If you can turn your Bibles to Psalm chapter 90, we're going to be reading from verse 1-12. Our focus is on the second part of the sermon series in chapter 90. I'm going to be focusing on the second part, verses 7-12. The first part was "Look up." This week it's going to be "Looking in" and next week it's going to be "Looking out." I want to read starting from verse 1.

Reading out of the NASB. Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born, you gave birth to the earth and the world. Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn man back into dust and say, "Return, O children of men." For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by.

You are 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. 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. For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years or of due strength, eighty years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow.

For soon it is gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we face the new year in 2019, we ask Lord God as the psalmist asks that we would number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

That we may live Lord God not to spend our days but to invest it for the things that count for eternity. We ask Lord you give us soberness, a deeper understanding of who you are, where we stand before you, that we may not drift Lord God from year to year, from month to month.

Help us Lord to run with a clear purpose and clear aim. So we ask for your direction and your Holy Spirit to speak to us through your word. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Again, as a quick review, the reason why we're taking some time in Psalm 90 before we jump into the book of Hebrews is because again as we concluded 2018 and we're facing new year in 2019, Psalm 90 was an appropriate text for us to spend some time in.

Moses is about to lead the nation of Israel into the promised land. They spent 40 years wandering in the desert and now they're finally going to go. And obviously Moses himself doesn't make it because of a sin that he commits, but he's trying to get them ready to get in.

So this is kind of like a pep talk before they get into the promised land. So they're looking over the mountains and saying like if we just cross over this mountain on the other side is where God was leading them and they should have been there 40 years earlier but because of their unbelief God caused them to wander out in the desert for 40 years.

But before they enter he's trying to warn them and encourage them that entering into the promised land doesn't mean that you're finally home. And so he begins chapter 90 by reminding them God is your refuge. He is your dwelling place, not your promised land. He's the one who's eternal.

He's the one who has control over your life. Your destiny is not in your hands. Just because you go there and then you're surrounded by mountains and you're fortified and finally you can have a stable nation doesn't mean that you have arrived. So again it's kind of a pep talk.

Before we get there don't forget that your refuge, your strength has always been with you. Before the mountains were ever created God was. And so that was the first part that he was talking about in the first section verses 1 through 6. Who is God? To look up before we enter the promised land.

But in light of who he is, if he is our dwelling place, if he is our God, if he is our life, the most important question that any human being has to ask and repeatedly ask is where do you stand in your relationship with this God? It's not a question about whether you go to church, whether you grew up in a Christian home, how well you can recite the gospel, or how well did you serve the church.

In your relationship with this God where do you stand? He started by reminding them about who God is. And then the section that we're looking at this morning verses 7 through 12 he teaches us to see where they stand before this holy God. Now on the surface I'm just going to tell you ahead of time, you know, it doesn't sound much like a pep talk.

If you have a group of people that you're going to lead into the promised land and you're trying to encourage them to be focused and to rely on God, verse 7 through 12 really at least in and of itself is going to sound like, "Wow, that's his pep talk?

God is angry with you and we're going to die? Our life is short? Number our days? I mean that's his pep talk?" Right? I mean he's not a great motivational speaker if you see it in that context. But you're going to see why this is so crucial to their life and success in the promised land because if you don't understand where you stand before God, you can be mistaken all your life thinking that somehow you have made it and then when you are in the presence of this holy God and God says, "I never knew you." So the most important question that any individual must ask is, "Where do I stand before this holy God?" So we looked at God.

Who is God to the nation of Israel, to God's people? And this week Moses is reminding them where the Israelites were because of their sins. So first he says, "The reason why we die, the reason why the nation of Israel has passed away in verse 7, we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath we have been dismayed." Now you have to understand Moses has led 600,000 fighting men into the desert, meaning including women and children there's probably well over 1.5 million people.

According to scripture, every single one of those people died out into the desert except two people. The two spies, Joshua and Caleb, outside of those two, that means 1.5 million people perished because of their sins. So Moses is looking at them, reminding them, "Don't forget the reason why you and I perished out here is because God was angry with us." In other words, he's telling them, "Don't repeat this when you get into the promised land." The reason why we're in the condition that we are is because we have been consumed by God's anger.

