Psalm 90: Numbering Our Days with Purpose and Wisdom

Life passes more quickly than we realize. In this message from Psalm 90, Pastor Chris Teien explains how remembering the brevity of life helps believers pursue God's wisdom, invest in what truly matters, and live each day with eternal purpose.

Written by Moses during Israel's wilderness wanderings, Psalm 90 reminds us that God is eternal while our lives are temporary. This message explores how trusting God's unfailing love, seeking His wisdom, and relying on His strength enables believers to make the most of every opportunity and leave a lasting impact for Christ.

In This Message:

1. Recognize God's Eternity and Our Frailty

God has always existed and remains our eternal refuge, while our lives are brief and dependent upon Him. This message reminds believers to find their security in the Lord rather than in earthly possessions, accomplishments, or circumstances. (Psalm 90:1-6; Genesis 3:19; Hebrews 13:14)

2. Remember That Life Is Short and Live Wisely

Every day is a gift from God. Moses encourages believers to recognize the brevity of life, take sin seriously, and seek God's wisdom so that each day is invested in what has eternal value. (Psalm 90:7-12; Ephesians 5:15-17; Proverbs 9:10)

3. Rejoice in God's Unfailing Love and Lasting Purpose

Even in difficult seasons, God's steadfast love brings hope and joy. This message encourages believers to trust God's faithfulness, pray for His blessing, and depend on Him to establish work that will have an eternal impact. (Psalm 90:13-17)

Takeaway

Life is short, but every day matters. Trust the Lord as your eternal refuge, seek His wisdom, and invest your time in what will bring glory to God and make an eternal difference.

Illustrations

• Israel's wilderness wanderings remind us that delaying obedience to God can result in missed opportunities and unnecessary hardship.

• Comparing our lives to grass that flourishes briefly illustrates how quickly our earthly years pass.

• The example of writing down funeral wishes and a personal testimony encourages believers to leave behind a legacy that points others to Christ.

Key Quotes

"Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

"God is our eternal refuge."

"Every day is either invested or wasted."

Search Topics

Psalm 90, Moses, numbering our days, wisdom, eternity, Christian living, God's unfailing love, purpose, spiritual growth, Pastor Chris Teien

Full Episode & Transcript:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/17684329

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Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

