Transcription
Grab a seat and open up your Bibles, and we'll get rolling. Hey, well, as Kurt was saying, my name is Johnny Artavanas. My wife's name is Katie. I met her at camp. I had hired her to do music, and I went up to her and said, "Hey, I'm Will, God's will for your life. Marry me." And so we've been married for just a couple years. We have a baby on the way. Katie is 34 weeks. I didn't talk to her much yesterday. She just texted me at night. I said, "How was your day?" And she texted me back with two words: "I'm huge." So she is, uh, I, I mean, it's wow. She's, she has a baby in there, I know for sure. Um, and I'm just so thankful. Uh, also for my friend Kurt, his friendship to me, his example to me. As Kurt said, I am the Dean of Student Life at The Master's University. And then during the summer, I work at just different camps and running camps for youth. It's a big part of my heart that students understand and believe in the gospel. And so I'm thankful, uh, to be a part of that.
A little bit more about me. I'm the first of seven children. My parents, Scott and Patty, have a full quiver: two boys and five girls. And when I was growing up, I've always been a little bit weird with numbers. You know, as my dad would preach when I was a kid, I used to sit in the front row and I would take notes. But really, what I was doing was memorizing the numbers in the church directory. Do you guys remember church directories where you used to wear like the matching Old Navy shirts and everyone would be there, happy family? And I would memorize the numbers. And then even when I was like seven or eight years old, they used to greet people not by their name, but by their number. So, "Ah, 630378141, how are we doing?" And I would groan. They'd be like, "What is wrong with this kid? Scott and Patty, what have you done with your son?" I used to save up money and recycle cans and bottles so that I could buy sports cards, not because you really looked at them or wanted to trade them, but it's because I wanted to memorize the birthdays of every athlete ever. Is anybody born on October 6th? Uh, no one. Uh, so I also used to memorize their stats. Sometimes, right now, even still, people always ask me how I sleep. Not just because they're being kind, but because ever since I've been a little kid, I've had a difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep because I'll wake up in the middle of the night with the deep theological uncertainty of how many career rebounds Charles Barkley had. And so I can't go to bed. Twelve thousand five hundred forty-seven. And then I'll remember how many interceptions that Deion Sanders had. And then I'll have to go look. I have to know the numbers. Now, I relax currently by making depreciation schedules of used car, used cars. And so I just have a problem, uh, with numbers. In third grade, I won the DuPage County Multiplication Championship just because I used to memorize the multiples in the back of the car. So I'm a little bit of a weird guy. I'm starting off on a wrong foot.
But the number that stuck with me more in the last year than any other number is the number sixteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-two. As of today, sixteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-two. That's not the amount of years left till the Bears won the Super Bowl again. That is the amount of days, if I live to be 75, that I have left until I meet my Creator. And the reality is, not even tomorrow is promised to me. That might sound like a lot, but today, the rest of the day, is just a gift from God, and it's not promised. I suppose that the thought of dying for so many of you is so fraught with grief, or so, or so morbid, or so gloomy, that we try our best to remove it into the corners of our mind. But I have found in my own life that a periodic pondering of my own death is revolutionizing for my life. And I hope it is revolutionizing for your life. I have a couple questions for you this morning because the Bible raises questions, and it also answers questions. And the questions that I have for you are: Do you want to live a life of wisdom? Do you want to live a life that matters? Do you want to live a life of urgency and mission and resolve? Well, then Psalm 90 is going to be our teacher this morning.
In the last year, I've become fascinated with the life of Jonathan Edwards. He's likely not the way that you've maybe perceived him growing up. He is the well-known preacher and evangelist of the 18th century. And when he was saved at 17 years old, he wrote a series of resolutions. Most 17-year-olds are playing NBA 2K or Call of Duty. And here's what Jonathan Edwards writes, the first of his 70 resolutions: "Resolved, I will do whatever I think to be most to God's glory." The second, third, and fourth resolutions speak in similar sentiment, and they all have to do with living to the glory of God. Now, if you've grown up in the church, this idea of living for the glory of God is so familiar and so routine to us that we really have lost sight of what it actually means. But Jonathan Edwards was consumed with living completely for the glory of God. And the first four resolutions speak of that. Resolution number four: "Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but that which tends to be most to the glory of God." This was his main thought. It was his main preoccupation.
