Psalm 90 | Teach Us to Number Our Days (No Audio/Video, Manuscript only)
The Good News About Death | Enriching Tradition • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 41:02
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Alright, show of hands, who in here has started listening to Christmas music? Anyone?
Anyone start decorating yet? Honestly, I almost put some lights out on my house cause it’s been warmer and I hate doing it when it’s freezing cold, but I figured since we’re not in Kentucky I better not… no offense to those of you from Kentucky!
Gentleman… how’s your Christmas shopping coming along? Don’t raise your hand, but I know there are some procrastinators in here. We don’t need you to raise your hands, you’d all wait to the last second to do so anyway, we don’t need you to raise your hands because you don’t need any more encouragement! You’re all too proud of your procrastinating as it stands arleady!
Right, you’re the ones out there on Christmas Eve just finishing up your shopping list. We know who you are. You’re the guy who just hits the Walmart gift card carousel because you ran out of time. Hey, no judgement… who doesn’t enjoy a good gift card!
Well, after this morning, you can’t say you haven’t been warned. The clock is ticking! Christmas is fast approaching.
Speaking of ticking clocks, how much time do you think you all have left on yours. Ha! You see what I did there? How much time do you think you have left on your internal clock!
Quite a segway isn’t it… we’ve been in a series called the good news about death and I realize no one in our world really likes to think this way, but your clock, my clock, it’s ticking folks.
How old are you? What’da think you’ve got left?
Heart disease runs in my family. I recently started taking some pill my Doctor says will help my high cholesterol. Rachel will hate me for saying this, but I’ve prolly got a good 20 to 25 years before my ticker gives out… Lord willing, maybe 30, 35, but, honestly, I don’t know, I might only have 20 hours. I’m not sure what the countdown is set to, but it’s set. My clock is ticking and so is yours. It’s been said the only 2 certainties in life are taxes and death. Uncle Sam and the Grim Reaper. They come for us all!
Now, I realize, as I’ve mentioned that this is not a warm and cuddly topic, but hang with me. We’re not going all doom and gloom this morning. As sobering as it can be to think about our mortality, because of Jesus, there’s also a lot to fill us with hope and joy even within a discussion about our deaths. And as morbid as it is to think about the reality that our clock is ticking, there is a lot of wisdom in facing up to this truth.
(title Slide)You see, when we live as if we’ll never die, we tend to waste the life we have. We worry about things that don’t really matter, we fret over things that are not in our control, and we become consumed by stuff that is not eternal.
But when we face reality, that life is a gift from God that is fleeting. It’s not a status we’ve earned; it’s a gracious gift we’ve been given. When we recognize the reality that our lives in this world are fleeting, that we are frail and as dust, yet, the Lord God is mindful of us! When we remember this, we will better recognize the sacred weight of every second of our lives and be empowered to live with joy as we realize that for the believer this is as close to hell as we will ever be!
Because of sin, death was a judgement, but now because of Jesus, death no longer has the final word but has been resurrected into the door for believers through which we walk onward and upward into an eternity with God!
If you brought your Bible, I’ll invite you to open them with me to Psalm 90 and we’ll be looking at a prayer from a man named Moses!
You’ll see as we read the middle stanzas of this psalm display the dark side of this coin we call life. However, I want you to notice that this darkness is not given the first or final word in our Psalm. As real as the judgement is we currently sit under, experiencing the trials of life and the loss of loved ones and health to death and decay, this fact and the harshness life is set up against a God who is sovereign, personal, eternal and able to establish the work of our hands.
As we contemplate our mortality, this morning, I pray that this Great and Good God would encourage our hearts with the hope of eternity.
With that in mind lets read the Psalm together.
Psalm 90:1–17 (NIV)
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. 3 You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” 4 A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. 5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death— they are like the new grass of the morning: 6 In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. 7 We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. 8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. 9 All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. 10 Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. 11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 13 Relent, Lord! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants. 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble. 16 May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children. 17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands.
I. The Lord is sovereign, personal, and eternal. (vv. 1-2)
As you heard in the middle of this Psalm and I told you to expect, it gets dark there in the middle as Moses assesses the state of humanity apart from Christ, in flight away from God. It’s a bleak outlook on humanity and the judgement under which we stand, but it’s not inaccurate is it. Honestly, for those of us who stand sheltered in Christ, with God as our dwelling place and refuge, we can sympathize we can relate with the word of Moses about the affliction, suffering and brevity of life.
