The Address That Never Changes

A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Part of a series from favorite Psalms, “Lift Up Your Eyes!” 

Turn in your Bible, please, to Psalm 90.  Psalm 90.  If you have a pew Bible, it’s page 929. I am this summer preaching on some of the favorite Psalms.  This is the one Psalm out of the one hundred and fifty Psalms that is given to us by Moses.  We believe that the Psalms began to be collected about the time of David and many of the Psalms are from David.  But if that’s true, this would probably be the oldest Psalm because Moses lived several hundred years before David. 

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.  Before the mountains were borne or you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Verse 4:  For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by.  Like a watch in the night.

Verse 12 says: Teach us therefore to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Verse 14:  Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love that we may sing for joy and be glad all of our days.”

And Moses winds up with a prayer. “May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us.  And establish the work of our hands for us.”  Yes, he repeats it, “Establish the work of our hands.”

By way of reference, the window on the floor side, right over there, that’s the stained glass window of the last verse of this chapter. 

Moses is one of the great, great stories of the Bible.  And sometimes, sometimes when we get to one of those incredible stories in the Bible, we forget that it is also about us.  Let’s begin with Moses as he might have written this Psalm.  Would have been at the end of his life.  Probably atop Mount Nebo.  If you can picture Palestine, the Jordan River on the far side of Palestine, past the Jordan River is a little mountain range and one of the peaks is called Mount Nebo.  And that’s where the Israelites camped before they collected themselves to cross over the Jordan and being claiming the Promised Land.  I see Moses standing on top of Mount Nebo, taking that scarf that Mid eastern men wear to shield them from the sun, and putting it back over his shoulder so he can see better the vast expanse of the Promised Land.  A far- away look in his eyes as he remembers.  Part of it he remembers by the story his mother told him.  You see it all began in Egypt.  The Hebrew people had been enslaved and in bondage by the Egyptians for several hundred years.  It had gotten worse and worse.  It had gotten to the point where the Egyptians, especially the wealthy ones, lived in absolute luxury and the Hebrews, poverty, cruelty, slavery.  In that situation, Moses’ mother bore a child.  She did not want to give it over.  She did not want that little boy to simply become a slave.  And so she hid it.  You find the story in Exodus.  Exodus, the second and the third chapters.  If I had time, I would go back and walk you through it.  In that story, incredible story that it was, Moses who begins his Psalm, “You have been our dwelling place in all generations,” he remembers his first dwelling place.  It was his mother’s, but it was also something his mother did when she could no longer hide him.  She fashioned a little basket of papyrus and then with tar, she made it waterproof.  And on a day, she took the little boy and she put him in the basket, down to the Nile River and let it go, hoping that Pharaoh’s daughter, as often she did, would bathe in the Nile River that day.  Maybe, just maybe, she would discover that basket, have an affection for the boy, and take the boy home.  When I get to heaven, I’m gonna meet that woman.  Talk about trust.  Talk about a mother’s trust.  Talk about the dwelling place of a mother’s trust in what God can do with her son.  Consider… when she let loose of that basket, the current could have taken it out in the middle of the river.  Or, somebody could have intercepted that basket and seen that it was a Hebrew child and immediately taken it to the slave par.. save …slave place or even turned it over.  Instead, the Lord God gave that mother the trust that her inventiveness would work.  And it did!  And it was Pharaoh’s daughter who opened the basket and saw that little Hebrew boy.  And he was crying, and she felt sorry for him.  And took that little Hebrew boy and named him Moses, because in Hebrew, that sounds very much like drawn away, or drawn out of.  And she knew she drew this little boy out of the Nile River.  Well, that mother had her daughter, older daughter, watching in the shadows and when Pharaoh’s daughter took the little baby and held it, that older daughter came up and said, “Would you like for me to find a Hebrew woman who could nurse that baby?”  And the daughter said, Pharaoh’s daughter said, “Would you please?  Go, go do it.  And tell ‘em I’ll pay.”  And that’s how Moses’ mother got to be with Moses in the early days of his life.  But the day would come when the dwelling place of a trusting mother, the address of a believing mother, turned into the dwelling place of preparation.  For Pharaoh’s daughter came and got the boy, took him to the palace, gave him the best of training.  Moses grew up with all of the advantages of an Egyptian.  He learned that those folks up there in the Palace were just folks.  He learned they had their strengths and their weaknesses just like everybody else.  And decades later, when he would face Pharaoh and say, “Let.. God says ‘Let my people go,’ ” he knew exactly how to address Pharaoh.  God is preparing Moses decades before he will need that skill.  Oh, Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. 