Interestingly, resolutions five, six, and seven all have to do with one particular element of Jonathan Edwards' life: time. Time. Edwards understood that you and I, and he himself, cannot live for the glory of God if we do not number our days. Resolution number seven: "Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it was the last hour of my life." Edwards used to pray, and I hope we all do, that Christ would stamp eternity on his eyeballs. He wanted to view everyone through the perspective that they were going to live forever for eternity. It's not just believers who have eternal life; it's unbelievers who also live eternally. And he asked God, "Please stamp this on my eyeballs. Impress this upon my heart." He wanted to live each and every hour as if it was the last hour. This was an abnormal teenager, and it was an abnormal guy, and that's why God used him in an abnormal way. Distracted disciples don't turn the world upside down, but those who measure their time wisely and shrewdly can be used by God in great ways. You and I, for in Christ, are not here and left on earth to meander or shuffle or merely to exist. Think about it. If God saved you so that you would have a relationship with Him and reconcile you to Himself, what prevents Him from bringing you to Himself right this moment? It's because of what? It's because He's given you a work to do. He's given us all a work to do. And we must ask and plead with God to teach us to number our days.
I love the Psalms, and I was talking to the 20s group about this last night because we live in a world of posturing and pretend. "How are we doing? Great. Everything's perfect. Here's my perfect life." But in the Psalms and in the scripture, and I hope this is an encouragement to you, there is no stoic denial of emotion. There's no posturing and pretend before God. It's not like they act like they have their life altogether. The Psalms, 33 of them, are lament, meaning people are pouring out their heart to God. "God, where are you?" The Psalms teach us how to pray, how to respond to misery, to heartache, to pain and loss and sorrow. It teaches us how to respond to delayed answers to prayer, how to deal with our own sin, or when we've been sinned against. They address many of the most pressing questions in our mind. And the Psalms are truly our own articulation of Christian experience. And in Psalm 90, the heading says, "A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God." This is the first Psalm ever written, and it is the only Psalm written by Moses. It says, "The Man of God," and this is a proper title for the lawgiver, the leader, and the prophet of Israel. And the context and the timing of when Moses wrote this is important. Moses wrote this Psalm after he had led the people out of Egypt, and they traveled to the land, the promised land of Canaan. And when Israel arrived at Kadesh Barnea after coming out of Egypt, the Lord commanded them, the what? To take the land. And the people refused. And their lack of faith angered God, who sent them back into the wilderness for how many years? 40. Then for 40 years, Moses led the children of Israel in circles through the wilderness until an entire generation died. And if you've been to Israel, you know this, they were not hundreds of miles away from the promised land. They were yards away from the promised land, a rock's throw. Moses, the pastor of two million people, did more funerals than anybody else in human history. If any generation had wasted their opportunities and their lives, it was the people of Israel that Moses led. The wilderness became a graveyard, a wasteland of bones. And all of those funerals, all of those deaths, served as a reminder of the transitory and fleeting nature of life. You and I are going to die. We love the moment. We are intoxicated by the temporary, and we quickly lose sight of what is going to matter in 10 million years from now. This Psalm flies in the face of human progress, vaccines, social media, Facebook posts. You are going to die. You are mortal. James Montgomery Boice says this: "This Psalm is probably the greatest passage in the Bible contrasting the grandeur of God with man's frailty." We need a teacher, and the only teacher who can rescue us from ourselves is God. And in order that the Lord would teach us to number our days, we are going to see, see Moses in the Psalm break down four attributes of God that will compel us and constrain us to live wisely with our remaining time on earth. Four attributes of God that are going to compel us to live wisely and number our days.
