Psalm 90
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
I paid my life insurance bill a few weeks ago and it made me think more this time then usual
when i was young i never thought i would die.
well i have gotten older
i didn’t want to deal with things like high cholesterol
well i have high cholesterol
what hit me like a brick talking to Morgan was the realization i won’t always be with my boys
there will be a day when They will need me and i won’t be there
It made me really ask with some fear and hope
Will what i teach them last, Will my life count
i told Morgan i was heart broke and afraid
i told her i hated it
She looked at me and said “you should hate it. You are supposed to hate it“
I was facing fear and remembered the Gospel tells me God has done something epic about those very fears
Here is the question we all ask and the wisdom of Psalm 90
Do you long to achieve something worthwhile for Jesus? For your life to count for something? We all yearn for that. The big surprise at the end of Psalm 90 is that we are authorized to ask God to “establish the work of our hands” (v 17)—to make what we do last for eternity.
If you fear for the things I fear Psalm 90 is for you
Psalm 90 is a guided tour through all the hard reality we experience
we are going to see 3 things in psalm 90: knowing our place, knowing our greatest problem, the wonderful work of Christ
Knowing Our Place
Knowing Our Place
Lord, you have been our refuge
in every generation.
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity, you are God.
You return mankind to the dust,
saying, “Return, descendants of Adam.”
For in your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that passes by,
like a few hours of the night.
You end their lives; they sleep.
They are like grass that grows in the morning—
in the morning it sprouts and grows;
by evening it withers and dries up.
We have been learning the 5 books of Psalms tell the story of Reality
The Psalms are the road map to God in the human experience we all know
Book 4 begins here
It begins with the people of God in the place I was talking about at the beginning
things do not go from cries of abandonment to praise in quick fashion. Book Four will end in praise, but it opens with a cry to God about a situation that feels as if it will never resolve itself
Longing for faithfulness bigger then their fears
Wondering if everything sad can come untrue when we all fall so much and the world is a mess
Here is the hope we can have right off the bat
Lord, you have been our refuge
in every generation.
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity, you are God.
How does that give me hope when I pay my life insurance
Before he made me he was who he is
The character of God was already there
The plan to save me and give me a hope and a future is the story of reality
Not my fears
A.W. Tozer said: Before we were. before God created a thing he wasn’t doing nothing. His mind was stirring with thoughts of you.
if that was who he was before he made you we can trust Him to get us home
And it means that my fears don’t get the last word
God does
If God who did not even spare his own son is the God reality centers on we can know his eternal faithfulness is our home
Not this world
If I think I am what will shape my sons into courageous men I will be paralyzed by every decision and word I say
But if God is my home he is the home I can point them too and know what I long for will be accomplished
So when we are faced with the reality of verses 3-6 we can stop running for the office of God because we remember our place
You return mankind to the dust,
saying, “Return, descendants of Adam.”
For in your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that passes by,
like a few hours of the night.
You end their lives; they sleep.
They are like grass that grows in the morning—
in the morning it sprouts and grows;
by evening it withers and dries up.
Don’t worry Moses gets more depressing before it ends on an unreal hope
But this is the contrast that can make us realize running for the office of God is dumb
Psalms for You Settled Affection and Sober Reality
We need this sober realism about our frailty, our mortality, our terrible transience
it makes us ask the central verse of this Psalm we will see later
Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.
Teach us in light that this life isn’t all there is to live in ways that really matter
There is so mush hope in that when we are loaded with the fear and regret of this life because we all are
None of this has gone how we thought it would
Who knows what Christopher Ash lays out?
We may be blighted by the great expectations loaded upon us, perhaps in childhood or early adulthood; perhaps our parents had hoped—and let us know that they had hoped—that we would succeed in particular ways. Maybe they wanted us to be the successes—in exams, or music, or sport, or jobs—that they had failed to be or never had the opportunity to be. How sad we feel when we begin to realise we shall never achieve what they have expected for us or what we hoped for ourselves.
Ever let yourself down?
Ever feel like you won’t live up to your own expectations?
We first find hope when we know there is a place where what we truly long for will be done
And it only comes when we realize he has the home where it wil all be accomplished one day
But it gets worse before it gets better
We have to know why we are in the mess we are in
Knowing Our Greatest Problem
Knowing Our Greatest Problem
For we are consumed by your anger;
we are terrified by your wrath.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
For all our days ebb away under your wrath;
we end our years like a sigh.
Our lives last seventy years
or, if we are strong, eighty years.
Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow;
indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.
Who understands the power of your anger?
Your wrath matches the fear that is due you.
Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.
