Teach Us to Number our Days

Welcome back to the second week of our New Year’s series, “Passion, Urgency, and the Culture of Our Church”. I tried to come up with a more creative title for this study, but I couldn’t come up with a catchy name that got the point across, so I went with an informative title. This series is all about defining our culture at Legacy. What do I mean when I say culture? As we learned last week culture is simply the shared way of life among a group of people. It’s the collection of our beliefs, values, behaviors, and the rules that shape how we live, how we relate to God, and how we relate to one another.

Simply put:

Culture is the way we do things around here.

And so, as we begin the new year this is the perfect time to talk about defining or maybe even redefining what our culture looks like at Legacy. The two elements that I want to define our culture at Legacy are passion and urgency. Last week we spend the majority of our time talking about passion, and we learned that passion is...

Passion is an internal fire that expresses itself with consistent action toward what we love most.

The point I want you to understand is being passionate about something drives us to action. We invest our time, our talents, our money, and our energy into our passions. Why, because we are doing something that we love. Here is another clever definition of passion that I shared in our last lesson.

Passion is love in motion

You see, we don’t have to guess what people are passionate about. We just have to watch what they consistently choose.

And so, last week’s lesson was designed to help us determine what we are passionate about. But it was more than that. It was also designed to help us realize whether or not we are passionate about the things of God.

Are we passionate about studying our Bibles?

Are we passionate about coming to church to fellowship with God’s people?

Are we passionate about growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ?

And if the answer to that question is no. Then we need to be open and honest with God about it. Here’s a newsflash. God already knows what has captured your heart. He already knows. So, if we lack passion for the things of God, the first step is confessing it , and then we need to take steps to get back on track. Amen.

And let me just give a quick testimonial comment here. For the first thirty-three years of my life I lived for all kinds of different passions. I was passionate about music, hunting, fishing, partying, adventure. And I gave me heart to all these different things and pushed God into the margins of my life. And I never imagined being able to go “all-in” on the Jesus thing. I thought it I gave up all these other “passions” in my life that I’d never have fun again, that the adventure would be over. But man was I wrong.

Serving God and discovering Him through the study of the Word is the greatest adventure I’ve ever been on. Nothing is more purpose driven than serving the Lord Jesus Christ. God created you, and the moment you were born again He gave you a spiritual gift to use for Him. Nothing is more exciting than the journey of following the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians in chapter 3

Philippians 3:8 NKJV

8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ

Notice twice in this verse Paul talks about the “loss of all things”. So, what exactly did Paul give up? What was the “loss of all things” Paul was speaking of in this verse? Well in the verses leading up to this, Paul talks about all the worldly advantages he had before Christ. You see, Paul had it made in the shade. He was highly educated, well respected, had the right family lineage (of the tribe of Benjamin), according to the law a Pharisee, and He suffered the loss of all these things for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ.

You see, Paul got it. There is nothing more excellent that the knowledge of Christ, and experiencing the deepening fellowship that comes with growing in the knowledge of Christ. And after Paul has lost of these worldly gains, and remember, He is writing this letter from prison, look how He describes everything He gave up. He says, I “count them as rubbish”.

And I get Paul’s mindset here. Not that I would dare compare myself to the Apostle Paul, but I completely understand this mindset. I understand having a life completely intertwined with all the things of the world, and then looking back thinking, “wow, everything I had back then, everything I lived for back then, was complete rubbish”. Nothing compares to the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

And so if you are here today, and you think you can never “go overboard” like some of these people who are at church every time the doors are open... If you think you’re life will be over… or you’ll never have fun again, hear me on this. The things you think you “can’t live without” are the things keeping you from truly living.

Paul didn’t look back on his old life with regret. He didn’t say, “I miss what I used to have.” He said, “All of it was rubbish compared to knowing Christ.”

And church, that s is the consistent testimony of believers who has ever stepped out of lukewarm faith and into wholehearted devotion. Once you taste the joy, the peace, the purpose, the fellowship, the power, and the presence of Jesus — everything else feels unimportant. Everything else feels empty. Everything else feels like rubbish.

Believe me I have experienced this and anything God has done for me, He will do for you. So, seek Him diligently this year. Better yet seek Him passionately this year, and watch what happens.

Ok, let me get off this soapbox and start steering us toward today’s text. We’ve talked a lot passion so far, and we’re not done with that subject, but I want to switch gears now and talk about urgency. And really these two things go hand in hand. In other words, when we are passionate about something, that passionate fuels a sense of urgency. Right. When we are fired up about something we want to take action and we want to take action now. And the flip side is also true when we’re not passionate about something typically there is no urgency. Let me put it this way. When there is no passion we get complacent.

