1735. Satisfied With the Steadfast Love of God, Pt. 2

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This Baptist church in Fredericksburg, Virginia, will be concluding a message from yesterday titled, Satisfied with the Steadfast Love of God, from Psalm 90. Not all the Bible's written to you, but all the Bible's written for you, and you ought to read the Bible with a sense of God, you are teaching me something here, this is for me. Oh, how love I thy law. Look at verse number three.

We learn something about man. I think first of all, we learn that man is temporal. You know that, but watch how God says it. Verse number four, a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past as a watch in the night. Interestingly, this is the only one of the verses in Psalm 90 that's quoted in the New Testament. Second Peter, chapter three and verse eight, where the scoffers of Peter's day were saying, where is the promise of his coming?

For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water perished, but the heavens which are now by the same word are kept in store, reserved under fire against the day of judgment. Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is what the Lord has a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

This is an important verse for us to consider. And that is that God sees things chronologically much different than you and I see things. And God says your life is this, watch this, it's this. That's your life.

How can I describe it? It's like a thousand years to a day, it's like a watch in the night, like a three hour watch in the night. He's going to go on and give us some other metaphors, but throughout the Bible God tells us that life is short. Go to now ye that say today or tomorrow.

We'll go into such a city, we'll continue there a year, we'll buy and sell and get gain. Whereas you know not what you'll be on tomorrow, what's your life? The only time in the Bible the question is asked. What's your life?

What's your life? You ever ask that question? Philosophers have tried to answer that question, they can't.

Biologists have a hard time answering that question, where does it begin? But God answered that question for you, what's your life? It's even a vapor that appearth for a little time and then vanishes away for that you ought to say if the Lord will we shall live and do this or that. But now you rejoice in your boastings, all such rejoicing is evil, therefore to Him that knoweth the new good and doeth it not to Him it's sin. How can we be laissez faire about life? How can we be laissez faire about our love for God and our service of Him when we realize that life is like this and all that matters is what we do for Christ? Only one life, and so soon it will pass. Only what's done for Christ will last. Temporal, man's temporal. First number five, thou caris them away as with a flood.

They would know all about a flood, they had just seen some things carried away in a flood of the Red Sea. They are asleep, it's like going to sleep and you get eight hours sleep and it's over like that. Or seven hours or six hours and boy you sleep and it's like I just closed my eyes and now that's life, that's your life. It's like I'm 56 years of age and you might say, oh that's old, I'm telling you, it was yesterday I sat in Bible college. It was yesterday I was just getting married, it was yesterday, I'm telling you, where has the time gone? That's life.

Some of you are seniors and this is your last Bible conference. You're off into life. I'm going to tell you something, it goes like that. Man is temporal. But not only do I see that man is temporal, I see that man is unfaithful. Look at verse number six to finish those verses about temporality, verse number five.

In the morning they're like grass which grow up, in the morning it flourishes, in the evening it's cut down, it withers. We're consumed by thy anger, by thy wrath, we're troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities. Check this out, verse number eight. Lord, Lord thou, thou hast set our iniquities before thee.

Does that bother you? God, Lord you've put our iniquities right in front of your face, you know exactly who we are. Now watch this, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

God knows it all. I was talking to my good friend Marty Heron just recently, he said, Kurt, I just had a conversation with an FBI agent. And here's what he told me, he was doing an investigation, he said, and the FBI, here's what we realize about people. He said, we realize that people have three lives, everybody has three lives. Think about this, everybody has a public life, that's a life you allow everyone to see, that's your social persona.

The things you put on your Instagram page. This is my public life, it's what I want people to know. It's what people do know. But you also have a private life, you have a life that your family knows, you have a life that your best friend knows, you have a life that your inner circle knows, you have that life. It's a life that the public doesn't know, but if you really knew him you wouldn't think that way. What we're saying is that there's a public life and a private life.

But then this FBI agent told Marty, he said, but there's a third life. That's the secret life. That's the life your best friend doesn't know about. That's the life that your spouse sometimes doesn't even know about. That's the life that your family would be shocked to know about. It's the secret life.

And the FBI agent said that's the person we're looking for. We're digging to find what is the real, because that's who you are. You are who you are in the dark, that's who you are. That's who you really are. You are who you are in the dark, that's who you are. Not your public life, that's what you want people to think you are. Not your private life, that's what you're trying the best to make yourself to be. But no, that secret life, and the Bible says it, but God knows that. He knows every little bit of it.