Number one: The eternality of God. The eternality of God. I want to look with you at verses one and two. Moses says, "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. You have been our dwelling place." In order for us to understand how limited and short our time is, Moses understands we must understand the brevity of our own days. Moses declares that as generations come and go, people die, homes change, God is the dwelling place for their soul. These people are nomads. How many of you are not from Florida? Yeah. And so we ask the question, does Florida feel like, what, home? Does it feel like home yet? Well, parts of it, maybe not other parts of it. This area still feels like home. This is where the rest of my family are. But these people, the people of God, they were nomads. They were pilgrims. They're constantly moving around. They had been in Egypt for 400 years of bondage, and then they leave the land of Egypt thinking that they're going to their final home, and then they dwell around and around, never in a place of stability and security for 40 years. No one understands homelessness like the people of God. We tend to view God as this omnipresent spirit hovering over the earth, generally aware of the doings and happenings of His people. But He is far more than that. This is what Moses is getting at. No matter where their body has been, God has been the home for their soul. And if you're a believer, your dwelling place is not a place; He's a person. Your dwelling place is God Himself. One writer asks, "Have you ever known what it is like to have God for your dwelling place?" And the sense of comfort, he says, if you feel like a tumbleweed bouncing around in the wilderness, God tells you, "I am your home." And then it says at the end of verse 1, "in all generations." Moses understood, and you must understand, that God being a dwelling place to His people doesn't begin just in the wilderness or in Egypt. He says, "in all generations." For all of eternity, God will be our dwelling place. Do you feel out of place? Do you feel like a nomad? God is your home, your hope, your refuge, and your strength. And the hymn writer writes, "O God, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come, our shelter from the storming blast, and our eternal home."
Verse two: "Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth into the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." I love this. For the last number of years, I've lived in the middle of Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Forest. And in the middle of that national park, there's a lake, and it's called Hume Lake, and it's where I run student camps. And I often walk up to students, little kids sometimes, I'll see them up there. And I go, "Hey, Bobby, who made that lake?" And they'll go, "God did." And I'll say, "No, he didn't. That lake was made by John Eastwood in 1908 because he was the inventor of the multiple reinforced concrete arch dam." And they'll go, "What?" And then I'll tell them, "Yeah, this lake is a man-made lake, and it was used to store lumber and then to support a flume that would transport this lumber down to Sanger." But then I'll say, "Bobby, who made that mountain?" Not John Eastwood, the builder of multiple reinforced concrete arch dams. Those mountains were made by God. And before my great-grandpa Athanasius or Abraham, the man of God in the Old Testament, those mountains were there. And Moses is drawing our attention to something. He says, "The mountains, before they were even born, or you gave birth to the earth into the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." The mountains in the Old Testament, and even in our own lives today, culturally speaking, are symbols of solidity and strength. And that's why the Psalmist reflects in Psalm 121, "I lift my eyes up to the mountains; where does my help come from?" They draw our attention and our focus upwards. Psalm 95 says that the mountain peaks belong to Him, because who else could the mountain peaks belong to? Only to the God that made them. And Moses is saying, "Before these mountains were ever even a thought, before they were born, you have always been God. You've always been God." And sometimes when I walk in the midst of nature, maybe you're like me, you go, "Man, I wish I could see the highlight reel of what's happened in these spots." Here's what happened here 800 years ago. The Vikings. You know, I would love that. But those mountains don't talk. Those trees don't talk. But the God who made them does. And the God who made those mountains tells us we need to consider His eternality because only when we understand His everlasting nature will we be able to appropriately number our days. We have no time to waste. Earth is a baby. God always was. He is eternal. If God was temporal like us, He could not be a refuge to us. He could not be a home to us. If God had a beginning, God had a creator. And if God has an ending, He cannot offer life to anyone because you cannot offer what you do not possess. But we can entrust our lives and our home and our refuge and our hope to a God who is eternal because only an eternal God can offer us with great confidence security in Him for all of eternity.
