1 LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
10 The days of our years are threescore years 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.
11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
17 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.
Life is fragile and fleeting, but by God’s mercy our lives will be worth something for all the living we have done.
We enter the psalm with feelings of deep awe at the permanence of God and His power in creation and judgment. There are storms on other planets where the winds blow at 600 miles per hour over land masses the size of our earth. These storms could wipe out all life on Planet Earth in 30 seconds. But God spares us for now. In contrast with almighty God stands puny man, fragile and fleeting, especially in view of God’s overwhelming judgment. Feelings of futility sometimes visit those who have lived a few years and can see death approaching. Is it really worth going through all the struggles and suffering of life only to see our lifes’ work burned and our bodies buried in a grave? Why bother living this life at all? These sorts of questions are not uncommon for adults in their 40s and 50s as they begin to reflect on the net value of their lives. But these feelings of futility are quickly replaced with feelings of deep fulfillment in the heart of a true believer because his life is blessed in God. He knows that his life is worth living because God will make something of eternal value out of what he has done with his life.
Verses 1–5. The first half of the psalm contrasts the stability and eternity of God with the fragility and vulnerability of man. Earthly relationships come and go, men are disloyal to one another, and then they all die and their memory disappears into the fading marks on a gravestone. But God is always here. There may be people who have been a part of your life for a long time. Maybe your father and mother have been with you all of your life. They are regular fixtures in your world. But this will not last forever. If it has not already happened, there will come a day when you will no longer be able to return home to visit your father and mother because they will be gone—buried deep under the soil. This is not true for God, however. He is always home, and it doesn’t matter whether we are speaking of Abraham in 1600 B.C., the Apostle Paul in A.D. 60, or the rest of us in the present day, we can always count on God being the same Father He has always been to His people, from generation to generation.
Even after your father and mother have passed away, no doubt you will still be able to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona or Mount Everest in Tibet. Did you know that there was once a time long ago when these “permanent” sites were not there? Before God formed Mount Everest, God was present, and after Mount Everest burns to the ground, God will be present. This is how the psalm begins.
It is hard to say if verse 3 refers to the destruction of the rebel Israelites in the wilderness (whom God destroyed with snakes, disease, and other means) or the Egyptians who He destroyed at the Red Sea. Either way, God really brings deadly judgment on man, all the while offering opportunity for repentance. Even in His judgment, He extends mercy and calls for repentance! There is opportunity for repentance and an extension of mercy right down to the end as God rains fiery judgment upon the children of men.
Verse 4 returns to a contemplation of God. He is no slave to time, and He is in no hurry to bring about His purposes. It may be helpful to consider the other three dimensions of human existence—space. If I wanted to go to the moon, I would have to build a rocket ship and travel for many days before I could walk on the moon. But God does not have to get to the moon, for He is already on the moon. He is not subject to space, for He is sovereign over space in His omnipresence. In a similar sense, God is not subject to time. He does not have to “wait” for things to happen as we must if we are to get from the year 2011 to the year 2040.
Such contemplations are beyond all comprehension!
We look at the last thousand years since the beginning of the apostasy in the West as a very long, arduous process. However, God says that a thousand years for us is only a day from His perspective. Let’s try to look at it from His perspective for a moment. Christianity’s influence peaked in the 1500s, which was by about noon in God’s timing. The Renaissance, the universities, and the Enlightenment philosophers did their damage, and the Reformation was a meager attempt to salvage Christianity’s inevitable drift towards the humanist apostasy. Then the missionary movement took the Gospel to every corner around the world between 1700 and 2000. The influence of Western Christianity received a little burst in the founding of a Christian nation on the shores of New England in the 1600s and 1700s (at about 2:00 PM in God’s timing).
By the 1800s and 1900s (or 4:00 PM in God’s timing), an extraordinary number of Jews turned to the Christian faith. The destructive influences of national socialism, communism, scientism, ungodly uses of technology, materialism, existentialism, and nihilism brought about the virtual annihilation of entire cultures and civilizations in the 20th and 21st centuries. By 5:00 PM in God’s timing, the Muslims began displacing Christian apostates (humanists) in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Canada. Now the Christian influence continues in small nooks and crannies throughout the Western world as it spreads to other continents around the world. All of these events are interconnected and play a part in God’s plan for one single day! It seems like a long arduous process for us, but it is only one day in God’s “Day Planner”!
Verses 6–11. These six verses contrast puny man with almighty God, Who is eternal and sovereign over space and time. Man is like grass that is here today and gone tomorrow. Who would bother writing the life history of some stem of grass growing in the backyard? If you did record the history of a clump of grass, I doubt that you would find anybody who would be interested in reading it. The lifespan of a blade of grass may be a year or two, and a human might live a little longer than that. But this is nothing in comparison to the immortality and eternality of God! Of course, man’s problems are even deeper. He has the problem of sin, and he is subject to God’s judgment for sin. In verses 7–9, the psalmist expresses deep wonder at the swift and complete destruction God brings upon the sinner.
Grass will get a year or two, but man gets seventy to eighty years to live. In one way or another, either directly or indirectly, every man suffers the effects of the wrath of God every day of his life. Moses’ prediction for longevity is as accurate today as it was when he wrote it some 3,500 years ago. Life was hard then, and it is just as hard today (even with improved medical technology). Although Christians may enjoy a little redemptive restoration here and there, all the pain, tribulation, suffering, the sorrow, broken relationships, diseases, and death are evidences of the burning wrath of God against this world of sin. Life is really hard, and then you die.