And complacency is a major problem that can creep into our Christians lives. What is complacency? Well, simply put complacency is the opposite of urgency.

Let me give you a simple comparison of urgency vs. complacency.

Urgency means:

acting now

feeling the weight of importance

moving with purpose

Complacency means:

feeling no need to act

being satisfied with the status quo

losing the sense of importance

drifting instead of moving

You see, complacency is the enemy of passion because it convinces us that we already have enough of God. Its the “I’ve got everything I need” attitude. And this is exactly what happened to the church of Laodicea that we studied last week. Let me quickly pull up one of the verse we studied.

Revelation 3:17 NKJV

17 Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—

Here the Lord is speaking and He is revealing the complacent attitude of the church. Notice the first thing this verse says, “Because you say”… The you here is the church. This church was saying, “I am rich have become wealthy, and have need of nothing”. That right there is a complacent attitude. If you are at a point in your life where you think you have “enough God”, you are in a dangerous spiritual state. You have become complacent and lukewarm. Our attitude towards God should be like David’s who wrote in the Psalms

Psalm 42:1–2 NKJV

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

And remember the words of the Lord Jesus Himself who said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.”

You see, the wise person understands that we can never have enough of God. And once we start to taste and see that the Lord is good then we want more and more. And when we seek God passionately and urgently then we can say along with the Apostle Paul, “I count all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord. There is no more exciting way to live than passionately and urgently seeking after God.

Let me make one more quick point and then we will get into our text.

Urgently and passion result in spiritual growth (moving with a purpose)

Complacency and lukewarmness result in spiritual drifting (swept away by the current of the world)

Ok, so topic for today is going to be urgency. And I’m going to give you a Biblical answer as to why urgency is so important in our Christian lives. So, as we come into our study today I want to start with a question. I want to ask you a question, and I want you to think of the answer to this question before we move on.

What is man’s most valuable resource?

Now I’m fairly certain that when most of us first answer this question we think that our most valuable resource is money. I mean after all, money puts a roof over our head, it keeps us fed, it puts gas in our cars, etc, etc. So, logically we think our most valuable resource has to be money right?

Wrong.

Money is not our most valuable resource our most valuable resource is time.

Our most valuable resource is time

Now, let me explain to you why time and not money is our most valuable resource. Time is our most valuable resource because we can never get more of it. God numbers each person’s day’s here on planet earth and nobody gets any more than what God decides. In other words, once we spend our time on something it is gone forever. There is no getting that time back. You see, time is our only resource that is inelastic. Meaning, time is our only resource that we can never get more of. Once it’s gone it is gone for good, no exception.

Now money on the other hand is a valuable resource, but when we spent our money, we do have the ability to make more money. Simply put, if we lose money there is at least the possibility to get it back. But, that is not the case with time. Once we spend our time on something it is gone forever. And this is why the Bible repeatedly tells us to carefully consider what we spend our time doing.

And today we’re going to study a portion of Psalm 90. You may not realize this, but Psalm 90 was written by Moses, which makes it the oldest of all the Psalms. And the theme of this psalm is the brevity of human life.

Moses sets up a striking contrast: God, who is “from everlasting to everlasting,” and then man, whose life is fleeting. Moses says that a typical lifespan is about seventy years, and perhaps eighty if one has the strength. And in light of that reality, Moses offers this prayer

Teach us to number our days

In other words, Moses is saying, “Lord our lives are so short. Help us recognize how little time we truly have. Teach us to use every day wisely. Impress this truth on our hearts so we don’t waste the most valuable resource You’ve given us. Because once our time is gone, it’s gone for good.”

Ok, with all that being said we are ready to jump into our text, But before we do, let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Let’s pray.

Psalm 90:1–2 NKJV

1 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, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

I love how Moses begins. He says, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations”. When Moses says “dwelling place” here, he uses a Hebrew word that means “a shelter from danger or hardship”. In other words, Moses is saying, “Lord you have been a place of safety. You have been a refuge for people of all generations”.

This is a mind boggling thought. Do you realize that we are praying to the exact same God as Moses? Let that sink in. Think about the generations that have come and gone since Moses? For fun I asked AI how many generations have lived since Moses and it said Moses lived around 1400-1200 BC, which means somewhere around 120-130 generations of people have lived since then.