Isaiah 46, verses 9 and 10: "I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me." God wants you to know something about Himself. He's not shy about what makes Him different. Sometimes at camp, I bring a youth pastor up on stage when it's their birthday, and we sing to them. You know, there's a thousand students in the room, and we sing to them. What does the guy do when you're getting sung to in front of a thousand people? It's awkward, right? Have you ever had a birthday party? You don't know if to sing along to yourself because that's weird. You're like, "Maybe they'll think I'm prideful if I go, 'Happy birthday to me.'" So then the other side of the spectrum is, "What? Stop. Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you." When we sing praise to God, He's not self-deprecating. We like modesty, don't we? We almost want God, or think that God, when we say, "God, You alone deserve all the glory," we'll go, "Ah, shucks, thanks, guys. That's okay. Thank you, thank you. Let's go. That's kind. I see you and I hear you. That's kind." No, God isn't modest. He's not self-deprecating, and He's not shy about His own glory. He says, "I am proud of it." He is jealous for His own glory, and He wants you to know something about who He is. "I am God, and there is no other. There's none like me." And what makes me unlike every other God or man? He says, "I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all My purposes.'" What makes God unlike every other God is not only that He is eternal, but that He also declares the end from the beginning. He is the end from the beginning, and He declares what's going to happen within those parameters because number one, He is eternal, and number two, in verses three through seven, He is sovereign.
Or three through six, He is sovereign. The sovereignty of God. He says in verse three, "Moses, you turn man back into dust and say, 'Return, O children of man.' For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night. You have swept them away like a flood; they fall asleep. In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew; in the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; toward evening it fades and withers away." Moses gives three consecutive metaphors for death here. And he says, "Here, you turn man back into dust." We are all going to die. Humanity is a mixture of the divine and dust. I remember as a young boy, my friend's dad passed away. He was on a run, I was a military chaplain, had a heart attack and died. It was the first time in my life I was asked to be like a pallbearer. And I remember carrying the casket, and at the gravesite, they said, "Ashes to ashes, dust to what? Dust." We are all going to return to the dust because that's how God made man. And sometimes when people die, we say, "How did they die? Or why did they die?" And it says here that God is the one in His sovereignty who turns man back into dust and says, "Return, O children of man." You and I won't exceed the number of days that God has appropriated to us by a single moment, a single moment. Psalm 139 says, "All of my days were written in Your book before one of them came to be." You cannot exceed your lifespan by a single second. We might say that someone dies prematurely, but it is God who turns people back to the dust.
Verse four: "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night." I like history. So Wikipedia, the finest source of history, told me the empires of the last 1000 years: the Holy Roman Empire (not to be confused with the Roman Empire), the Western Chalukya Empire of South India, the Western Xia Dynasty in China, the Second Bulgarian Empire that lasted 237 years, the Mongol Empire from 1206 AD to 1368 AD, the Ottoman Empire that lasted 623 years until 1922, the Aztec Empire, the British Empire, the German Empire, the American Empire. And God says, "Yesterday, the glory and obliteration of empires are forgotten. New inventions are ancient history." My favorite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, says that the attempt to locate your life within history is as absurd as trying to locate your body within astronomy. Doesn't work that way. Even beyond 1000 years, the most lengthened, the most lengthened stretches of time are merely blips on the radar of God's eternality, tiny islands in the sea of God's timeline. But He returns us to where we have been made.
And then we see in verse five and six, three consecutive metaphors. When I lived at Hume Lake, the camp that I worked at, we are there amongst the biggest trees in the world. And a mile from my house is the biggest tree in the entire world. It's called General Grant's Tree. It is a Sequoia. And all of this church could not push over that tree. You get a hundred men and not pull down something whose roots have been going deeper and deeper and wider and wider for hundreds of years. But we are not Sequoias. He says that we are like grass in verse five, "which sprouts anew in the morning; it flourishes and sprouts toward evening; it fades and withers away." In Israel, what happens is there is a coolness at night which creates a dew, and the dew rests in the soil, and then a tiny little shroud of grass comes up in the morning. And by noon, that blade of grass is completely disintegrated by the sun. And this is what Moses is saying. Our life is like it comes and it goes. But we expect sometimes to pace out the end of our life by an awareness of our fading and withering. But sometimes grass doesn't just fade and wither. Sometimes grass is cut short. We never think that we will be the one who has limited days. Spurgeon says, "Here is the history of grass: sown, grown, blown, moaned, and gone." That's why you, Spurgeon, that's good. Isaiah 40, verses 6 through 8: "All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field; grass withers, flowers fail. God is forever." And your life is like a tiny shroud of grass. It's like a vapor. David Gibson calls it a fistful of mist. You try to grab it, but it's so transitory, it's fleeting, it's elusive to us. Do you not see how important it is to live your life for the glory of God?
