PSALM 90: LIVING A MEANINGFUL LIFE

Intro:

Who here was born in 2006?

Who here was born in Aug of 2006?

Aug 1st?

Well, if you live (passed life expectancy) until you’re 80. You have 23,192 days to live.

but if you sleep 8 hours a night, you have 15,461 days to live

if you work 8 hours a day - you have 7,730 days to live

if you scroll the U.S. average of 3 hours & 15 min a day you have 4,480 days to live

How will you spend that time?

Tonight - in Psalm 90 we will be charged to live life well. To live a meaningful life, to use our time efficiently for the maximum impact. Tonight, we ask God to help us number our days.

Ultimately, we don’t know how long anyone has to live - most people here think they have most of their life ahead of them yet no one is sure. Death doesn’t come knocking on the door, it barges in whether you are ready or not.

Death is the great equilizer - its the great unavoidable - it trumps every other fear.

Death is coming - your clock is ticking - time is running out, what will you do with it

NEED:

what makes your life worth living?

How do you know that the things you’re doing everyday are the best things?

If you died tonight what would be said about you?

What would be written on your tombstone?

If you died tonight, BASED on the life you live, where would people think you went for eternity?

Think with me over 2022 - what did you do that was meaningful?

got a 4.0

won a championship

hung out w/ friends

got more followers

learned a new instrument

Those things, are not bad, but are they actualy meaningful, THAT MEANS do they make an eternal difference? Will they be talked about in Heaven? Will they be rewarded by God?

The common Christian teenager & really every teenager IS WASTING THERE LIFE - but I want you to be different. I want you to make your life count, I want you to look back on your highschool career and see all of the ways God used YOU!

That can only happen when you ask God to help you number your days. That can only happen when youn remember that..

Prop: God is eternal and you are not, so ask Him for mercy that you can live a meaningful short life.

READ THE PSALM

Context: This is the 1st Psalm ever written and the author as the title states is Moses. He is leading millions of people they were catapulted out of slavery in Egypt and were meant to go an a journey for a few months to the promised land where they would set up permanent residence but this generation never gets there. Instead they wander around in circles just yards from where they were going.

The generation that witnessed God’s miraculous salvation and deliverance from intense slavery and persecution were just a few months away from entering the promised land ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS OBEY but yet not one of them stepped foot on that new location. They wasted their lives living like tumble weeds bouncing around the wilderness. Moses would have performed funeral after funeral with the same message “Here lies so and so who never got to where they were going”. And so it is in these wilderness wanderings that Moses writes this Psalm confessing the sin of the Israelites and asks for God’s mercy.

Thesis: 2 Truths and a Demand necessary for you to live a meaningful life

God is Eternal v.1-2

And you are not 3-12

So ask Him for mercy in order to live a meaningful life 13-17

God is Eternal v.1-2

Psalm 90:1-2 “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”

“Lord, You” Moses addresses God in this way 10x

this is unique to majority of the Bible, the entire NT is complied of letters written to other people but this Psalm is a prayer written to God - it is God Centered

The invitation is for believers to pray this psalm w/ Moses - an opportunity for us to learn how to talk to God in prayer and to get a insight on the prayers of the prophet, miracle worker and leader of Isreal

“You have been our dwelling place in all generations” - If you know much about Isreal - this is a big statement. No nation knows the homeless life like Isreal. They were living rough. On the streets. They had no house, no garage, no address. And even before those 4o years of homelessness was 400 of enslavement in someone else’s country.

But Moses says God no matter where we are there you are. You are our security, our home, our refuge.

For the Christian that is the same truth. Acts 17:28 “for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’”

“Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world” - If you rewind the history of the world at high speed you’ll briefly see glimpses of things like 9/11, Hitler giving a speech, cowboys and indians, french revolution, columbus discovering america, roman centurions, city of Babylon, contrcution of Pryramids, dinosuars, and then darkness… yet when you reach the beginning of that timeline, no further you can go back THERE IS GOD.

The uncaused cause of all things unbound by the laws of physics - who has been actively governing every event big or small forever.

Moses in the wilderness looks at the ancient Mountains and declares that not even these compare to the age of God.

The God who made the mountains and all the trees that cover it, the God who designed trees to have rings so that we can tell their age IN THIS very Psalm is teaching us to Number Our Days

“Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” - God has no beginning or end, He is free from the succesion of time because He made it. A watch on God’s wrist asks Him, “What should I do?”

God is eternal - He has seen more days than anyone or anything else. He has more wisdom than every man put together. When He speaks we listen.

Since the eternal God has given you a moral life - you need Him to teach you how to live this life, how to use it well.

God’s eternality highlighted by Moses begs us to consider the importance of living life to the fullest, to think that the creator of TIME gave us some to live we ought to be concerned with how to use it well.

I love what the teenage Jonathan Edwards wrote when he jotted down HIS LIFEs RESOLUTIONS

1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time

5. 5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

17. Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

Jonathan Edwards was a teenager dedicated to using his time to bring the eternal God glory - and He lived this way because he knew that God was eternal and that he wasn’t

And you are not 3-12

Psalm 90:3 “You turn man back into dust And say, “Return, O children of men.””

“You turn man back into dust”

Man, unlike God has a beginning its called dust Gen 2:7 “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

Man’s beginning is dust and so is His end Gen 3:19 “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.””

Your physical body is made up of matter that will decompose and enter back into the earth

24-72 hours after death — the internal organs decompose.