However, before we get to the middle, again I want for you to notice what get’s the first and final word for Moses and what should get the first and final word for us as well! Death, suffering, they are realities against which we now contend, but only for a season! God, the eternal and almighty King, He has the first and final word over us and His creation! Even as creation groans, as Paul writes, we look forward to what the pangs of birth with bring to fruition for the people of faith in this God whom Moses invites us to gaze upon first in this Psalm.
Lord, He says.
I looked up this word. It’s not the personal name for God that He gave to Himself at the burning bush with Moses. It’s not Yahweh. Yahweh is God’s personal name. It means, I am and I will be. Or He who is and was and forever will be. That’s not who Moses address. No, here the word used is Adonai, which means Lord, Master, King, Sovereign. (for some help understading the names of God see the Bible projects video: “God's Name Has Changed?! (Learn Its Interesting Biblical History)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLrGM26pmM0)
Moses invites us before we think upon the brevity of life and the harshness of death. He invites us to gaze upon the Sovereign King! The King who is in control, when all feel out of control! The King who formed the mountains, who formed the creation of this world in which we live, who formed you and who formed me! Moses invites us to gaze upon the Sovereign Lord!
The Sovereign Lord, who even though His is supreme, and great and powerful, is approachable.
Lord, Moses prays, You have been our dwelling place…
Again I looked up that word, dwelling place. I can’t pronounce it in Hebrew, but it means refuge and shelter from danger and hardship!
Lord, Master, Sovereign King over all. Maker of mountains, Maker of the Earth and the air and all that is, you have been our dwelling place, our refuge from danger and hardship, not just for us, but throughout all generation.
(could go to blank screen) Love ones, I’ve heard this from many recently. There is a fear in the air over the state of things our country. I feel it myself. With the passing of Issue 1 and the free license we the people have given to anyone for basically any reason to murder innocent children. With the passing of issue 2, we the people have told our children they should seek solice, comfort and security not in the this Great and Good God of Heaven but in substances, in marijauna and narcotics. Is life to hard for you? Well then escape to some substance to find the solace your soul craves. With the passing of these laws and others, our government and we the people have shirked our God given authority to praise God’s good and restrain what God says is evil! Instead evil is now called good and the good as God defines it is called evil!
Indeed we are in dark days and there is fear about the direction of our country, but before you or I loose hope, look with me not to politics or goverenments, look not to the minds of fickle men, those who would be governed, look with me with that dear old Saint, Moses to the God who stands over and above it all, still on His throne, still ruling and reigning from Heaven! Do not loose hope, little flock! Jesus is still King! We will not nor have we even been saved by votes, by laws, or by government! Jesus is King and His is savior and because of that we still have hope!
Darkness, as dark as it gets is nothing. Darkness lasts not even for 1 second, when you turn on the light! As we move into a season of advent 2 weeks from now, we would be wise to remember that a great light has shown into this darkness and this light will not be over come by this or any other darkness!!!!
Lord, you have been, you are, you will be our dwelling place, our shelter from danger and hardship throughout all generations!
I was talking with Wes about this passage and he told me, leave don’t skip this line. Through out all generations. Don’t skip this line!
If you know Wes and Lynne even a little, you’ll know they are grandparents. You’ll know this because so much is their joy at being grandparents, they can’t help but praise and proclaim the blessings of having grandchildren frequently and often. Honestly, when I see Wes light up at the mention of his grand kids, so tangible and evident is the gleam in his eye that I can’t help but share in His joy!
But Wes told once that with this joy, there always was a season of fear for him that came at the announcement of his first grandchild. He said his heart was filled with fear at what kind of world his granddaughter would be brought into. His heart was filled with fear until that is, the Lord Jesus reminded Him of this truth, He is the dwelling place for those who believe through out each and every generation!
From everlasting to everlasting, Jesus is King!
And again I looked up those words. Everlasting to everlasting. They are the same Hebrew words modified by the sentence structure and surrounding pronouns to mean something like this paraphrase. From distance times long forgotten to an an indeterminate and unending time going on into the future, You are God!
Before we go further, can I invite you to just sit in this for a minute. We are going to sing Worthy of it all at the end of this message. This is why we sing it Church. Who else, is like our God, our dwelling place! Our God of long distant times past forgotten, of an indeterminate and unending time going on forever into the future! The God of each and all and every generation! Who else is sovereign like Him, Powerful like Him, and yet personal like Him, approachable like Him! Only He is worthy and He is worthy Church! He is worthy of it all. Of your life and mine. Every millisecond of the suffering we face in the hope of standing in His glory, only He is worth of it and He is worthy of it all. Amen?!
