The Brevity of Life

We've been hitting some Psalms here and there for the last probably four or five years in

between different things and we are working our way through the book, Psalm 90.

There's 150 of them, so we're over the halfway point.

In the last section of the Psalms that we looked at, which is often referred to as the

third book of Psalms, you probably see in your Bible, or you may not, you may see a

designation as you flip through some of the different Psalms.

While we have them in one book, there are actually five different books that have been

categorized in that way for whatever reason.

It's uncertain as to why they were categorized that way through the years, but they are.

So Psalm 90 is the start of the fourth book of Psalms.

What we saw a lot of in the third book of Psalms were the Psalms of Asaph.

That was a large portion of those Psalms.

We see a variety of different writers of the Psalms throughout the book.

David is accredited with writing many, if not most, of the Psalms, but we see some other

characters too, Asaph being one.

And then tonight we have this Psalm of Moses from Psalm 90.

So let's pray and we'll get started.

Father God, we come to you.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us tonight, that you would help us to be free

of our worldly distractions, that you would help us to focus on you and not what we have

to do tomorrow or the rest of the week, but that we would just give you our attention

tonight.

I pray that you'd hide me behind the cross to preach and teach in a way that brings glory

and honor to you, that you take away any pride or any distractions that are in my heart tonight,

that I do a faithful job to preach this word.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right.

Psalm 90.

This Psalm, I think we can say, is split up into four sections, kind of contrasting each

other.

And so the first section starts in verse one.

Lord you have been our refuge in every generation before the mountains were born, before you

gave birth to the earth and the world from eternity to eternity, you are God.

So we are establishing very early on in the Psalm who God is, that God is above all things,

that God has created all things, that there is nothing above God and everything that there

is has been created by God.

He is eternal.

He has been, He will always be.

And so here Moses is setting us up.

He's setting up where God is and who God is in comparison to who we are.

God is eternal, but as human beings, we are mortal.

God is the one who created us.

So we are created by God.

We don't create gods.

Well, we do.

Sadly, humanity does try to create many gods and there have been many gods that have been

created in the minds of many human beings.

But there is only one God and that is the God that we are talking about tonight.

And he created us.

We did not create him.

And so we see that it is God who is in control.

God is all powerful and we are pretty pitiful, powerless human beings.

And we see that contrast here in this next section starting in verse three.

You return mankind to the dust saying, return descendants of Adam.

You are in your sight a thousand years or like yesterday that passes by, like a few

hours of the night.

You end their lives, they sleep.

They are like grass that grows in the morning.

In the morning it sprouts and grows.

By evening it withers and dries up.

And this is the description of mankind.

We are formed from the dust.

God used the dust and he made Adam.

We come from the dust and one day we will return to the dust.

It does not take our bodies long to turn into dust.

Not dependent on the conditions, but it does not take many years in the right conditions

for a bone to turn, or excuse me, for a body to turn back into nothing but a pile of dust.

And so God has created us.

He is eternal.

But we are mortal.

God made us out of the dust and these old bodies will one day die and be placed in the

ground and they will return to dust.

Now our lifetime may seem like a long time.

Our 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years if we are fortunate enough.

That seems like an eternity to us.

That seems like a long time.

But in the grand scheme of things it is nothing.

And that is what he points out here in verse 4.

For in your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that passes by, like a few hours

of the night.

So God is eternal.

Time is nothing to him.

Our lifetime to God is not even a speck in the timeline of eternity.

God is forever and we do not live forever.

We are temporary.

In the same way that we go to sleep at night, we go to sleep at 9 o'clock, we wake up at

6 o'clock and all of a sudden 9 hours has passed, but it passes by out of bling.

We go to sleep, we wake up and the time is gone.

And Moses says here, this is what time is like for God.

What seems like a long time for us is but a short time for God.

And so he is reminding us of who God is and who we are.

So we are those created by God and one day we will return to the earth.

Alright in the next section, verse 7.

For we are consumed by your anger.

We are terrified by your wrath.

You have set our unjust ways before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

For all the days ebb away under your wrath.

We end our years like a sigh.

Our lives last 70 years or if we are strong 80 years.

Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow.

Indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.

Who understands the power of your finger?

Your wrath matches the fear that is due you.

Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.

Now here we see a beautiful section.

For we are consumed by your anger.

What is he talking about?

Well it is believed and suggested that Moses probably wrote this psalm when they were wandering

in the wilderness.

They had sinned against God.

They had been disobedient to God.

And now he is talking about the wrath of God.

They certainly had experienced that in its full force.

And that is what he acknowledges here.

That they are consumed by God's anger.

