Fall 2018, 40 Days of Prayer, Day 20
Psalm 90:1-2
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.
The Eternal Nature of God
The Psalms were written over a span of a thousand years by several different authors, chief of which was, of course, David, the man after God's own heart. He wrote over 70 psalms but he didn't compose the very first one in our Bible. Scholars speculate that Ezra may have written the last of the psalms in the Psalter but Moses has the honor of writing the first. He composed Psalm 90 and it is his only entry. The sub-headings in your Bible that often credit the composer may have been additions to the manuscripts. If so, they are ancient additions because the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the same verbiage. In any case, Psalm 90 is ascribed to Moses, “the man of God”. What a nice title.
Moses knew God well. God chose him specifically to be His choice servant, speaking to him from the burning bush, using Moses to free the Hebrew nation, delivering the Law directly into his hands, leading Moses as he led the nation. God also used Moses to record the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. I wonder if Moses had Genesis in mind when he wrote these words. God, the only eternal Being, spoke the universe into existence. He has no beginning and there will never be an end to Him. Long, long after our sun burns out He will still live, unchanged, unchanging. And He has always been and will always be sovereign, with perfect knowledge, and perfect righteousness, in full control.
Moses lead his people in a nomadic existence for 40 years in the wilderness. They had no home, no place to call their own. They were strangers and pilgrims wherever they went. Yet they had the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant, and with it, the shekinah glory of God's presence. They had the cloud by day as a roof over their head and the pillar of fire by night as their hearth. Their safety and their contentment was in God. He supplied every need. He called them by His name. In a very real sense, God was their dwelling place.
And in the centuries since, with the conquest of Canaan, the establishment of the tribes, the kingdom, the exiles and the returns, the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and almost 2000 years of additional wandering and suffering, God has been their dwelling place. Although in June of 1948 God re-planted them in the land He promised to Abraham, their only true refuge is still, and will ever be, in Him.
And now we, the hagioi, the saints, the called out ones, have been grafted into the olive tree that is Israel. In the fullest sense, we who are in Christ, in whom we live and breathe and have our being, our dwelling place from the first generation to the last, is in God. Like the Hebrew children of Moses day, we too are strangers and pilgrims. We wait as loyal subjects, not for a land of our own, but for our eternal King to come rule and reign over us and all creation.
Prayer Focus
Eternal God most high, we consider all the things of this world as rubbish in comparison to knowing and being known by Christ our Savior. It is in Him that we find our rest, our peace, our purpose, and our strength. Help us to hold the things of this world lightly. Help us to long for His appearing. Come quickly Lord Jesus.
Sermon by John Wesley “The Important Question”
"What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Matthew 16:26
For the lost, death is to him but the beginning of sorrows. Yet a little while, and he will see "the great white throne coming down from heaven, and him that sits thereon, from whose face the heavens and the earth flee away, and there is found no place for them." And "the dead, small and great, stand before God, and are judged, every one according to his works." "Then shall the King say to them on his right hand," (God grant he may say so to YOU!) "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." And the angels shall tune their harps and sing, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, that the heirs of glory may come in." And then shall they shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars forever and ever." How different will be the lot of him that loses his own soul! No joyful sentence will be pronounced on him, but one that will pierce him through with unutterable horror: (God forbid that ever it should be pronounced on any of you that are here before God!) "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!" And who can doubt, but those infernal spirits will immediately execute the sentence; will instantly drag those forsaken of God into their own place of torment! Into those Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell! Hope never comes, That comes to all, -- all the children of men who are on this side eternity. But not to them: The gulf is now fixed, over which they cannot pass. From the moment wherein they are once plunged into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone, their torments are not only without intermission, but likewise without end. For "they have no rest, day or night; but the smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever!"