Psalm 90

Background

When thinking of the Psalms, who normally comes to mind?

David, but he only wrote about half of them.

Solomon wrote some

Asaph wrote some

Ethan the Ezrahite wrote some

Several are unnamed

We even have one from Moses, the man of God.

Psalm 90 is that psalm by Moses, and it is where we will be spending our time this evening.

What comes to your mind when you think about Moses and his life?

Very likely, this psalm was written by Moses during the time when Israel was in the wilderness for 40 years after having disobeyed God in their faithlessness. He had seen many of them die in the wilderness under God’s judgment, and in Numbers 20 we see what may very well be the immediate context to this particular psalm — Miriam (Moses’ sister) had died, Moses himself had disobeyed God by smacking the rock he was told to speak to, and Aaron (Moses’ brother) died as well. A lot of difficult and emotionally difficult things occured in Moses’ life by this time.

God’s Eternity

verses 1-2 provide the opening statements for the whole psalm.

What is Moses choosing to focus in on at the beginning here?

God’s immortality

That God is a place of safety for His people, that He is able to continue being that safety to future generations, and that He is the One who created the earth and therefore is beyond and before it!

Moses starts by proclaiming God as the refuge for His people in every generation, past and future — again, the focus here is that He is there in every generation. as the second verse exclaims His eternal nature.

vv. 3-6 continues this theme by comparing God’s immortality and Sovereignty with man’s finiteness.

v. 3 seems to call back to part of God’s punishment of Adam in the Garden — from dust you came and to dust you will return. Moses appears to be convinced that God is in full control over life and death, as he also mentions in v. 5-6.

In v. 4 we see a very familiar concept to us. 2Pet. 3.8

2 Peter 3:8 CSB

Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

Is either Moses or Peter being literal in this statement?

No. It is a poetic way of saying that time is no object to God because He is eternal! He is outside the boundaries of time and space just as a computer programmer is outside the bounds of the code he writes.

Romans 1:20, while not a direct quotation of this psalm and in a different context, also brings out to us the picture of God’s eternal-ness through nature.

One point we can take away from this portion of the Psalm is that God IS the refuge for His people. Just as He was for the Hebrew people in the Old Testament who were faithful, just as He was a refuge to the persecuted Church of the early centuries after Christ, so He is now with us a strong place of rest and security! He is the strong arm on which we lean, and He will continue to be so forever for those who call on His name!

v. 7-12 hones in on the finiteness of mankind before the Lord.

He is talking about being under the wrath and anger of God… to what might he be specifically referring to?

While Moses may specifically be mentioning God’s wrath on the people of Israel in the wilderness, there is something yet to be learned by us.

v. 12, Moses’ plea to God to teach him to be wise at heart and not waste his short life away. He seems to be saying, “Life is full of heartache and loss and struggle, and it all goes by very quickly…so we need to learn to be wise with the time we are given.”

After all, time is not something we own — it belongs to God and works according to His will and design for it. The time that God gives us to be on this earth is a stewardship for us to handle with wisdom. as Paul says, Eph. 5. 15-16

Ephesians 5:15–16 CSB

Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

Lastly we have v. 13-17

The ending of this prayer is a plea for God to be merciful and kind of His people.

God is the only place that we will ever find true satisfaction and fulfillment. God’s granting that to His people is out of His compassion for us!

I think back to Matthew 9 when we talked about Jesus’ compassion on the sinners.

Moses is praying not only that God would satisfy the people, but that He would let them see His splendor, literally that He would show them His beauty.

Lastly, Moses says “Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us”.

What do you think this means?

Praying for God to delight in His people and be happy with them!

APPLICATION:

The psalms are a wonderful place to see the theology of some of the men of the Bible, and to see their hearts as well. They are raw, real, emotional, and reverent.

In light of seeing God’s eternity and our finiteness, are we living wisely with the time that we have? Are we making the most of every opportunity?

Pray for God to grant us all wisdom to live in this manner, and that He find delight in His people forever!