made Moses feel so small. So insignificant. His long life was but a drop in the bucket compared to the Eternal One. Like a flash flood in the wastelands of Sinai, time and decay had swept through that complaining generation of Israel, carrying men and women away, never to be seen again.

We’re just like the desert grasses, Moses thought. Sprouting up with the morning dew, but withering away before the evening sunset.

And so it would be for every generation after Moses. So it is with us today. Despite the advances of human technology and modern medicine, we rise up strong in our youth, only to wither away in old age. It was all very humbling to think about.
Moses couldn’t help but think how it could have been different for his nation. They had stood on the border of the Promised Land once. Carried there by the mighty hand of the Lord  as if on a great wave. But then the rebellion. Then the complaining. And God’s sad decree.

The people of Israel had received so much good from Yahweh. But still their sinful hearts wouldn’t be satisfied. And for their sins of grumbling and rebellion, and for their hearts of hard discontent, they were feeling  the Lord’s rebuke.

In the end, all their bold complaints against God had withered into a sigh. The strength of man had degraded into a whimper. Seventy years? Eighty? Did it matter? Even a long life was filled with labor and sorrow in this sinful world. And in the blink of an eye, it was all over.
In verse 11 Moses says to God,

“Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
“ (Psalm 90:11 NASB).

The answer to that question, is no one. Nobody comprehends how intense God’s anger and fury is, and so nobody fears him as they should.

In Egypt, Pharaoh didn’t understand. God visited 10 plagues of epic proportion on Egypt, and still Pharaoh sent his army to chase after the Lord’s people. Pharaoh’s troops met their end at the bottom of the Red Sea.

The people of Israel obviously didn’t learn from the experience. They saw the plagues. They saw the Nile turned to blood. They saw frogs infest the land. They saw locusts devastate the fields. They heard the sad cries when all the first born sons of Egypt died in one night. They saw the Read Sea part before them by the Lord’s power. And yet they still complained against Yahweh, and were cursed to wander.

Even Moses didn’t fear the Lord rightly. He had a front row seat for all the miracles that Yahweh did for his chosen people, and yet Moses still got cocky. When the people complained about having no water, Moses told them,

Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10 ESV).

When Moses struck the rock twice, water did pour out for the people. But Moses had sealed himself from the Promised Land by claiming God’s power as if it belong to him and his brother Aaron.

Because of his insolence, Yahweh told Moses he would not be going to the Promised Land. He too would be laid to rest in the wilderness. It was a hard lesson for Moses to swallow. God is Holy, and as the Holy and Eternal God, he will be respected. He will be feared.

And so Moses prays,

“So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12 NASB).

In other words, Lord teach us to see how mortal we are, so that we approach you with awe and respect. For as the proverb says,

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7 ESV).

If we learn anything from the history of ancient Israel and Moses, it must be to fear the Lord. To bow in reverent awe before him, knowing that he will not be trifled with. He is serious about sin. He simply will not tolerate it. And he will judge the sinner with righteous judgment.
But amid all of these somber thoughts, Moses wasn’t despairing. Through all his life experiences Moses had learned to bow before Yahweh in true humility. Through all the mighty works of God that he had seen, Moses had learned to truly fear the Lord—and to depend on Yahweh for anything and everything he needed.

Listen again to how Moses closes his prayer. He doesn’t close his prayer with despair, but with an expression of complete dependence on Yahweh’s grace, and faith in Yahweh’s love.

 Psalm 90:13-17 (NASB)

13             Do return, O Lord; how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
14             O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15             Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us,
And the years we have seen evil.
16             Let Your work appear to Your servants
And Your majesty to their children.
17             Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
Moses doesn’t ask, “Will you return, O LORD?” He asks, “how long will it be?” He knows that as great as the Lord’s anger is, his love is greater. He has promised his people that they WILL enter the Promised Land in time. And furthermore, that a Savior will be born there one day. A Savior who will deliver all sinners from their damning, wrath incurring choices.

Moses knows the LORD keeps his promises. So he prays that the LORD will soon bless Israel so they can live their lives on this earth in joy and gladness, instead of painful wandering.
Humility.

Fear of God.

Dependence on God.

Faith in his promises.

These are the things Moses has learned in life. These are the things he prays about. And these are the things that he would have us imprint in our hearts today.
Last Sunday was Reformation Sunday, and we talked a little about Martin Luther rediscovering the message of sins forgiven through Christ’s cross. But one thing that we didn’t talk about was Martin Luther’s death.

As Martin drew closer to death, his thoughts turned to his own mortality, just like Moses’s thoughts did. After Luther died, his friends found a slip of paper in his pocket. And on this slip of paper Martin had scrawled a little note. It said, “We are beggars, this is true.”

Like Moses, Martin had learned to bow before the eternal God with humility. With fear. But most of all, in complete dependence and faith.

Every good thing that comes to us in life comes from above. From our Creator God. And from him comes not only food and drink, house and home, but also forgiveness and the promise of eternal life.

The Eternal God has visited us, as one of us. And through the cross of the God-Man, the God has laid his lovingkindness on us, so that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

In life we experience pain and sadness, but these few days of suffering will be soon forgotten in the eons of goodness to come. God’s work of salvation has appeared to his servants, and to their children. Because of Christ’s work, the Lord’s favor rests on sinners like us. So much so that he no longer even calls us sinners, now he calls us saints.

So yes, we are beggars, this is true. Mortal men and women. Sinful men and women. People with nothing to offer the holy God. But because of Christ, the Lord who birthed the mountains, earth, the world—the Lord has become OUR dwelling place.

We’re but strangers here on earth, the Lord is our home.

Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts, and your minds, in Christ Jesus.

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