He says that in verse 10, our lives last 70 years or if we are strong 80 years.

Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow.

Indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.

Here is this reminder again that our lives are short.

Even way back in Moses' day, he acknowledged, look, people don't last very long.

Moses said 70 years.

Maybe if you are lucky, you get 80 years.

And even in those 80 years, they are filled with sorrow.

They are filled with pain.

They are filled with hardship.

We could probably all attest to that.

Even in the best times of life, life is still hard.

There are still difficulties.

There are still hardships.

And so we are not guaranteed many years in this world.

Yeah, we could probably all think of some people that made it to 100 or some people

that made it to 90.

But you can also think of some people that didn't make it to 40 or 50.

And so generally speaking, we are going to have 80 years at the most, 70 years.

And they are going to pass by quickly.

And so what are we doing with those years?

Are we making the most of those years?

Especially as we begin to get closer to that 70 mark, as we begin to get closer to that

80 mark, the clock is ticking.

There aren't many years that are left.

The average age of death in the United States is 78 years.

78 years.

Maybe you get a few more.

Maybe you get a few less.

And that clock never stops ticking.

Those years are passing by.

So what are we going to do with those years?

Our time is short.

That's what Moses reminds us of in this Psalm, that our years are numbered.

We get 70.

Maybe if we're lucky, we get 80.

Maybe if we're really lucky, we get 90.

But not often is that the case.

Our years pass by quickly.

So we have to make the most of the years.

We have to make the most of those that we know that are getting up in years.

Those who are getting up the years have to make the most to impart some kind of wisdom

in those who are coming up behind them because time is ticking.

It's kind of a scary thing to think about when you start thinking about how many years

we have left.

Nobody knows how many years we have left, but 78 is the mark.

If we live to the average and we're 70 years old, that's eight years.

Let's say you know somebody that's 70.

They're going to live for eight more years.

And you only see that person four times a year.

That's 32 more times you're going to see that person.

Whoa, that kind of puts it in perspective.

Every time you see that person, maybe you see them every three months, you mark that

off the list.

You're going to see them 31 more times, 30 more times.

And as life begins to draw to a close and you kind of begin to do the math of how often

you see people and how many years you have left, what was thousands upon thousands of

times have dropped to hundreds of times, have dropped to dozens of times, have dropped to

a handful of times that you may have left to spend with those that you love.

And that's a scary thing to think about.

You may want to do the math and then again, you may not because it's kind of scary to

think I'm only going to see this person how many more times.

So is there something you need to tell somebody, some wisdom you need to impart on them?

Well, you better tell them because time is running out.

And that's what Moses says.

Look, we're in the midst of this hard time.

Life is hard.

We're not guaranteed many years.

And one day this old life's going to come to an end.

And what does he say?

And we will fly away.

That's a familiar idea to us.

We sing the song, I'll fly away.

I don't know if it comes from this verse, but I would guess that it probably does come

from this very verse that we live our life out as long or as short as it may be.

And at the end of it all, we fly away if we put our trust in Jesus Christ.

He says in verse 12, teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom

in our hearts.

That is to say, okay, our days are numbered.

So we need to be aware of that.

We need to be aware that that number is not getting bigger.

It's getting smaller.

The moment we're born, we begin to die.

The moment we're born, that's the most amount of days that we will ever have.

Now, when that timer runs out, we don't know, but our timer is ticking.

And so we need to know that our life is short.

We need to do things that are going to make a difference, that are going to help us to

draw closer to God, that are going to help us to make good decisions for ourselves and

for our family.

This is important.

We need to recognize that our days are limited.

And so we see that they are consumed by God's anger here in this section.

And then in the last section, we see this plea for God to help them, that God would

turn to them, that God would deliver them, that their days are short.

They've been wandering.

They've been experiencing the wrath of God.

But will they ever get to see any peace in the rest of their days?

Will there be any deliverance that comes in their days?

And that's what we see at the end of this section.

Verse 13, Lord, how long?

Turn and have compassion on your servants.

Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love, so that we may shout with joy and be

glad all our days.

Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us.

For as many years we have seen adversity.

Let your work be seen by your servants and your splendor by their children.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us.

Establish for us the work of our hands.

Establish the work of our hands.

So here's a prayer, God, we need you.

It's been a long time we've been wandering.

There's seasons in our life that we feel like this.

Now hopefully we hadn't been wandering for 40 years, but maybe there are seasons in our

lives and people's lives that we know where it is a long season of wandering from the

Lord, of living for the world, of living in sin.

And that's a bad place to be.

We talked about that some Sunday when we talked about Jonah.

But what does Moses do here?

