Prayer of Moses
Download MP3Good morning, everybody. I'd like to invite you to turn with me to Psalm 90. We're gonna be looking at, prayer of Moses today. But first, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Josh Howson. I'm the executive pastor here at Redeemer, and I'm really thankful for the chance to get to be up here with you today.
Speaker 1:And I'm up here, and we're looking through a sermon series this summer on great prayers of the Bible. We've looked at quite a few already, quite a few prayers of David, and what we've seen in them, and so many of these prayers articulate different experiences that we walk through in life, and they give us words to pray to God as we go before him. Now, I want to let us know today is no different. We're going to walk through these words of Moses. But to prepare you, there are going to be tough words to start with.
Speaker 1:He invites us to sit in some somber realities about our lives. But I hope, as we walk through his prayer, we'll see that we can identify with him in both the somber focus on the shortness of our lives, but also in the hope that we have. And as we're doing this, I actually hope that we get to learn 2 lessons as we walk through the passage today. First, I hope that we learn more from and about the God that we serve. I hope that our time in this word makes God more glorified, makes his gospel more glorified.
Speaker 1:But, second, I actually hope there's a practical nature to our time together. I actually hope that we learn from Moses about how to pray. So, we're going to look at a few practical pieces of his prayer that hopefully can help us pray more like Moses. So, as we think about these things, please turn with me to Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses. Hear these words.
Speaker 1:Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust, and say, return, O children of man. For a 1000 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.
Speaker 1:In the morning, it flourishes and is renewed, and in the evening it fades and withers. For we are brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
Speaker 1: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? So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Speaker 1:Return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants, and satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all of 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. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us.
Speaker 1:Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we pray that you will reveal yourself to us today.
Speaker 1:We pray that through your Spirit that you would give us a heart of wisdom, so that we can better comprehend our need for you, but also so we can better understand the gospel. We pray that in this time together that you alone would receive all the glory and all the honor and all the praise. So please speak to us because your people are listening. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, as we see from the beginning of this passage, we have the title A Prayer of Moses.
Speaker 1:And when we see this title, it's actually intended to give us somewhat of a backstory that will fill in some of the blanks that we might not have. And so I want to talk about that backstory for a minute. What we're intended to understand is the backstory of the people of Israel and Moses. We can go all the way back to Abraham, when God made a covenant with him, and he promised a few things to him. He promised to make a great nation out of him.
Speaker 1:He promised to give them a land, and he promised to bless all people through Abraham. This wasn't just a promise, this was a covenant that God made with Abraham and ultimately with his people. And what we have seen throughout the story of the people of Israel and Moses is that God has been faithful to this covenant. We see that because God has created a people. And not only that, when his people fell under the rule of the Egyptians, he came to their rescue, and he saved them, and he used Moses to lead them.
Speaker 1:Not only that, as he was leading them, he was their shelter, and he provided for them, and he cared for them. And ultimately, he leads them to the land that he promises. In all of this story, God has been faithful. But on the other side of the story, we've also seen that man has not been faithful. Men have sinned.
Speaker 1:They've sinned against God by grumbling and not trusting him, and ultimately, when they were brought to the verge of entering the promised land, they didn't believe, and they didn't trust God that he would deliver them into that land. And therefore, God cursed them and said that this generation would not see the land, and they would wander in the wilderness. So this is what's happened. Moses has led them, and even Moses, the man of God, has sinned at this point. He sinned by striking the rock at Meribah, and when he did, God said that also you wouldn't enter the promised land.
Speaker 1:And it's very likely that out of this story, that's where we have this prayer. As we get to the end of the wandering in the wilderness, and this second generation is about to enter the promised land, and Moses is given the opportunity to go stand up on a mountain and see all the land that God would provide. And when this happens, Moses gets a time to reflect. And I believe this prayer comes out of this time when he reflects on the end of his life, which is coming soon. He reflects on all the generations that had gone during this time in the wilderness, but he also reflects on God's faithfulness at bringing them here.