 Some of you who are our wonderful guests this week, you are preparing, you are preparing for ministry.  You’re preparing for things that God will open and I know how impatient, at least I was.  Now, you know, I am sure you are holier than I was back in that day.  But I wanted the full map.  You know, I wanted to know what God was going for me for the rest of my life.  It doesn’t work that way.  God gives you a little piece of the map and he says, “Dwell there.” And that’s your dwelling place.  And when the next part opens up, you get another piece of the map.  When the next bridge comes, you cross that bridge but you don’t get any indication of the next one.  That’s the dwelling of the Lord God who has been with us for all generations.

Well, Moses had a dwelling place, too, that he would visit to his shame.  He killed a man. He saw an Egyptian persecuting one of his kinsmen and he killed him.  Hid his body in the sand.

Thought it was secret.  They found out.  Moses had to run for his life.  He had gone into the dwelling place Paul mentions in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned…” including Moses.  Ran for his life.  Ran for the mountains.  Ran for the far-away places.  Running away.  That is no answer to sin, you know that!  Running away won’t get you anywhere.  Facing it and letting God do something with it in Jesus Christ our Lord, that’s how you ought to handle it.  Well, he found himself in the mountain and he entered into the dwelling place of connection.  Call this the “connection address.”  A time when Moses, I believe, for the really first time connected with God.  In the solitude and the grandeur of the mountains, and the starkness of them, that mountain range has nothing like the Appalachians or the Rockies.  It is almost treeless.  Rugged.  But it is a place of majesty and beauty.  No wonder Moses says, “You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations before the mountains were born.”  Ah.  He met the God who made the mountains in the mountains.  How many of us have done the same?  Before the mountains were borne, you were God.  He and God got on a first-name basis in those mountains.  But he connected with someone else, a family.   Water was life; he was by a well.  A priest of Midian by the name of Jethro, had seven daughters.  Don’t know if he had any sons – never mentions them.  But anyway, the daughters brought the flocks to water and apparently, every day the shepherds would chase ‘em away.  It was only when the shepherds finished that the daughters could do their work.  Sounds a little familiar.  Anyway, the shepherds were interrupted by a solitary man over there called Moses.  They got home early.  “How come you’re home early,” said Jethro.  “There was a man that helped us.”  “Who was he?”  “Don’t know.”  Jethro found him, said, “Welcome to my family.”  Moses married, had children, had every intention of spending the rest of his life with Jethro.  God had other plans and one day, out on the mountain side, tending his sheep, probably looking at the same bush he had looked at many times, but suddenly, God spoke through that bush.  It was burning, but not burning up.  Moses turned aside to see what was going on and God said, “Moses, Moses.”

What does Moses mean?  Drawn out.  God is drawing out of Moses a response.  A response to a call.  A response to a responsibility.  A response to use his gifts.  A response to use his background.  “Moses, Moses,” and God in that moment turns Moses’ life around.  Every believer has some burning bush experiences.  When life turns around, when where you’ve been is where you’ve always been but something happens and it’s different and you see it and you know it and you hear God and you respond to God, connecting.  The dwelling place of connection.

 Want to ask you something.  Have you connected with God?  Maybe for the first time.  May the God who wants to connect with each one of us be here for you this morning and may you hear your name called and may you respond.  And it’s possible that God has a special thing for you to do, a special job, a special gift to be used, and you hear your name this morning, and you say, “Yes.”  That’s the dwelling place of connection.