He calls out, look, how long, Lord?

Is it time?

Will you have mercy on us?

Will you help us?

Will you restore our joy to us?

What does he say?

He says in verse 14, satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love.

And then in verse 15, make us rejoice.

Just as many days as you caused us to be in misery, God have mercy on us so that we would

rejoice in you in just that many days.

That as many bad days as we have, God, that you would bring that many good days into our

life.

Sometimes this needs to be our prayer.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of these truths that Moses reminds us of.

It's God who's in control.

That God is infinite.

We are finite.

We are only here for a little while.

And we don't want to use that little while to do stupid stuff and live in disobedience

to God.

And that's what Moses and the Israelites had done here.

They had done some pretty stupid things and they lived in disobedience to God.

And if they're 80 years, they had just spent half of that time wandering in the wilderness.

That's not a good use of time.

And so we want to be those who make better use of our time.

So Moses says here, look, we're in a hard time, dear Lord.

We feel your wrath, but would you just have some mercy on us?

Would you have some grace?

Would you restore us, dear Lord, so that we can rejoice in you, so that you can establish

the works of our hands?

That is so that you'll bless what we do, that our hands will do better works, that our hands

would not do the work of sin and the work of the world, but that our hands would do

the work of God.

And listen to what he says here in verse 16.

Let your work be seen by your servants and your splendor by their children.

There seems to be the idea of a generational thing here, that God's people would come to

a knowledge of God, that they would repent of their sins, that that generation would

work, that they would become servants of God, and that their children would see that and

that their children would become servants of God and that God would bless that nation,

that God would bless those people if they would only seek him, if they would only call

out to him.

And what a beautiful thought that is for us in our country, because we're not doing so

good.

If you hadn't been keeping up with the world, we're not doing too good.

The United States is not doing too good.

The world's not doing too good.

It's a lot of evil out there.

It's a lot of things going on that are just bad things.

There's a lot of people who have turned from God.

God has been taken out of everything in our country.

People have stopped living for God.

They've stopped listening to the word of God.

They've stopped living by the word of God.

And our society is just crumbling.

But what we need to do, perhaps, is look at the words of Moses here and quit trying to

think that we're our own gods, that we're in control of anything.

That's the problem with people today.

They don't believe that they're a god.

They think they're their own god.

They think they can control the world.

They think they can control the weather.

They think they can be the one who's in power.

They think they can be judge and jury and executioner.

They think they can be everything without failing to realize that there is a God who

has created us and He is the one who is in control.

And it is God who will bring judgment when the time is right.

And it is God who will bless and give, or it is God who will curse and take away.

We need to humble ourselves before God and quit trying to do things on our own and realize

we are mere mortals and we can't do nothing on our own.

We come from a pile of dust and we will return to a pile of dust.

But there is one who is in control and that is the one that we need to seek.

We need to be seeking to be servants of God.

We need to teach that to the next generation so that they would become servants of God,

so that they would teach that to the next generation and they would become servants

of God.

And the result of that is that we would see a land that would be healed.

We would see a land that would be strong because we would see a land of believers in Jesus

Christ who were seeking the will of God.

And when that occurs, there will be healing.

But until that occurs, there will be more destruction.

That's a sad thing to say, but we are not on a good track.

So maybe tonight we need to listen to the words of Moses, make the most of our time

and let us never forget who we are and who God is.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you for these words.

I pray, dear Lord, that you would help us never to become proud, but that we always

remember, dear Lord, that you are our creator.

We are a created being and we thank you for creating us.

We thank you for being good to us and taking care of us.

But dear Lord, we need not ever forget that you are the one who is in control.

So I pray that we would trust you, dear Lord, that we would seek you, that we would call

out to you, that in the midst of our trials, dear Lord, maybe some of which we bring on

ourselves like the Israelites did, that God, that we would seek you so we wouldn't experience

your wrath, but that we would experience your grace.

Dear Lord, I pray that you help us to know just how precious life is, that we don't take

it for granted, that we don't waste our time, that we make the most of it.

And our short time, 70, 80 years, if we're blessed enough to get that, whatever amount

of time we get, help us to do the most we can with it for your kingdom.

So God, I pray that we would seek you as Moses calls us to in this Psalm tonight, that we

would seek you and humble ourselves before you, dear Lord, that we would be a nation

that would serve you, that we would be a people, Christians, dear Lord, who would serve you.

Dear Lord, that the world would see our example, that they would see the love of Jesus Christ,

that we would pass this example down to generations to come.

God, that the works of our hands would be worthy works, that they would be acceptable

works, that they would not be selfish works, but that they would be works for your kingdom

and not ours.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.