Speaker 1:And I hope that we can remember that story as we read his prayer, because it gives us some insight into why he prays the things he prays. So with that in mind, let's look at the first two verses of this Psalm. Verse 1. It says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Speaker 1:These first few verses ground the entire psalm and the entire prayer that we're about to look at, and in them, Moses tells us a few things about God. First, he tells us that God has been their dwelling place throughout all generations. He continues by calling him the creator, the one who formed the earth and the mountains. And then finally, he calls him the God who is from everlasting to everlasting. And it's important for us to think about the way that Moses talks about God and the ways that he's revealed him, because these are some aspects of God that Moses believes are foundational for everything else that will follow in his prayer.
Speaker 1:So what does he say? He says that God has been their dwelling place. He recognizes that throughout this entire story that we just walked through, that God has been their refuge and their deliverer. Nothing that has happened has been because they have done enough or been good enough. It's been all because God has been their dwelling place, and he's been committed to his people.
Speaker 1:And Moses finds comfort in the fact that God is a dwelling place. He continues, and he sees God as creator. He's all powerful. He's the only one who can create heaven and earth. And not only that, he was before creation.
Speaker 1:And in all of this, Moses knows that he can trust in the power of God. And finally, he recognizes that God is this sovereign, reigning king who will be from everlasting to everlasting. There is a future hope that Moses has here. And I want us to see that each of these ways of describing God becomes a foundation they are important for the rest of the passage. And in this reflection on how Moses prays to God, I actually said at the beginning I hope that we learn some practical lessons about how to approach God in prayer.
Speaker 1:And I believe that this is a practical lesson we can learn, is that Moses turns what he knows about God into the things that he prays to God. I hope we can hear that today. I want to say it again. Moses turns what he knows about God, and he turns it into the things that he prays to God. This is really important because, as I've said a few times, nothing that Moses will pray afterwards could be prayed without establishing it first in God.
Speaker 1:He knows that God is the only foundation for any hope throughout the rest of this prayer. He knows that the foundation cannot be himself or his needs or his fears. He needs to begin with who God is and what he's done for his people. And if you were to do a look through the Bible and look at many of the prayers contained, this is a format that's common. We see the people praying the Bible, looking to God as the foundation for anything that they would ask.
Speaker 1:And sometimes they just reflect on how God has acted throughout history, and these things that they can trust that he will do again. And other times, there's these overt celebrations of the character of God. But regardless, as you look throughout scripture, prayer is grounded in who God is, the promises that he's made, and what he's done for his people throughout generations. So this is the first lesson, it's a practical lesson, I hope we learn today. I want to encourage us to be a people who pray to God the things we know about him as the foundation for our prayers.
Speaker 1:But this is kinda hard, isn't it? If you think about your prayer life, that might not be what it looks like. And I believe one of the reasons that this is hard is because we've been hardwired to think differently. The world has hardwired us to think more about ourselves than anything else. We think about our own needs, about our own desires.
Speaker 1:We're taught to pursue our own happiness at all costs. And ultimately, individualism is king. If we look at our culture, that's what we're being taught. And unfortunately, I really believe that that has infiltrated our prayer lives. Because if you were to do a list of the prayers that you've prayed recently, if you're anything like me, you might find that your approach to prayer is treating God more like a genie in a bottle than the sovereign God of the universe.
Speaker 1:You go before him with your wishes, throwing them up, hoping that he'll respond and hear you. It looks more like a laundry list of your wants and your needs. And what I am not saying is that we should take our cares and our desires before God, but what I am also saying is that we need to get the order correct. We need to make sure that we've found our prayers in God so that then we can make a request known to him based on who he is and who he's revealed himself to be. I believe that that's what Moses is doing in these first two verses.
Speaker 1:He's grounding his prayer in who God is, in the promises that he's made, and in the ways that he's worked for his people throughout generations. So I hope we can learn that, and that can become an element of our prayer as well. Now look with me where Moses goes from here. We're gonna look at verses 3 through 6. They say, You returned man to dust, and You say, 'Return, O children of man, For a 1000 years in your sight are but as yesterday when it has passed, there is a watch in the night.
Speaker 1:You sweep them away as with a flood, and they are like a dream. Like grass that is renewed in the morning, in the morning it flourishes and is renewed, and in the evening, it fades and withers. Now like I said, this passage is gonna ask a lot of us today. It asks us to walk through thinking about the shortness of life, because in this section, Moses moves on. He moves on from, in the first section, focusing on who God is, and now he's gonna focus on the condition of man.