So we see God's eternality, we see His sovereignty, and in verses 7 through 12, we will see His justice. He says, "For we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath; we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence." We ask, "Why do different people die? How did they die?" But the reason that they died is always the same: "For we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath; we have been dismayed." Sin is at the bottom. It's the common denominator for why people die. Death is by sin. Sin is at the bottom of man's frailty and brevity and tragedy. Think about the context. Moses is wandering around in the desert. There's bodies everywhere. People are burying their loved ones, mourning their loved ones. Why did this happen? Well, it's because we are all polluted by the sting of sin. And this is why we die. And so I ask you, if sin is so serious to God, why do we treat it so casually in our own life? And why do we treat it so nominally in the lives of those around us that have never heard of Christ? We get angry about the wrong things for the wrong reasons and express it in the wrong ways. But God's anger is holy anger. God's wrath is God's righteousness responding to all unrighteousness. And it sounds kind of Old Testament, Johnny. No, read the rest of John 3. Read the rest of John 3. For God's love is real. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have what? Everlasting life." For He didn't send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might live through Him. What's the next verse? "Whoever does not believe is under the wrath of God right now." Right now. Whoever does not believe is under the wrath of God right now. Do you treat your neighbors like that? Or do you go, "Well, this is for me. This is for them. To each their own." Do you understand? And do you really believe the things you say you believe? God is not just mildly displeased at sin. He hates sin.
Verse 8: "You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence." There are no secret sins to God. Hebrews 4:13 says that "everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him who sees everything, and to whom we will give an account." Jeremiah 16:17 says God telling the people, "I see everything that you do." What is secret on earth is an open scandal in heaven. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before Him. He sees it and observes it. And He's not dividing His attention amongst His people. He sees your sin as if it is the only sin happening at that moment in all of the universe. And He sees it with full eyes and knows everything that you do. The camera is always rolling with God. The microphone is always on. And He sees every sin. Every secret sin is number one, utter foolishness before a God who sees everything. And number two, robs you of the life that God intended you to live.
Verse 11: "Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due to you?" No one fears God too much. No one. There's a proper fear of God, right? Not as, uh, Martin Luther used to describe as servile fear and a filial fear. Those are the two different types of fear. Servile would be like a man before his torturers. And the filial fear would be a young child who deeply respects and honors and wants to please their father. There is a fear of God that is proper, and it's the beginning of wisdom. So if you miss this, you miss God. "Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you?" We live in a world where God has been defanged. He's like a cosmic grandpa that laughs off the treason of his little rascals. It says, "Who understands this God? You hate sin, and you will punish sin, and you are sovereign, and you are going to one day send people back into the dust." And if God's attributes are eternal, and one of His attributes is His wrath as a byproduct of His holiness, that means that hell is never going to be described as a temporary place. It never ends. And this is why Jonathan Edwards used to speak with tears in his eyes, knowing that people around him, his neighbors, his family, his loved ones, were not going to hell for an instant or a moment or a day, but for all of eternity. And the reason hell is eternal is because people aren't just being punished for 75 years of sin in hell. They are punished in hell forever because they continue to hate God and sin forever. The people in hell hate God more in hell than they do when they were here. And that is why hell is forever. "Send Lazarus to dip water on my tongue." And God says, "No." God's wrath will equal all the obedience that is due to Him.