Now as we move forward with Moses to the next part of this prayer to think of our mortality, I’d invite you as with Moses, to keep one eye fixed upon your King. Keep one eye fixed upon the Lord who is our dwelling place as you think with me about our ensuing deaths.
Trans—> If we flee from this Sovereign, Personal and eternal God, vv. 3-12 spell out for us the judgement we can expect to live under and it’s a bleak picture.
II. We are a race under judgement of a fleetingly fickle life that ends in death. (vv. 3-12)
Before a sovereign and enteral God (a God stands outside the bounds of time) v. 4, we are literally as dust! vv. 3-4. Like dust in the wind, like grass in a field… here today and tomorrow dried and shriveled up! (vv. 5-6). I don’t know if I should or not, but I love v. 3. God says to people, “return to dust, you mortals.” I don’t know why I love that language but I do. Who can say something like this and expect for it to happen? Who but our King? With but a word, He literally, literally can take a body and drop it to a pile of dust to the ground!
Moses recounts, our days are a fleetingly fickle struggle, dust in the wind. At best, we can expect about 70-80 years and then we’re snuffed out like one blows out the flame of a candle. (vv. 10)
And not only are our lives fleetingly fickle, we live them under the ever watchful eye of a this Holy Sovereign King who does not like what He sees. (vv. 7-9, 11)
All of our iniquities, that’s our wrong doing, the bad we do. As well as the good that we fail to do and all the motives and thoughts of our hearts and minds that do not square with the will of the Sovereign King.
Even the secret sins… the things no one else knows or sees about you. Careless words thought and not spoken. Careless words that we speak. Slips of the tongue. Gossip. Slander. Slides of hand with the pen on our tax returns, white lies spoken to reshape our reputations ever so slightly for the better, filters we add to images online attempting to promote lies, versions of reality we wish were true but are not, versions of ourselves that signal to the watching world a picture of ourselves that are fraudulent and hypocritical.
And before you say, come on preacher lay off the Old Testament here! Don’t be so judgy! Enough with all this talk of the wrath of God against sin. Enough with the Old Testament! This God who Moses says deserves to be feared, this is the God of the old testament! We’re under the new covenant of grace and the God of love. Jesus changed everything!
That’s not an untrue statement friend but it’s more nuanced than what I just said.
While it is true that Jesus changed everything, He did not change God!
Here the words of Jesus, the God who was and is, the Sovereign who is personal and eternal from the New Testament:
Matthew 12:34–36 (NIV)
34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. 35 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.
Turns out the meek and mild savior born in a manger wasn’t always so meek and mild always. Indeed our inquiries are every before Him. Even our hidden secret sins, even our empty words will be judged! (for more on this see: https://www.gotquestions.org/idle-words.html)
Jesus Himself, endorses Moses words here in Psalm 90:11. Great is the fear that is due to the Lord GOD!
Matthew 10:28 (NIV)
28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
The one who can say to us mere mortals, turn to dust and we would instantly be dropped to a pile of sand on the floor where once our body stood! It is He and only He who is worthy of our fear and awe!
Church, death is a fearsome thing, especially for those who have no concept of eternity.
Our Basque friends, in Spain, as a culture they are completely devoid of a concept of an afterlife. They do not enjoy speaking about death, even more than most and avoid the subject almost all together. Why, because for them what comes after this, is blackness. Nothingness. An eternal empty void of darkness. It’s a hopeless world view. Join with me in praying for them! That God would pierce their very present darkness with the glorious the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ!
Death, indeed, is a fearsome thing for those who are running from God and perishing. Even for believers, death is a fearsome thing and we know where we’re going, but the fear we are to have is not of death, it is a fear of the one who has the power over death, the power to destroy both soul and body in hell!
And before we move on I can’t not address the fear of the Lord. It’s all over the Bible and as I just highlighted not just in the old testament. We are told in the New Testament by Jesus Himself and his contemporaries to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 4).
And I think, 1 John really helps us understand the kind of fear we are to have towards the Lord. 1 John 4:18 tells us the kind of fear we are to be done with, while also showing us a picture of the kind of fear we are to pursue in Jesus.
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
According to 1 John and to John Pipers comments on 1 John (amended from: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-does-it-mean-for-the-christian-to-fear-god), “God doesn’t want us to cower like slaves in the household where the children should be enjoying sweet peace in their Father’s care. If we can get to the point of perfect love, of understanding and receiving the love that is dispensed in and through the person of Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t fear God’s rejection of us or His wrath. We would be really content in His acceptance of us through our faith in Jesus. If we’ve known the love of God or as Moses prays here, we’ve come to God as our dwelling place and refuge, we can be done — we should be done — with a cowering fear that we might not be saved, that we might not escape death and rather we should enjoy our care and our security in God’s house.”