Speaker 1:And we are to see ourselves in contrast to the God of the universe as we move on in this prayer. But unlike God, the God who is eternal, we see ourselves as frail and our lives as short. This is important for us to think about, because so many of us spend so much of our lives trying to avoid the concept of death. We don't want to think about the fact that our lives are short. And so often, the only times we do think about this idea is when we're hit with it in the face through the loss of a loved one, through sickness and illness, and through the when you get to the end of your life.
Speaker 1:It's because we want to avoid it at all cost that I believe scripture makes us think about it today. And not only this passage, but we actually see throughout scripture, this is a refrain that we hear so often. Let me read 2 passages that reflect this same idea. First in Psalm 39. Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Speaker 1:Surely, all mankind stands as a mere breath. Similarly, in the new testament, James 4, you do not know what tomorrow will bring. For what is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. And then this isn't just a biblical idea.
Speaker 1:We say this a lot, is that the one thing that we can know for sure in human life is that we will all die. But we spend so much of our time trying to avoid this idea. We spend so much time in our practices and our habits trying to numb ourselves out to this reality. And I think that's why it's important for us to sit in this for a little while today. It's because Moses is calling us to self reflection, a self reflection that we're not prone to and that the world tells us not to do.
Speaker 1:So I invite you to do the hard work with me of thinking about these things. And one of the ways we know Moses wants us to sit here for a while is that he actually gives us a lot of illustrations in this short, little, stream of verses. And I want to walk through them really quickly. The first one he says in verses verse 3, if you'll look at that, it says, you returned man to dust. He gives us this image because he wants us to think of the refrain that out of dust you've come, and out of dust you will return.
Speaker 1:This is that idea that death is the only thing that's certain. The universal truth is that you will die, and he wants us to start there. But he goes on, not just to think about the fact that we will die, but he actually wants us to see that our days are short. They're short. He says in verse 4, for a 1000 years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past.
Speaker 1:If we think about this, we've heard this before, but when you think about all that has happened in the past 1000 years of human history, it feels like a lot of time. There have been kingdoms that have risen and kingdoms that have fallen in that time. When we think about all that has happened, we are to think of that in contrast to the God described in the first two verses, who is everlasting, and he says that that is like a day to him. It's like a day to him, and when we think about the fact that later in this passage it says that our years are about 70 or 80, our lives are even shorter. And we need to think about that, and we need to think about that in contrast to who God is.
Speaker 1:And Moses is inviting us into that when we think about this. He goes on, and he says that our days are like a watch in the night. This image would have been common for them, and they recognize it as the idea of these watchmen who would be on the city gates at night, watching to protect the city. Typically, these were just a nighttime shift, sometimes 4 hours. And what he's saying is that our our lives and our days are just like this one night shift for these watchmen.
Speaker 1:We're to realize that just as the sun goes down and comes up, such is our lives. And quickly in 5 and 6, we see 3 more illustrations. He says that our years are swept away just like they would be with a flood, that they're like a dream. They're that quick. And even they're as quick as the grass that withers over a day in the sun.
Speaker 1:And each of these illustrations that we just saw is intended to bring us some perspective on the shortness of life. And I believe that we need to sit with that, and we need to think about that, because Moses wants us to recognize that our days are here one day and they're gone the next. And this can be, as we sit here, honestly, a somber idea. You probably didn't know you're gonna wake up on a Sunday morning and think about your death so much. And I know that it's hard.
Speaker 1:It really is, and that's why we're doing it. We're doing it together. And then in thinking about it, there might even be the chance that it's bringing up fear and anxiety. What I want to tell you is that Moses wants us to sit there for a second. But if he wants us to sit there, we need to ask ourselves why, because it seems kind of cruel that we have to sit here for for this time.
Speaker 1:But I believe that that leads us to the second element of prayer that we're gonna look at today, that we're gonna see in just a minute. And this element is the the idea of confession and repentance. I believe that that's what Moses is doing here. Now we think of confession and repentance a lot of ways. The most common way you might think of it is approaching God with a specific list of sins and things you want to ask for forgiveness of, and that is absolutely one of the forms of this.