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Chris T 0:16

Alright, so we're going through a series in the Psalms. A summer in the Psalms. There's a lot of good Psalms. We could talk about Psalms for years. There's good ones. Today we're going to talk about the first Psalm, the original Psalm, the one that Moses wrote. So bet you didn't know Moses wrote a psalm. But before I begin, I just wanted to talk about Bible translations again for a minute. As a church, we are blessed in every way to have so many translations available to us on our phones, on our computers, to listen to, to read, to share. The new Believers New Testament that we have that we give away is the New Living Translation 2015 edition. There is a big difference, like the 1996 edition, is pretty much there's a lot of differences between that and the updated one. So I'm promoting the most recent one. And the reason I bring it up is because I'm going to use it again for this psalm, because I think that it really says what it means. And my goal is to not make you good at Bible trivia, but to help you, equip you to help people be transformed by the Bible. And sometimes when you use the New Living Translation, people say that's a paraphrase. And what that would be is if somebody read like the King James Version or something and then just wrote down their own version, like the Passion Translation. I don't recommend that one. That's definitely a paraphrase. The message, that's a paraphrase. Some of that's good, but not one that I would preach from. But when we think about Bible translations, what we're trying to do is we're trying to hear the words that God has for us. We're trying to understand what the word is saying and how do we apply it to our lives. And so in front of you, in the chairs, is the NIV 1984 edition, which I don't know, 20 years ago, that was just the standard. That's what everybody used, and there wasn't all of these different translations. So and for word-to-word, word, word-for-word study, I was like the New American Standard Bible, 1995 edition, and everything's everything keeps getting getting updated. So there's like a 20, I'm not sure what year it is, 2021 or 2022 New American Standard Bible. Now there's the Legacy Bible, there's the Christian Standard Bible, that's actually a good one. There's the ESB that keeps getting updated. And so two things that I wanted to bring up about that is one, the New Living Translation is a real translation that was translated by like 70 or 90 evangelical scholars that most of them we would appreciate. And I believe that this Psalm 90 that we're going to look at was overseen by Ray Ortland. I don't know if you've heard of his ministry before, but he's an author and he's been on the radio and all, and he's a good guy. So the New Living Translation, I like to use that. Not all the time, but I like to use it. And I'll also let you know that In Converge, the group that we're a part of, one of the fastest growing churches, the largest one in Minnesota, often uses the New Living Translation. In the Christian and Missionary Alliance, one of the fastest growing churches uses the New Living Translation. Not every single time, every single way, but when a pastor reads through multiple Bible versions like I have this week and preparing for this, and I see that this one really speaks to the heart, that's how we're using it. Okay, the title, Dust to Dust. That isn't necessarily here in some verses in Ecclesiastes and things, but that actually comes from funerals. So that is the funeral a pastor uses when they say ashes to ashes, dust to dust, when they don't know if that person really went to heaven or not, when they're not sure of that person's spiritual salvation. On one hand, a pastor's not going to put somebody they don't know anything about into heaven, at least they shouldn't, and say, he must be saved because he must have heard about the gospel, because he lives in America. Or sometimes Lutherans and Catholics and sometimes people that really rely on infant baptism will say that he was baptized as an infant, so we know he's right with God, even though he didn't live for God all of his life, never set foot in the church. Pretty much hated everything about God, but they'll put him into heaven because of the infant baptism. I don't think that works. However, you can't put him into hell because you have no idea that person could have had a deathbed confession. That person could have heard the message somewhere along the way, realized that they were in trouble, and prayed that the Lord would forgive them of their sin and come into their life and save them. And they probably have a lot of regret about wasting their life. When you come to Christ at a very old age, which is much less likely than coming to Christ at a very young age, but when you get serious about following Jesus in your old age, you often have a lot of regrets about all the things that you could have done, all the ways that you could have spent your life if you would have been more serious about Jesus in your younger years. And the other part of that is there are some Christians who put everything on hold because they're enjoying life, because they want to do this, they want to do that, they want to build this, all these different things, and they put God on hold. And they're like, someday when I'm older, someday when I'm retired, someday I'll have more whatever. And then someday comes and they're like, Well, I'm too tired, everything hurts, I'm busier than I thought. Someday never comes unless you make it a priority. And so all of those things that I just said is what Moses is talking about. What Moses is