Psalm 90 – Shadows of the Cross

I'm going to read from uh from Psalm ninety.

Uh so maybe you have a Bible on your phone.

Uh I'm going to give a kind of undisclosed kind of period of time or a small period of time.

Uh my Bible is page four hundred and uh ninety-six, but Psalm ninety.

I'm going to read the the whole thing and then we'll uh consider it together.

Again, remember uh you can post questions in the chat.

This is uh really just a uh a reflection uh on a few things in the psalm, and then we can uh have something of a of a dialogue about them.

Uh really encouraged by those of you who are uh able to be together with your uh with your community groups, looking forward to being with some people later this afternoon.

But let's uh let's come uh now and read God's word together.

Psalm ninety, a prayer of Moses, the man of God.

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 from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

You return man to the 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.

You sweep them away with a flood, they are like a dream, like a grass that is renewed in the morning.

In the morning it flourishes and is renewed.

In the evening it fades and withers.

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.

For all our days pass away under your wrath.

We bring our ears to an our ears, we bring our years to an end like a sigh.

The years of our life are seventy, or by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?

So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long have pity on your servants, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen evil.

Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.

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.

May the Lord bless the reading of his word.

Certainly, is that it's been very clarifying, uh, clarifying of things that um that I am likely to forget.

I think things that the world is likely to forget about who we are and uh what really uh matters, uh how things truly are in the world.

I think part of the fear uh is that it's uh brought to uh brought to light just how vulnerable we are as a as a as a species, uh as a as a family of human beings.

And uh Sam Nighty brings some of those things home, which is part of the reason why I've been reflecting on it.

And so I just want to draw your attention uh to uh to four things, uh two things that uh we falsely think, two things that we falsely think, and then two things that we forget.

Two things that we falsely think, and then two things that we forget.

The first of those things that we think wrongly is that we think that we are in control.

Hasn't the uh exponential nature of the spread of uh the virus just reminded us how out of control we actually are.

We go through our lives thinking that we are masters of our own destiny.

You know that uh like the poem Invictus, it matters not how straight the gate, I am the captain of my soul, I am the master of my fate, I'm in control.

Corona reminds us that that's not true.

But that's really helpful actually because what what's going on in the world right now is reminding us of how the world really is.

We actually fool ourselves into thinking that we're in more in more control than we actually are.

What uh COVID-19 does is strips back the veneer and shows us what's really going on, that we're not in control.

But the psalmist goes further.

The psalmist shows us who is in control.

It's verses one and two.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Just because we're not uh in control doesn't mean that uh no one is, and that the world is somehow spinning out of control, though it can feel like that, can't it?

No, the Psamos uh reminds us that from everlasting to everlasting there is one who is enthroned uh in the heavens, who is in control.

It is our good and powerful God.

So that should cause us, shouldn't it, to reconsider our pride, our uh forgetfulness of who God is, thinking that uh we will just go and do this thing and that, like James says.

We go into a certain town and spend a year there and make lots of money and then we'll come back.

It's times like this when we remember, no, hold on.

Uh we are not the lords of our own destiny.

But it's not just a rebuke, a correction, though it is uh certainly that, it's also an opportunity for a renewal of confidence.

There is one who is seated on high, and we stand in a better place than the Psalmist because we know that that person who is enthroned on the seat of the universe is the God man, the Lord Jesus.

There's a human being who knows our frail frame.

Who knows what it is to grieve.

Doesn't look at sickness with confused bewilderment, but who has seen it up close and who knows that it's not the way the world is meant to be.

He is the one who is from everlasting to everlasting.

And so while we think uh wrongly often that we are the ones who are in control, now it's an opportunity to correct that thinking and to remember that the Lord our God, the Lord who loves us, who established the mountains, He is the one who is in control.

The second thing that we wrongly think, and it's connected with this, is that we wrongly think that we are indestructible.

That's what verses three to uh six remind us.

There are a number of images that just show the fleeting nature of it uh of humanity.

Verse three, you return, O man, to the dust.

Hearkening back to uh to the end of Genesis three, dust you are, and to dust you will return.