Speaker 1:But there can also be this high level, general understanding of our brokenness, confessing that before the Lord, and recognizing who we are in contrast to a holy God. And I believe that that is what Moses is doing here. He spends time reflecting on the shortness of our lives because he wants to make much of our fallen condition and our need for God. Look with me again at verse 3 so we can see this more clearly. He says, you return man to dust, and you say, return, oh children of man.
Speaker 1:When we hear this, if you've thought about this passage before, it might take you back to the garden, to Genesis 3. The language is very similar, and I think our understanding of the curse on Adam in the garden will really help us understand what Moses is doing here. So please listen to these words as I read Genesis 3 verses 17 through 19, as God responds to Adam and Eve's sin. And God said to Adam, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and you have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you.
Speaker 1:In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plant of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Speaker 1:See, I believe Moses doesn't just want us to think about the brevity of life, though I think that is actually important. What he also wants us to see is something, honestly, much more serious. He wants us to see our fallen condition and the judgment that comes from our sin. This is why we looked at Genesis 3, and I believe that this is what we're about to see Moses talk more about in verses 7 through 11 in Psalm 90. So if you will, let's read those verses.
Speaker 1:Verse 7 through 11. For we are brought to an end by your anger. By your wrath, we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
Speaker 1: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? You see, this actually gets to a much more difficult conversation, much more difficult than thinking about our own lives.
Speaker 1:We're starting to think now about our gods in perspective, comparison to God. And what we see in verse 7 is something that's kind of hard to hear. What he says is that our years and our days are brought to an end by God's anger. Let me say that again. Our days are brought to an end, actually, by God's anger.
Speaker 1:And on the surface of that statement, it might be pretty unsettling to you to hear that, which is why we needed to look back at Genesis 3, because if we believe that God's anger is something that he just throws around recklessly, there will be no hope in this passage. You'll leave concerned and fearful. But that is not what Moses is describing. Hear me. It's not.
Speaker 1:Instead, what Moses is recognizing is that God's anger comes because we sin. Listen to verse 8. This is why Moses continues there. He says, You have set our iniquities before you, Our secret sins in the light of your presence. This verse tells us God knows our sins.
Speaker 1:He knows that we are just like Adam and Eve, and that we too are under the curse of the law, just like everyone who has followed. This is a hard thing for us to think about, but I really believe that there's value in it. I believe if we do this hard work, there will be something good that comes out on the other end. Because I believe that as we come to understand our own fallenness through confession and repentance, we will all the more be ready to understand the mercy of God. So let me encourage you.
Speaker 1:There's hope to come in this passage, but I don't think we can fully get there until we sit in our sin, in our fallen condition. And this is why I believe in our daily lives of prayer, confession, and repentance are important. Is because they draw us to our need for God. When we focus on our sinfulness and on our brokenness, ultimately what it gives us the chance to do is make much of the gospel. And I believe that's what Moses is trying to teach us here.
Speaker 1:But I don't think we just see this in Moses. There's actually a parallel that we'll see between what Moses is praying in Psalm 90 and a lot of the words that we hear from Paul in the New Testament. And what I wanna do is read a few short passages that reflect this first half of Psalm 90, this idea that we are fallen creatures and our death is a result of that sin. So here, Paul expressed the same sentiments, starting in Romans 3/23. He says, for there is no distinction.
Speaker 1:All have sinned, and all fall short of the glory of God. He continues in Romans 5 to say, therefore, just as sin came into the world through 1 man, and death through sin, And so death spread to all men, because all sinned. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like Adam's, who was a type of the one who was to come. And then finally, the first half of Romans 623 that says, the wages of sin is death. Do you hear the similarities here between what Paul and Moses are saying?
Speaker 1:They want us to recognize the effects of our sin. This is what this first part of Psalm 90 is trying to do for us today. It wants us to recognize that our days are short, and that they come to an end because of God's anger towards our sin. And maybe, for some of you, this is the first time you've thought about this in a while. And maybe, as we walk our way through Psalm 90, you have a very easy time connecting with what Moses says about God.
Speaker 1:You have no problem understanding that he is sovereign, creator, he's all powerful, and all knowing. And in the fact that he is all knowing, you have no problem understanding that he sees your sin. And when you look at your life, one of the things you're most understanding of is that you are sinful. But you might stop there. There's some of you sitting here that might feel the weight of that sin.