talking about, and just to set the stage for the Psalm of Moses. Do you remember when God told the Israelite spies, the 12 of them, to go in and check out Canaan land? And so they were supposed to go in and bring back a good report, and ten of them came back, and they're like, There's no way, those people are so big, there's we just can't do it. Oh, I wish we could just go back to Egypt. Oh, it's so terrible. And they said, No go. And two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, came out and they said, Yes, God, yes, they are big. Yeah. But we trust in our God. Well, as you know, God was pretty upset about that. And he said that the entire generation in the wilderness was gonna die out. And the new generation and Joshua and Caleb would be the ones that were going into the promised land. So there's a period of time when Moses is leading a group of people as they wander around in circles in the wilderness, and they're just waiting for a generation of people to die out. And I'm sure there were lots of funerals all the time. I'm sure that they were dying, and I'm sure that somebody had it figured out as to know who was left. And they're like, okay, we got Martha and we got Floyd. And as soon as Martha and Floyd are done, then we're set, then we're free, and then we can start to see some things happen. I don't know. Let's keep trying to overfeed Floyd or something, see if we can speed this up. But so this is what Moses is referring to. This is his mindset. This is his, I understand your judgment on us, God, but please show us mercy. And I I long for the days when you used to do great and wonderful things, and right now we're just stuck on pause, stuck on hold. And I don't know if you feel like you're stuck on pause or stuck on hold. Maybe you had great aspirations for your life and they haven't been realized. Maybe you're hoping that the best is yet to come, or maybe you just assume the best has already come. And so I think that as you praise the Lord and put him first, that your circumstances might not change, but your attitude and your joy may. And that's what this psalm is about, and why I'm excited to share about this psalm. So let's get into it. Oh, by the way, the funerals for believers talk about the great hope we have in Christ and the resurrection of Christ and the assurance of heaven and all of those other things. And I am delighted, that's almost always, the funerals, the memorial services I get to share. And like I've said before, if you could bless us all by writing down your testimony, maybe even writing down things that you like said at your funeral songs written or songs to be sung, things like that, it just makes it so much more fun. I always want to do a memorial service or a funeral, thinking to myself, okay, if that person were here right now, would they be pleased with what we're singing, what we're saying, what we're doing? And we have no idea when our time will be. There's no guarantee that I'll be here tomorrow. There's no guarantee that you will either. There is, however, a high probability that you'll probably be around for quite a while. So let's get serious about following Jesus. Okay, number one, recognize God's eternity and our frailty. Recognize God's eternity and our frailty. So I think that most of the people in this room are pretty knowledgeable about that. We realize that we serve an eternal God and that our time on this life is temporary. But because we've received Christ as our Lord and Savior, because we've been adopted as children of God, because we have the Holy Spirit and we've been assured heaven, we have all this stuff going on in us. The Holy Spirit testifies that we're totally that we're truly children of God, that we know that this life isn't it, that this is like not even the pregame for a while, all that God has for us. So we do recognize God's eternity, and we also recognize our frailty. Verse 1 Lord, through all the generations you have been our home. Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and to the world, from beginning to end, you are God. You turn people back to dust, saying, Return to dust, you mortals. So here Moses is writing, and they don't really have homes. Like I said, they're wandering in the desert, in the wilderness. And so they pitch their tents and sometimes a pillar of fire by night in a cloud during the day, move out when they're supposed to move. They were wandering in the wilderness. God was their refuge, God was their true home, God was their dwelling place. They didn't have a permanent place, they didn't have a permanent place even to worship the Lord at that time. And Moses is saying, God, you're you're it. So we find our security, our stability in you. It's not just that, they don't say that God isn't just a God isn't just a refuge, He is our refuge. Deuteronomy 33, 27 says, the eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you. And Hebrews 13, 14 says, For this world is not our permanent home. We are looking forward to a home yet to come. And so we need to realize that too. Sometimes we think that this is all we get. We do want to have a secure home, a home that protects us from the storms, from the snow, from all of those things. And it is good when God blesses us with a good home or an apartment or a dwelling place like that. But to realize that we need to hold on loosely to these things because this isn't all there is. And sometimes God wants us to move, God wants us to do something, and we don't want to give up what we have or the home that we have, things like that. And sometimes when people become fully committed to following Jesus, they pack up their stuff and they move