And then here comes the high note of the song. Don't you understand God's character? If you want to live a life that matters, you have to understand who God is. That He is eternal. He is our home. Do you feel out of place? He's your home. Do you feel like the world is falling apart? He is sovereign. He appoints your days, and He appoints kings. This president has been elected by God. The next president has been elected by God. He is never snoozing. He never takes a time out. No one ever interjects, "For, um, I'm acting on behalf of God." He is completely sovereign. And He is completely just. And the high note of the Psalm is coming in verse 12: "God, if this is true, because we live our life in light of something that is concrete and true, God, if this is true, then verse 12: Teach us, teach us, please God, to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom." God, please, my life is so fleeting. I have not even another 24 hours promised to me. This morning, I woke up from a DM from a 15-year-old student that one of my friends died. A youth pastor that I've known for six years. He was on a run, and his lungs collapsed. 36. That was how he woke up. And we think, "That will never be us." The Psalmist says, "No, God, teach me to number my days." Calvin says, "Although we know we are going to die, we are so tied to the transient that we imagine we are going to live forever." But to enroll in God's school of wisdom, if you want to live a life of wisdom, you have to appropriately assess and number your days, not because you're marking days off of a calendar, but because you live your life in light of eternity. You are an absolute fool, according to the scripture, to live your life like there is no end to it. You cannot present to God a heart of wisdom if you do not value the scarcity of time.
A boxing legend won the Olympic gold in 1968, and he went on to dominate for years, winning the heavyweight title in 1973. However, this athlete filed for bankruptcy a decade later in 1983. This isn't Rocky 5. This is a true story. Should eliminate that movie. He lost it all, but he turned a corner in his late 40s and made a comeback, not by boxing. He made back all of the money he lost, and then hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, not by athletics, but by marketing portable electrically heated grills called George Foreman's panini makers. Dip that guy in balsamic, call it a day. Fortunes are lost and rebuilt, but you cannot have back yesterday. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. Do not waste your life. Don't waste your neighbors. Don't waste the parents on your child's sports teams. Once they are gone, they are gone. We consider the fin like the just, the limited resources we have in our retirement accounts or our inventory, but we think we have an unlimited number of days. And as Moses led this funeral procession through the wilderness, he's teaching the people something about God. Know this: God is eternal. Know this: God is sovereign. Psalm 103:19: "God has established, established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all." He's fixed the throne. God's not on a La-Z-Boy. He's not relaxing. He's on a throne ruling and reigning. And He is also just.
But this Psalm is not just filled with truth, it's filled with hope. Life, death, and judgment are in God's hands. But fourthly and finally, so is grace. The grace of God. We see the eternality of God, the sovereignty of God, the justice of God, and then verses 13 through 17, the grace of God. Moses, the Psalmist, gives us hope. Time demonstrates God's kindness and love. And he knows that after the demonstration of God's wrath, he calls on God to replace this wrath with favor. He says, "Do return, O Lord. How long will it be? And be sorry for your servants. Oh, satisfy in the morning with your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." He says, "This God, please satisfy me in the morning with your lovingkindness." He doesn't just say, "I want to believe it" or "I want to affirm it theologically." He says, "God, you have created a groove in my heart and in my soul that can only be filled by one thing. It is the faithful love of God." Only the unsatisfied person prays to be satisfied. And Moses prays for that which only can truly satisfy: a deep awareness and tasting, an experience of the love of God. So satisfy me in the morning with your lovingkindness. We are not lovable because of who we are, what we have done, or where we live. We are lovable because God loves us perfectly and unceasingly. And the Psalmist raises the question, "Do you want to be satisfied this morning? Do you want to be filled in a way that no earthly possession or person can offer?" Then ask God to satisfy you with His love.