Speaker 1:You feel what it feels like to be in contrast to a holy and just God. And what I want to do is I want to acknowledge that. I want to address that, and I want us to sit in that, because that's the first step in understanding the rest of this prayer. Because I will tell you that there is hope to come, but we need to acknowledge the depth of our sinfulness. And now that we've talked about that, let's look at the hope that Moses does talk about.
Speaker 1:It's found in verses 12 through 17. Please read these with me. So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, oh lord, how long? Have pity on your servants.
Speaker 1:Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all of 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. Let the favor of the lord our god be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us. He has established the work of our hands.
Speaker 1:I believe as we get to this third and final section in this passage, we see another lesson to be learned about prayer, and that's the lesson about petition. Like I said before, it is a good thing for us to bring our desires before the Lord. We see that throughout scriptures, that God says that he cares for his children. He wants us to make our request known to him. But I do want us to remember the order in which Moses prayed.
Speaker 1:He started by praying what he knows about God. Then he moved in a plea to focus on the human condition and recognize who he is before that God. And then finally, he starts asking God for forgiveness and mercy. That order matters, and I hope that that can be how we pray as a people. So what does Moses ask for?
Speaker 1:Let's look at these, what I'd say are three requests of Moses. Give them to you quickly, and then we'll walk through them. First, he petitions the lord to give them a heart of wisdom. 2nd, he asked god to show them mercy. And then finally, he asked God to establish the work of their hands.
Speaker 1:So first, a heart of wisdom. Moses knows what we just walked through, is that left to his own devices, he's only gonna turn inwardly, and he will only be led to sin and destruction. So he knows his only hope is an appeal to God and what the spirit can do, which is giving you a new perspective that comes from a new heart. This is what Moses asked for. He wants this new heart from God.
Speaker 1:And I believe in verses 12 and 14, we actually get a picture of what this heart looks like. Look at them. Verse 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. And then in verse 14.
Speaker 1:Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all of our days. I believe the first character of a heart of wisdom is that it comes to number its days. And as we've seen, the reason for that is so that then you can understand your need for God. We need to have a heart of wisdom for this reason. But second, we need to have a heart of wisdom because that's the only way we can fully find our satisfaction in the steadfast love of the Lord.
Speaker 1:So we've already spent some time talking about the shortness of our days. I'd love for us to think about the steadfast love of the Lord. Throughout scripture, as we see this term, it frequently is defined as the covenant keeping level of the Lord. God is steadfast, and he keeps his promises. And Moses knows this, because as we started with, God is ruthlessly committed to the covenant he's made with Abraham.
Speaker 1:We've seen that he created a people for himself, that he's cared for his people. He's made them into a nation. And Moses knows that all of these things are in fulfillment of what we read about in Genesis 12, the promises made to Abraham. But Moses also knows that as we rely on the steadfast love of the Lord, that we will see him committed to his covenant so much that they will come to future fulfillments as well. And Moses knows this.
Speaker 1:And he knows that it's only when we have hearts of wisdom and trust in the steadfast love of the Lord that we will be entirely satisfied, that we will find true joy, and that we will find gladness, because that is the only sure foundation we can stand upon. And this is why he prays for a heart of wisdom. But I think this also invites us in this room to be a people who pray the same prayer. We need to ask for a heart of wisdom, because we also turn into ourselves, and we are sinful, And we need God's help trusting in his covenant keeping love. And one of the ways we can do this is by looking back, just like Moses did, at all of the ways that God has been faithful to keep his promises.
Speaker 1:We have all these exact same examples as we look through scripture that Moses had. But what I want us to hear today is, we have so much more, as we've seen them fulfilled in Christ. We see that in Christ that God ultimately blessed all nations through Abraham. And when we have a heart of wisdom, we can rest in this knowing that it came from the steadfast love of God. So I wanna invite us to be a people who pray for a heart of wisdom that trust in this kind of a love.
Speaker 1:That's the first partition of Moses. The second comes in verse 13, which says, return, oh lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. It's not until we come to grips with the steadfast love of God that we can move to this next request, and that is for mercy and forgiveness. Because we know that the only chance we have is to appeal to God's love.
Speaker 1:This is what he knows, and this is why Moses can pray this confidently. He has a confidence that comes because of God's character. If you remember back what we read in Exodus 34 is that God revealed himself to Moses, and he declared his character to him. Hear this description of God. Says the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, who slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for 1,000, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.