on. And God works through that. God works through that, and that can be a good thing. So verse 2 talks about God's creation, and so we know that God created the heavens and the earth. So Moses is like if he's doing a movie, he's starting with a camera way back before he zooms in and saying, God, you are it, and you created everything, and you know how we were made. And at the end of our days, you say we return to dust. Genesis 3.19, you were made from dust, and to dust you will return. So in our days, as we think about the bodies that we have and the gift of life that we have, it's so weird to think that God formed us out of dust, out of nothing, but yet we are so miraculously and marvelously made, and God gives us an opportunity to try to take care of our bodies and to do what we can with the tent of this body and the life that we have. And the fitter we are, or the more we take care of it, maybe the more useful we can be for God's service. Maybe the quality of our days will be better. But to know that God cares about us, God cares about our bodies, he knows how we were made. And so Moses is putting that all into perspective. And again, he's probably seeing people dying all around him as they wander around in the wilderness and wait for God to start moving again. So then, verse 3 or verse 4. Moses says, For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few net hours. You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that springs up in the morning, it blooms and flourishes, but by the evening it is dry and withered. So again, Moses is putting into perspective what God, how God feels about time. So they're focused on these years of waiting in the wilderness, were just over, so we could move on. But Moses, who would go up to the mountain and be in the presence of God, who brought us the Ten Commandments, who did great, wonderful, mighty things, he knows that God's perspective of time isn't like our perspective of time. Just like 2 Peter 3:8, when it says to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day with the Lord. And so sometimes, in my mind, sometimes time just goes by too slow. It seems like when I'm not focused on anything, if I don't have any task to accomplish, if I if I'm not engaged in doing something worthwhile, sometimes time can go by really slow. And sometimes when I'm busy doing good things and I have lots of aspirations and want to get a lot of things done and I'm really enjoying myself, sometimes time goes by too fast. But like dreams that disappear. Kind of like if you had a dream and you woke up and you forgot it, kind of like that, maybe. But to think about the life that we live, the things that we do, and then how fast life really goes. On one hand, life goes by slow. And the other hand, I look back at pictures. Some of the social networking stuff gives you pictures, you know, like 10 years ago, and it shows you a picture, and it's like, man, 10 years ago, that doesn't even seem like 10 years ago. That seems like it, like a day. And then other things seem like so long ago. But life just goes by so fast. And to know that God cares about our days and God cares about our life. And when we look at it in man's perspective, without the wisdom of God, we might think that our days are meaningless, kind of like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, where he keeps saying things are meaningless outside of God. And so then the grass. I'm sure, like in this area where Moses was, the grass would in the morning, you know, be up and ready, and by the end of the day, the heat would cause it to wither. Have you ever that probably happens to you too? So I had a house one time that had grass on sandy soil, and as long as you watered it a little bit all the time, that grass would stay green. It didn't matter if you watered it for long periods of time because of the sand. But otherwise, if it looked great in the morning because of the dew and everything, by the end of the day, it would be crunchy and usually it would come back. But sandy soil. Sometimes we have this illusion that we're in control. We're in control of our days, we're in control of our time, but actually God's in control of our time. He holds life and death in his hands. And sometimes we think that this world is going to offer us security and we're safe as long as we do what we do. But we find that that's not always true. We find that society changes, the neighborhood changes, culture changes, the house changes, houses grow old and fall apart, too. Number two, remember life is short and uncertain. Remember, life is short and uncertain. So Moses wants to make sure that Israelites, that the Jewish people who would actually think about this passage for the new year, and we do too, actually. This is often a passage we use for a new year, for funerals, and for recommitting our lives, trying to remember that our lives are short and uncertain and how secure they are in Christ. But verse 7, we wither beneath your anger, we are overwhelmed by your fury. You spread out our sins before you, our secret sins, you see them all. We live our lives beneath your wrath, ending our years with a groan. So we like to think that God is quick to forgive, and he never cares about the things that we do or the way that we live our life, but he does. And no amount of repentance or sacrifices was going to let was going to have God change his mind on these unfaithful wilderness wanderers going to the promised land until they died out. And during that period of time, Moses is like, man, this is tough. You are showing your righteous anger. And this passage isn't meant to scare us, but to see how holy and pure our God