Essentially, because of Jesus, we need not experience a fear of God’s wrath, but there is a respect and awe, a reverence that we should carry towards God. A respect for His power and might, a fear that draws us in rather than drives us away.
And I realize this is a hard thing to grasp so allow me to share an illustration (blank screen), again from John Piper (see early citation). John tells of a time when he visited a friend named Dick with his six year old son Karsten.
As he tells it, he and his son approached Dick’s house, and as they did, they were greeted by a great monster of a dog at the door. A dog that looked Karsten eyeball to eyeball. Now apparently, John had forgotten something back in the car and so he sent his son Karsten back to grab it. And as Karsten ran back to the car, the dog went racing up behind the six-year-old with a low growl. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and predictably, Karsten was terrified.
At this point Dick leaned out the door and shouted to John’s six year old son, “Karsten, maybe you better not run. He doesn’t like it when people run away from him.”
And as Piper writes, “This will preach.”
And Dick continued, “Kartsen, don’t run, He doesn’t like it when people run away from Him. Just walk beside him. Walk with Him. You can even put your hand around his neck.”
Now imagine with me this great dog is God. Perhaps a more appropriate image would be to imagine him as Lion. The Lion of the tribe of Judah. This great lion, He’s not safe, He’s a lion, but He is good.
Here’s my point: God is horrifically dangerous to run away from, and we should be terrified to run away from Him because His wrath for our iniquities and secret sins, it fills his face with red hot indignation and fury, but if we will stay with him, if we will walk with Him, if we will seek refuge in the dwelling place of the Cross of Christ and His resurrection, God’s growl is changed from one of wrath bent on our destruction to one of protection for His own.
And so when Moses speaks of the fear due to God’s name, it’s not a fear of punishment as one who runs from Him, it’s a fear of awe at the power of this great beast who will protect him if He runs to Him! And you say, how do you know that, well look with me at the last part of Psalm 90.
III. We can live with joy and gladness in the face of Death because the God who is sovereign and personal is able to establish us and the work of our hands into eternity. (vv. 13-17)
Relent LORD, Moses now shifts in the name He uses for God. You can tell because LORD is in all capitals. This is the Hebrew word, Yahweh, the personal name for God. The name that means He who is and forever will be! The Great I Am! Relent LORD, Moses says! Turn away from the fearful pursuit of us in judgement and wrath, turn from that, to a pursuit of us with compassion and your unfailing love! Turn away from judgement to compassion that we might not fear death or fear your wrath and punishment but that we might sing for joy and be glad all our days as short and fleeting as they may be.
Make us glad, for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.
Some of you known trouble, haven’t you? More trouble than most. The Israelites, whom Moses led, they knew it too. Slavery at the hand of the Egyptians, forced immigration, a flight from the only home they had known, fleeing in the night for asylum and refuge, facing down death from war and wild animals, death from the elements, death from starvation and dehydration. Some of the affliction they suffered was from the reality of living in a fallen world with sinful men and women. Some of your trouble is from this as well. But some of what they suffered was judgement, discipline from their Heavenly Father for the choices and sins they committed against Him and sadly some of what we suffer is discipline for our choices as well. Needlessto say, they knew suffering, like we know suffering, but here Moses prays to this sovereign, personal and eternal God, turn our suffering to gladness, let us know more days of gladness, more days of joy more than the days for which we suffered!
Church God will make good on this prayer! For our life, on this side of heaven, is brief. But a breathe, And while we can know joy and gladness today in the safe harbor of God who desires to become for us a dwelling place, we cannot yet know those joys or that gladness apart from sin, one day though, one day after you and I taste death or Jesus returns God will make us glad for not just for as many days or years that we’ve been afflicted and seen trouble but for thousands and eons more into eternity!
As we said at the start our clock is ticking, but praise be to God, for the Believer, this is as close to hell as you and I will ever be.
Please pray with me:
Sovereign God. Maker of mountains. Giver of life. Yahweh, You who were. You who are. You who will forever be, teach us to number our days, to live in your love. Relent from sending your wrath upon us, for Jesus’s sake and because of His blood that was shed. Have compassion on us, your servants, your sons and daughters. Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love that we may sing for joy and be glad all the days of our fleeting lives. And as we look forward to eternity, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom, that we may enjoy your good gifts this side of heaven. Establish us in your love and the works of our hands both now and into eternity! For your Glory and our Joy we pray. Amen!