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Psalm 90:1-17

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

“LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest man to destructions; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. [Time dilation, verses 2-4] Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”

Introduction

Psalm 90, stands alone in the Book of Psalms, it is the oldest Psalm, it tells you right in the beginning this is a prayer of Moses the man of God. So hundreds of years before the Psalms began to be gathered and written, there was this one song here that stood alone, remarkably, all by itself that God had put on the heart of Moses, the man of God, to write down. We don’t know how many others that he may have written, but this is the one that God has preserved and given to us. Some like to look at the next Psalm, which we call an “orphan Psalm,” because there’s no author mentioned, they say also it could be Moses, but it could be Hezekiah, it could be anyone. This one we know is a Song of Moses, the man of God. I’ll read it, it says “LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Thou turnest men to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70 years); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years (80 years), yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return,” turn back to us, is the idea, “O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” Of course, Moses writing, we’re not sure exactly what point he wrote this. Think of the things that this man had seen, think of what he had put to the page, God used him to put the Torah to the page, the record, the first five books of the Bible. Intimately involved with creation, the days of creation, the origin and destiny of man, watching God in Egypt judge the strongest nation in the world, delivering then his own people, then years in the wilderness with the pillar of cloud by day, shading them, the pillar of fire by night, leading, and frightening off their enemies. Being fed for 40 years with Manna falling from heaven, I forget, it would have to be over 40 thousand tons a day to feed close to 2 million [estimated as high as 3.5 million] people, the amount of, you think, this is daily, the logistics to care for 2 million people in the wilderness, in the desert, the amount of water, the amount of Manna falling out of heaven, the logistics of that is unbelievable. Moses, having seen all of that, of course, and knowing something beyond that, I mean, going finally to the LORD, and saying, LORD, let me behold your glory, I’m not going to go any further LORD, unless you go with us,’ you know, 115, 120 years old, worn out, it’s been 40 years in Egypt, 40 years on the backside of the desert [of Midian, modern-day Saudi Arabia], then 40 years leading this largest pentecostal grumbling church on the planet through the wilderness, ‘and I’m tired, and LORD, unless you go with me, I’m not gonna go any further, let me see your glory.’ And it says he made ‘all of his goodness pass before Moses,’ that was his glory, his mercy, his longsuffering, his grace and so forth. This man, Moses, again, we don’t really know his name, we don’t know his Jewish [Levitical] name, we only know the name that Pharaoh’s daughter gave him, which is Moesha, Moses, that’s the name that an Egyptian woman gave him when she drew him out of the water. [Comment: The Egyptian word “Mose’ means “son of” as in Thutmose, “son of Thut.” They didn’t know who Moses was the son of, so they named him “Mose” which the Bible spelled out or recorded as Moses. For a more complete historic view of who Moses was and this event, see http://www.unityinchrist.com/lamb/exodus1.html] We don’t know his real name, isn’t that interesting? You think of the nation of Israel, they can’t say their God’s name, YHVH, they don’t know his name, and their main patriarch, they don’t even know his name, just his Egyptian name. It’s funny the way the LORD does things. But here he puts the quill to the page under the anointing and the direction of the Holy Spirit.

From Beyond The Vanishing Point, From Before Space-Time Existed, God Was There

And he begins with the LORD, Jehovah, the Covenant God he knew well.

“LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” (verse 1) and he was the one who wrote “these are the generations of Adam.” He had put those things to the page, and he’s realizing, ‘LORD,’ standing where he is, with the quill on the page, looking back to the things he had written about, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void…And God said, Let there be light…” the things that he had put to the page, now he’s standing there realizing ‘LORD, in all generations, LORD, generation after generation you have been our dwelling place, LORD.’ And he says ‘that was established before the mountains were brought forth, or even before you had formed the earth and the world,’ “even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” (verses 1-2) The Hebrew says “from eternity to eternity”, but the point in that language, and that thought was, you just say ‘From beyond the vanishing point [i.e. the creation of Space-Time]. That’s the way they thought about it. You think back as far as you can possibly think back, go back, go back, I don’t want to go there, go back, go back, go back [ARCHEOZOIC 2.1 billion years ago; PROTEROZOIC 520 million years ago; PALEOZOIC: Cambrian, 520 to 440 million years ago; Ordovician, 440 to 320 million years ago; Silurian, 360 to 320 million years ago; Devonian, 320 to 265 million years ago; Carboniferous, 265 to 210 million years ago; Permian, 210 to 185 million years ago. MESOZOIC: Triassic, 185 to 155 million years ago; Jurassic, 155 to 130 million years ago; Cretaceous 130 to 65 million years ago. CENOZOIC: Tertiary, 65 to 1 million years ago; Pleistocene, 1 million years ago to present. For a good study about the subject of Genesis 1, offering three different doctrinal interpretations for Genesis 1:1-31, see http://www.unityinchrist.com/Does/Genesis 1 1-31.html] And go back past the beginning, you know, wherever you think it might be, where did it go? Go back to the Big Bang, before it banged, we won’t even make you explain who banged. But before that [i.e. before Space-Time], what was there before the Big Bang? You know it tells us that God created the world [and universe] from nothing. So, when he enacts creation, bara creating matter from nothing, all there is before that is nothing. You can’t conceive of that. There wasn’t just blank space with nothing in it, it doesn’t say that before that there was emptiness, it was nothing. There wasn’t even emptiness. There wasn’t even a black empty expanse of space, there wasn’t even what you think nothing was. There was just nothing. Back beyond that, the vanishing point in our intellect and our thought, in our concept, from beyond that vanishing point, he was there. He was there, to the other end, whatever it goes, as far as human intellect can carry a thought out, ‘beyond the vanishing point, from beyond the vanishing point, thou art God.’ He’s talking about the eternality of the God that he knows, and then he’s going to talk about how frail and temporary man is. In verse 7 he’s gonna start to say ‘the problem is, that man is sinful, on top of all that, and God, you’re kind, but you’re thorough and you’re just, and you can’t endure sin.’ And in verse 13 then he begins to plead with God for mercy, not knowing the Saviour the way we do. So, you have to maintain that context.

The Frailty Of Man

He says, “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” (verse 3) “Thou turnest,” it’s interesting, “enosh” there, which means “mortal” or “frail”, it speaks of man in his mortal or his frail state, “Thou turnest frail man” “turn to destruction” in the Hebrew is, “to be crushed.” The idea is “to powder.” ‘You turn man back to dust again,’ is what’s inferred by that. “and [then] sayest, Return, ye children of Adam” the origin of man. It’s an interesting picture. For you and I, it’s, he says in the Book of Genesis it says ‘From dust thou came, to dust thou shalt return,’ the same 17 elements that are in the Baseball field out there, the dirt, are the same exact 17 elements you’re made of, they’re arranged a little nicer, most of the time. But it’s the same 17 elements, and then back to dust again. But then, for the believers, it says ‘Then he calls us back again, he says, Return,’ for you and I, we know there’s resurrection insinuated there [i.e. our bodies return to dust again, as we await the resurrection to immortality, when our bodies, refashioned to spirit composition, more solid than matter, we will be resurrected, and given immortality, cf. 1^st Corinthians 15:49-54]. And look, resurrection, there’s no problem with that. All he needs to raise you from the dead, is the code. In your DNA and the genome, now of course they’ve discovered the epigenome, above the genome, which even makes the genome more complicated than they thought the genome was. Now there’s signals floating above the genome that turn parts of the DNA on and off, which even throws evolution further out the window [not talking about theistic evolution]. But all he needs to reconstitute you is the code, the software [that software is called “the spirit in man” or “the spirit of man” in the Bible, it is what gives us our intellect and human intelligence far beyond animal intelligence, but it also maintains a complete record of a person’s physical structure, right down to the last cell and beyond that, to the DNA code itself, cf. 1^st Corinthians 2:9-13]. That’s what you are. I’m living in this [he pounds his chest], it’s wearing out, he’s going to say that through here. But it isn’t me, I’m still 16 years old, I’m inside of it. It’s 63, it’s wearing out. But I’m inside of it, and what I am, spirit, soul [spirit-in-man, as the Bible calls it], it’s software, when you take software and you put it in your laptop, the laptop doesn’t weigh anymore, it’s nonmaterial. So what you are, really, the part of you, a part of you is nonmaterial. The hardware dies, the software goes up to be with God. [Comment: Ecclesiastes 3:19-21, “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity[i.e. emptiness]. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward [upon death], and the spirit of the beast [the animal software] that goeth downward to the earth?” i.e. this one Scripture shows the “spirit of man”, with no distinction between good and evil men, goes upward to God’s presence, in the 3^rd heaven, upon the death of that individual. The spirit in man of the righteous will be in the resurrection at the time of the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ, at the 1^st resurrection to immortality, all the rest await the great resurrection at the Great White Throne judgment, the same period of time spoken of in Revelation 20:11-13 and Ezekiel 37:1-14. There are only two great resurrections back to life mentioned in the Bible. The dead await one or the other. Ecclesiastes and the Psalms indicate that the spirit-in-man remains unconscious upon death, and different denominations agree or disagree with this belief. We’ll find out for sure when we die, now, won’t we.] And then you’re [your physical body] turns back to dust again. A lot of Christians were eaten of lions, eaten of beasts, buried at sea, burned in the fire, whatever it might be. All God needs to put you back together again is the data, the software. What you get in the resurrection [to immortality] is an upgrade. You know, if you get a new computer, all of a sudden the same software you had is doing all kinds of things that it couldn’t do in the computer you had before, because you got an upgrade, that’s what the 1st resurrection is. Atoms are fungible, God can build molecules and structure out of any atom, atoms are all the same. ]Comment: Calvary Chapel’s believe our upgraded bodies in the 1^st resurrection to immortality will be composed of flesh and bone, no blood. Other denominations believe we will receive eternal bodies composed of spirit, just as God and Jesus are composed of, and this spirit is more solid than physical matter. As to who is correct, again, we’ll have to wait until the resurrection to immorality and find out now, won’t we. It’s not important, eternal life is eternal life. 1^st John 3:1-2 says we will be like Jesus in the resurrection. That’s good enough for me.] All he needs is you, your spirit [in man] in the resurrection, to raise you up again. And for you to look the same, for me to look the same, I believe some of us will grow up, some of us will grow down, hopefully I’ll be around 30 again, that would be great, I think, if I can remember. But we have this incredible future in front of us.