is, and to realize that sin, sin is serious before God. God knows everything that we do. There isn't any sin that He doesn't know about, any sin that we can hide. He knows our thoughts, He knows those secret sins. If we feel under conviction of them, we should just pray and ask the Lord to forgive us of that. Call it out, name it, ask for forgiveness and apply that forgiveness to our life. Sometimes people are struggling with besetting sins that they just can't get over, or they can't get over the guilt. And sometimes talking to a trusted Christian friend or a Christian counselor can help. But we live our lives beneath your wrath, ending our years with a groan. It can be a tough thing when you are in a community or in a society, and people make wrong, sinful choices. Even if you choose to do the right thing, it still makes life difficult. And it was a difficult life in the wilderness for God's people during that time. But Moses had hope. Moses is just saying it the way that it is. Many of the Psalms just say the way they feel about life. And we can be honest in our prayer with God too. We can just tell him life is terrible. This is terrible. God, this is messed up, or this is good. It always is good if you're gonna list all the things that are terrible to start counting your blessings also. So that can be a good thing. But he put continues on. Seventy years are given to us. Some live to 80, but even the best years are filled with pain and trouble. Soon they disappear and we fly away. Who can comprehend the power of your anger? Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve. The fear, the righteous, reverence, that kind of fear. To fear God is a good thing. When you take him seriously, when you respect him, when you want to do his ways, because you know that he can reward, but you also know that there is a consequence for sin, a penalty for sin. So 70 years are given to us, some live to 80. That's an average. So many people live to 70, some live beyond 80. So I went to whatever, one of those websites, the personal death clock one, and I typed in my health stats and my age and everything, and it predicted I was gonna live to be 86. So it's better than I thought. So it doesn't know for sure, but it just tries to take averages. And we don't know how long we'll live. We don't know how long, how many days we get or the quality of those days. But Moses calls out, he's like, as you know, I'm tight with God, and still my life is full of trouble. And our lives are filled with pain and trouble. And then when our lives are over, it says we fly away. So one commentator said, like a bird flying out of a cage. But when I like to, when I think of this, I like to think about when I fly away, I leave the tent of this body and go to be in the presence of the Lord. I think that's how the believer flies away. But to know that God's righteousness is serious and God's treatment of sin leads to anger and wrath. But Jesus' forgiveness leads to blessing and a personal relationship with the Lord and love. And he loves us so much he doesn't want us to stay that way. Number three, request God's wisdom to use our days well. There are so many things we can do with our lives, there are so many things we Can do to fill our time, so many areas that we can volunteer, so many things we can learn, so many degrees we could accumulate if we wanted to accumulate degrees, so many things we could build, so many things to take in. We could travel the world, we could learn multiple languages, we could become experts and things, and all of those are great. But the thing that I want more than anything is I want to know what God's will is for my life, and I want to pursue that. I want to be focused on doing that. And maybe I'll get to enjoy some of the other things too, but to focus on God's plan for my life, God's will, his way in my life would be the best way. And that's kind of the center of the psalm, kind of what the whole thing is focusing on is what Moses wants you to know the most, is to teach us to realize the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom. Teach the Hebrew says, Teach us to number our days so we may get a heart of wisdom. So left to ourselves, we will not find the things of God, we will not know the things of God. But when other Christ followers get involved in our life, when we start spending time in Scripture, when we start wanting to learn the things of God, we will grow. We will be taught. And then what's even better than being taught is we can teach others. And to number our days isn't in a morbid way, isn't like a countdown to death, like one of the personal death things online has a countdown timer that you could set up and just watch it click down, which is kind of morbid and weird. But if you knew the exact day that you were gonna die, if you knew the exact day that you were gonna die, I would think that you might change some things in your life. I think maybe you would make amends to someone, apologize to someone, encourage someone, tell someone you love them, share all the passwords with the person you love or whatever, make a will. Those types of things if you knew that death was imminent. But wisdom is more than just knowledge. Wisdom is from God, it is the ability to rightly apply the knowledge that we have and the knowledge that is available so that we would grow in that. And like I said, Moses is watching these people die out so they can move on. But Ephesians 5.15 says, Be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise, make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Do you do that? Do you look at what you can do, what how you can do it, the resources