I mentioned this to the 20s crew last night. I'm asked a lot because I'm around thousands of high school students throughout the year, "Johnny, why is it that you think so many students leave the church at 18?" Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, no one ever gave them the opportunity to do it when they were 16 and presented the gospel clearly enough so that they could reject it. They don't understand what they're getting into. And that's why when you go to youth groups and they're singing, "It's a climb, life's just hard, and Jesus is going to enable us to walk through it," that's limited in what they can reject. But I think it's mainly, uh, because they have grown up hearing truth but have never seen anybody exhilarated by it. The Psalmist prays, "God, please satisfy me with Your love in the morning." I have a question for you. If you're a parent, when is the last time, and Kurt, I think you're a great example of this, when is the last time you've grabbed your students or your, your children, not just in telling them that God is good, but grabbed them by their shoulders and said, "Oh, man, let me tell you, that God is deeply satisfying. He's more wonderful to me than anything this world could offer. And if it all got ripped away, I would have something that fills the groove of my soul that no earthly possession or home or vacation could ever do. Oh, let me tell you, son, let me tell you, daughter, this is wonderful to me. And I don't want you just to believe it. I want you to taste what I have tasted." He is supremely satisfying. His love is wonderful to me. I don't just believe in it; I feel it. And this morning, what I need, and what I need from you, son or daughter, pray for me, is I would be deeply satisfied by this love because if you see me satisfied by it, maybe you'll want to eat what I'm eating. And what I'm eating in the morning for breakfast is the love of God. Don't you want this? The text says, "Lord, help me to be satisfied so that I can rejoice." You want to live a life of joy in a world of uncertainty and confusion? Then you need to be satisfied by God's love.
"Make us glad," verse 15, "according to the days you have afflicted us." I gotta move here. "And the years we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants, and your majesty to your children." He said, and I love this, "Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm for us the work of our hands." Verse 16: "Let the work appear, let your work appear to your servants, and your majesty to your children." Here's what I think he's saying. He said, "God, I don't want to live my life riding the pine. Put me in the game. I'm in, coach. Put me in. Let your work appear to your servants." I want to get in the game. I don't want to just pace out the end of my days, even if I have 16,833 of them left. I want them to matter. God, I want them to matter. Let your work appear to my servant. Put me in the game. God, make me active. You have given me a work to do. You've left me here for a reason. I want to hustle. And in verse 17, we're reminded that the Psalmist is taking us by the hand and leading us to an answer that helps us so that the stony, bony fingers of mortality no longer bring us sorrow or despair, but bring us great thrill. Numbering our days shouldn't be full of despair. It should be full of thrilling excitement because we've been given a job. And he says, "Confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm for us the work of our hands." He's saying, "God, only that which You accomplish through me actually will matter in a million years from now. Only the endeavors blessed by God will last."
It says in Revelation that when we meet God face to face, He's going to wipe away every tear. Sometimes we say, "There will be no tears in heaven." And I don't know if that's true because it says that He will wipe away every tear. So there will be tears, right? And one of the reasons I think that there might be tears is when we see who God is, understand even to a larger degree the scope of His love and kindness and mercy towards us, and realize that we just tweeted and posted about how lost the world was and never did much about it. I, I think there will be no sin in heaven. That's a promise of God. That's a reality. But I don't think it's sin to have regret. I think there will be regret in heaven, and I think it will quickly, there will be no shame. And I think it will produce a level of tears. You can push back on me, but I think about it more and more. We're going to, we're going to have our whole life put before us when we meet Christ, and we're going to think, "Man, this is a real love. This is a real faith that we can have." And you've watched my sin. Nothing but the blood. Nothing came for sin atoned. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And we can consider how we lived our life, and we're going to think of the neighbors we live next to for years and years and years, and we're going to go, "Man, I wish I could have back those days." Everything's going to be better in heaven. The food's going to be better. The music is going to be better. The fellowship's going to be better. But there's only one good thing you and I can do on earth that we will not be able to do in heaven, and it's to tell a lost sinner that they can be reconciled to God because He loves them and has poured out His love for them, and He was raised from the dead so that they also might be raised. That's the only thing that we can do that's good on earth that we will not be able to do in heaven. And the Psalmist says, "Please God, confirm for us, because I can't do this in my own strength. No amount of human eloquence or power or wisdom or experience can transform hearts of stone into hearts of flesh." He says, "God, please do this through me, because only God's power can save God's children."
