Psalm 90 - Teach Us to Number Our Days

Ordinarily, we study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, but this morning we're going to hear from God's word, the word he has for us today from the book of Psalms, like we did last week.

We had originally planned to begin our study of Matthew.

You may have heard that we were going to do that today.

We decided it would be wise to push it off to next week.

So excited to study the Gospel of Matthew with you.

Cannot wait.

So go ahead and read ahead.

Now you have a chance.

Next week we'll start Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

If you'd like a paper copy of the Bible, just lift up your hand.

Someone will bring one around to you.

This morning at the start of this new year, I thought it'd be helpful for us to set our eyes on Psalm 90, one of my favorite psalms.

This Psalm is likely the oldest in the entire Psalter.

Its authorship is attributed to Moses.

As many of the psalmists often do, and I love this, Moses pastorally invites us, you and me, the people of God, to pay attention, to stop even for a moment, to put away our distractions, even for a moment, to give our focus, to give our attention to the most important things.

The first things, ultimate things, to view life in light of eternity, not just those things that are temporary at the start of any new season, in particular the first of a year.

I do think it's good for us to review the year that's come before and to look ahead at what is to come, to see how we might improve in the coming years.

But the Psalms are so good at lifting our eyes, lifting our eyes to eternal things, not just the moment right in front of us or the moments in front of us or the days that we think we might have.

The Psalms invite us to lift our eyes beyond that.

Yes, to examine our life, that is a good thing, and it calls us to do that, but to examine our life in light of eternity.

I think that's what Pastor Moses is going to do that for us today.

Our times are in his hands.

We studied last week.

As a reminder, the Psalms are a collection of 150 songs and prayers written by a variety of authors in many different contexts and periods in history, traditionally broken up into five different books.

Psalm 90 here is the start of what we call book four.

Nearly half of the Psalms, nearly half, are written by King David.

This Psalm, likely written three or four hundred years before King David.

It's good to keep that in mind, that context.

The Psalms are the hymn book of the people of God, the prayer book of the people of God.

We've already sung many of the Psalms this morning.

They give us words when we're weeping and we have no words to speak.

Did you pay attention to how many prayer requests and needs we had, as Matt read that for us this morning?

The psalms give us words when we have no words to speak.

They remind us of the sovereignty and the goodness of God.

Our times are in his hands when we are despairing or tempted to despair.

They give us songs to sing when we are full of joy, and I hope you are today.

Songs to sing, though, when we lament.

And they wake us up, they wake me up when I'm spiritually asleep, when I'm distracted or when I'm wandering.

So so much of the world we live in pushes and pulls us, and we all know this, towards the immediate, towards the urgent, the outrage of this news cycle, or the next big thing, or the next temporary high.

That's all the way all around us.

Richard Foster, who wrote the great book, Celebration of Discipline, said it this way: the adversary, meaning Satan, the devil, the adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds.

John Piper, I think with a wry smile, actually said it like this, and I love this if you put up on the screen.

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the last day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.

Didn't know we'd be preaching today, right?

The Psalms can be a smelling salt, smelling salts that wake us up.

That wake us up to examine our life in light of eternity, to stop and listen.

Jesus said it this way: He who has ears, let him hear.

That's what the Psalms do.

It's an invitation for us this morning, for me, for you, to reorient our finite lives around the infinite Creator God, who loves you.

And I think that's just what Moses has in mind with the psalm that we'll study here today.

So I invite you to turn to Psalm 90, if you will.

It's right in the middle of your paper Bible.

And I'll put up on the screen a really simple structure of how Psalm 90 is broken up.

It starts off with the first two verses, Moses telling us, giving a brilliant display, describing for us who God is.

And then he moves on to who we are, the present human condition.

And then he moves on to what our proper response of faith should be.

So as you're turning your Bibles to Psalm chapter 90, let's pray together.

Psalms 90 · chapter mention

Everlasting God.

Help us to hear your holy word that we may truly understand, and that understanding we may believe.

And that believing we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience.

And in following you, Lord, may we come to know you with such intimacy that our ears are attuned to your voice this morning.

May your Spirit empower us to seek your glory in all that we do, and we all said.

