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Shabbat Shalom. This morning I have the privilege of sharing with you my favorite psalm in all of God’s Word, Psalm 90. I love Psalm 90 because it is a psalm that describes what life in this world is like, in a very beautiful but direct way. It is a psalm all about time, time from the Lord’s eternal perspective, and time from our very short perspective. Psalm 90 teaches us how we can be wise and enjoy the blessings of the Lord even in a world filled with suffering. This makes Psalm 90 wisdom literature, a common theme among my favorite psalms.
Psalm 90 is also a prayer, a prayer from Moses to the Lord asking Adonai to return to him and our people. We are never told the sinful events that led Moses to compose this psalm as the Lord punished our people. But a brief look at our people’s history shows us there are so many events that can qualify as the reason for this psalm. Rebellions, grumbling, anger, and idol worship are sadly recorded throughout the Torah, even Moses was not above reproach in his own actions towards the Lord.
But the greatest reason Psalm 90 is my favorite psalm is because it teaches us how short and precious life is. There is a timeless quality to this psalm that I love. Psalm 90 teaches us to correctly value each day because we don’t know if it will be our last one or the last day for the ones we love.
Before we dive deep into Psalm 90, I’d like to begin by reading through it once. I encourage you to close your eyes and picture the wonderful imagery of this psalm.
A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
7 For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
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.
11 Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?
12 So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
13 Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.
16 Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
17 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!
Our Psalm begins with the author, the only Psalm we have written by Moses in the book of Psalms.
A Prayer of Moses, The Man of God
There is much that can be said about Moses, and his history is known to most throughout the world. But perhaps there is no higher praise for Moses then the fact that He was a called a friend of the Lord. That the Lord would talk to him as one does a friend, face to face, though still veiled so he would not be destroyed. Moses is a man who knew the Lord in a very deep and personal way therefore we can trust in the truth of what He has written through the Holy Spirit. Since this is a psalm of Moses, we know this is the oldest psalm in God’s Word.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
The very first line of this psalm declares the Lord as our dwelling place, a place of safety and refuge. He is our Rock, our eternal source of Shalom, complete peace beyond our circumstances. In a world that is full of chaos and uncertainty the Lord remains the same, for all those who belong to Him through His Son, Jews and Gentiles.
The eternality of the Lord is beautifully illustrated in our second verse. He has existed before the Earth was formed and before the first page of the Bible. From eternity past to eternity future, He alone is Lord of All. None can compare to Adonai.
From the nature of God we turn towards our nature as human beings in verse 3.
3 You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
The Lord is our dwelling place, our place of safety, but there is more to Him than just peace. The Lord is the one who causes life, but he also causes death. Now in the English this seems to be a straightforward reference to Genesis that we were made from dust and that to dust we will return, but it goes much deeper. The word used for dust in this verse is Dakka, which has the sense of being crushed, like how a person breaks pottery. It is a word that means to be broken, not always just physically but also broken in spirit.
We experience suffering and eventually turn back to dust, but the Lord is also calling us to return to Him. We are being called to turn away from our sins, from trusting in ourselves and this world. There are many reasons why we suffer and many that are out of our control, but sometimes suffering is used by the Lord to cause us to stop rebelling and turn back to him. Moses sees the suffering of our people in this light.
We continue with one of the most beautiful depictions of time ever written:
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
Verse 4 is one of my favorite verses in this psalm. The poetic way times moves is just beautiful. We start with a thousand years from the Lord’s perspective being like a day for us, and then step down to just a few hours in the night. We have now moved from the Lord’s perspective to our human one. Compared to the eternal nature of our Creator, our lives are very short. We are compared to new grass in the wilderness which will sprout up and then die before a single day has passed. This is an uncomfortable thought for most of us because we tend to think of life as long. Life can seem, especially when younger, that it will never end. But lives do end and usually before we want them to, especially for those we love and care about. When compared to the Lord, our lives are but a single drop in the vast river of eternity.