The Lord commands our return to the dust.

Thousand years, uh verse four, are an exceptionally long period in human history, and yet they are fleeting.

A watch in the night is a a three-hour period that guards would uh would stand post.

You sweep them, that's humanity away with a flood.

Floods in the ancient uh world came about quickly and vanished just as just as quick.

They're like a dream.

It's not often that you wake up and are able to remember the things that you dream because they fleet away.

The grass blooms and in the morning, and then by evening time it has withered and faded.

If anything, that the crisis the coronavirus has shown us is our frailty, our weakness.

Uh this morning when I checked, I think there's a slight lag on this website, but the numbers are reasonably accurate.

There are uh 154,000 cases of coronavirus or COVID-19 in the world, and just about 6,000 people have uh have died.

By way of hope, I mean, one of the things that that that tells us is that it's probably not going to be a species killer.

It's not going to wipe everybody out.

We will overcome this, we'll take measures to do that, as indeed we're doing.

But it would be foolish then to think or to go back immediately to not learning the the lesson of Psalm 90, or indeed the lesson of why this has befallen us.

We are not indestructible.

And so that's why the uh the psalmist says, just jumping on down to verse 12, so teach us to number our days, help us to remember that, God, help us to remember the fleeting nature of our lives, help us to uh to count on what really matters, that we may might gain a heart of wisdom.

Why is it wise to remember our frailty?

Well, it's wise because it puts us in the right context, it puts God in the right context.

He is big and we are small, we are fleeting, and he is eternal, and we rest in his eternal and unfailing care.

It's also wise because it clarifies what matters, clarifies what's really important.

You just look at all the things that are being cancelled.

It kind of shows us all of the vanities of our world, if you kind of use that ecclesiastes language.

You know, big sport, you know, Six Nations is uh is all but cancelled, uh different.

Here I am trying to do a sporting analogy again.

Um, sporting events, people who sport um are finding themselves cancelled.

Entertainment, cinemas, movie releases are being suspended.

It's not to say that those things are bad and we shouldn't enjoy those things, but it does show us that when humanity's backs are against the wall, what really matters?

We can entertain ourselves to uh to death, and so it's good from time to time to be reminded, to number our days, and to gain that heart of wisdom, right?

Two things that we wrongly think, and two things that we forget.

First thing that we forget, and it's there in verses seven to twelve, is that we forget our need of God.

We forget our need of God and his forgiveness.

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

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence, for all our days pass away under your wrath.

We bring our years to an end like a sigh.

The years of our life are seventy, or by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers or who has seen the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?

One of the things that any sort of calamity or any sort of sickness does is it reminds us that our world is not how it should be.

That our world is broken.

To use the Bible's language, the bird the world is under a curse.

It's not operating correctly.

Suffering and evil and death are consequences of humanity's rejection of the God who loves them, the God who made them.

And so when we when these things happen, they are, as C.

S.

Lewis said and said all the time, that suffering is God's megaphone to a deaf world.

It's God's way of apprehending people and saying, stop.

And reminding them of their need of Him, of their need of not just restoration renewal in terms of creation, but restoration renewal in our own hearts.

So there's a very personal, private nature.

Verse 8 Our secret sins, our personal need of Him.

Perhaps this time is a time to reflect upon what really matters and our need of God.

Because the fourth thing that we forget is there in the rest of the Psalm is that we are prone to forget the goodness and the grace of God.

We're prone to forget the goodness and the grace of God.

I love that.

Um Johnny Gibson who uh teaches at a theological college in uh in America.

He wrote a kid's book uh called The Moon Is Always Round.

And in that book, uh he is teaching his son uh about a uh a tragedy in their life, and he uses the analogy of the moon, and he shows his son in the in the kids' book, he asks his son, is the uh, is the moon always round?

Yes, daddy, but we don't always see it as round, sometimes we don't see it at all, and God's goodness is like that.

God's goodness is always there, God is always good, and yet we sometimes cannot see it fully, sometimes we do not see it at all, and yet good he remains.

He is good and gracious towards us such that we are able to call on him.

