Introduction
- Never resolved: “I hope to spend less time in prayer…”
Hengstenberg There are scarcely ten in ten thousand moved by these things as they ought to be.
Read Psalm 90
- Our Shelter (1-2)
- God’s eternal affection despite our fickleness.
- The “dwelling place” all generations.
- Our Judge (3-11)
- Our Help (12-17)
- Teach Us and Have Pity On Us (12-13)
- Satisfy Us and Gladden Us (14-15)
- Illuminate Us and Favor Us (16-17)
- God’s eternal affection despite our fickleness.
Our Judge (3-11)
- 3-4 Spurgeon, “God resolves and man dissolves. A word created and a word destroys.” The brevity of human life in light of God’s eternal presence. Humbling to think that God “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). Even a long life is “soon gone” (10). 1,000yrs is as a “watch” = 3hrs of night/sleep.
- 5-6 You flood them away. So many lives quickly extinguished.
- 7-8 The wrath of God due for our sin. This was fulfilled for those whom God killed in the wilderness.
- “Dismayed” = tremble, terrified, panic. There is a swift recognition of what sin deserves coupled with the acknowledgment that God knows all our darkest secrets. What we hide from others we cannot hide from God (Heb. 4:12-13).
- Clearly, sin is not to be taken lightly. Remember: Moses is praying to God before the people. He’s warning them (i.e., Heb. 6).
- 9 “Sigh” = audible exhale, moan, associated with mourning. Thomas Watson, “We come into the world with a cry, and we go out of it with a groan.”
- 10 Exemplified by Moses’ generation which passed in constant turmoil. Although Moses lived to be 120, he was exceptional.
- 11 Many have attempted to illustrate the wrath of God. Jonathan Edwards does an excellent job in his popular sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Slippery ground at the edge of a pit. Walk over hell on a rotten covering.
- No matter how helpful the imagery is, no depiction of God’s wrath can match reality. We cannot exaggerate it.
- Death is an unavoidable and fearful reality. And fear is a motivator. Fear of temporal and eternal punishment is swept away by a culture that minimizes its view of a sovereign God.
- However, it’s only believers who properly fear a Sovereign God.
John Calvin The minds of the godly alone are wounded with the wrath of God; nor do they wait for his thunderbolts, to which the reprobate hold out their hard and iron necks, but they tremble the very moment when God moves only his little finger.
- The Blaspheme Challenge (2006): Videos of atheists denying existence of Holy Spirit (unpardonable sin). Holding out their stiff neck for the thunderbolt of God. They have no fear, because they have no God.
- Francis Bacon, father of the scientific method and empiricism, also wrote philosophy and theology.
At morning, fair it musters on the ground; At even it is cut down and laid along: And through it spared were and favor found, the weather would perform the mower’s wrong: Thus hast thou hanged our life on brittle pins, to let us know it will not bear our sins.
The reality of death and trials > search of rememdy…
Climax
- Christ alone knows the full extent of God’s wrath. On the cross he drank the cup of God’s bitter wrath for us.
- What’s judgment for unbelievers is hope for Christians!
- Those for whom Christ suffered are not brought to an end by God’s anger and dismayed by his wrath (7). It’s not true of those in Christ.
- Rather than our sins being before God (8), those who stand in Christ have their sins cast away as far as the East is from the West!
- Believer’s don’t pass away under God’s wrath (9), their testimony is Psalm 23:6.
- Is that your hope?
Our Help (12-17)
- Teach Us and Have Pity On Us (12-13)
- 12 Knowledge through his Word, specifically, stewarding our days. “Heart” > right affections.
- When we learn the brevity of life we begin to value eternal things.
- 13 Prayer doesn’t have to be wordy, but it should never be cold.
- Satisfy Us and Gladden Us (14-15)
- 14 If God will have pity, we will have joy.
- 15 Replace the 40 years of affliction in the wilderness. The Lord would answer this prayer. He promised to bring the next generation into the Promised Land. And they were a faithful lot.
- Illuminate Us and Favor Us (16-17)
- 16 Let the next generation see what only you can do! Fathers, is this your prayer?
- 17 Your legacy isn’t carved in stone, it’s a faith passed down to the next generation. Repeated request because our works are so often filled with imperfections.
Conclusion
- If we never look back at our lives from God’s perspective we will never be struck by its brevity (12).
- The growth of our church rests on God’s favor, but we resolve not to be idle.
- Our lives don’t have to be brief and wasted (3-11) they can leave a lasting imprint in this world.
- Persevere in prayer. Keep knocking. Keep asking. Pray Psalm 90 often. Will time spent in prayer ever be regretted?