Amen.

Psalm chapter 90, verse 1.

Psalms 90:1

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, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place, can be rendered a number of different ways.

Lord, you've been our dwelling place.

Lord, you have been our refuge.

You've been our tabernacle.

You've been our home, our abode.

See, in these first two verses, Moses here gives us a glorious display of who God is, the creator, the infinite one, the eternal one, the everlasting God.

But did you notice how it started?

It didn't start with that.

It started with, Lord, you have been our home.

It started with how things were meant to be.

The Lord, He created this universe so that we might dwell with Him, so that His people might make their home with Him.

What a way to start this psalm.

It begins by reminding us that we, you and I, were created to be in His presence.

That's what we were made for.

If you came in here today with a view of God, perhaps that is cold and distant.

Moses is here saying, pay attention.

Pay attention.

It's an invitation.

It's an invitation for any of us in here who might be wandering, might be lost, away from our true home, our true dwelling place.

It's an invitation to come.

So beautiful.

Lord, you have been our home.

Verse 3.

You return man to dust and say, Return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday, when it is past, or as a watch in the night.

So in verse 1 and 2, he begins the description of who God is, and now in verse 3, we're starting to see this description of who we are, our human condition.

And it starts off with an obvious allusion to Genesis chapter 3, verse 19.

Genesis 3:19

You were turned man to dust.

The psalmist Moses here is being very clear-eyed, very straight.

Our days on this earth are finite.

You will die.

He starts off the human condition with that.

The consequences of sin, Moses wants to draw a line directly from what death is, this consequence of sin, directly back to Genesis 3, 19.

Our rebellion, our sin.

And the consequence of that is death.

We are mortal, we are finite creatures.

A thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past, or watch in the night.

What he's using here is poetic imagery to contrast the infinite, glorious, everlasting God with the finite creatures that we are.

Humanity.

Verse five.

You sweep them away as with a flood.

That's humanity.

Listen to all the poetic images that he uses here.

You sweep them away as with a flood.

They are like a dream.

Like grass that is renewed in the morning.

In the morning it flourishes and is renewed.

In the evening it fades and withers.

And I think even here in Middle Tennessee, we understand this imagery from the ancient Near East.

On a warm spring day, we see the dew on the grass.

It's beautiful, it's green, and by the end of the day, it's warm, the sun is beating down on it, and it withers and it fades.

Another poetic image.

In fact, here in Middle Tennessee, it could be in a January warm day.

Our time is finite.

Verse 7, for we are brought to an end by your anger.

By your wrath, we are dismayed.

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

So we started off with this broad assertion of the human condition that we are sinful people.

Now it's getting very personal.

Lord, our sins, our iniquities are before you, even our secret sins.

And I think the secret sins that he's referring to here certainly include those sins that you and I hide in shame from God and from others.

We try to hide from God.

It includes those things, but it also includes the sins, the broken parts of us that we don't even know about.

God sees it all in the light of his presence.

He doesn't sweep it under the rug.

Verse 9, for all our days pass away under your wrath, the just consequence of sin.

We bring our years to an end like a sigh, or your translation might say whisper.

Verse 10, the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength, eighty.

Yet their span is but toil and trouble.

They are soon gone, and we fly away like a bird.

They go away.

Verse 11, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?

Or it could even be translated as this who knows or who understands the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you.

Certainly a sobering account of the human condition.

I'm sure you're glad you came to church to read that bit of text.

There's good news here, though.

So the use of all this poetic imagery, the simile and metaphor, Moses lays it all out for us.

This is no Pollyanna psalm.

It's steeped in reality.

We see it all around us.

Perhaps in this last two years, in this particular generation, we haven't, death has been in our face more than it has been in many years.

Think about that prayer list that we prayed earlier today.

The consequences of sin are all around us.

Moses wants us to look at the human condition and all of its disorder and brokenness and draw a line to the source of that disorder, and that is sin.

It's rebellion against this holy, infinite, eternal, everlasting God.

The sin that began in the garden, and yes, the sin and rebellion in our own hearts today.

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

We try to hide it.

Adam and Eve tried to hide it, if you remember that old story.

