TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS

(PSALM 90:9-12)
Sunday 15 November 2020
Rev Simba – All Saints Tatura Anglican Church

To listen to this sermon go to: https://allsaintstatura.org.au/sermon/

Psalm 90: 1-12

1 A prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling-place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, ‘Return to dust, you mortals.’
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death –
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
12 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. NIV ®

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Good morning once again. We have read together Psalm 90:1-12 but what I plan to do
today is to get us to think through the issues raised in verses 9-12. Before we move to
these particular verses, may I point out how important God is in this Psalm. Psalm 90 is
most probably the oldest Psalm as it opens with Moses addressing God as eternal and
Israel’s dwelling place. Man’s life on earth is acknowledged to be brief because of our sin.
The Psalm shows a compelling reason to ask for wisdom from God just as Moses did, so
that God can reveal his work, demonstrate His power and favour and make his people
successful.
God is the source of life and the sustainer of every form of life in the whole world. Please
notice how intimate God is to his creation in verse 1, “Lord, you have been our dwelling
place throughout all generations.” God and his creation mutually dwell in each other.
God dwells in us. We dwell in him. This is how he relates to those who trust in him or in
his name. This is God’s consistent character in all ages. We are finite beings. God is infinite
and eternally everlasting.
The second verse in this Psalm says, “Before the mountains were born or you brought
forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” I think this
verse lays a foundation for what we need to consider today. Our mortality and frailty
need to be surrendered to a strong, faithful and eternal God. A God who is Sovereign, in
control and rules justly, as he has proven so from generation to generation. God existed
before and beyond time and space. Before the mountains (an example of what we can
physically see) were brought into existence, God himself was already there, transcendent
from eternity to eternity.
God is the creator. He is not part of creation, he has always existed, he created the
mountains, the earth and the world. He has always been and he will always exist. Genesis
1 and 2 describe God’s creative process, and Hebrews 11:3 points out that God created
the universe by his spoken word. Moses’ Psalm here echoes the words of Genesis 2:7,
“then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” This is quite significant, I
believe. It tells us without question that God himself is the source of life. He is our breath
of life. He is our life support so to speak. He is the only one who can turn off our breathing
system. Nobody else can give us this kind of life and equally so, no one can take it away
from us except God himself.
As we consider how brief our lives here on earth are, it leaves us thinking of why and how
best we can live our lives. How can we make the most of it? How should we think and act
if this precious life is one that has been graciously given to us by someone full of
splendour, majesty and glory? This is articulated by Moses prayerfully in verse 12, “Teach
us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Friends we need all the
wisdom we can get to make the most of our time here on earth - that means seriously
considering what we fill our time with to make it count.
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So again, listen to Moses speaking in his own time…
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

If we read Deuteronomy 31:2 and 34:7, Moses lived for 120 years. Verses 9-10 mention
seventy and eighty years. It is not a promise or a limit but an estimate of human lifespan.
This was the known Ancient Near-East heathen usual lifespan then. It’s like saying the
average life expectancy in Australia is 83 years. This is not the rule of thumb but an
estimated calculation. Some people might live longer than that, others might die younger.
Psalm 90 emphasises man’s futility and God’s overall control on all creation as the source
of life.

Psalm 90 acknowledges pain, sweat and toil in the world. It acknowledges man’s fallen
condition and our miserable plight outside God’s saving action. Suffering and tears are
inherent in creation which came as a result of Adam’s sin in Genesis 3. Without Christ,
the whole human race is living under God’s curse and anger- this is stressed by Moses in
verse 9, “All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.”
Moses saw and witnessed the miserable deaths of those who disobeyed God for forty
years in the desert. Forty years of toil and wandering. No rest but being constantly on the
move- having your bags packed every day not knowing exactly where you and your family
will sleep. Actually, it is homelessness for forty years because of disobedience and
unbelief. This is confronting and it must have been painful to those who went through
this.

In our ignorance and foolishness, we are tempted to think that working hard and
accumulating wealth, saving enough money for retirement and our children is fair
dinkum. Tell you what? We need to look beyond that.

This psalm today confronts and exhorts us: “Teach us to number our days, that we may
gain a heart of wisdom.”

So maybe it’s helpful to ask again, what is it to number our days? What does it mean?

Dairy farmers can count their cows. Nowadays we boast technology that tags each dairy
cow and it’s connected to a computer. Each individual animal is counted - that’s just what
we do. Each calf is counted. The same with sheep, how many tonnes of barley or wheat
harvested, how many litres of milk produced each day. We estimate the revenue from
our hard work on the farm. Numbers is what we do. Well and good.

But here, when the bible talks about numbering our days, it does not literally and
physically mean counting how many days we have lived and how many days we might
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have left in this world. It’s not using a calendar. Friends, it is not a calculation. No man
can do that. It’s impossible because we are not God. No one can count the number of
his/her days, weeks, months and years while they are alive. Only God knows when we
will die.

Rather, the meaning of numbering our days is a humble petition to God, that he would
convince us to live our lives as if this present day was our last one. We cannot boast of
tomorrow. We don’t know what will happen today and perhaps tonight the Lord might
call us to be with him. I’m not sure if you remember the story told by Jesus about a
wealthy person who thought life was all about amassing wealth and enjoying a good life.
In Luke 12:18-20 it reads,

"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and
there I will store my surplus grain. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of grain laid up
for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. "But God said to him, 'You fool!
This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have
prepared for yourself?'

We cannot boast of tomorrow.

We shouldn’t boast in our achievements or how great our plans are.

Instead, there is a sense in which we need to humbly ask for godly wisdom on how to live
lives that please him - that God would teach us how to seriously meditate on, and
consider the shortness of our days, really comparing the brevity of our lives to his endless
majesty of his kingdom.

Our lives are from God and we should live for him. We should therefore not waste time
on things that do not bring glory to God. We need to consider how frail and short our lives
are.

The brevity and uncertainty of life is sobering. When we wake up, let’s give thanks to the
giver of life and every good thing. Let’s be thankful for family and friends.

If you have been so sick recently, thank God for each day that you are now well. If you
have chronic sickness thank God you are here. If you haven’t been sick at all, thank God
for that. You’re not just as fit as a fiddle, it is God’s grace sustaining you. May God teach
us to number our days.

Let’s be thankful to Jesus our Saviour, the One who died and rose from the dead so that
we can come to God. Let’s remember Jesus each morning, each evening, each and every
hour, that he is on the throne and that God rules the world through him.

Let’s put Jesus as our number 1 priority. If you are someone that “squeezes” Jesus into
your weekly schedule, I will prophetically say that’s not good enough. Please put him
first. Let’s our lives “making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
(Ephesians 5:16).
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Friends, we can never boast of our plans, can we? ‘Now listen, you who say, “Today or
tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make
money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You
are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If
it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogant
schemes. All such boasting is evil.’ (James 4:13-16)

Let’s remember that “…when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his
Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so
that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5)

Jesus is the Saviour, the ever-living Son of God. “He made known to us the mystery of his
will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when
the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under
Christ.” (Ephesians 1:9-10)

Friends, this is the time to turn to Jesus while it is called today. Not tomorrow. This the
time to pray to him and ask for his forgiveness for turning away from him. When we turn
to him in faith, he will accept us and fill us with his Spirit as his children.

Teach us to number our days.

Let’s pray.