There's a great symmetry in the Psalm if you're looking at uh at Psalm 90, uh, verse 3.

God says to humanity, return, O children of man.

But then in verse 13, the psalmist, Moses responds, representing humanity here at this at this point, and says to God, return, O Lord.

It's the same word.

How long?

Calls upon him, calls him to act.

It says, Have pity on your servants.

Just as God calls upon us to return to that to that dusty frame that we had, so we call upon him to act with pity and with grace and with mercy.

We lay claim to his nature.

And old Anakin Prayer says that his nature is always to have mercy, and so we can call on him the gracious Lord.

COVID-19 and all that is going on, and the people around us who are getting sick, and all of the uh lockdowns and frustrations with that could lead us and tempt us to forgetting the goodness of God.

These verses at the end of Psalm 19, Psalm 19 have great confidence to them.

They recognize the world for how it truly is, who God is, who humanity is.

And so they call on him.

They call on him who is good to satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, verse 14, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Verse 15, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us.

Verse 17, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, establish the work of our hands.

Psalmist recognizes the goodness of God.

So we want to cry out to him.

We want to cry out to him that he might restore our joy and our gladness.

That he might show pity.

We want to pray for help and restoration.

We want to pray that he would establish the work of the hands of those in authority.

We want to pray for those who are in the medical profession.

We want to pray for those who are elderly, who are sick, and who are especially vulnerable.

Verse 11 of Psalm 19 says, Who considers the power of your anger and the ra and your wrath according to the fear of you?

A little phrase, who considers the power of your anger?

Could be rendered, who has seen it?

Who has seen the power of your anger?

Now standing where we do.

We know that there is one who has seen the power of the wrath of God.

We're only a few weeks away from Easter, considering Good Friday.

And the death of Jesus.

Where Jesus went willingly to the cross that first Good Friday and saw, experienced in full measure the anger of God.

Why?

So that all things might be made new.

Jesus dies to take our sin, verse 8, those secret sins.

He dies to liberate creation from its curse.

And so that gives us great hope, doesn't it?

Because what that reminds us of, and what that lifts our gaze towards, is that there is a world that Jesus is preparing where sickness and death and mourning and crying will be counted amongst the former things.

We know that that is true because of his resurrection from the dead, never to die again.

And so as Christians, we have such hope, such news for a fearful and anxious world.

That we can tell them of a God who is unfailingly good, that brings his purposes to bear even through suffering and hardship, who is not blinded or taken by surprise by what has befallen us as a society, as a world, but is able to act and has acted to restore and renew all things.

And so while there may be even many of us in City Church who are fearful and anxious and unsure, it is an opportunity for us to renew trust, to cry out to our good God, to spend time with him to meditate on what he says.

Perfect love drives out fear.

And Jesus is the embodiment of that perfect love.

We want, as a community, our actions towards one another over these coming weeks to be governed by love.

That's why we're not meeting, as subpar as that is.

The reason why we're not together is because we love one another.

We do not want people to be unnecessarily exposed.

So let us renew in this time of being a part our commitment to the Lord Jesus and our commitment to one another.

And let us pray that we will soon be restored, that we'll soon be able to gather together and sing and be glad.

And I pray.

And then if there are any questions, uh I'll take them.

If not, we will conclude.

I know some of you are in your community groups uh in small groups, and so uh you can spend some time uh together, uh social distancing from one another.

Um, but why don't I pray?

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

Father, give us uh wisdom in these days to know who we are, to know our frailty and our vulnerability, but not have that drive us to anxiety and fear, but have that drive us to uh to you, the one who is sovereign and the one who is good.

Help us uh to uh number our days, and so to reflect upon uh what what really matters, those things of eternal consequence, and to respond to you with new or renewed faith and trust.

Help us as a church family to know how best to uh love and serve one another, particularly those who are sick, get sick, uh, are vulnerable.

Help us uh to know how best to uh support and love and care for them.

But we do ask you, Lord, for a relief.

Ask you to return, O Lord, how long?

Have pity on us.

And we pray all of these things in the name of the Lord Jesus, who is making all things new.

Amen.