But nothing is hidden from him.

Nothing is hidden from the light of his presence.

But listen, friends, God loves us.

If you hear nothing else today, hear that.

Rebecca Manley Pippert says it this way about God's wrath.

God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.

God is rightly and justly angry towards sin.

But don't forget how the psalm began.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place from generation to generation.

How can a holy and righteous God with those who are, how can he dwell with those who are set against him in his ways, who are in rebellion?

If you remember Adam and Eve tried to cover up their sin in the garden, and they used fig leaves, those fig leaves were insufficient, and God provided a covering.

God made a way.

We read about the city of God in Revelation 21.

Behold, the dwelling place that we just read about in the Psalms, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people.

How is that possible?

We sang about it earlier.

Our only hope in life and death is what?

Christ alone.

It's a who.

Set your eyes on verse 11 there.

Who considers, who knows, who understands the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?

This side of the cross, we know the answer.

There is only one who has known it fully.

Christ, the Lamb, who took upon himself the just wrath for my sin and for yours.

That's good news.

So that we might be able to stand in the presence of God, forgiven and free from the curse of sin and death.

He himself has come to make a way.

There's nothing left for us to do except to come to him.

And faith, here's another invitation to make our dwelling place with God.

The psalmist says, Lord, you have been my dwelling place.

Lord, my iniquity is before you.

My secret sin is before you.

My only hope is you.

You see here Moses pastorally saying, Wake up.

Pay attention.

There would be no better way to begin 2022 if you haven't yet come to the Lord.

I hope you do.

Keller, Timothy Keller says it this way: God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are, and yet also radical unconditional commitment to us.

The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent.

The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.

We say amen to that.

So Moses has beautifully shown us here the glory of God eternal.

And he's reminded us of the fragility and fallenness of humanity.

So let's continue reading as Pastor Moses shows us a fitting response to this merciful God.

Verse 12.

So an important word there.

So what?

So in light of all of this, teach us to number our days.

That we may get a heart of wisdom.

Could be translated, so that we might present to you a heart of wisdom.

Such humility in this prayer.

What a way to start this prayer of response.

Teach us.

Teach us that we might get a heart of wisdom.

13.

Return, O Lord, how long?

Have pity on your servants.

And this prayer here, Moses, of course, wouldn't have known the fullness of this, but we sang about it during the Advent season.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free.

It's the same longing that we see here from the people of God and Moses.

How long?

Basically, they're saying, Lord, we know that we're sinful.

Reverse the curse of death.

This side of the cross, we know he has come.

We know he has come.

And yes, until he returns again, we still live in this now and the not yet.

We see the ravages of sin and death around us, so we can still pray this prayer.

Lord, how long?

But we do it with hope.

Verse 14, he continues this prayer.

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Satisfy us in the morning.

So before the day even comes at us, satisfy us with your steadfast love.

Your Hesed love, the covenant faithfulness, such a rich word.

Satisfy us, really.

It's talking about abundance, like a feast, which I assume many of us have been eating quite well the last couple of weeks.

Satisfy us in the morning with your rich love, so that we might rejoice, so that we might worship.

And how can we do that when we read it, when we read this middle part of the Psalm, and we see the death and what sin wroughts all around us?

How can we possibly rejoice?

Well, because in the morning we were satisfied with his love first.

Beautiful prayer.

So teach us to number our days.

Satisfy us in the morning.

Verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Put another way, Lord, make us grateful for the days that you have given us.

May they be precious to us.

But he doesn't just sweep under the rug the ravages of sin.

No, he says, we will see evil and affliction.

But Lord, give us gratitude.

So he starts off with, teach us humility.

Teach us, Lord.

Satisfy us, Lord.

Make us grateful.

And then how does he end it?

Verse 16, let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children.

Let the favor of the Lord, or the beauty of the Lord, the kindness of the Lord, the delight of the Lord.

We don't have an English word that really gets at this.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands.

He has a job for you, he has a job for me, a mission to build his kingdom.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us.

Yes, establish the work of our hands.

There's dignity there of the human person who has a job, who has work to do.

Hmm.

So rich.

What a treasure this psalm to us is today.

