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The sermon presents God as the permanent habitation of His people, contrasting His stability with Israel’s wilderness instability and the insecurity of life apart from Him. Spurgeon connects assurance of salvation with love for fellow believers and with an intimate, unreserved relationship with God. Christians are urged to rejoice in their eternal home, while those outside Christ are warned of eternal homelessness and punishment. The invitation to Christ is explicitly gracious: salvation cannot be bought or earned, but is received freely, followed by lifelong love and service.
Theological center: God Himself is the believer’s secure and everlasting habitation, entered through the free grace of Jesus Christ and evidenced by love for God’s people.
Applications: Examine your spiritual dwelling · Love fellow believers · Receive Christ without payment · Love and serve Christ forever
Primary texts: Psalm 90:1 · 1 John 4:13-16 · Hebrews 4:9
“LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Psalm 90:1 MOSES was the inspired author of three devotional compositions. We first of all find him as Moses the poet, singing the song which is aptly joined with that of Jesus, in the Revelation, where it says, “The song of Moses and of the Lamb.” He was a poet on the occasion when Pharaoh and his hosts were cast into the Red Sea, “His chosen captains also were drowned in the Red Sea.” Further on in his life we discover him in the character of a preacher, and then his doctrine distilled as the dew, and his speech dropped like the rain, in those chapters which are full of glorious imagery and rich with poetry, which you will find in the Book of Deuteronomy. And now in the Psalms, we find him the author of a prayer, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God.” Happy combination of the poet, the preacher, and the man of prayer! Where three such things are found together, the man becomes a very giant above his fellows. It often happens that the man who preaches has but little poetry, and the man who is the poet would not be able to preach and utter his poems before immense assemblies, but would be only fit to write them by himself. It is a rare combination when true devotion and the spirit of poetry and eloquence meet in the same man. You will see in this Psalm a wondrous depth of spirituality. You will mark how the poet subsides into the man of God and how, lost in himself, he sings his own frailty, declares the glory of God, and asks that he may have the blessing of his heavenly Father always resting on his head. This first verse will derive peculiar interest if you remember the place where Moses was when he thus prayed. He was in the wilderness. Not in some of the halls of Pharaoh, nor yet in a habitation in the land of Goshen, but in a wilderness. And perhaps from the summit of the hill, looking upon the tribes of Israel as they were taking up their tents and marching along, he thought, “Ah! poor travelers, they seldom rest anywhere. They have not any settled habitation where they can dwell. Here they have no continuing city.” But he lifted his eyes above and he said, “LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Passing his eye back through history, he saw one great temple where God’s people had dwelt. And with his prophetical eye rolling with sacred frenzy, he could foresee that throughout all futurity the specially chosen of God would be able to sing, “LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Taking this verse as the subject of our discourse this morning, we sh…