The sermon titled 'Our God, Our Help and Our Hope' by Mike Davenport is based on Psalm 90 and explores the themes of God's eternality, human frailty, and the desire for wisdom in our remaining days. Davenport highlights that God has been the dwelling place for all generations, emphasizing His unchanging nature from everlasting to everlasting. In contrast, human life is transient and frail, likened to grass that flourishes in the morning and withers by evening. The sermon encourages believers to seek wisdom by numbering their days and to find refuge in God's eternal presence. As a tradition in the speaker's family, Psalm 90 is read during New Year celebrations to reflect on life's brevity and God's enduring presence. Davenport urges the congregation to pray for God's mercy, seek His compassion, and to desire the establishment of their works through His grace. The sermon concludes with a call for believers to seek God's guidance and presence as they enter the new year, emphasizing the importance of living with a heart of wisdom and a reliance on God's eternal nature.

Good morning. Today's sermon is based out of Psalm 90. Please follow along as I read. 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, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

You turn man to destruction and say, return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood. They are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up. In the morning it flourishes and grows up.

In the evening it is cut down and withers. For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we are terrified. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh.

The days of our lives are seventy years, and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away. We know the power of your anger. Who knows the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is your wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long, and have compassion on your servants. O satisfy us early with your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the day in which you have afflicted us, the years in which we have seen evil. Let your work appear to your servants, and your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us.

Yes, establish the work of our hands." Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be in this Psalm 90. Father, we're grateful for all the preparation that has gone into this. And Father, we pray that you would just be here right now with Mr. Davenport.

Lead him, Lord, in the word. Father, lead our hearts to hear from you today. Father, let us be active listeners as we are here, knowing that we are not here merely just to sit, but we are here amongst you, hearing the living God speak his word and his truth to us. Father, what a wonderful time to be in here, to hear of the days that we have as we end out this year. Again, Lord, we are grateful for this opportunity to be here to hear your word and your truth.

Help us Lord. Amen. Well here we are brethren, the final Sunday of 2018, just one more day between us and the year 2019. The ending of one year and the beginning of another year has always been a time of contemplation for men, and Psalm 90 provides us with a biblical grid of how we should consider our days in this world, a consideration that is appropriate for such a time as this, the changing of the calendar year. In fact, the reading of this psalm was and still is a tradition in my wife's family.

It goes back at least to her great-grandfather. Her great-grandfather would take this psalm every New Year's Eve and read this psalm to his family. And even when Judas' grandfather had married and left the house and was on his own, his father would come and visit, and every New Year's Eve would read this Psalm. Well, because of the occasion of this man's father reading the Psalm every year when he would come to visit, Judas' grandfather began reading it at birthdays, and that was passed down to his son, Judas' father, and now we read that each and every birthday as well, a tradition that is now through four generations. This psalm is like the rest of the Psalms in the fact that it was God-breathed.

God moved a man to write these very words for us, but it's peculiar in this sense that it was written by Moses, by Moses. Well, I hope to walk us through this text under the following three headings. First, a declaration of God's eternality, a declaration of God's eternality. Second, a description of man's frailty, a description of man's frailty. And then third, a desire for our remaining days.

The title is Our God, Our Help, and Our Hope. Our God, our help, and our hope. So we begin with the first six verses that deal with a declarations of God's eternality. Verse 1, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. God is declared to be the dwelling place, the never-changing abode of his people.

This was the declaration of Moses, the man of God, and it was the declaration that Moses knew firsthand, and yet he also declares it on the benefit of all generations. The prayer of Moses was most likely recorded and expressed at the near the end of his life as he was coming near the end of his days a life that spanned a hundred and twenty years on this earth a life that witnessed firsthand God's faithfulness to multiple generations you see God had been a dwelling place of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, all of them tent dwellers all their days. God was the dwelling place for all those who came out of Egypt, setting them free from bondage and taking them through the waters of the Red Sea. God was the dwelling place of the generation in the wilderness, setting in their midst the cloud and the fiery pillar, leading them and guiding them, providing for them their every need all along the way. And God was the dwelling place of the generation that stood before Moses as he turned the reins over to Joshua.

