Hands and Habitations
Grace to you and peace from
God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our text is Psalm
90, and we consider these particular verses: “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all
generations. Before the mountains were brought
forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to
everlasting, You are God. …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.”
Thus far our text
When
he was an old man nearing the end of his life, Moses, prompted by the Holy
Spirit, wrote the words we just heard. If you read Psalm 90 in its entirety, you
realize that Moses doesn’t pull any punches. Moses knew the Law—who better than
the one through whom the Lord delivered it to His people?—and he knew his own
sinfulness. Sin draws the wrath of God upon sinners. Even if we are permitted
to grow old, we still sicken and grow weary and eventually die. It’s not
natural—we weren’t created that way—but death is God’s reaction to sin: the sin
we inherit as children of Adam and Eve, and the sins we commit in thought word
and deed, by what we do and what we leave undone. St. Paul wrote, “As sin came into the world
through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all
men sinned.”
But
as you read Psalm 90, you realize that the Lord’s wrath toward sin is only
exceeded by His love. For the person whose God is the Lord, the steadfast love
of God comforts the believer for as many days as the Lord gives. God makes His
dwelling place with and in the believer, and He allows the believer to live with
Him.
This
is the reality in which our beloved Lyle lived his life. If ever there was a
man who knew about dwelling places, it would be Lyle. In his work as a
carpenter, not to mention his work with Laborers for Christ, he knew something
about building a dwelling place. He knew what it took to build a house, to
assemble a meeting room for a church, to erect something meant to last. He also
knew how wrath could affect those dwelling places. Whether it was storms or the
wrath of earthquakes or the devastation of floods, what can be built up with
human hands can be so easily torn apart and left to decay. While he built
things to last—while he prayed that the Lord would “establish the work of our hands for us”—he also was smart enough
not to put his trust in things that moth and rust can destroy. He knew the
truth: “The wages of sin is death.”
And because of that, He knew the day would have to come when the Lord would
make all things new. There was only one dwelling place Lyle trusted, and that
was in Jesus Christ, who has been “our dwelling place in all generations,” who is the “Word made
flesh” to “dwell among us.”
Lyle
was a baptized child of God. He heard the Word of God and believed the Word of
Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. He trusted in the promise of his Lord who
said, “In My Father’s
house are many mansions; if it were
not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you to Myself; that where I am, there
you may be also.” What a wonderful blessing and
honor, to have the Lord be Lyle’s dwelling place! And on the 7th of
August, that promise was fulfilled in full, when the Lord called Lyle home to
dwell with Him forever. On one occasion when I visited Lyle in the hospital, I
remember him and Sarah asking me if the Lord would have any use for Lyle’s
abilities in heaven. Honestly, I didn’t have an answer for that. I still don’t.
But I can tell you this with certainty: Lyle is now “before the throne of God, and [serves] Him day and night within His Temple; and He Who sits
upon the throne will shelter [him] with His presence.” I don’t know what
kind of service the Lord will require from Lyle, but I know the Lord will have
something for Lyle to do, and whatever it is, it will give Lyle great joy.
The same is true for you. The day is coming when you
will be carried away “like a flood;”
you will finish your years “like a sigh.”
But you will not face that end alone—if, indeed, you can call it an end—for the
Lord will be with you, dwelling with you and in you, just as He is now. When
the number of your days is complete, He will grant you a blessed end and
graciously take you from this vale of tears to Himself in heaven, where He “will wipe away every tear from [your] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor
crying. There shall be no more pain…” And as you await that day, just as He did for Lyle
these many years, the Lord will dwell with you and within you “establish the work of [your] hands,”
using your work for His glory. God grant it for the sake of Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace which passes all understanding will keep your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.
Amen.
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