Speaker 1:It's in this second petition that Moses recognized that his only appeal to mercy can come upon the steadfast love of God. And once again, I want to invite us to pray a similar prayer. Because we need the same mercy and forgiveness that Moses asked for, And we need to fall headlong upon the steadfast love of God. And I think it's at this time that it's good to return to that parallel that I'm drawing on between Moses and Paul, because they have similar language. And I believe that Paul gives us an even clearer picture of this mercy, because he is able to look back and root our confidence in Christ.
Speaker 1:So hear these words from Paul. We're gonna read Romans 623 again that says, for the wages of sin is death, but it continues. It says, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ephesians 2 sounds pretty similar. Says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Speaker 1:That sounds a lot like the first half of this prayer of Moses. Right? But once again, he continues. He says, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1:In this passage, we hear that Moses and Paul sound very similar. But the thing that we have from Paul is that as we look sin and death in the face, we now have a hope for salvation in Jesus Christ. Because in Christ, we know that we have access to the father, this eternal dwelling place, and we know that we have immeasurable joy and gladness, because though though our days are fleeting, in Christ Jesus, we get to reign in the house of the Lord forever. And this is the heart of wisdom that we are taught to ask for. It's a heart that numbers its days.
Speaker 1:It numbers its days because when we come to grips with the fact that we won't live forever, we will all the more celebrate the gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our lord. So as I said before, this text can be overwhelming. It asks a lot out of us to think about somber ideas of death and dying, And I do think that we need to sit there for a while, but I also hope that you see that there is so much hope in it. There's hope that Moses helps us see is founded in the steadfast love of God alone. And in Paul, we see that the manifestation of that is ultimately in Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1:Because in him, we find grace and mercy and forgiveness from our sins. Because, as we read in our opening scripture, death is swallowed up. In his resurrection, Jesus conquered death and he set us free. There's no more reason to fear death because we, like Moses, can pray for forgiveness, and we know that in Christ, he will give that to us. So this is great news, and I hope that as we walk through this prayer, we will now be more ready to see the great news that is Christ Jesus.
Speaker 1:And we need to be people who pray like this and reflect on this regularly. And in this, we get to move to the 3rd and final petition of Moses that we see in verses 16 through 17. It says, 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.
Speaker 1:Establish the work of our hands. Do you hear what Moses' final request is? He doesn't stop by asking just for mercy. He doesn't only look forward to a future hope. He asked the Lord to establish the work of their hands today.
Speaker 1:As we pray the same thing, we need to realize that we can pray the same prayer. Yes. We do look forward to the promises of the future. We do know that a day is coming when he will return and when he will make all things new. We know that a day is coming when he will bring a new heaven and a new earth, but that does not mean that everything we do today will fade away.
Speaker 1:On the contrary, through the work of our hands right now, God is currently beginning his work of redemption. He's currently restoring things that are broken from the fall, and he's doing that through us and in us. So as we read in this passage, we recognize there's a future hope, but we also recognize that there is a hope for today. And he sees this, he sees that we have a foretaste of the redemption that come, that we read about in Revelation 21, which says, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people.
Speaker 1:And God Himself will be with them as their God, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I am making all things new. You hear that? The first line he says, behold, the dwelling place of God will be with man. Moses looks back to all the ways that God had been their dwelling place in the past, but we get to look forward to a day when God will literally dwell with us.
Speaker 1:We see that, and we know that, but we also we look forward to this day when God will come and be with his people. He will defeat death, and he will restore all things. But until that day, I hope that we can be a people who pray to the lord, establish the work of our hands. Yes. Establish the work of our hands.
Speaker 1:Pray with me. Heavenly father, we declare that you are the sovereign God who did create the heavens and the earth. We also recognize that you are completely unlike us. You are eternal and you are all powerful, and we are not. Our days are numbered and they're fleeting, and we need you.
Speaker 1:We're broken, and we confess that. But through your Spirit, I pray that you will give us a heart of wisdom that will recognize our need for you and that will rest entirely in your steadfast love. And as we do this, I pray that you will help us trust entirely in the gospel that we know in Christ Jesus. And I hope that you will also establish the work of our hands today, as we live and dwell among your people here on earth. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:Amen.