Not only are we transient we are in trouble
God hates things aren’t how they are supposed to be
And his hate for it is called his wrath and Moses will use that word alot in this Psalm
That can make us modern people shudder but its in here so lets talk through it
His wrath is not a lightning bolt
It is his right anger toward sin
And here is how this plays out
It is Him letting me have what I want apart from him to much
When we tell the God who made us and ordered this world to flourish is specific ways that we know better then Him he will tell us at some point your will be done
We think God is a bad guy for hell but here is the reality about hell
C.S. Lewis says: Hells doors are locked from the inside
God hates we choose things and people other then him
Nto because he is some insecure being
But because he is a loving father telling the children he loves not to play in the street
But we love to play in the traffic like nut cases
God’s wrath is letting us pursue other loves that only steal kill and destroy
Wrath is God giving you too much of what you want apart from him anyway
Paul knew this in Romans 1 18 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, 19 since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. 21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools
When we realize the folly of our running from God we can reorder our lives and longings for what truly matters
Then we remember who we are and who He is …through the crushing of our falling
Moses pray’s in verse 12 : Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our longings, our perspective, how we interpret our world.
To get there he takes an honest road
You have probably heard somone say that for there to be good news there has to be bad.
this is the bad
5 times in as many verses the anger of God is laid out
It is the most brutal part of the bible I know
Paul says it in fewer words when he says in Romans 6: 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. No matter who you are
What you have accomplished
no matter if you have shunned God and become the most autonomous self or if you have told one lie and thought that good performance saves you we are all have the same problem
The haunt of death knowing we have all told God my will be done at times not His
I promise this ends on a note you cannot imagine of hope but this is the reality
Sin has brought God’s wrath against it
What does that mean?
He hates funerals so much he died to conquer them
But he hates that we die
He hates the self destructive ways we look for life apart from Him
Isn’t that good news?
We all hear God is love but you can’t have love without a right anger toward what hurts who you love
Do you love and care about Kids but just say I am love when they are abused
No there is a place for a right anger against what wounds us and breaks us because he loves us
When Jesus arrives at the tomb of his friend Lazarus in the book of John the language is intense
it says he was deeply moved
That word in the Greek is used to describe a bucking horse biting a bridle enraged
He hates it
Because creation was shattered we all will see our bodies give out in this life
You should hate it
He hates it
Because of what it has done and what it has cost
It costs more than we can imagine
Here is where the turn to unreal hope comes
The Wonderful Work of Christ
The Wonderful Work of Christ
Lord—how long?
Turn and have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love
so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days.
Make us rejoice for as many days as you have humbled us,
for as many years as we have seen adversity.
Let your work be seen by your servants,
and your splendor by their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us;
establish for us the work of our hands—
establish the work of our hands!
If there is anything Moses wants us to know it is the truth that faithfulness drives out fear
Where is that faithfulness most shown
Where was his commitment to rescue us on full display?
The Cross
Moses was pointing to it like a flashing sign on a desert highway
Look at verse 16
Psalm 90:16 Let your work be seen by your servants, and your splendor by their children.
When was it seen?
His faithfulness was seen by the cosmos that day on the cross
It was there the Son took what we deserve and drank the cup of it dry
He knew the wrath of God poured out on Him so it would never darken our door
I say this often but we need to reimagine our savior
Popular pictures make him look so weak and passive
He was not weak on the cross he was the most epic warrior you can imagine
He was there to take the fight for your life to be made new right to hells front door
And he took the anger of God toward sin that day so all we will ever know is faithful love that will never leave you or forsake you
What he did was brought home for me 2 years ago
My baby boy Baker had to get a procedure when he was 3 weeks old at a pediatric urologist
They had to strap his little legs down and give him 2 local shots and do a procedure
i was allowed in with him
i had to let his little hands clasp my fingers as he wailed and screamed for 20 minutes
I spoke to him the whole time until i sweat
Its ok its ok its ok daddy is right here im right here
Im 6’3” 230 and i have been through some things
I can’t imagine how many people and what they would have to have done to me to get me away from him
It was so bad when it was done I went in the other room and cried so hard there was a puddle under my face
Because it hit me
Do you realize what he endured for us to make death a shadow.
What he did to take the stinger out of its horrible pain
The father wathced his son nailed to a tree
And in that moment he walked out of the room on his son so that he would never walk out on you
You want faithfulness that drives out fear ?
Tell me another reality better then that one
Jesus was abandoned so that you never would be
You can know God is still there
No matter what you have done
Whatever you fear the most
He faced the darkness of this wrath in the garden of gethsemane and didn’t run away
If he didn’t in his darkest hour he never will in yours
So learn to number your days in light of the Gospel
And learn your assurance is anchored in the wonderful work of Christ for us
Tim Keller said: “The central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us.”
That is the wisom of Moses in Psalm 90