3-5 days after death — the body starts to bloat and blood-containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose.

8-10 days after death — the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas.

Several weeks after death — nails and teeth fall out.

1 month after death — the body starts to liquify.

Then from there your skeleton loses collagen and literally becomes dust

Your clothes and jewelry last longer than your bones

“And say, “Return, O children of men”

There is no grim reaper to avoid, God, in the same way he said let there be light and there was, in the same way Jesus commanded the storm to be still and it did, He will command your heart to stop beating and it will - when He wants, How He wants and where He wants and you will obey - Job 14:5 ““Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass.”

Psalm 90:4 “For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night.”

“For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by” - What did you do yesterday? just another day? Thats God’s perception of the last 1000 years.

“Or as a watch in the night.” - that would literally be a 4 hour shift in the night.

1,000 years to God (14 of your lifetimes) is like 1-3rd period at school. its nothing

3 illustrations of death Psalm 90:5 “You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.”

Like a the dry creeks in santa cruz last weekend that turned into rapid rivers, tearing apart homes and taking lives is how you will be sweeped away from thus earth (ILLUS: evver droped a boat in the gutter when it rains?)

Sleep: For the beliver death really is like sleep - its nothing to be afraid of, in fact it will be nice because you will immediatley be inthe presence of the Lord TRUE REST & PEACE & one day you will AWAKEN in the ressurcetion w/ a new body and w/ Christ physically

For the unbeliver death is like going to sleep and waking up in a anightmare. The more horrible it is the harder your try to open your eyes only to realize that the nightmare is now an eternal reality -that will last as long as God himself

Like GRASS v.5-6

You see the green grass we have bc of the rain and you know we are one war week away from it dying and blowing away in the wind - this isnthe fraility of human life. Fully dependent and one thing away from death

Psalm 90:7-9 “For we have been consumed by Your anger And by Your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence. For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh.”

Moses now gives the reason for the brevity of human life… sin

We are conceived in sin and therefore are born to die.

And our bodies waste away so quickly because of the effects from God’s judgement upon sin

Rom 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—”

Moses and the Isrealites know this too well - they literally had their entire life consumed by God’s judgement upon their sin. Their sin caused them to spend the rest of their lives homeless in a desert looking for what was so close but never found.

“Our secret sins in the light of Your presence”

There life was like a hamster on a wheel, dog chasing its tail - constantly moving but making no real progress and so when they get to the end of their life it ends with a sigh

ILLUS: Canvas deleting my entire work - I sigh because it was a complete waste of time

That is like life for these Isrealites

Is that life for you?

Desiring something only to never get it?

Chasing a feeling yet its always fleeting?

thats sin isnt it? Promises something that it cannot give, it says it will be sweet but ends bitter,

spurgeon says “Sin is the most deceitful thing in the world. It promises to make us happy, but it makes us miserable. It promises to enrich us, but it makes us poor. It promises to give us liberty, but it leads us into the most abject slavery." – Charles Spurgeon

Psalm 90:10-11 “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?”

Isn’t it true, life is so short and its end is certain and unavoidable - life is like a movie with a bad ending. All you can be sure of is that in this life you will work and have nothing to show for it at the end, your accounts will be emptied, your stuff given away, your body cremated.

“who understadn the power of your anger and fury?” - rhetorical question because obviously it is no one, not even the people in hell have come to a full undertanding of God anger - there is eternally more

So this should no cause us to avoid the relaity of sin and its consequences but instead drive us to a healthy reverent fear of God.

The puritans used to say should you care more about the weeds in your neighbors garden or your own?

Obvioulsy, your own. Listen - God hates sin, He is angry towards sin - that includes yours - in fact for belivers He hates your sin more. He sent his son to die for it.

Psalm 90:12-13 “So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom. Do return, O Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants.”

Here is the climax of the psalm! This is where the psalm moves from explanation to application

TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS = Ask God to teach us to do this, not so that we know when we will die but that we will live each day like it is our last, Like Edwards resolution = “Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.”

The only way that you will live a life worth living is when you humble yourself to ask God for help

That we may present to You a heart of wisdom = Wisdom is knowledge applied

Here is what you know, God is eternal and you are not - so if youre going to live a meaninful life then...

So ask Him for mercy in order to live a meaningful life 13-17

Psalm 90:13-17 “Do return, O Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, And the years we have seen evil. Let Your work appear to Your servants And Your majesty to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”

This Psalm though filled with somberness and sobreity ends with an upward lift in a major key

“Do return, O Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants” Moses is asking God, though he is present everywhere always, to manifest His presence once again to His people to lock arms with the isrealites and to make their life worth it again

“O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, And the years we have seen evil.”

make our good days = our bad ones

reverse our grief into joy

bring meaning into our meaninglessness

“Let Your work appear to Your servants And Your majesty to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”

By God’s grace kindness and mercy we can live lives that are full of value and significance

You can do things that will last for eternity

Conclusion: Will you tonight decide to use your time wisely, to live like you were dying bc you are, to live each day like its your last?

Many of you recognize that you have not lives a good life, a useful life or meaningful life, you might recognzie that your entire life has been lived for the benefit of no on but yourself. You’re living on borrowed time and God will come to judge what you did with the time He gave - how will He respond to find it wasted? WITH ETERNAL PUNISHMENT in HOLY ANGER

Yet God IN PERFECT TIME sent his son Jesus Christ who lived 33 years in active, intentional and passive obedience = which we so desperatley needed