 Well, you know the story how he went back into Egypt, the ten plagues, that Pharaoh let ‘em go, and then they began the dwelling place of the journey.  The journey across the desert to the Promised Land.  Whoo, what a journey it was.  And the people were not particularly thrilled about the change.  They didn’t like the food, they didn’t like the climate, they didn’t like the dwelling place.  They didn’t like anything.  There are stories in the Book of Numbers which has been called the “book of complaints.”  And Moses… somebody put it like this, Moses carried him… carried them on his back all the way to the promised land.   The journey.  The journey is never easy.  Jesus said we were to take up our cross and follow him.  He didn’t say, “Take up your creampuff and follow me.”  He didn’t say, “Take up the Twinkies that I have sent from heaven and come follow me.”  He didn’t say, “Come, I’ve got some key lime pie over here.  You’ve done so well – take a big, big piece.”  He was realistic.  The journey has its tough times.  “Take up your cross daily and follow me.”  They made it across that promised land, complaining all the way, but I want you to think what happened there.  And this is what happens on your journey and mine:  things get put into place on the journey in spite of the difficulties that wouldn’t be put into place had we not been on the journey.  God gives him the Ten Commandments.  We discover our boundaries.  God gives them a place of worship – this..

the tabernacle.  We discover the church.  God gives them a place in which they can learn forgiveness, and they do.  And we do.  The journey is a place where you put things in place.

The journey is the putting together of dwelling places.  A dwelling place, like meeting God every day for a little prayer and Bible reading and soul searching and thanksgiving and praise.  Well, Moses stands on Mount Nebo and he remembers all of the dwelling places of his life, but now he knows he.. he’s not going into the Promised Land. God has told him that.  “Can’t go, Moses. This is your last address.  Mount Nebo. I’m going to give it to Joshua.  He is equipped for it.  You’re not.  And Moses, let’s go.”  But he has one last prayer.  And it is a marvelous prayer.  If it is not underlined in your Bible, solve it.  Here it is, verse 17: “May the beauty of the Lord our God rest upon us.  And establish the work of our hands for us.  Establish the work of our hands.”  In other words, Lord, may your beauty be upon all we’ve been through.

And may you take all we’ve done with our hands, we’ve made the tabernacle, we’ve preserved the Ten Commandments, we’ve put together the Ark of the Covenant, we’ve made the great journey, now, make it matter.  Put roots to it so the generations to come will know that we were here.  God does that.  “Establish the work of our hands.”  If you think about it, evil and the sacred are done with the same hands.  If you were going to describe the Lord Jesus, you could very well describe it and outline his life with hands.  The hands that Mary used to hold him, the hands that John used to baptize him, the hands that Jesus used to touch the leper, which was a no-no, and the leper was healed.    The hands that took the little babies and He blessed them with His hands.  And he said, “Allow the little ones to come to me.  Forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”  It was His hands that were spread out on the cross and pierced with nails.  The hands apart, the hands of salvation, the hands of overcoming, the hands of forgiveness.  And what of the hands of resurrection? On the Emaeus road, He with his Hands broke the bread and they knew who He was.  When He appeared before the apostles, Thomas who had doubted said, “Unless I touch the nail prints in his hands,” and Jesus said, “Here they are.”  And Thomas said, “My Lord and my God.”  Now, Thomas and Moses are together.  Listen:  “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.  Establish the work of our hands. Yes, establish the work of our hands.”  Will you pray with me?

 And Lord Jesus, we come this day and we open our hearts and our hands to you.  And may we, before we leave this place, be willing to put our hands in your hands.  May we trust our lives to you.  May we trust our futures to you.  Establish the work of our hands.  And, O Lord Jesus, if there is someone here this day who has not ever connected with you, may be this be a time of connection and communion and salvation.  And, Lord Jesus, if there are decisions to be made about a church home, or baptism, or a commitment of life, may it happen.  O Lord Jesus, be our dwelling place in these coming moments.  In Christ, our Lord, AMEN.