Vital Proof Of God’s Existence & Of The Bible As His Word

He says here, “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” (verse 4) [some say this speaks of Time Dilation, see movie The Genesis Code, or log onto http://www.unityinchrist.com/Does/Genesis 1 1-31.html] ‘To you time is not what it is to us, you stand outside of it.’ You know, Isaiah is the one who remarkably challenges our thought. One of the things about the Scripture that differs it from the Banishad, the Bagavagita, the Koran, the other religious writings in the world, is this Book is between at least, minimum a third and a half prophetic, and the standard here, is, if one thing God says doesn’t come to pass that a prophet said, take the prophet out and stone him. We can’t do that anymore. But God says, ‘When I send a prophet, everything he says comes to pass exactly, because I’m the one who sent him.’ That’s the test. Jean Dixon, you know, some of the modern-day prophets, they get 50 percent right, that’s what you get right when you flip a coin, you know. Again, the Psychic Hotline in Florida, going out of business, and the Newspaper saying ‘They never saw it coming.’ [laughter] Here’s what God says about his ability. He says, “Who hath wrought and calling the generations from the beginning, I the LORD, the first and the last, I AM he.” He says, “Produce your cause, saith the LORD, bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them, or declare unto us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods…” (Isaiah 41:21-23) He says ‘If you can show us, if you’re standing outside of time, you can show us the end from the beginning, we’ll know it.’ Again, he says, “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory I will not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” (Isaiah 42:8-9) If you go through Isaiah 41 through 47 you’ll find it over and over and over, “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, I am the last; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set in it order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them.” (Isaiah 44:6-7) So, over and over and over and over, Isaiah 41 through 47 God says ‘This is how you know I am who I am, and that I’m standing outside of time, and I am not subject to [it], because I’m the One who tells you, writing things down before they ever come to pass.’ And just look, not even today, you study the things he said about Alexander the Great, and just the compound probability, the statistics of that happening are beyond imagination. When he called Cyrus 150 years before he was born, he said ‘I’m calling you, I’m naming you, your name is Cyrus, and you’re gonna set my people Israel free from the captivity,’ before Cyrus was even born [see http://www.unityinchrist.com/ProofOfTheBible-FulfilledProphecy.htm