How amazing! We are speaking to the God who has delt with every generation of man that has ever existed. We are speaking with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are speaking with the God who walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. But not only that we are speaking to the God who was, even before the world began. In verse 2 Moses says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”

Church, let us never forget who we are speaking to when we come before the throne of grace in prayer, and let us never take for granted the privilege that we have to speak with the One who is from everlasting to everlasting”.

Moving on to verses 3 and 4,

Psalm 90:3–4 NKJV

3 You turn man to destruction, And say, “Return, O children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it is past, And like a watch in the night.

Moses goes on here to say, “You turn man to destruction, And say, Return, O children of Men”. The Hebrew word translated “destruction” in this verse is a word that means crushed or possibly crushed matter, which we would call dust. So, Moses is saying, you turn man to dust, and say return O children of men. This is a fact. God formed us from the dust of the earth, and when we die we return to dust. Solomon wrote in Eccles 3:20, “...all are form dust, and all return to dust”. Moses is speaking the same truth here.

And then when we come to verse 4, Moses says, “For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past.” Think about that for a moment. Think about yesterday. Now that it’s gone, it feels like it passed in the blink of an eye. We barely remember everything we did. Once a day slips into the past, it seems so brief, like it went by in an instant.

And Moses gives another picture: like a watch in the night. A watch was only about four hours long, and most of the time people slept right through it. How long does a four‑hour stretch feel when you’re asleep? It feels like nothing. It feels like an instant.

Moses says that’s what a thousand years is like to God. Yesterday when it’s gone… a watch in the night… that’s how quickly a millennium passes before Him.

Why? Because God created time, and He stands outside of it altogether. From God’s perspective, a thousand years passes like the blink of an eye.

And what I want us to realize is that in this Psalm Moses is comparing the eternal God—the God for whom a thousand years passes like yesterday when it’s gone—to us, frail, mortal men. Listen to what he says in verses 5 and 6.

Psalm 90:5–6 NKJV

5 You carry them away like a flood; They are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up: 6 In the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and withers.

Notice Moses says, in the morning they are like grass which grows up: In the morning it flourishes and grows up; in the evening it is cut down and withers.

Moses, here seems to be speaking now of the man’s short life span. And this is not the only place the Bible compares man’s life span to grass. Listen to Psalm 103.

Psalm 103:15–16 NKJV

15 As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. 16 For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, And its place remembers it no more.

Here is the point that both of these Psalms are making. Our lives are but a vapor. We are here today gone tomorrow. We are like the grass of the field or like wild flowers. We flourish for a brief period of time, we wither, and then the wind passes over us and we are blown away. Our lives pass us by and the world remembers us no more.

And you see, this is why we have only one hope. All we can do is place our faith in the one who is from everlasting to everlasting. And that my friends is the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, the Bible has been saying this for thousands of years in many different ways and in many different verses.

This life is short, so use your time wisely.

We should cry out to God like Moses and say Lord,

Teach us to number our days

Help us remember God just how little time we have so we don’t waste our lives.

And what is amazing about Psalm 90 is that Moses gives us the average lifespan of men. Skip down to verse 10 with me.

Psalm 90:10 NKJV

10 The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Now, here is what is absolutely amazing. Moses wrote this psalm thousands of years ago, probably when the Israelites are wondering in the wilderness, and he says our days are 70 years, maybe 80 if a person is strong.

Now let me ask you another question. Do you know what the global average lifespan is for a man today? According to AI, the worldwide average for a man’s life is 70.9 years. That’s for men, if you add women to this number it goes up to 73.5 because women live longer than man.

Isn’t that amazing, with all the the technology advancements, with all the advancements in modern medicine the average lifespan hasn’t changed since Moses wrote this Psalm. Why do you suppose that is? Why don’t humans live longer today then when Moses wrote this Psalm? The answer is sin. Mankind has a sin problem and the Bible says the wages of sin is death. On average we only live to be about 70 years old because of our sinfulness.

And so in light of how short our lives are Moses says this in verse 12. He says,

Psalm 90:12 NKJV

12 So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Church, this is the point of today’s lesson. We have extremely short lives. And because we have such short lives we need to be extremely careful how we spend each day. This is what Moses is saying. Lord, help us to remember that our time is short so that we don’t waste it.

Here is the point I’m getting at. When we start to number our days, when we start to realize what little time we actually have in this life, it creates a sense of urgency in us.

You see, realizing that our time is short changes the way we live. It wakes us up. It shakes us out of spiritual sleepwalking. When we truly grasp that our lives are only seventy—maybe eighty—years, suddenly the things that once felt so important don’t seem so important anymore. And the things we used to ignore suddenly rise to the top.