Obviously when he says consumed, he's talking about their death, their perishing. And when he says the word anger, the word anger in Hebrew literally means nostrils. When I think about the imagery that's given here is, you know when you see a cartoon and the bull is angry and he begins to flare his nostrils before he begins to rush, right?

And that's the picture of God and his anger burning against Israel because of their sin. He says we are dismayed. In the King James Version it says we are terrified. We are terrified because of his wrath. He's reminding the nation of Israel that this is not, first and foremost, a friendly God.

In fact, all throughout the book of Leviticus, God was teaching the nation of Israel, "You cannot, you cannot just nonchalantly come into my presence. All of everything that we studied in the book of Leviticus taught Israel, you are a sinner until you are atoned for, until you are covered by the blood of the animal, you cannot enter my presence." Remember when we were studying the book of Leviticus chapter 10, the first priests that bring an offering to God, they are consumed by God's holy fire because they didn't follow instruction.

Imagine what the nation of Israel felt as they were practicing the book of Leviticus, as they were practicing the laws of Leviticus. Because every single day they are reminded, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. The wrath of God remains on you. Literally over and over again, even out in the desert, God becomes so angry.

He wanted to literally just open up the ground and just take them all out. And there are times when Moses is the one who's pleading on his behalf, "Lord, what will the nation say that you brought us out here and if you consumed all of us?" And so God remains patient because of his interceding.

But he reminds the nation of Israel, first and foremost, that the God who is our refuge is a holy, holy, holy God. Don't forget what happened out in the desert. Part of the reason why Christianity has become what it has become in our generation is because the gospel has been preached falsely.

When disaster happens in our generation, the natural, the question that comes up from the secular world is, "If the God that you tell us is so good, why are these bad things happening? Why would a loving God allow 9/11 to happen? Why would a loving God allow famine to happen?

Why would a loving God allow starvation to happen, sex trafficking to happen? Why would a God that you say loves the world so much allow that to happen?" Part of the reason why that's the first question that comes up whenever a disaster happens is because they do not understand where man stands before God.

The gospel does not begin by saying that God loves you and his compassion, has a wonderful plan for your life. That's not how the gospel begins. If you read the book of Romans, it says the wrath of God remains and it is being revealed against all unrighteousness. So the gospel of God begins by telling us that a holy God is angry with the world.

That's the beginning point of the gospel. Because until we recognize that a holy God is angry with the rebellious world, the natural question when disaster happens is, "Why would that gentle, loving, caring God allow this to happen?" So when you understand the gospel in the way that it is presented in the scripture, the natural question really should be is, "Why would a God who is that angry allow us to continue to live?

Why did he not squash us already? If the God that you are telling us is so angry with the world because of our sins, why do we exist?" That's the question that the world should be asking if the gospel is presented correctly. We have become so concerned with getting people through the door that we have compromised the gospel.

And because of the compromise of the gospel, that the application of the gospel and the living of the gospel doesn't look anything like what we see in scripture. Some of you guys may have seen this advertisement this week. I believe it was either this week or last week it came out.

The military has a new marketing strategy to get millennials to come into the military. Has anybody seen that this week? A few of you have seen that. Basically the military has gotten now a poster saying, "We welcome snowflakes, selfie addicts, and me, me, me millennials to the military." No joke.

This is real. This is why it was on the news. Because they're having such a hard time getting millennials to volunteer for the military. Well, we got to find a way to get them to recruit them into the military. Now contrast that to the previous years of how they advertise military.

Some of you guys may remember, depending on what generation you grew up in, that Uncle Sam is looking for what? A few good men. Or when I was younger, the thing was, "Be all that you can be." Make something of yourself. Stop wasting your life. Join the military. Do something.

Be all that you can be. Or the Marines, they have Semper Fi. Always faithful. How do we go from that to selfie addicts? Snowflakes welcome. Me, me, me millennials. We need you. And the reason why this made the news was because the moment that they become a soldier, they're going to have to train that out of them.