Wow. Man is temporal. Man is unfaithful.

That's the point. Man is unfaithful. This wasn't a beef that Moses had with God. God, you've been unfair.

You've been unfair. I mean, after all, you delivered us from Egypt and here we are sitting and languishing in the wilderness. Hang out here for 40 years, I mean, come on, I know we complained, I know we committed idolatry, I know we did some bad things, but really?

I mean, no, he's not complaining. It's funny how we take great umbrage when somebody says something about us that's not true. Somebody falsely accuses us, or somebody misrepresents us, and oh, we've got to rear back our shoulders, and we take great umbrage, like, how could they dare say that?

That's not me! But I wonder if the real you were on display. And we take great umbrage at little things that are untrue, but we seem to pass over and gloss over the things that are really true that we know about down deep in our heart. What Moses is saying is man is temporal and man is unfaithful, and primarily those things are true because man is forgetful. I think that's really the underlying gist of verses one through eleven.

That man is temporal, for sure, man is unfaithful, but man is forgetful. A man looks to God as an ever-present help in current need, but boy, now Egypt is gone, and now the Red Sea has been crossed, and now, you know, we don't need God as much as we need. God, what have you done for me lately? What have you done for me lately?

God, how have you impressed me lately? And even those people that came to Jesus in John 6 and said, Moses gave our fathers manna in the wilderness, and Jesus said, no, no he didn't, my father gave your fathers bread in the wilderness, and by the way, they ate that bread in the wilderness and they died. I'm come to give you bread that you'll never die, I am the bread of life.

We'll come back to that. What am I saying? I'm saying, boy, we learn a lot about who God is. And the more poignantly you see God, the more effectively you see yourself. And just like Isaiah, who saw the Lord high and lifted up, whose train filled the temple, boy, when Isaiah got a fresh glimpse of God, boy, he got a fresh glimpse of himself. And Moses is showing us God.

Here's a little snippet portrait of God. And in seeing God in his eternality, in his faithfulness, in his fearfulness, and who are we? Who are we? What is man? That God would even think about us with little blips, little blips on the screen that are here and gone, and the short time that we're here is a time of unfaithfulness, and a time of capriciousness, and a time of forgetfulness.

Why would God ever love me? We learned something about God. We learned something about man. But watch this last play this morning. You've listened very well.

We learned something about hope. Now I want you to see that because at this point in the message you're like, wow, you know, this guy is really a negative preacher. Look at verse number 12. I love how Moses makes a simple and yet profound transition.

Would you look at it? Psalm 90 and verse number 12, so? I love that. So, so? So what? Well, so based upon this, so based upon our unfaithfulness, so based upon the fact we deserve this, so based upon the fact that we're waiting for all these people 20 years of age and upward to die, so, so what? What do we do with all this information?

We just kind of crammed in our heads for the last few minutes. Watch what Moses says. So, so teach us. Lord, we need your help because our thinking is wrong. Lord, we need your help because our, the whole way that we, our whole perspective is skewed.

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. I think verse 13 captures the entire essence of the last part of chapter, of Psalm 90. Look at verse 13, where he says, return, O Lord.

God has said to man, man, you're being judged, return back to the dust of the earth. But now, man who has seen God in his eternality, and now man that has prayed and seen God in his faithfulness, and in his awesome judgment, he says, God, return. God, we want you. Return. How long, Lord?

Now, return, O Lord, how long, let it repent thee concerning thy service. God, we want you. God, we want you.

We want you. I wonder in your chastisement, I wonder in your, perhaps your stint in mediocrity right now, I wonder is there ever a pressing, urging, pulling, convicting sense in your heart to say, God, I want you. When's the last time you had a moment of God consciousness? When's the last time you just got up in the morning and your thought turned to, God, God, you love me and I love you. And God, I want to know you, O God, to know you and the power of your resurrection, the fellowship of your sufferings. O God, I just want to know, where is that? There's a group of students in Asbury, Kentucky right now, I don't know much about what's going on. They say it's revival.

Hope it is. But I'll say this, God is no respecter of persons. And maybe, just maybe, a group of college students said, God, we want you. More than a career and more than you as an accoutrement in our lives, we want you, O God, we want you.