Verse 11 magnifies the problem even more with a contemplation of the anger of God in the execution of His judgment. As the popular aphorism goes, “Life is the pits, and then you die.” But what happens after you die? None of us has seen first-hand the powerful anger of God evidenced in the fires of hell. Truly, the sight of it must be overwhelming and must inspire the ultimate fear of the Almighty!
Verses 12–17. Following this sober contemplation, Moses presents his major point:
“Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
This powerful admonition calls for a sober reflection upon the days of our lives. Although many young people want to think they will live forever and the elderly do not like to think about their impending death, Moses insists that we should live with our death in view. How we spend the time that God gives to us in this life is important, and we should redeem the time by applying our hearts to wisdom. Keeping the commandments of God is the definition of wisdom, according to Deuteronomy 4:6. Paul instructs us to “redeem the time for the days are evil.” Not much has changed since Moses and Paul wrote these words. However, the temptations to waste time with foolishness, vain pursuits, games, internet activity, and other pastimes are one thousand times more prevalent today than they were just two hundred years ago!
The last five verses of the psalm contain a prayer for God’s mercy as we apply our hearts and lives to wisdom. Of course, we will never be able to apply our hearts to wisdom without the grace of God working in us. Moses prays that God will return to us because we will not return to Him (verse 3) unless and until God returns to us and shows His favor to us. The earlier God visits us with His mercy, the more we will rejoice in this life of suffering. All around us is this ugly world of sin. In our natural state, we are ugly. If we will be beautiful, if there will be any beauty, it will be found where Emmanuel, the Son of God is present. May we be found in Him.
In these last verses Moses also grapples with the problem of true fulfillment in life. If we are just cosmic dust floating around in a chance universe, there can be no satisfaction in life. Or, if we are in rebellion against God and refuse to serve Him, our lives on earth are nothing but a miserable introduction to a miserable eternity in hell. What possible satisfaction can anyone get out of either of these two scenarios? Indeed, the only possibility for any real satisfaction and joy in life must be found in the God Who Himself is eternally self-sufficient, eternally glad, and eternally fulfilled in His ultimate purpose (verses 1 and 2). Only God can satisfy us in His mercy. Only God can make us joyful in the afflictions and misery of the life we live and the death we will die.
Moses prays for a vision for the work that God is doing in this world. Only God’s work will amount to anything significant. Only the Kingdom of Jesus Christ will stand the test of time since it is God’s project. There is plenty of work that is done in this world that will burn. The empires that men build will go up in smoke, proving that their work was for naught and all of their commitments were useless. Who wants to see their lives account for nothing at the end? Moses, above all people, should have considered his life’s work important. After all, he delivered a million people out of enslavement to the greatest empire of the day. He successfully led the people of God to victory in battle and prepared them to take the Promised Land. But even this great man understood that all of these efforts would amount to nothing unless God established the work of his hands.
1. The entire psalm is an application. We are encouraged here to maintain the right perspective concerning life because our days are numbered. Walk in wisdom. Walk in God’s truth. And this truth includes all the revelation of Scripture concerning the nature of God, the nature of man, God’s provision of redemption, God’s righteous laws, and everything found in His Word. It is more than to hear the Word and know the Word. We must, by His Spirit, apply the Word to our thoughts, words, and actions—all the while being absolutely reliant upon the mercy of God.
2. Sometimes older people look back on their lives with regret. It is sad that they did not turn to wisdom sooner and soberly reckon the shortness of life. They wasted away much of their lives. In keeping with the prayer of verse 13, we pray that God would visit our children with His mercy early in life. Then they will be able to serve Him all their days rather than wasting their lives in the service of the devil.
3. Often, we take great satisfaction in a sense of accomplishment. Whether we achieved some material success or even a spiritual conversion through the witnessing of the Word, we like to think that we did something important, that our lives are worthwhile. But all of this is for naught if God does not bless the work in His eternal kingdom. In all that we do, let us look to God for His blessing. Let us not rest content in the accolades of men and the subjective feelings of self-satisfaction. Let us pray that He would take these meager efforts we have exerted in building homes, churches, and businesses, turning them into something that will shine for eternity.
Worship includes prayer to God. This prayer of Moses’ contains the deepest reflections of the soul of a very wise man. It is the only psalm of Moses recorded in Scripture. What we find here is somewhat comparable to the thoughts of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. This prayer sets a realistic and humble assessment of human life against the backdrop of God’s eternal and infinite nature. Primarily, it is a prayer for God’s mercy upon His people, imploring that He would save them and that He would establish them, their work, and their families forever.
1. Who is the author of Psalm 90?
2. What two things are juxtaposed in this psalm?
3. To what is man compared in the early verses of the psalm?
4. What appears to be the condition of God’s people when the psalmist wrote this psalm?
5. What is the major point contained in verse 12?
6. What makes our lives worth living?
1. Do we feel as though our lives are worthwhile? Are we doing anything that will have lasting value for eternity? If so, what makes it of lasting value?
2. Do we soberly consider the fact of our certain death even now? If we were to live considering the shortness of our days, would we be so likely to waste our time in sin and foolishness? How would this affect the way we lived? Would we be sober or somber? Would we be joyful?
3. How do we apply our hearts and lives to wisdom today?