The very promise of God to Joshua being, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Dear ones, God is still, He is still the dwelling place of His people in our own generation. Generations of his church have come and gone, but he remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. If we live in him, we live and move and have our being.

In Him is our hope, our peace, our life. In Him is our redemption, our righteousness, our reconciliation. In Him is our safety, our satisfaction, our sanctification. The coming year before us does not change the address of those who are God's people. He has been and still remains our dwelling place.

Verse 2 says, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." The Scriptures open up with the marvelous and revealing words, in the beginning, God. In the beginning, God. When the earth was without form and was void, God was already there. Before the mountains were brought forth, the mountains that seemed so permanent, so unchanging, before those unchanging mountains unchanging mountains was an unchanging God. What words can better describe his eternality than from everlasting to everlasting?

The Alpha and the Omega, the one who transcends time, who has always been and always will be. He is God from everlasting, and He is God to everlasting. He has never not been God. He is the self-existent One, the All-Sufficient One, glorious in His eternality. All that God is, all of His attributes, all that is in God has been there in its fullness and perfection from all eternity.

Listen to the application provided by Matthew Poole. This eternity of God is here mentioned, partly that men by the contemplation thereof might be wrought to a deeper sense of their own frailty and nothingness, which is the foundation of humility and of all true piety, and to a greater reverence and admiration of the divine majesty, and partly for the comfort of God's people, comfort of God's people, who not withstanding their present miseries, have a sure and everlasting refuge and portion. Verses 3 and 4. Verses 3 and 4, you turn man to destruction and say, return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night. Children, do you recall the name of the man who lived the longest time upon earth?

It's recorded in Genesis chapter 5. Who was that man? Methuselah. Methuselah. Do you know how long Do you know how long Methuselah lived?

969 years. 969 years. Can you imagine living 969 years? 969 years? It seems like such a long time.

Just two lifetimes of 969 years put back to back. If you took Methuselah's lifetime and put two of them back-to-back, it would stretch all the way back to the time period that the Apostle John wrote the book of Revelation. Two lifetimes would take you back to when John wrote Revelation. Yet 969 falls short of the 1, 000 years mentioned right here in this text. Moses tells us that in the sight of God, Methuselah's 969 years was like 23 hours.

23 hours. That's all. Yesterday's 23 hours. As if that's not enough, Moses also likens the thousand years to a watch in the night, a period of but three or four hours. Oh, how prone we are to see everything in this life from our perspective, whether time, whether the true value of things, whether the worth of our own soul, Without the reality of Psalm 90 before our eyes, without the reality of who God is, of who we are and what He has determined concerning us, without these realities, we wind up with a worldview that leaves us with nothing but the vanity of vanities that Solomon wrote about.

Moses goes on in verses 5 to 6 and says, "'You carry them away like a flood. They are like a sleep. In the morning, they are like grass, which grows up. In the morning, it flourishes and grows up. In the evening, it is cut down and withers." Matthew Henry says of these verses, As soon as we are born, we begin to die.

And every day our life carries us so much nearer death. Men are carried away as with the flood, and yet they are as asleep. They consider not their own frailty. Like men asleep, they imagine great things to themselves till death wakes them. Time passes unobserved by us, as it does with men asleep.

It is a short and transient life, like that of the grass which grows up and flourishes, in the morning looks green and pleasant, but in the evening the mower cuts it down and it withers and loses all its beauty. Death will change us shortly, perhaps suddenly, and it is a great change that death will make with us in a little time. Man in his prime does but flourish as the grass." Do take note that it is the everlasting God who carries man away. It is the everlasting God who cuts man down. He does not change.

He does not need to leave this in the charge of another. His word is forever settled. He has declared this to be the result of the fall of Adam. It is appointed unto men once to die. No matter how young you are, no matter how strong you may feel, your end is to be simply carried away, to be cut down.

To be cut down. Both of those actions, passive actions, they come upon you according to the will of God. And Moses would have you, my friend, find refuge, to find a dwelling place with this eternal one who holds your life in His hand." Well, having declared the eternality of God, Moses turns secondly in this passage to a description of man's frailty, a description of man's frailty. And we find this in verses 7 through 11. For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we are terrified.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. My friend, death is My friend, death is not simply the way of nature. It was not woven into the fabric of nature at creation. Death is a result of the curse brought upon man due to our rebellion. As we saw in the previous verses, it is the eternal God who carries away mankind like a flood.