Simply put, numbering our days produces urgency. It produces a holy urgency that causes us to stop assuming we have endless tomorrows to get serious about God. It causes us to stop putting off obedience for another day. And it causes us to stop wasting time on the temporary things of the world that hold no eternal significance.

Here is a truth that is probably the most undertaught truth in Christianity today. As believers, our lives will be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Bible says, believers will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to determine our faithlessness in this life. This judgment is not to determine whether a not a person is saved or not. In other words, this judgment isn’t to determine who will enter the kingdom. Every person at this judgment will enter the Kingdom because they have believed in Jesus for eternal life.

No, this judgment will determine who were faithful servants to the Lord during their lifetimes. And it will be decided who will receive eternal rewards and who will reign with Christ in His eternal Kingdom. In short, unfaithful believers will not get this privilege. They will not here Christ say, “well done good and faithful servant.

Christian, only the things done for Christ, enabled by the Holy Spirit, have eternal value. Paul says, these works are like gold, silver, and precious stones. They will earn eternal rewards when God judges our lives as believers. And Paul also says, that all of our fleshly works done with selfish motives are like wood hay and stubble. In other words, all of our works of flesh have zero eternal value.

Here is the point and I’m going to start wrapping up. Each day as believers we have the ability to serve Christ faithfully and use our time wisely. This earns us eternal rewards. Or each day we have the ability to waste our time and spend it on selfish desires that has no eternal value. How will you spend your time? Hear me when I say this. You need to number you days so that you don’t waste them.

So, as I work to close here, I want to do something a little different. I want to give you a little demonstration that will hopefully help you number you days. Simply put, I’m going to give you an exercise to help you number you days. Well, how do we number our days. Let me show you.

I am 48 years old right now. I’ll be 49 in Sept. That means that I have 21 years and nine months until I reach 70 years old. Well, when we look at it that way, we tend to think that we have plenty of time, so I want to look at this a little bit differently.

How many Sunday’s does that mean I have left? How many Sunday’s does that mean I have left. Well I already did the math. I have 1,132 Sunday’s left. I have about 1100 Sunday’s until I’m seventy. And if you want to figure out your number it is easy. Just figure out how many years you have left to 70, in my case it was almost 22 and than you times that number by 52 weeks in a year. Let me give you a quick example using round numbers. Let’s say your 50. If you fifty you have

20 years x 52 weeks a year = 1040 Sundays

Man… when you look at it like that, it hits completely differently. That’s what Moses meant when he said, “Teach us to number our days.” When we start counting our time this way, we suddenly realize just how urgent our situation really is.

Every Sunday matters. Every Sunday is a opportunity. Every Sunday is a chance to worship, to grow, to serve the King who is from everlasting to everlasting.

And every Sunday we skip—every Sunday we trade for sleeping in, or watching TV, or going hunting, or fishing—every one of those is a piece of our life we can never get back. Time is the one resource God gives us that cannot be replaced, refilled, or recovered once it’s gone. Do not waste your most precious resource because there isn’t anymore of it once it’s gong.

When we number our days, we stop treating Sundays like they’re disposable. We start seeing them as eternal opportunities—moments to invest in our souls, our families, our church, and our walk with Christ.

Because if we only get 1,040 Sundays in twenty years… we can’t afford to waste even one.

Now let me show you a sad slide.

If you had to guess, how many Sunday’s a month would you say the average Christian attends every month?

According to Barna Group’s national church attendance studies, the average Christian in America attends church:

About 1.6 Sundays per month

(Two Sundays every five weeks.)

Let me show you what that does to our Sundays. I told you I have roughly 22 years to 70, which works out to 1132 Sundays. If I attended church like the average Christians do, who many Sunday’s do I have left? Well, if I make it to church 2 out of every 5 Sunday’s that’s 40% of the time. Which means my 1132 Sunday just became roughly 452 Sundays. That means that I wasted close to 700 of my available Sundays.

Legacy, if you treat your Sunday’s like the average Christian you are wasting 60% of your Sundays. Simple math. If you’ve got 1000 Sunday and you make it to Church 40% of the time you wasted 600 of the 1000 Sundays. Legacy that is the very definition of being lukewarm. That is being complacent. We cannot operate like that. The time is now. It is high past time to wake out of our sleep and get busy. We are going to attack this next years and the years to follow with urgency and passion. Number you days so that you don’t waste them.

Let’s pray.

Altar call. Show my marble jar.