Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

Psalm 90

“A Lesson on Time”

Rev. Meagan M. Boozer

“If I could save time in a bottle..” (Jim Croce)

“Does anybody really know what time it is?” (Chicago)

“Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away…” (Isaac Watts)

We say we’re: “Out of time.”

We say we’re: “On time.”

We spend time.

We kill time.

There are about two dozen people in this congregation who are spending their time reading through the Bible in a year. The book of Psalms is a book that is interspersed throughout all of the weeks of readings. This week’s readings included Psalm 90, a psalm about “time.” This Psalm is THE oldest Psalm. You will see in your Bibles that it is written, “A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God.” Moses was the little baby in the bulrushes. He was the one who lived in the house of Pharaoh and who was called by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. He’s the one who announced all the plagues were coming, and he’s the one who raised his staff over the Red Sea so God’s people could walk between the walls of water. Moses is the one who stood high on Mt. Sinai and received the revelation of the Ten Commandments. He’s the one who led the people through the wilderness, and he’s the one who died before ever reaching the Promised Land- he saw it- he just ran out of time.

A prayer of Moses, a special, chosen man of God. Let’s read it together now:

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. 3 You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” 4 For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past or like a watch in the night. 5 You sweep them away; they are like a dream like grass that is renewed in the morning; 6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. 7 For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. 8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. 9 For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. 10 The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. 11 Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. 12 So teach us to count our days that we be gain a wise heart. 13 Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. 16 Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands- O prosper the work of our hands!

Last Sunday, John and I had the blessed opportunity to be present at a wedding of one of Doug’s former youth pastors a Central Presbyterian. It was a wonderful wedding service- truly a service of worship. The minister said all the right things in all the right places, we sang, we prayed, we laughed. And then, towards the end of the service, the minister told the bride and groom, “Cherish one another every day, you don’t know how many days you will have together.” “Life is a vapor,” he said. “Life is not insignificant, but, it is a vapor.” A vapor is defined as a mist- something without permanence. Life is a vapor.

Well, right there, is a pretty good summary of the overall message of Psalm 90.

Live your days well, because life is a vapor. Moses wrote this Psalm while traveling in the wilderness…

Now let me stop right there.

A wilderness is an uncultivated area uninhabited by human beings, or simply an uncultivated region. The opposite of uncultivated is ‘refined.’ The word refined means ‘pure.’ I think we would agree that we are not living in a world that is pure. Because of sin, we are living in an uncultivated place. Therefore, we are living in a wilderness. So, Moses, writing this Psalm in the wilderness, is writing it for us as well as or the people right there with him.

He establishes in the first two verses two things: 1) God is personal “Lord, You have been our dwelling place,” (He is our place of safety, our place of refuge, He is our home) and 2) God is the eternal creator of everything that has ever been or ever will be. “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” “O God, you are personal, and you are sovereign over all!” That’s our God!

Then he gets right to it. Now, understand, Moses is tired. He’s been in the wilderness a long time. He has a bunch of grumblers all around him. And he says something like, “Your power is beyond our understanding. Your anger against us, O God, could have killed us all the way back when we sinned against you in the Garden, but instead of wiping us out in your anger and disappointment, you allowed us then, and you allow us now, to blow in and blow out- like a vapor.”

Moses is establishing in his prayer, that God is omnipotent (all powerful)! He’s establishing that our lives, whether they are 10, 20, 60, 80 years are inconsequential in the overall span of time- for, Moses says, “A 1000 years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.” Moses is saying, or trying to say, or trying to pray, “Please Lord, help us not get too overwhelmed by the wilderness. It’s hard. It’s dusty. It’s hot. It’s boring. These people are driving me crazy.” “Please Lord, help us realize that our time here is a gift from you to be used for your purposes.”

Look at verse 11: Moses asks the Lord, “Who considers the power of your anger?” He knows the answers is ‘no one.’ No one understands the power of God’s anger. If we did, we would not take our sinful behavior so lightly. And so Moses prays, “Teach us.” “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” (v.12) This goes hand in hand with our teaching from the verse in Proverbs from last week 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

The Psalm ends in a prayer grounded in reality- sort of like the old hymn- these verses now take us forward: “O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come…” 13 Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. 16 Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. 17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands- O prosper the work of our hands!

I feel somewhat sorry for the people before Christ who prayed this prayer and others like it who were so dependant on their own ability to fulfill the law. “O please Lord, may our work mean something…” “O please Lord, may our work mean something…” But that’s not where we are as followers of Christ. As people beyond the Old Testament, we can read the end words of this Psalm in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate work of God who lives in us and who causes our work to mean anything. He is the one who changed, once and for all, the sign under which we live from God’s wrath to God’s grace.

We, who are in Christ, if we’re growing in our faith, we use the trails and troubles of the wilderness in which we live to teach us more about God and more about ourselves so that we can become more faithful. We face our inevitable death in the trust that God’s judgment on our sinfulness has fallen on Christ himself, our Redeemer.

For Moses and his people, this prayer took them to a place of renewed healthy fear of God, and a renewed faithfulness in God’s plan and purpose for the wilderness and for the people wandering together in it.

For us, this prayer should do the same. It is written to take us back to a renewed healthy fear of God and his power, and then on to a renewed faithfulness, gratitude, and confidence in Christ as we, too, wander together in the wilderness- seeking others who long for the Promised Land.

Life Means So Much by Chris Rice

Every day is a journal page

Every man holds a quill and ink

And there’s plenty of room for writing in

All we do is believe and think

So will you compose a curse

Or will today bring the blessing

Fill the page with rhyming verse

Or some random sketching

Teach us to count the days

Teach us to make the days count

Lead us in better ways

That somehow our souls forgot

Life means so much

Every day is a bank account

And time is our currency

So nobody’s rich, nobody’s poor

We get 24 hours each

So how are you gonna spend

Will you invest, or squander

Try to get ahead

Or help someone who’s under

Teach us to count the days

Teach us to make the days count

Lead us in better ways

That somehow our souls forgot

Life means so much

Has anybody ever lived who knew

the value of a life

And don’t you think giving is all

What proves the worth of yours and mine

Teach us to count the days

Teach us to make the days count

Lead us in better ways

That somehow our souls forgot

Life means so much

Every day is a gift you’ve been given

Make the most of time

Every minute you’re living

Lee Iacocca (Former Chairman of The Chrysler Corporation in the 80’s)

If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s the most important and then give it all you’ve got.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German author, painter, philosopher, dramatist, scientist)

Nothing is worth more than this day. Every second is of infinite value.

Will Rogers (cowboy star of over 71 movies)

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (Best selling author)

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

William Penn (who signed the land grant that allowed this church to be built on this property in 1766)

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.

Those who are young think they are immortal. The old despair because their time is almost over. Time is a burden when we have to wait; a scarcity when we are busy. Time is the source of anxiety, illusion, and remorse. Moses is reminding us that time is a gift. Let’s not waste it by replaying past mistakes, holding on to grudges, withholding forgiveness, or continuing in patterns of sin that compound the guilt and shame that keeps us from making the Lord our dwelling place. “Lord, teach us to count our days, and to make our days count.” Amen.

Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

08-20-06