No soldier who is a snowflake is going to be useful in the military. No soldier who is self-absorbed and selfie addict is going to be useful in combat. So they attract them to come in, but once they come in, I'm pretty sure the basic training is not going to change for them.

Once they get in, the basic training is going to be the same for everybody. They're just trying to get them through the door. We have preached the gospel in such a way to get them through the door once they get in, what they hear and what they see in the scripture is so unlike what was promised.

And we've allowed it in the church where it no longer looks like what we see in scripture. If we don't recognize first and foremost where we stand, where sinners stand before a holy God, the gospel is not necessary. God didn't come to a sinful world to help us live a better life.

He didn't come to a sinful world because he saw the world and they were hungry, so he decided to go and feed them. He saved us from his own wrath, from his own anger because of our sins. And he's reminded the nation of Israel, do not forget, the reason why we perish is because of our own sins.

Verse 8, you have placed our iniquities before you. Now in the Bible, there's three separate degrees of sin. The first degree of sin is the general sin that covers all sins. It means to miss the mark. In the Greek, the word that is used is hamartion. And it is a general term meaning whatever God wanted for you, you didn't hit it.

And it doesn't sound as bad when you explain it that way. But there's a second layer to that. The second layer is the actual disobedience. Willfully choosing what God told you not to do or not doing what God told you to do. So it's the act itself. That's the second layer.

The word that is used here in Hebrew, iniquity, is a much deeper word than that. It's not just simply talking about missing the mark. It's not talking simply about willfully doing an act. It's talking about the corrupt nature of man. You know we talk about we are sinners because we sin.

Iniquity, the word iniquity teaches us we sin because we're sinners. In Psalm 51 verse 5 it says, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me." We didn't become sinners when we reached the age of accountability and all of a sudden we started to realize what we were doing.

The scripture says we were born into sin. We were conceived in sin. Not only were we conceived and born in sin, Jeremiah 13, 23 says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good for accustomed to doing evil." Not only were you conceived in sin, born into sin, there's nothing you can do to change that.

Because it is not simply an act. It's not something that you did and say, "Well, I'm not going to do that anymore." Because the term iniquity means there is a corruption, a rotting, a spiritual cancer that you and I cannot reach. And the scripture says we are consumed because our rebellion goes much deeper than what you and I recognize.

If there's any particular thing that stands out to me in sanctification, you know, oftentimes we think of sanctification as, you know, here's some things that bad habits that I had and things that I weren't disciplined in and then as I was sanctified, I got better. I got better at reading scripture.

I got better at purity and I got better doing this and that. And all of these things are things that we need to work on as Christians. But at the core of our sanctification is a deepening recognition of just how far we are from God without Christ. And until we recognize that, Christ becomes a want and not a need.

There is a huge difference between a Christian who wants Christ versus a Christian who needs Christ. A person who wants Christ can want him one day and not want him the next day. Can want him in the beginning of the year and at the end of the year not want him because you don't have a need for him.

See, the beginning of the gospel teaches us our desperateness. Where we stand before this holy God in our sins, we are consumed. He says our secret sins are exposed in the light of his presence in verse 8. His presence literally means in his face. Intimately standing before this holy God, the first thing that gets exposed is our secret sins.

You know, there are sins that are pretty obvious. The scripture says not to lay on hands hastily because some men's sins are obvious. Some of us are not good at hiding our sins. It's obvious. You walk into the door, there comes a sinner. It's obvious. There are some men's sins trail behind them.

And that's why it says be careful, wait. Because eventually it gets exposed. But no matter how good we are in hiding our sins, it says in the presence of God, it gets exposed. You notice that in every instance where a man of God stands before this holy God, their first reaction before they're even awed by God is terror.

Remember Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6? He's being chosen to represent him to speak to the nation of Israel and he sees a vision of God and what happens? The first thing that happens, he falls to the ground in terror. Woe is me, woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips from the people of unclean lips.