It is this eternal God who cuts mankind down in his prime. And this verse would have us understand that this death is penal. It's penal. It is a result of our sin that has aroused the wrath and anger of a God who is not only eternal, but is also holy. Wrath and anger are but the natural response of God, a holy God, to real sin found in His creatures.

Does the wrath of God terrify you? Does the wrath of God terrify you? It should. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Hebrews 10, 31. In his writings in the book of Revelation, Doc John describes the terror of unbelievers that will be present on Judgment Day when the wrath of the Lamb is revealed.

Interestingly, it is to these mountains, it is to these mountains that these unbelievers will call out the very mountains whom God preceded, yea, that God created. Revelation 6, 14 to 17 says, then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains and said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come and who is able to stand? Are you terrified of the wrath of a holy God? As we said earlier, this prayer was most likely recorded near the end of Moses' life.

He had seen firsthand the consuming wrath of a holy God. And it's not just the God of the Old Testament. Consider the words of Jesus Christ, his last words, recorded words to Nicodemus, he who believes in the Son has everlasting life, and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him." My friends, please don't let this thought escape you. If the everlasting Christ is not your dwelling place, then for you there is no refuge, but the wrath of God finds it a dwelling place itself place itself upon you. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.

Verse 9, for all our days have passed away in your wrath. We finish our years like a sigh. Each day that passes seems to hold within its clutch some reminder to us of the wrath of God, some reminder of the curse that came upon us due to sin. The brightest and best moments this world has to offer are quickly erased by the reality that we are part of a fallen creation. Well did the hymn writer pen the following words, swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.

Its glories pass away, change and decay in all around I see." Quoting another writer in his commentary William Plummer wrote we live a dying whining complaining life and at last a Grown is its termination how amazingly expressive Thomas Watson said we come into this world with a cry and we go out of it with a groan. With one sweep of his pen, Moses describes all your days. Yes, every single one of them. And Moses seems to anticipate an argument as he turns to the next verse, an argument coming from a man who has had a full life, a life that seems from his perspective to be quite long. Verse 10, the days of our lives are seventy years, and if by reason of strength they are of strength they are 80 years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away." This verse stands in stark contrast as it should to the verses in the first part of our text.

The eternal God preceded the mountains. He is from everlasting to everlasting. A thousand years are like yesterday. They are like a three or four hour watch in the night. But, says Moses, in contrast with the everlasting one, as for man, the days, the days of our lives.

How about that contrast? He doesn't even use the years as the measuring stick. He uses days. The years are stated as the accumulation of the individual days, days here being the standard of his measurement. If a thousand years are like a day, and if my math is correct, then our 80 years are to God as but one hour, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds.

If a thousand years are like a day, 80 years, One hour, 55 minutes, and 12 seconds. Contemplate that with me for a few minutes. The entirety, the entirety of your life in the span of about two hours. That's it. To drive the point home, consider this our dear brother Bill Brown as he approaches his next birthday has at this point been granted by God an extra 23 minutes beyond the one hour, 55 minutes and 12 seconds.

He's been granted 23 extra minutes before God as God sees it from his eternality. And if we look at this from another perspective, the calendar year 2018 was in the sight of God one minute and 26 seconds The whole entire year gone as if in less than a minute and a half. Even if ten additional years are added to the 70, the boast of those years is nothing more than labor and sorrow. Even with the additional time, life is soon cut off and we fly away. The words chosen by Moses are very expressive.

A life that is cut off, cut off. A leaving of this life that is not described as walking out or even running, but a flying away with speed and without encumbrance or hurdle, we fly away. Verse 11, who knows the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is your wrath. Dear one, you cannot fear too greatly the wrath of God.

The reality is that we are most likely to fall short of considering this wrath appropriately or accurately. The fear that drove the men and women to cry out to be buried beneath the mass of the mountain in Revelation 6 was in response to the reality of the wrath that was coming upon them. But alas, it was too late. Too late. Too late.