Written so many years ago and still as relevant as ever on this first Sunday of 2022.

The original readers and hearers of this text were the Hebrew people whom God had rescued, if you remember, out of the bonds of slavery from Egypt.

Not because of their own merit, but because God set his steadfast love on them, his initiative and his work on their behalf.

It was written for a people who are most certainly weary, wandering, some wounded by others, some wounded by their own sin and foolishness, some full of fear and doubt.

And is that anyone in this room today?

Is that anyone at home today?

The human condition hasn't changed all that much.

Moses doesn't sweep away any of those things under the rug.

He doesn't say out of sight, out of mind, no.

Rather, listen to this he frames the disorder.

And the misshapen condition of humanity, of my own heart, he frames that with the presence of the Lord.

How does he begin?

Lord, you have been our dwelling place.

And he ends the prayer with, Lord, may your favor rest upon us.

He frames our disorder, our misshapen hearts.

The everlasting God has the first word, and he has the last word.

As this new year begins as a pastor, I don't have resolutions or goals to give you this morning, although there are many that you could choose from that'd be good and proper.

But what we do have on offer from this Psalm is an invitation to a renewed posture, a renewed disposition of a heart, a perspective on life that is steeped in reality, the brokenness that is around us, but always looking forward to eternity.

It's an invitation to pay attention, to wake up, always looking towards our true home.

What a way to start a new year.

So, since I don't have 12 steps for a better you this morning, I thought it would be wise and good for us as a church to consider at least four of the prayers of Moses here.

And there are at least six in this song.

We're going to pay attention to four of them this morning.

And perhaps these prayers will be online for you later this week.

Perhaps these prayers could be something that you use in your own personal quiet time or with your family, with your business, your small group.

So, number one, four prayers from Psalm 90.

Let's read this together.

Teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom.

Such humility in a prayer like this.

You have to be humble.

If you ask, teach me.

Teach us, Lord, an acknowledgement of our affinitude, our mortality, an acknowledgement of our need for what?

For wisdom.

Wisdom is a precious treasure, friends.

Far more valuable than knowledge or information.

We've never had more information available to us.

Never in all of history have we had more information available to us at our fingertips.

But the world is in short supply of wisdom.

Living in light of eternity.

Proverbs 8 says, Wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.

Proverbs 9, we say this often around here, tells us the source of wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Let's say that together.

It's not on the screen.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

A great way to begin our year.

Numbering our days.

Teach us to number our days.

That's another way of saying, Lord, we know our days on earth are finite.

Give us the grace to value this gift of life.

Show us what's important.

Show us what's valuable to you.

Show us first things, ultimate things, so that we might navigate this broken world in light of your presence.

That's wisdom.

There's another way of approaching numbering our days, and we're all familiar with it.

It's a subtle twist that the world, the flesh, my flesh, the devil entices us with all the time.

Number our days so that I might take all the pleasure, the power, the money, the success, the security I can.

Take all of it out of each day that I possibly can.

Do you see the subtle change there?

The twist of that good thing.

Another way the Bible describes that perspective is eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

But the psalmist flips that around on its head, teach us to number our days in such a way that the fruit is a life of wisdom.

A flourishing life shaped by the truths of God's word, and that's why we're here today.

And also hemmed in and freed by the good boundaries that He set for us in creation.

Teach us to number our days.

A freedom to enjoy God and His good gifts.

Who wouldn't want that?

I hope you do.

Second prayer, let's read this together.

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Before anything else comes my way today, before I even begin my day, Lord, may I know full to overflowing the truth that you have set your love on me.

Starting our day that way, may that truth be seared in my heart, may it be deep in my bones.

Satisfy me in the morning with your love.

Why?

So that we might rejoice and be glad all of our days, so that we might worship.

That's what we're doing here today.

And after reading that middle section of the Psalm, the one that describes our human condition, how can we possibly rejoice and be glad all our days?

It's because the infinite, the eternal, the holy creator God has set his steadfast love on us.

And my friends, yes, our iniquity is before him, our secret sins are before him, seen in the light of his presence, yet he loves us.

He has made a way.

And do you know that?

I hope you do.

The sight of the cross, we know the fullest expression of it.