Where is that? Where's the passion for God? Where's a genuine desire to say, O God, I want to know you. And all your fullness, O God, I don't deserve you.

But, O God, would you come? How long? Where's that urgency? Where's that passion? Is it nothing? Is it nothing? No, I think that our hope should be in God alone.

That's really the point. You want hope? Hope is God. Hope is not getting out of judgment. Hope is not getting God to change His mind about chastisement. Hope is not, no, hope is God, I just want you, God, I want you, and I can have Him.

He's available. God's knowable. God, God is relatable. God's there. Our hope should be in God. And so with that big rock thought in mind, let me just encourage you to pray these three ways in conclusion. With that big rock thought in mind, verse 13, return, O Lord, how long? Let me just encourage you to pray three different ways. Here they are, ready?

Here they are. And this should be your prayer for the rest of the Bible conference. Number one, ask God for a fresh perspective on your life. Ask God to give you a fresh perspective on your life.

Some of you have your life all planned out. Would you please, in this Bible conference, ask God to give you a fresh perspective on your life. That's verse 12. Teach me, O Lord. Teach me, God, because I don't normally, I don't naturally do that. We don't naturally have a good perspective of our lives. We don't naturally have a good perspective of the time of our life.

We don't naturally have, we need God to teach us. O God, teach me to number my days. You know what we number, right? We number our years. I told you I'm 56. How many days old am I?

I don't know. But God says, quit numbering years, start numbering days, realizing that I work not in units of years, I work every day. His mercies are new every day.

His grace is new every day. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and boast not thyself but tomorrow, thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Listen, today is the day.

Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. The point is, you've got one day, and so do I. You've got one day to serve God, and guess what day that is? It's today. And if you won't serve Him today, you're not going to serve Him.

We're procrastinators, all of us. God says, today's your day. Teach me God, teach me God.

Ask God to give you a fresh perspective of life. I have a friend who when he turned 50, he's in his 60s now. He said, well, you know, if I lived to be threescore and 10, 70 years of age, that I only have X number of days left, so he figured out how many days there were between his 50th birthday and his 70th birthday. Put it in the leap years, all that, and he bought marbles.

That exact number of marbles, so whatever that is, the 8,000 marbles, whatever it was. And he put 8,000 marbles in a big jar, and he put a jar right next to it. And from the day after his 50th birthday, he began to take a marble from that jar and put it in this jar. I put it in the jar, dink, dink, dink, I don't know why I'm saying dink, but dink. I saw him recently, he's in his 60s. How's that jar thing going, I said. He said, I'm losing my marbles.

So are you, and so are you. And I don't need to tell you the stories about people that don't live to be 70. You've got one day, that's today, God teach me that. Ask God for a fresh perspective on your life. If we lack wisdom, we ask of God. He giveth to all men liberally and prayeth not.

By the way, that's one of the benefits of trials. That's one of the benefits of chastisement in James 1, is it forces us to say, God, what is my life all about? God, what are you doing? Oh God, I need to see this thing differently. That's what Moses was doing in a trial, saying, God, I need wisdom. So do you.

Number two, not only ask God for a fresh perspective on your life, and I would even say underneath that, let the brevity of life mean urgency, not despondency. It's like the team that's down by 20 points in the fourth quarter. You've got two kinds of players. One kind of player is like, okay, we've got to go small ball, we've got to chuck this thing up, we're going to only shoot three pointers, we're going to get back in this game.

Why? Because brevity means urgency. Then you've got the one guy saying, well, we lost this game, we lost this game in the first quarter, we might as well just quit right now and go to, you know. Let brevity, let the brevity of your life mean urgency, not despondency. Ask God for fresh perspective. Number two, determine to find satisfaction in God's unfailing love. And here we are.

We've come full circle, haven't we? Determine to find satisfaction in God's unfailing love. Moses said, oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy. Oh God, may we be satisfied in what, in your love for us alone.

Oh God, may that be our stay. See the word satisfy, Moses used that word throughout the Torah. And in the use of the word satisfy, in every other occasion that Moses used this word, it meant to fill, as in fill us with food.

The Lord, you fill it, like filling, he used it in regard to the manna. That God, every morning you give us food and we eat until we're full. And what Moses said is, oh God, what you've done for us physically, what you've done for us with food, oh God, do that with your very self.