And http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/2ndcoming_4.htm]. Let alone statistically the things that we see today. So here he says ‘LORD, a thousand years in thy sight, they’re like yesterday when it is past, it’s just like a day going by, it’s like a watch in the night.’ And in regards to time, human beings as we’re related, he said, “Thou carriest them away as with a flood;” (verse 5a) just like when one of the wadis flood and the waters come down and washes people away. He says, “they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” (verses 5b-6) as a sleep in the morning, you wake up, and you never even realize you fell asleep, and it’s over like that. And he says, ‘Sometimes that’s the way life is, like a sleep, in the morning, all of a sudden you wake up.’ “they are like the grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” (verses 5b-6) that’s the way human life is in its brevity and its frailty.

The Problem Of Man, His Sinfulness & Unbelief

Look, verse 7 he kind of drops into the past tense, as he works through all of this, saying ‘This is what’s happened, this is the history of man, because he is sinful, and the necessity of God responding, because he is holy.’ He says, “For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” (verses 7-8) So that rules out the concept of secret sins, all things are naked and open before the One with whom we have to deal with, the Bible tells us. David says ‘Before thee, in thy sight, have I done this great evil,’ when he was repenting, ‘it wasn’t secret, LORD, you saw the whole thing.’ Solomon, the wisest man that ever lives, when he signs off in Ecclesiastes, he says, ‘For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil, all of it open before the LORD, nothing’s hid from his sight.’ ‘We’re consumed, LORD, your anger.’ (verse 7) And justly, because all of “our iniquities are before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.” (verses 8-9) Listen, Moses had watched the longest and largest funeral march in the history of mankind. After two years, when they had come to Kedesh Barnea, and they sent in Joshua and Caleb and the ten other spies, they came back and said ‘We can’t go in there, the giants are in there, they’re going to eat us up, we’re like grasshoppers in front of them.’ Only Caleb and Joshua were saying ‘What are you talking about, let’s go in there, let’s take them.’ And God said, ‘You know what? Because you turned away in unbelief, because I brought you out of Egypt, all the miracles you’ve seen, I bring you to this place, and you’re turning away, your carcasses are going to fall in the wilderness. And your young ones, who you said they would be a prey, they’re going to go in, and they’re going to possess the land.’ So you have a generation where it was 38 years, certainly two years into the journey, everybody was passing away, this funeral march, for the next 38 years. And Moses watched as a whole generation, in the beginning of Numbers, 603,000 fighting men of age, between 20 and 50 years old, all of them gone by the time they come to the Promised Land.

Moses Looks At Man’s Frailty Again

So Moses is very introspective about this, he’s watched this, he says, ‘LORD, our life is like a tale that was told, our days are passed away in your wrath, we deserve it, we turned away, there was unbelief, made the golden calf when we got in the wilderness,’ he has all of these things in his mind. He says, “For the days of our years are threescore years and ten;” they’re 70 years, because he wrote the Book of Genesis, he remembers what it said, after the Flood. “and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (verse 10) I remember reading the article, that for every so many hours you spend in the gym, you add one hour to your life in longevity. And then the person in the article said, “And I realized, the sacrifice that I made when I was young, the years I could have been doing something else and enjoying life, instead I was in the gym adding time to my life, now that I’m old, decrepit and full of pain, full of agony and all this stuff, when I could have enjoyed life when I was younger instead of adding years to this end of my life.” Days of our years, we live to be 70 years old, “and if by reason of strength” God’s gracious to us, and we end up to be 80 years old, “yet” he says, “is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (verse 10b) “Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.” (verse 11)

Bottom Line Of The Psalm, “So Teach Us To Number Our Days, That We May Apply Our Hearts Unto Wisdom”