He is terrified. He doesn't stand there and say, "Oh my gosh, you're so holy. These Israelites, how can they live like that if you're like this?" He's not worried about their sins. He's not worried about what they're doing. The first thing that happens is he recognizes his own sins and he falls to the ground in terror.

That's the first thing that happens when somebody is confronted by his holy presence. They're not preoccupied with what other people are doing. They're not disgusted by other people's sins because the sin that is nearest to them is in themselves. Our secret sins that we did do such a great job hiding is exposed in the presence of this holy God.

In other words, there's nowhere to run. You can fake it in front of other people, your closest friends, with church people, even with your wife and your husband at times. But before a holy God, our sins are exposed. In other words, we're completely vulnerable. You cannot hide from God.

John, in the book of Revelation, same thing. He sees a holy God, falls to the ground in terror. Disciples, when God's glory is revealed through Jesus, they fall to the ground. They're not saying, "Oh, these Pharisees, how can they not believe you?" That's not the first thing that comes out of their mouth.

They're terrified. They get on their knees. "We are not worthy. Depart from us, Lord." Because their sins get exposed in the presence of his glory. He says, "All our days have declined in your fury. Because you are a holy God and you're angry with us, our life diminishes." And then he says, "We have finished our years like a sigh." They're not going into the promised land with a bang.

Majority of them have been washed out already and only Caleb and Joshua are walking into the promised land. And even Moses himself, because he makes a mistake, he doesn't get in. He says, "We're ending this journey with a sigh." All of us. Every single one of us. Our experience in life.

And when it says our life ends with a sigh, sigh obviously is a metaphor. They're talking about being deeply distraught, to regret, or to be weary. That's when we sigh. Nobody wins a lottery and says, "Oh." You don't go to a birthday party and say, "Oh." You kill joy.

Nobody does that. Sigh is because there's deep regret. Deep regret. He says, "That's the life of man in the presence of a holy God." And he's reminding the nation of Israel that you're not leaping into the promised land because you've been successful. The only reason why God has allowed you to enter that is because God's been gracious to you and he made a covenant with you.

That's it. The first and most important thing that any human being needs to recognize before this holy God is a desperate need for atonement. Because this is who we are without Christ. Secondly, because of this sin, because of this holy God, the life of man, he says, "As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years or of due strength, 80 years." He's not describing that all human beings die at 70 or 80.

Obviously that's not what he's saying. Moses is well over 100 when he's writing this. Basically what he's saying is that yet your boast is only labor and sorrow. If let's say an average person lives 70 and then if you work hard to stay in shape, right? You drank kale juice every morning.

You know what I mean? You stayed away from boba. You ran in the morning. You lifted weights. I mean you like worked your tail off and you added 10 more years to your life. So if you live an average 70 years, if you work hard 80 years, he said, "Yet your boast is only labor and sorrow." In other words, all you've done extended your hardship.

Instead of 70 years of hardship, you have 80 years of hardship. He said this is life of man. And it is a reflection of what God said to Adam in Genesis chapter 3. He says, "Cursed is the ground because of you," and talking about Adam, "because of his sin.

In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." I mean, you know, so many of you guys are young. Not all of us, but so many of you, right? Ask anybody who's been working for 10 years. Look at the way they wake up in the morning.

Nobody is leaping to work, nobody. I don't care how much they love the work. I don't care how much they enjoyed it 10 years ago. Give them a few months. A lot of times it doesn't even take more than that, a couple of years. Maybe your dream job was to be a cop.

I know somebody, yeah. Joe actually wanted to be a cop since he was like third grade or second grade. Ask him if he feels like his dream came true. Anyway, let me move on. Okay. He's sitting right there, so. He says, "Every man's experience with this life, no matter how long you live, no matter how much you toil, no matter how much you try to lengthen it, in the end, our experience is common.

Both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You will eat bread till you return to the ground because from it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return." And then he says, "For soon it is gone and we fly away." And we think about it, Moses is watching everybody that he led basically die out in the desert and he's reminding them, "Don't forget.