Oh, if only such fear had gripped them before the day came! If only such fear had driven them to Christ in the days of salvation instead of away from instead of away from him now that it was too late. Do you think you grasp the power of God's anger? Have you considered the fierceness of his wrath?" The hymn writer described it like this, Ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great here at Calvary may view its nature rightly and hear its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load, tis the word the Lord's anointed, Son of man and Son of God.

Man and son of God. The fierceness of the wrath of God was not withheld from his withheld from his only begotten son who cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's the wrath of God. Don't underestimate that wrath. Don't underestimate it.

Having seen the declaration of God's eternality in the description of man's frailty, let us consider lastly a desire for our remaining days. A desire for our remaining days. For our remaining days. Verses 12 through 17. So teach us, so teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

So here we stand at the end of another calendar year. We stand looking upon a new year before us. What desires do you have for the new year? It's, as we said, often the time of planning and preparing. What are you planning?

What are you preparing yourself for in this coming year? Most importantly, are you looking at your calendar with a heart of wisdom? I love this quote by John Calvin. Quote, even he who is most skillful in arithmetic and who can precisely and accurately understand and investigate millions of millions is nevertheless unable to count 80 years in his own life. It is surely a monstrous thing that men can measure all distances outside of themselves, that they know how many feet the moon is distant from the center of the earth, what space there is between the different planets, and in short that they can measure all the dimensions both of heaven and earth, while yet they cannot number eighty years in their own case.

It is therefore evident that Moses had good reason to beseech God for ability to perform that which requires a wisdom which is very rare among mankind." End quote. Dear ones, we are in need of divine illumination. We need to be taught how we should do this. The first lessons listed in the teacher's manual are the very things that Moses has been declaring to us. The right understanding of who God is and who we are.

That God is immutable, immortal, and eternal and that man is sinful, mortal, and frail. Have you come this morning with a heart ready to be taught? Are you listening? Are you contemplating? Will you respond correctly?

Will you enter the year of 2019 with a heart that is gaining more and more wisdom? It was such wisdom that inspired men of the past to pen such words as, He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Only one life will Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. No reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

No retreats, no regrets. Those came from men who numbered their days and had a heart of wisdom to apply to those days. Oh God, with an understanding of the two hours of this short life that we have, accordingly teach us how we should number the moments we have been granted by your sovereign hand. Verse 13, return, O Lord, how long and have compassion on your servants. This should be considered in light of what Moses had witnessed in regard to the wilderness generation Because of their sin and unbelief the people had experienced the wrath of God something of the departure of the glory of God in their midst.

And so Moses is here pleading for the compassion of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God to be extended to the people, to be granted to his called-out people. In reality, he is praying for revival. He's praying for revival. Return, O Lord! How long?

How long? The prayer of Moses, what he is actually praying for, the context of his prayer becomes clearer in the reading of a portion of the instruction of Asaph in Psalm 78. Turn with me a few pages back to Psalm 78. Psalm 78. Let your eyes And let your eyes fall down upon verse 32, Psalm 78-32.

This is being spoken of, this very generation who had wandered in the wilderness. In spite of this, they still sinned and did not believe in his wondrous works. Therefore, their days he consumed in futility and their years in fear. When He slew them, then they sought Him, and they returned and sought earnestly for God. Then they remembered that God was their rock and the most high God their Redeemer.

They remembered again that he was their dwelling place. Nevertheless, they flattered him with their mouth and they lied to him with their tongue, for their heart was not steadfast with him, nor were they faithful in his covenant. But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. Yes, many a time he turned his anger away and did not stir up all his wrath, for he remembered that they were but flesh, a breath that passes away and does not come again. How often they provoked him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert.

Yes, again and again they tempted God and limited the tempted God and limited the Holy One of Israel. In spite of the fact that their unbelief had turned God away to anger many times, God still had mercy. And that is why Moses prayed again, return, O Lord, return. How long? Dear ones, God delights in mercy.

He delights in mercy. He delights in compassion. Judgment is called by the Puritans. God's strange work. Do you long for the compassion and mercy of Christ?