So, if the Lord is our dwelling place, we naturally must ask why He is also the one who sweeps people away in death? Why do we die? Moses explains that to us in the following verses.
7 For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
The reason why we die is because of our sins, that each one of us fails to live up to the standard we were created to. Each of us falls short of God’s perfect glory every single day in various ways. We may claim that we deserve to go to heaven, that we are “good enough”, but it is a lie. If we are honest we will admit we are the same as our people in Isaiah 64:6: ” All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”
All our supposed good works are like filthy rags, unable to cover us or protect us from being swept away. The Lord’s anger and wrath in verse 7 has the idea of fiery breath in the Hebrew. In a sense if our lives are like new plants in the morning, the fiery breath of the Lord from His righteous anger is what dries and withers us. We are swept away in His righteous anger at our sinfulness.
It is not just the sins that we will admit to that leads to our deaths, but our secret sins as well. Human beings do not change, we all have sins we can easily admit to, and more painful ones that are much more difficult to acknowledge. It is in the dark that the adversary and our sins flourish. But it is in the light that the Lord and forgiveness is found. We see that all of our sins, even the ones carefully hidden away, are known to God and set before the pure holiness of His presence. We can lie to others, and we can even lie to ourselves, but before the Lord all is known. Our claims of being good enough evaporate very quickly.
Psalm 90 continues with the truth that our sinfulness leads to a lifetime of difficulties and sufferings.
For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
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.
Even in the time of Moses, thousands of years ago, the human life expectancy was 70 or maybe 80, as it is today. Not much has changed since the time of Moses and for all our technological advances we still have roughly the same lives that are marked with troubles and sorrow.
When Moses wrote these verses through the Holy Spirit it is likely he was thinking about the suffering he and our people experienced in the wilderness. That generation lived out these verses, passing away under the Lord’s anger. But there is a timeless truth here as well for us. The truth is that life is fleeting and precious. Our lives can be filled with all kinds of joy but are also filled with tsuris (troubles) and sorrow as well.
We live in a world that is in rebellion against the Lord and because of our pride we experience many kinds of suffering. Suffering that comes from having unjust leaders, suffering from living in a chaotic world, and suffering that comes from our own bad decisions.
So, if we suffer because of our sin and we live in a world that is full of troubles and sorrow what can we do about it? Moses goes on to explain what we can do in response to this dark world.
11 Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?
12 So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
It is in these verses we reach a major turning point in the psalm. Most of what Moses has described up until this point can be understood from observing life around us. The world around us declares the reality of a creator who had to exist before this world was created. We all know one day we will pass away, and we have all been touched by sorrow and troubles. While we may minimize and argue about our sins, very few people would claim to be perfect. But the solution to these problems is where we need God to step in. Moses understood that He could not save our people from our suffering. We today also need to understand that there is nothing in our power that can save us from our sins.
The fact we cannot save ourselves is sadly controversial today. There are so many people who are willing to sell us their schemes on how we should be living our lives. From New Age paganism to self-help nonsense, people make a great living in swindling others with empty promises and even emptier teachings. We are told that with enough money, love, power, sex, or respect, we will be happy and live fulfilled lives. But jobs end, people disappear, lust is empty, and love does not always last. We are eventually left more broken from these comfortable lies and then must pick up the pieces of our lives when it all falls apart.
The lie that we can fix everything ourselves is also found in Rabbinic Judaism today. Especially in the Reform and more theologically liberal groups of Judaism. Because there is no belief in any sort of personal Messiah. Rather, the teaching I grew up with in Hebrew school is that human beings working together will bring about the Messianic Age. Five minutes watching the news or on social media will show how well that is going.
Moses though is wiser than the world, because he turns to the Lord and asks Him to give us a heart of wisdom, to count our days. He asks the Lord to teach us, so that we would understand deeply our nature and the anger of our righteous Creator. But what does it mean to number or count our days? In one sense it is to understand the briefness of our lives in this world, that we are here and gone so very quickly. However, this is not the complete meaning. Moses asks in the Hebrew for the Lord to teach us to number our days correctly. Therefore, there is a correct and incorrect way to number our days.