Don't forget who he is. Don't forget why we're in this situation." Who understands, verse 11, "The power of your anger and your fury according to fear that is due you." Obviously, it's a rhetorical question. It's more of a command to recognize the fury of God's anger. First and foremost, the fear of the Lord, the scripture says, is the beginning of wisdom.

Once we recognize who he is, then we recognize what it is that we have in Christ. Years ago, before my father passed, years before he passed, he had a bad heart attack. And so we didn't know if he was going to live or not. So we ended up taking him to a hospital way out in Corona.

He was there for 10 days and so obviously our family didn't know if he was going to make it or not. So we were all on high alert and by the grace of God, he made it through that. And then obviously the doctor said, "He's not completely strong so make sure that he's resting." And so on the way back home, I think he was living in Tustin at that time, on the way back home we stopped over at my house and I was living in Corona and we had a swimming pool in our backyard.

And so my dad, basically the doctor said, "Don't do anything strenuous because he's still very delicate." And we had him sitting outside just relaxing and then the kids were going swimming. And so my dad was sitting outside and all the kids, we ended up going back inside. And so all the adults are inside and all of a sudden we hear this splash in the water.

And so something happened and you could tell by the noise. So we all ran outside and we saw my dad in the pool. And so my oldest son, Jeremy, he was probably no more than four or five at the time. We saw my dad basically fishing him out of the water and at that he didn't know how to swim yet.

So what happened was he had two older cousins, Nathan and Matthew, and they were a little bit younger but they knew how to swim. So they put the slide, you know, the little slide next to the pool. And so they were getting up and sliding into the water back and forth and so Jeremy thought, "Hey, me too." And so after they went inside, Jeremy decided to go in and he slid into the pool but he didn't know how to swim.

So he was facing up, you know, upside down in the pool. And obviously, I mean, those of you guys who've been around little kids around pools, it's dangerous because they don't make any noise when they drown. So my dad was sitting there just relaxing and saw Jeremy just floating on the pool like that and obviously there's no other adults.

And again, my dad just had a heart attack. He was sitting there to rest. He went in there, jumped in the water and fished him out. And the reaction that Jeremy gave was classic because he pulled him out and literally saved him. Jeremy walked out and he shook it off and he turned around and said, "Thanks, Harabuji," and then just walked in.

Harabuji is grandpa in Korea. He had no idea what just happened. My dad ended up spraining his ankle that he, you know, it took a long time for him to heal. He was bruised, I think for years because he just wouldn't heal, you know. He just came out of the hospital.

We didn't know if he was going to make it that week. And he jumped in the butt. Jeremy was just like, "Oh, thanks, Harabuji," and just walked right in. And to this day, I don't think he understands what really happened. I can explain it to him. He's like, "Oh, okay," you know.

The reason why Paul takes 11 chapters describing God's mercy and His grace is so that when we get to chapter 12, he says, "In view of this mercy, present your body as a living sacrifice." See, when we don't understand what it is that you and I have been saved from, that's the kind of flippant response we give to this holy God.

"Oh, God, thank you. Thank you," you know. We thank Him for the jobs that we get when we're sick. You know, He makes us healthy. We thank you for circumstances or maybe good investments that we made. And these are all such trivial things in light of what we already have in Christ that no one could take away from you, your eternal life.

The Son of God has been given to us to cover us of our iniquities that we could not hide before this holy God, that He gave His most precious Son to us every single day, even if we live the rest of our lives living in poverty and in sickness, we ought to be praising God for what He has already given us.

It's because we don't recognize what sin does in the presence of this holy God that we become flippant in our response. See, on the surface, it's like, "Man, this guy, what kind of a pep talk is this?" He's not trying to squash their spirit. Exactly the opposite. The reason why He preaches sin and why the gospel starts out by saying, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," until we recognize where we stand before God, without the covering of His blood, the rest of our life won't be given as a reasonable response.