Someone else, well, really, I guess I want to remind you of what's obvious. What is the Bible ultimately all about? One word. What's it all about? Jesus. Sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. The Bible is all about Jesus. And someone else understood the transitory nature of humanity and went before us as an example of what it looks like to leverage and maximize time on earth. Jesus says, "We must do the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work." There is a God-allotted amount of time for a God-appointed purpose. You have Jesus understood that His life was on a divine schedule because God had put before Him a divine purpose. And God has done the same with your life. He's done the same with your life. John 4:34: "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me." There was an energy that Jesus had to do the work that God the Father had sent Him to do. How did Jesus glorify the Father on earth? We live for the glory of God. Amen. Jesus lived for the glory of God. How did Jesus live for the glory of God? John 17:4: "by accomplishing the work that You sent Me to do." Jesus was completed, or was driven to do the will of God. He had a prescripted work to do. You know the key word in the Gospel of Mark, 45 times, "immediately." "Immediately." "Immediately." Jesus went immediately. Jesus left because He was doing something. He had a work to be done. Jesus, in His incarnation, that just means when He became a man, experienced what Moses experienced: the need to have God as your refuge. What it means to have your life cut short on a human level. Jesus experienced time and temptation and sorrows in every single part of what it means to be human. Do you know that He is no stranger to suffering? He's not just sympathetic where He feels bad; He's sympathetic because He feels and He cares. And Jesus, in His humanity, experienced God's wrath so that you would not have to, but rather so that through His nail-pierced hands, He could offer life to you and the forgiveness of sins and give you the soul satisfaction that you are searching for. If you're not in Christ, I want to tell you, and Kurt talked about this as we took communion, Jesus is the only way to God. And to be spared from the wrath of God is to trust that Jesus has borne it for you on the cross because He was fully God, fully man. He died for you, and He raised for you. And you don't work to get to Him. You believe in Him.
Perhaps no other year has served as such a strong reminder of the fragility and uncertainty of life. Last year, I had one of my other friends, and I'll be done. Uh, he called me on a Friday night. Um, he's a pastor. He's a father of six. And he said, "Hey, Johnny, I'm not feeling my best. Can you pray for me?" Or just, "Yeah, yeah, man." And then he says, "Can you preach for me on Sunday?" I said, "For sure, yeah. Uh, I'd love to." And he called me on Saturday and said, "Hey, I'm actually, I'm not going to come, and I'm not feeling super great still. It's weird." On Sunday, I got a text that he was going into the doctor, and he had a series of seven heart attacks, and he died. It was just like the most shocking death of my life. Like, this guy just told me he didn't feel well, and then he went and he died. That's just unheard of. And at Mark's funeral, there was a song as the tribute was played of his life, a godly man that loved the Lord. And in that song were the words of the Casting Crowns song, "Who Am I?" And it says, "I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow, a wave tossed in the ocean, a vapor in the wind." We have limited days, but we have a grand purpose that God has given us to accomplish, not through human effort and human achievement, but because of verse 17, God is the one who works in and through us to accomplish for His glory a divine work, redeeming sinners through Jesus' blood. And I pray that that's how you live your life until you meet Him face to face. Don't waste your neighbors. Don't waste your sports teams. Don't waste your coworkers. Proclaim Christ and number your days.
Can I pray for you? God, we love You, and we are so thankful, Lord, that You, Jesus, bore on Your body on the cross the punishment for our sin. Isaiah 53 says that He bore the punishment for our peace with God. All of us like sheep have gone astray, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. God, we're thankful for Your love. It's not just an idea that Christians adhere to to pump themselves up amidst the tragedy of the world. It's a reality that You, You, You tell us to root our lives in because the love of God is not only so satisfying, it's also compelling. And that's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, "The love of Christ compels me." It motivates me. It fuels me to go declare this love to those who have not experienced and tasted it. We need this love, and we need Your wisdom and Your Spirit. God, we pray this in Your name. And all God's people said, Amen.