To number our days incorrectly is to live like the world around us. To cling to our youth for as long as possible and try to ignore the fact we will one day die. We also will try to hide all our sins and pretend that we are good enough. Finally, if we do not count our days correctly, we will fill them with our own selfish and fleeting desires, instead of making the Lord the center of our lives.
To number our days correctly is to live for the Lord and not ourselves. We will understand how fleeting and precious life is, cherishing it as a gift from our Creator. We will return to the Lord, in our day through Messiah Yeshua, and begin to live lives different than those around us. Instead of living for the sins of the flesh we will begin to show the fruits of the spirit, showing the light of God inside us to a very dark world. Our prayer will then be like Moses’s prayer in the rest of Psalm 90.
13 Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Moses asks the Lord to return to His people, to show His compassion and unfailing love to those who have returned to Him. Moses knows that the Lord will return, the only question is how long will it be? Though life will still have suffering and troubles there is a change when the Lord is with you.
Even for all the years we have seen trouble we can still sing for joy, a joy that is dependent on the goodness of God, and not our present circumstances. Returning to the Lord is returning not to empty pleasure but to the only eternal refuge in a world filled with turmoil.
In our dwelling place we find peace. It is not a promise that we will never suffer, Moses makes it clear that we will see evil. It is instead a promise that despite the darkness around us we have a light that will never go out. A peace promised to us by our wonderful Messiah that passes all understanding.
To experience the love of the Lord means that we will grow in a different way than the plants earlier in this psalm. Instead of withering under the righteous anger of the Lord, we will rejoice and find a happiness that can never be destroyed. When our lives end in this world we know that we will then experience eternity with our wonderful Messiah and live forever with Him.
Psalm 90 concludes with these final verses:
16 Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
17 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!
As we reach the end of this prayer Moses turns his gaze towards the future, to the promises of the Lord. The Lord made many promises to our people and specifically to Moses. Moses prophesized that the next generation of our people would inherit the land of Israel. Though Moses died before we came into possession of the Land, he trusted by faith in the goodness and promises of God.
We too need to trust in the promises of the Lord. He will not let our sinfulness go unpunished, but He has promised to forgive us our sins through Messiah Yeshua. Through Messiah Yeshua we are given Shalom through the Holy Spirit to be able to walk through this world full of suffering. In our Messiah we see the work of salvation shown to us and the power of the Lord. A power great enough to change our lives forever that we cannot do ourselves.
Psalm 90 ends this prayer from Moses with him praying twice that the Lord would make permanent the work of our hands. Our lives may be brief, but with the Lord our work can have eternal impact.
There is a sort of obsession with many people with the idea of legacy. Many rich and powerful people will build giant statues or buildings to themselves, trying to leave something with their name behind. But buildings crumble and most people in this world are eventually forgotten. Even the graves of many people famous in their lifetime are forgotten today.
If we want to have lives that impact, to have the work of our hands last, it needs to be done through the power and blessing of the Lord. The work we do for His kingdom has eternal consequences. Treasures we store in heaven will be with us forever while the things of this world fade away. The ending of Psalm 90 always reminds me to keep my focus on the Lord, that through our eternal Creator, our lives have eternal meaning.
As we end our time this morning, I just want to reiterate some of the truths found in this psalm. First, Psalm 90 teaches us to correctly see that our lives are brief, but the work we do has eternal impact and meaning through the Lord. Second, if we walk with the Lord, turning back to Him, we can experience His Shalom throughout the sufferings and troubles of this life. Finally, Psalm 90 teaches us to correctly number our days, to value each day as a gift from the Lord and to use it wisely, to cherish our lives and the lives of those around us because they quickly pass away.
May the Lord teach each of us to correctly number our days so that all of us may become wise. May each of us return to the Lord through Messiah Yeshua and experience His Shalom, His peace, every day. May the work that we do be for the Lord and not just for ourselves. Yes, may the Lord establish the work of our hands.