Do you long for it, to know it, to experience it, to live in it? Or are you comfortable with where you are? To go on content without his compassion, without his mercy? If you desire not his compassion, you will surely experience his wrath. But Moses doesn't stop here in communicating his desire for the days that remained, verses 14 and 15.

Oh, satisfy us early with your mercy that we may rejoice and be glad all our days Make us glad according to the days in which you have afflicted us the years in which we have seen evil Note with me a couple of glaring realities found in these two verses. First note the source and the substance, the source and the substance of true satisfaction and gladness. What is the source? Where do satisfaction and gladness come from? From God.

From God. More specifically here in this verse, from his mercies that abundantly flow from his loving-kindness. My friend, do you know the source and the substance of true satisfaction and gladness? Or are you like Solomon searching for satisfaction and gladness where it cannot be found? Note secondly here our dependence, our dependence upon the sovereign will of God for the experience of satisfaction and gladness.

We're dependent. This is a prayer to God, a petition for satisfaction and for gladness. They don't come to us like some vending machine that delivers us the product according to the buttons that we push. This request of Moses is being prayed on behalf of a people who because of unbelief had wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. Yes, there were many days of affliction.

Years of seeing evil had come upon them. And why? Why? Because God in His mercy was bringing them into a land flowing with milk and with honey. There they stood on the border of Canaan, their eyes seeing that promised land.

But they doubted God. They doubted God. They doubted God could satisfy them and make them glad. It wasn't worth it to them. They decided to appoint a leader and return to Egypt and seek for satisfaction and gladness there.

And when God appeared, He said this to Moses, How long will these people reject me? How long will they not believe me? Can I speak a moment to you young people and to you children? Those of you who are strangers to saving grace, This is the last Sunday of 2018, and again, again, the gospel of Jesus Christ is being set before you. God, as it were, is taking you by the hand once again to the border of this promised land, this promised land of salvation, of satisfaction, of gladness, of spiritual milk, spiritual honey.

You're standing at that border again today. The previous times you have been brought to this border, you've rebelled, you have said that you would rather return to the bondage of your taskmaster sin and seek satisfaction and gladness there. And God has said of you what he said of this people, how long, how long will these people reject me? How long will reject me? How long will they not believe me?

Is there a Joshua? Is there a Caleb among you young people today who will take God at his word, who will not rebel, who will not receive and believe the false reports of the world's spies, who would seek to cast doubt on the goodness of God, to question the promises of God? Who among you today will take up the free offer of mercy and of grace in order to find true satisfaction and true gladness. Who today will enter in by faith? My prayer is that of Moses, that God would satisfy you early, early with his mercy, not late, but early in your life.

In your life that you would not be hardened by the years of wandering in your own wilderness of sin and perish and rot outside of the land of God's promise. The same prayer, this same plea will be found at the end of Ecclesiastes as well. There, Solomon, near the end of his life, having experienced the bitterness, the folly, the pains of seeking for satisfaction where it cannot be found, there in that last chapter says this to all who would dare follow in his steps of foolishness and vanity. He looks at the youth and he says, remember now, remember now, your Creator, in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come and the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in them. We come then to the closing verses of Moses' desire for the remaining days of life in this world, verses 16 and 17.

Let your work appear to your servants and your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. What is Moses referring to when he says, your work, your work? Well, the context of the prayer, considering the wandering of the Israelites, seems to indicate that this is referring to the work that God had promised to the patriarchs and then reiterated to this people, that he would bring them into the land of promise.

You see, dear ones, the unbelief of man will not void the promise that God made to Abraham. The unbelief of this people had simply postponed the fulfillment of the promise and had diminished the glory of God for a time in their midst. This is why Moses has already prayed for the return of the Lord. A return that includes God's taking up once again the fulfilling of the promise and displaying once again his glory among the people especially to the rising Generation who had no part in the unbelief of their parents exhibited close to 40 years earlier. This is what God had said in response to the unbelief of his people, Numbers 14, 29 to 32.