Oh God, may we be full of you, may we be full with a rock solid understanding of your great and loyal love for us. But I'll tell you what, when you truly understand that God loves you, period. And there's nothing you can do today to make God love you any more than he already loves you. But when you fully apprehend the love of God in your life, it becomes the greatest incentive, it becomes the greatest security, it becomes the greatest satisfaction you could ever realize. Paul said it's the love of Christ that constraineth us. Because if we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again. But when I just realize how much Jesus loves me, when I just realize what the love of God is for me, hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us.

We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the squirrels good, and seeth his brother hath need, and shut up his vows of compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him? My little children, bless not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. What's John saying?

He's saying, boy, when you truly apprehend the love of God, when you truly apprehend who God is, and the fact that he loves me, loyally and faithfully and steadfastly, it changes everything. Oh God, may that be my — determined to be satisfied with the steadfast love of God in your life. Ask God to help you to be satisfied. God, it's not what you give me. It's not what you do for me.

It's not the next thing on the checklist. God, it's you and you alone. God, I'm satisfied in my relationship with you because everything tentacles out of that. Ask God for a fresh perspective, determined to find satisfaction in God's love alone. And then lastly, pray for God's glory. Listen. Pray for God's glory to be reflected in your family and work.

I should have said it this way. Pray for God's glory to be reflected in your life, in the life of your family, and in the illustration of your work. Oh, look at what it says here in verse number — and I'm rushing a little bit — but look at verse number 15. I love how the psalm ends. He says, make us glad. Make us glad according to the days when thou hast afflicted us. Lord, may our future joys and satisfactions outnumber the days of our chastisement. Verse 16.

Watch this. Let thy work appear unto thy servants and thy glory unto their children. What's he asking for? What's the psalmist asking for?

He's saying, Lord, I want your glory demonstrably, your — what you can do, who you are, the reputation that you have. Oh, God, I want that to be — I want that to be evident. Oh, God, would you do something that is demonstrably from you? Oh, God, I'm tired of seeing the manipulations of man and the things that I can do and these little dots that I call life.

God, I want to see what you can do. God, let your work be known. It's the same prayer that Habakkuk prayed. When Habakkuk lamented, Lord, why would you ever judge us with the Babylonians?

They're worse than we are. And God had to teach him that lesson. But then finally, Habakkuk learned it and said, oh, God, revive thy work in the midst of the years. Oh, God, do a work.

Oh, God, we want to see you. God, do something on this campus that everyone would have to say, that was God. That wasn't some preacher.

That wasn't some conference. That wasn't some Bible class. That was God. That was God. May God's work be evident here. May God's glory be evident here. That was Moses' prayer.

God, show yourself. Look at verse number 18 and 17 in closing. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. What a beautiful, what a beautiful verse.

Pleasantness. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Establish thou the work of our hands upon us.

Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. God, here's my parting prayer, said Moses. God, God, would you just, when people see us, I want them to see the beauty of you. I want your beauty to be honored. When people see me, may they see Christ. Because the greatest work that God did was Christ.

The greatest beauty that God has is Christ. And Lord, may your beauty be upon me. And then Lord, establish my work. And God, from here on, Lord, may everything I do, may everything I touch, may every person I interact with, God, may it be a reflection of your work in me. Establish it. God, I don't want to waste one more moment. I want people to know I identify with you, and I want people to know that you are working in my life. So how about it?

We're done. How about it? How about it? Can Bob Jones University be a place that the on-looking world says, God's beauty is upon that place. We see it in their attitudes, we see it in their passion, we see it in their single-minded love for God. Those young people, what a commitment they have. God is at work in their lives.

How about it? Oh, satisfy us early with thy steadfast love. Father, thank you for this opportunity that you've given me to speak to these friends, these new friends of mine. Lord, our great prayer today is that this passage would be more than just an intellectual exercise, the assimilation of some facts and characteristics. But, oh God, today I pray that you would do a work down deep on the inside, insofar that you bring revival to every individual heart. Oh God, please, may we pray these simple prayers for wisdom, for satisfaction, for blessing. Oh God, imbue us today with hope and expected confidence about our future in Christ. And Lord, may the blip of our lives, may the blip of our lives be used in eternal ways for your glory. I pray. You've been listening to the conclusion of a sermon preached by Pastor Kurt Skelly from Bob Jones University's 2023 Bible Conference. Thanks for listening and join us next time as we'll hear more Souls During Sermons on The Daily Platform.