‘LORD, this is difficult, so, LORD,’ “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (verse 12) Here’s the point of the Psalm, this is what he comes to. You know, they say right now, the world that we live in on this ball of dirt, every day there’s between four and five hundred thousand (I don’t know who estimates these things) people born. Between four and five hundred thousand added to us daily. One Christian organization estimated that in one minute 60 people slip into eternity without Christ, and they said that’s extremely conservative. So as we sit here for an hour studying tonight, 3,600 people will have slipped into eternity without Jesus. Life comes and goes. And again, you know, we do a hundred funerals here a year, every three and a half days, whether we like it or not, we’re putting somebody in the ground. The pastoral staff reminded of how temporary, how fast this goes. Some of them are 18 years old, some of them are suicide, some of them get shot and murdered, some of them it’s an overdose with drugs, some of them are 80 or 90 years old, all these different stories, each one’s a life, each one is telling a story, each one is like a tale that is told. And Moses watched that tale told a thousand times as they marched through the wilderness. But we’re so caught up with our own daily lives, we don’t think about it. Death is a strange visitor, most of us don’t in our lifetime, in our family, we don’t have that many funerals. It’s always a very strange experience to stand at a coffin, it’s very foreign, we don’t have a file for it. Man wasn’t made to deal with it, if Adam hadn’t sinned, he’d have never seen that, so in the original software, we don’t even have a place to file it. We watch people go through struggles with it, they don’t know how to mourn, should we give away the clothes, should we keep the clothes, do I cook for myself, do I cook at all, do I do this, do I do that, what do I do now? And it’s such a struggle because it’s wrong. There’s nothing right about it. We spend our whole life thinking about all kinds of other things, not realizing how frail the Scripture says we are. We’re gone like that, snap! You know, it’s interesting, I saw this article and I had to grab it. It was on foxnews. It says “Workers in a Mississippi funeral home say they found a man alive and kicking when they opened the bodybag while they were getting ready to embalm him. Holmes County Coroner Drexel Howard” this is last week, “calls it a miracle that 78-year-old Walter Williams is alive. The coroner was called to Williams home in Lexington, a community in North Jackson Mississippi, where the family members believed he had died. Howard says Williams had no pulse and was pronounced dead Wednesday at 9pm. Early Thursday workers at the Porter & Sons Funeral Home were preparing to embalm Williams when he started to kick in the bodybag.” Which must have almost given everybody [laughter] a heart-attack. “I asked the coroner what happened, and the only thing he could say is ‘It’s a miracle.’ William Arch, the Holms County Sheriff told the radio the same thing. Family members were called and Williams was taken to a hospital. Howard says he believes Williams’ pacemaker may have stopped, and then started working again.” Ya, right. “Family members” because even if you have a bi-ventricular pacemaker, it shocks you right away when it stops, it doesn’t wait until the next day. “Family members say Williams, a farmer, told them ‘He’s happy to be alive.’” Now, I guarantee you, this guy’s thinking differently about Psalm 90 than you will be. When he reads “teach us to number our days” he’s thinking something very different, very different. You know, I talked to Damian Kile the last week, he’s a dear, dear friend, and he’s fourth-stage lymphoma, he’s filled with leukemia. And I said, “Damian, your voice is so important to the church, because you’re speaking to us from the edge of eternity. There’s no time for baloney.” He said, “There ain’t no time for baloney.” Here it says “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (verse 12) Just think, think about this, if you sleep six hours a night, there’s 24 hours a day, that means one fourth of your life is already gone, sleeping. If you work 8 hours a day, or go to school 8 hours a day, that’s a third of your life, 8 out of 24. Here’s the way it rolls out, 6 hours of sleep, one fourth of your life, that’s 17 to 18 years, 8 hours school or work a day, that’s one-third of your life, that’s 20 to 23 years you’re going to spend doing that. If you spend 2 hours eating a day, you may say ‘Well I don’t spend two hours a day eating,’ let me tell you, if you get an hour lunch, you take it. So that’s one hour. And in the morning, it takes you at least half an hour to stagger down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and get things rolling, even if you ain’t eating the whole time, and I know you eat a half-hour at dinnertime, and I don’t know what you eat before you go to bed. So, the idea is, if you eat 2 hours a day, that’s 5 to 6 years of your life. If you spend an hour a day in the bathroom, that’s 2 to 3 years of your life. If you spend 3 hours a day in front of the TV or on your mobile devices, and they say most Americans spend 5 hours a day doing that, that’s 8 to 9 years of your life. And if that’s true, you only have 4 hours a day left, to live. And I figure I wasted the first 22 years of my life. And if all of those other things ate up my time and I have, at this point at 63, if I live to be 70, I only have 204 months left to live. Think about it. Some of you are in a scarier position than I am. 204 months, and the vast majority of those months is going to be sleeping, eating, bathroom, work, and of those 204 months I’m only going to have four hours a day to think ‘What do I do with this?’ [If you have somebody special in your life, wife, family, that time is precious, not wasted. If you have a whole church in your life, that time is precious and not wasted.] Let me ask you a question. When you measure life that way, do you have enough time to be bitter? Do you have enough time not to be forgiving? Do you have enough time not to pray, not to read the Word? Not to be in fellowship? Think of the brevity of it. And look, I’m glad I’m reading this in the Bible, because when I was a kid, I had to listen to my grandparents, my parents, saying, ‘It goes by so fast, before you know it…’ and so I don’t want to sound like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve become my father or my grandfather.’ No, no, I’m reading the Bible. ‘LORD, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’ (verse 12) Because you just got here, and you ain’t staying long.