That's why He concludes in verse 12 by saying, "So teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom." In other words, He's saying, "Remind me how short my life is." 2019, let me never forget how quickly 2018 went. Let me never forget how quickly my 20s went, my 30s went, my 40s went, and how quickly the 50s and 60s will go.

Let me always remember this, how short this life is, that I may live a life of wisdom, that I would depend upon a holy, eternal God who is my refuge, that I would not set my hope here. You know, in 2016, they did a study on the average lifespan of Americans.

It says it's 78.9 years. Now, obviously, this is all averaging young children dying early, plus people who died past 100. So if you live healthy lives, I'm sure you can live longer than that. But it said on the average, it's 78. So rounding it off to 80 years, that means, if you do the math, 29,200 days.

It says to help me number our days, so I'm actually numbering it for you. 29,200 days, and I'm like me specifically, 50, 51 years, 18,250 days, 10,000. So I got about 10,000 days left, if I live average. Some of you guys may have more, some of you guys may have less.

What are you going to do with those days? Do you spend it and just lose it? Or are they being invested for eternity on the things that matter? That all depends on what you believe. If you believe this is your home, make the most of it. But this is it, right?

And if you don't experience it, if you don't taste it, if you don't go, you're going to lose out for eternity, if that's what you believe. But if you believe that we're sojourners just passing by, it makes no sense for somebody who is traveling to Hawaii and investing all your money to buy a nice tent to go camping on the beach.

Because it makes no sense, because you're going to have to go home. Nobody in their right mind would do that. No Christian in their right mind who believes what we profess to believe live as if we're going to be here for eternity. Let me conclude with encouragement. How many guys know the TV series Band of Brothers?

A lot of you. Okay, so some of this is going to make sense. And I thought this was so profound. So I think it was like... It's basically a... What do you call that? A docuseries? Well, it's not a documentary, but it's... Well, Andy, you know what I'm talking about.

Basically it's a movie based upon someone's journal about what actually happened. And it's about this Yeezy company. And in, I think it was about third or fourth episode, they jump into Normandy on D-Day. And this one private, he's shell-shocked. So whenever the war breaks out, he freaks out. And he's ashamed of himself.

And you can see it in his eyes. And so he's in the foxhole and the enemy starts to drop bombs and shooting. And all his fellow soldiers are out of the foxhole and they're shooting. And he's about to jump out and then he falls back in fear. And he's hiding out in the foxhole in terror.

Well, after all the shooting is done, and all of his friends are out, and he's ashamed of himself, and you could tell. And so the sergeant comes and he wants to confess. So he confesses to his sergeant. And he says, "Sergeant, you know, when that thing starts shelling, you know, I jumped in.

I was, I crouched in my foxhole and I didn't go out at all." And he, again, he's ashamed of himself and he's confessing this to his sergeant. And sergeant says, "You know what your problem is?" And he says, "Yeah, I'm afraid." And he says to the private, "Private, we're all afraid.

There's none of us here who's not afraid." And so he's kind of confused. He said, "You know what your problem is?" And so he's just kind of looking up and he says, "It's because you think you have hope." He says, "You need to realize that we're already dead. Until you realize you're already dead, you're not going to be a good soldier.

Your life depends on it and this war depends on it. You have to fight as a man who's already dead." I thought it was so profound. It's not in the Bible. There's something like it in the Bible. It's because you have hope that somehow if you hide in that foxhole that you're going to survive.

In order for you to be a good soldier, you have to accept the fact. You have to accept the fact that you're a dead man and fight. So many of us hide out in our foxholes because we haven't given up hope in this world. That somehow if I work harder, if I make the right investments, if I align myself with the right company and the right people, that I'm going to make it in this world.

And that false hope in this fallen world is keeping us in our foxholes, being unproductive. Until we recognize that we are crucified with Christ, it is no longer us who lives. And Christ who lives in us, we become useless as soldiers in God's kingdom. He who finds his life, he will lose it.

He who loses his life for Christ, he will find it. So I pray that in 2019, that we would have that eternal perspective, that recognize that this is no longer our life to live. It is for Christ. Let's pray. As our worship team leads us, let's take some time to pray.