that you have, the skills that you have, and see what you can do to advance the kingdom of God, to spread the message of Christ, to impact people. Maybe you have a skill other people don't have. Maybe you can see a way to use that. Be careful how you live, make the most of every opportunity. I think about that, and I think about there's opportunities that God wants me to take, and there's opportunities that are distractions, and trying to figure out what that is, wisdom. Proverbs 9 10 says, The fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom, knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment. So wisdom is a gift that God must teach us. We can't decide to be wise, we must seek it in prayer and scripture. And we spend time in God's word, we spend time around sometimes being around other godly people who have lived life before us, they'll share wisdom with us. They'll be able to point us to scripture and tell us their life experience on how God worked through it, and that will help us. And even help us to help others. So every day is either invested or wasted. So time, you can never get time back. There's no neutral use of time. It moves towards God's glory or towards personal loss. So we move forward in time. Number four, rejoice in God's unfailing love. So Moses has taken us from the sadness and the difficulty to being serious about the way we use our life and our time, to now saying we can rejoice in God's unfailing love. So, verse 13. Oh Lord, come back to us. How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants, satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery, replace the evil years with good. What a great prayer. What a great thing to ask. So, on one hand, God had pulled away because of their sin. And as Moses is saying, we should come back to God's unfailing love. He's saying, God, come back, come back to us and do those wonderful things that you did. Satisfy us with your unfailing love. Might not change all the circumstances, but to have that love, to have that joy, that we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Singing is such a huge thing. The Psalms is the hymn book, and many of the psalms were put to music. And so they would sing it. And to sing, sometimes when you sing the words, even when your heart doesn't feel like it at first, sometimes the words start to pour out and it starts to bring you joy, and it starts to encourage you in your faith, and it starts to motivate you to do right, and it helps you to get up when you're down, and it helps you to keep moving forward when you feel stuck, and it gives you hope when everything seems hopeless. Sometimes a good song, a good hymn, a good Christian song can motivate you and guide you and direct you in life. And I have many stories about random Christian songs that motivated me in hard times to give us the gladness in proportion to our former misery, replace the evil years with good. Sometimes you go through really hard things in life, and then after that season, after that storm, after that hardship, then God blesses you in an amazing way and he helps you through. But sometimes you find that the hard things that you went through, the difficulties that you went through, the hardship helped you grow closer to God, developed your character, gave you a softer heart towards the things of God and the people that God wants to reach. And sometimes you're able to then connect with other people who are going through the same hard things you did to tell them how God got you through and to give them encouragement and hope, but to replace the evil years with good. And the last one, number five, rely on God to establish the work of our hands. Rely on God to establish the work of our hands. At the end of Ecclesiastes, it talks about you should read it, the end of Ecclesiastes. It talks about how you should live your life. Ecclesiastes 11 talks about farmers who wait for perfect weather and never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest. And it talks about planting your seed in the morning and keeping busy all afternoon, for you don't know if profit will come from one activity or another. And it has advice for the young and the old, and so that's in Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 11 and 12. But to know that the work that we do, the work of our hands, that we want stuff that's going to last for eternity. That's our goal. So there's temporal stuff and there's eternal stuff. And we need to do both. I mean, we need to be able to feed our families, we need to be able to feed ourselves and stuff, but there's also investing in eternal things, investing in eternal priorities. Moses says, Let us, your servants, see you work again. Remember those miracles? Remember the things you did in the past before we got stuck here right now? Come on, God, let's do that again. Let us see that again. And let our children see your glory. So that's like, okay, this next generation coming up, they're either going to see faith or a lack of faith based on the people who are here. And we want our children to see your glory and know the Lord. And may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful. And so many things that we want to do for God we can't do on our own. We don't work for him, he works through us. And when we've done those things, we praise and glorify the Lord because he has been faithful to work through us. And it can be a good thing. And so those are some of the things in Psalm 90 that are encouraging from the first Psalm ever from Moses. So the next time we get together, we're going to look at the mighty works of the Lord. So I'm going to show a video clip.