The carcasses of You who have complained against me shall fall in the wilderness all of you who were numbered According to your entire number from 20 years old and above but your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised. But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness." Moses was pleading for this work of God to once again appear. What work of God do we as New Testament believers have reason to pray for? What has God promised to us? Well, for one, we have a promise that God's people will be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters, is that a work of God that you desire to be more evident in this coming year? The work of God in conforming you into the image of your Savior. Tied to that is the work of sanctification, God's work of sanctification. Sanctification is a slow process by means of the measurements we employ, and progress in it is something to be desired and prayed for. Another thing God has promised is that He will build His church.

Oh, that this work would appear unto us in this place and not just to others. May God convert people through the ministries of this church and build up his universal church. May God's work and purposes for Turkey appear to us, be made evident to us, and unfold in marvelous ways before our eyes. Do we want the work of God to appear in our midst. And for our children, and for our children, oh children, that you would see and be changed by the glory of the Lord.

If you see it, it will change you. It will change you. Do you remember the response of Isaiah to seeing that glory of Jesus Christ? He saw his sinfulness. He wanted to be made clean, and he offered himself upon the altar to be used by God in any way God saw fit.

Oh that the glory of God would appear to you, our dear children. Dear ones, can I interject a question? It's a question born out of conviction as I have studied this passage, a question that I have had to personally grapple with myself. Do your supplications in prayer look anything like these of Moses? This is not to say that we are not to ask for real, intangible things.

Jesus himself, in what's been called the Lord's Prayer or the model prayer, taught us to pray for our daily bread. But consider the things that Moses could have prayed for and the things that he actually did pray for here. Could it be that our praying, be it private or public, lacks such requests as these because we have failed to really stop and consider what fed Moses into these requests, the realities of who God is and who we really are. The next thing Moses requests is this, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. The beauty of the Lord our God is described by Matthew Poole as God's favorable countenance and gracious influence and glorious presence.

His favorable countenance and gracious influence and glorious presence. What might happen to us as a people if we began praying for this and God answered our prayer. His favorable countenance resting upon us, His gracious influence permeating everything we put our hand to do. And his glorious presence as a cloud and a pillar of fire leading us, dwelling with us, and protecting us. These things are at the core of the request for God to establish the work of our hands.

The things that will be accomplished in the coming year will not be established apart from God's favorable countenance, His gracious influence, and His glorious presence. My friend, you dare not, you dare not proceed without the beauty of the Lord resting upon you. Ask yourself this simple question. What was accomplished by the Israelites after 40 years of wandering? What was established?

Plummer says this, the best man needs guidance at every step. If our works are done in God's strength according to his will and by the aid of his Spirit, they will be stable and be found unto glory and honor at the appearing of Jesus Christ. So what do we learn from this passage? As the calendar flips to another year, our God is the same. He remains a dwelling place, a refuge for all His people.

He remains the only safe dwelling place for the rising generation, for all who will put their trust in Christ. He has not grown older. He has not grown weaker. He is the everlasting one who does not change. As we turn the page to 2019, we are another year closer to our final days in this world.

Like a watch in the night, our time in this life is drawing to a close, and another will simply step in and take our place. Like that which stands in the path of an increasing flood, we have been swept another year closer to eternity. And like the grass, our flourishing is beginning to wane and we are closer to our time to be cut down. Our sins of this year cry out for the wrath of God and if that wrath does not fall upon Christ as our substitute we will be consumed by that very wrath. So how appropriate The desire of Moses is for us as we enter this new year.

We still stand in great need of his mercy. Some of us have known seasons of affliction this past year. Do we not desire days of gladness? We have great need for His work to appear. Mercy drops round us are falling.

We need to plead for the showers. Some of our sons and daughters are yet blind to the glory of Jesus Christ. They have not experienced saving grace. They desperately need to see His glory. We ever stand in need of His favorable countenance, gracious influence, and glorious presence.

And as we consider goals and resolutions for the coming year, the works that we plan and those we actually accomplish stand in need of God coming and establishing them and making them fruitful for his kingdom and for eternity. So may this prayer be our prayer for 2019. Oh God, we thank you for your word. How relevant it is to us. Show us more of yourself.

Show us more of ourselves, oh Lord. Leave us not to ourselves. We pray these very same things as Moses prayed and we ask that you would answer them according to your good pleasure through the merits of Jesus Christ and by the power of your spirit. Amen.