Romans 8 says it this way, the Apostle Paul, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

For me and for you today.

He has come to make a way.

Lord, satisfy me in the morning with your love before the day even begins.

What a way to start a day.

What a way to start a new year.

Lord, satisfy us in January.

Satisfy us in January that we may rejoice all of our days.

Can you imagine what our lives might look like, our families, our homes, our home groups, our church might look like?

Hearts set ablaze because we started our day, we started our year.

Drinking to the full, the steadfast love of God.

That's on offer for us.

John Stopp said this there is perhaps no greater secret of progress in Christian living than a healthy, hearty, spiritual appetite.

Again and again, Scripture addresses its promises to the hungry.

God satisfies him who is thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.

So, one, teach us, Lord.

Two, satisfy us, Lord.

Number three, let's read this together.

Make us glad for the days you have given us.

Gratitude.

Gratitude flows from humility.

Teach us.

And it is a fruit of a life satisfied in the steadfast love of God.

Gratitude is also an essential weapon against the insidious poison of bitterness.

Is that something you've been partaking of?

Notice how the psalmist prays, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and is for as many years as we have seen evil.

This isn't a sacrine gratitude, something fake.

There's an acknowledgement that we will see and we will experience evil and suffering in this life.

We all have that felt experience.

We will until we see the return of our Lord to set all things right.

And we set our eyes that way.

But this gratitude of Moses is sturdy.

How long, O Lord?

There is something in Moses that trusted in the Lord to know that he would one day reverse the curse.

That sin and death would be eradicated.

Moses grounds our gratitude in the hope of an eternal God.

One who has an eternal perspective, our true refuge, who has come and will come again.

One of my favorite hymns, we sing it here often, my heart is filled with thankfulness to him who reigns above, whose wisdom is my perfect peace and whose every thought is love.

Now listen to this.

So I will live, I will give my life, my all to love and to follow him.

So teach us, Lord.

Satisfy us, make us grateful.

And the fourth prayer, let's pray this together.

Establish the work of our hands.

Did you notice that he didn't start his sequence of prayers with this, as I so often do?

Lord, make what I'm doing successful.

He didn't start there.

He places these prayers in order.

Teach me, satisfy me, make me glad and grateful, and then establish the work of my hands.

In other words, let all I do, all I plan, all the resolutions I make, may they all flow from your initiative, from your wisdom, from the promise of your steadfast love.

When we pray like this, it gives us moorings that keep us from being puffed up with pride when work is going great.

It also gives us moorings so that we don't despair when work is not.

Whatever your work might be.

Because in the morning, before I go to work, in the morning before I start my day of retirement or school or whatever the Lord has planted, wherever He's planted you, before any of that begins, I'm invited to drink deeply of his steadfast love.

In Christ, listen to this, church, in Christ we are set free from having to establish ourselves.

The Lord establishes our work.

Teach me, satisfy me, make me grateful.

And then with all gusto, we can pray confidently, Lord, out of your goodness, out of your mercy, establish the work of my hands, establish the work of my marriage, of my family, of my children, of my business, of my friends, of my church.

Maybe so in my life and yours, friends.

A couple of quotes here.

One from Jack Miller, who was a pastor and a professor who served in Pennsylvania.

The only New Year's resolution I might make every year is to collapse more fully on Christ.

I trust in Jesus' resolve, not mine.

And then from this 19th-century Scottish pastor, Robert Murray McShane, who has a wonderful, by the way, if you're looking for a Bible reading plan for the year, he has a great one.

I committed it's one that I've been using for many years.

Learn much of the Lord Jesus, he says.

For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.

He is altogether lovely.

For every look at your list of resolutions, your list of goals, take ten looks at Christ.

Ask him to establish your work.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Lord, teach us to number our days so that we might gain hearts of wisdom.

Satisfy us this January morning, this warm January morning with your steadfast love.

Fill us to overflowing.

Lord, set our hearts ablaze with confidence of your covenant love for us.

And as we come to your table this morning, remind us of what you've done for us and what you will do when you return.

Teach us.

Satisfy us.

Make us grateful.

In Jesus' name we all said.

Amen.