Moses’ Plea For God’s Mercy On Man

And then the cry comes, Moses seeing the great difficulty of the children of Israel in the wilderness, “Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” (verses 13-14) The idea is in the morning. By the way, that’s a great time to seek the Lord. He says if you seek him with all your heart you will find him, and the morning is great because it’s before the phone rings, it’s before everybody’s up, you’re not going to get interrupted, nobody’s going to ask you to do a job if you’re up early enough. Just, that morning is a great time. Some of you are night people, I understand that. But I’ve discovered in my own life that if I don’t pray and read my Bible until night time, in my prayer I’ve got a lot more things to repent of than if I start in the morning. If I kind of get my heart adjusted and my attitude and read the Word, and get my life in line in the morning, I’m not perfect, but I do better during the day. I’m not saying any of us are perfect, listen, our lives, we’re in Ephesians Sunday, our lives are in Christ. Reading this wonderful passage from this old pastor in Scotland today, who pastured the same church for over 50 years, and he said “For fifty years I taught book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse,” I thought ‘YA! I like this guy.’ And he said, “People misinterpret so often, I preached this sermon about Gods holiness,’ and he said, ‘This guy came up to me, and he said ‘He was condemned, like God was the sergeant major in the sky or something,’” “I said, ‘You silly boy, we walk and breathe in Christ.’ He said, ‘We are naughty in Christ, as much as we are good in Christ. We fail in Christ, we succeed in Christ, we live and breathe in the realm of Christ,’ and he said, “and because of that, we learn as the years go by, to trust him more and more and more. But our righteousness is because we are in Christ.” What a hope we have. Moses didn’t see that, you know. How wonderful. He says “O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” (verse 14) You want to rejoice and be glad? Here’s what will do it for you, being satisfied early by the Lord, “Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.” (verse 15) ‘LORD, let it return, let us see as many good and blessed years,’ look, “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.” (verse 16) ‘Open our eyes again, LORD, let us see LORD, your hand.’ “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.” and this is remarkable, “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” (verses 16-17) Let me tell you, I sit here, one of my advantages here Sunday, standing in the pulpit or here teaching, is to see this congregation, and so many of the stories and your faces, what a privilege for me to sit here and see the beauty of the LORD upon you. [Pastor Joe can see that reward for the work of his hands established by the Lord. I can’t see that, I have no way to gage the blessings and growth caused by the work of my hands on this website. It’s kind of lonely and a bit discouraging, knowing I have to wait till the resurrection to immortality and Christ’s Wedding Feast of the Lamb to see those things Pastor Joe can see right now.] The beauty of the Lord upon you, the glory of the Lord upon his people, his blood-bought sons and daughters. What privilege, “let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” (verse 17) How remarkable, how wonderful. “and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” (verse 17b) Look, if we’re numbering our days, if we’ve learned that, that life is so brief, that he alone, you know, is our dwelling place, and we live that way, then he establishes the work of our hands. It says in Ephesians 2:10, ‘there are good works fore ordained, that we should walk in them.’ he establishes the work of our hands. If we are numbering our days, the beauty of the Lord will rest upon us, we know the old song, you know, One life will soon be passed, and only what’s done for Christ will last,’ we become very cognizant, very aware of that. The Song of Moses, Psalm 90, we’re gonna, I don’t know how we’re gonna do this. We’re going to have to start 91, and then come back to it. We’ll just do the first verse maybe. [transcript of a connective expository sermon on Psalm 90:1-17, given by Pastor Joe Focht, Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, 13500 Philmont Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19116]