Wisdom for this Mortal Life #1

Humanity is living. History is unfolding in the context of the eternal purpose of God. There is nothing that is happening outside of God's eternal purpose. The hand of God, beloved, is in absolutely everything that happens. In the grand scheme of things, life is like a blip.

We're here one minute and gone the next. Psalm 90 considers that fact in light of God's eternal nature and then suggests a way to live accordingly. And that's where Pastor Don Green will take us today on the Truth Pulpit as we continue our series, Here You May Safely Dwell.

Hi again, I'm Bill Wright. Don, this psalm really puts life in perspective, doesn't it? You know, my friend, it's a privilege to be able to introduce this psalm in this way on the Truth Pulpit today. Because Psalm 90 has had such a profound effect on my own personal life. Verse 12 that says, teach us to number our days so that we may apply our heart to wisdom, that has factored into every major decision that I've ever made as a Christian. And I trust that it will be useful and meaningful to you as we open God's Word today on the Truth Pulpit.

Thanks Don, and friend, let's join our teacher now in the Truth Pulpit. What we want to do is we want to exposit Psalm 90 before I get too overly personal about all of this. But God's Word matters, doesn't it? Moses, as he wrote this psalm, probably wrote this during the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. During that wilderness time, the people of Israel were marching through, they'd been judged by God, and he had said that that entire generation would die in the wilderness. And so they're going through a 40-year purging as a nation to cleanse out all of the rebellious souls that had objected to God's work in bringing them out of Egypt. And so day by day, year by year, people were starting to die off. And if you do the math, I won't take you through all of this, if you do the math, there was anywhere between an average of 50 to 75 people dying day by day in the wilderness in Israel.

And that provides a bit of the backdrop for what Moses was seeing, what he was thinking, and what would have prompted him to write such a magnificent psalm as this. We're going to break it down into three points. The eternality of God, point number one, the eternality of God. Point number two, the mortality of man. And then point number three, the humility of prayer. The eternality of God, the mortality of man, and the humility of prayer.

And those things, that really kind of wraps it all up, and if you can get your mind around those three points, you can have a focus that will help you long after the words that I say are forgotten from your mind. And so let's start with point number one, the eternality of God, as Moses meditates and then writes for the benefit of all the people of God who would follow after him, now 3500 years later. Moses here is drawing upon, for his meditation, he starts with the eternality, the eternal nature of God.

Look at it there in verses one and two. He says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Moses starts this meditation dwelling on the nature and the essence of God. And that is where all proper right thinking of man begins.

We start with the nature, the purpose of God, and then we work things out from there. And as Moses begins here, he is connecting Israel with the people of faith who went before them. And look at what he says there in verse one.

He's speaking about Israel. They weren't quite yet a nation so much because they weren't yet in the land, but they had developed into this mass of people under the leadership of God. And he says in verse one, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. And what he's doing here is he's connecting the present group of the people of Israel with the people of faith who had preceded them. Now, God had called Abraham 2,000 years before the time of Christ.

Back in Genesis, Genesis chapter 12, he calls Abraham to follow him. That was 2,000 years before the time of Christ, speaking in round numbers. Moses lived, and this time of the Exodus was...

I'm oversimplifying, I'm just using round numbers here. About 600 years later, Moses is writing Psalm 90. And so there's been an intervening period of 600 years during which the descendants of Abraham were multiplying and growing.

Moses is calling all of that to mind. And he says, Lord, as our people have grown and expanded, you have been our dwelling place. What he means by that is, God, you have protected us and sustained us from our tiny numbers when we left Israel to come into Egypt during our 400 years of slavery in Egypt, where we multiplied and we were under harsh taskmasters, and very little was there at times to encourage us.

Lord, the underlying reality of our existence as a people was that you were protecting us, you were sustaining us, you were achieving your purpose even when it didn't seem like anything was really happening. And as I like to say, to just give a sense of perspective, 600 years in our terms, in our thinking of history as Americans anyway, would take us back to prior to the discovery of America by Columbus. Now that seems like ancient, dark history to us. It's so long ago, and yet that is the timeframe that Moses is writing from. He's looking back in chronological terms to something that would have preceded the discovery of America by Columbus, connecting that time all the way through to where he's presently writing and saying, God, you have been over us, you have been our security, you have been the driving force of our continued existence, even though we have been living in slavery much of that time. Here's the thing, God had been accomplishing his purposes even though at times there was very little external evidence of it.

And he looks back over the sweep of centuries and says, God, you have been working in the midst of all of this even though it may not have seemed like it at the time. For us as Christians, we could look back 600 years and go back just a few decades prior to the time of the Reformation and look back at the subsequent 500 years of Reformation history and realize how God has had his hand upon his people, his hand upon his word, his hand upon the proclamation of the gospel, and his kingdom has advanced, his church has grown, Christ has built his church just as he promised, even through the ups and downs of the ages that have intervened since then. And what you and I need to do in response to that kind of thinking, looking back at the window of 600 years of Israel's history that was prompting Moses to write, now in the church age looking back at the 500 years since the Reformation, looking back 2,000 years since the time of Christ, we need to think, we need to contemplate the way that God shelters and develops and grows his people according to his purposes no matter what the earthly opposition might be. If we would do that and contemplate providence rightly in light of God's word, we would be far less intimidated by the rise and fall of earthly leaders who are opposed to Christianity.

We wouldn't be so wrapped up in the things of politics, the things of economics, the things of this life because we would realize that behind it all and seeing these unseen things with the eyes of faith is that the hand of God is marching forward and is bringing to pass everything that he ordained to happen before the beginning of time. God is achieving his purpose without fail. And in that, the people of God have great security in that realm of faith, in that mental realm of knowing God and knowing the fulfillment of his purposes.

That is where we find our stability. He is our rock, our refuge, and his eternal nature guarantees that he will never miss out on what he's doing with his people. You know, it matters what you think about the sovereignty of God. And it is no small error for people to chip away at the sovereignty of God, either in salvation or just in not recognizing it, not teaching it because we want to exalt the so-called free will of man.

Beloved, I want to tell you those things have long, far-reaching ramifications. And Moses would have had nothing of it. Look at it there in verse 1 when he says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. You have been stable. You have been unchanging.

You have been immutable. And we as a people dwell in the shadow of your protection, as we'll say in Psalm 91 verse 1. He goes on in verse 2 here in Psalm 90. He says, Before the mountains were born, or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. He says, God, you had no beginning.

God, you will have no end. You established your eternal purpose before time began. He's looking at this and he's saying a statement of reverence, of fear, a spirit of worship. He's saying, God, you are working out your purpose in time. And after time ends, you will have accomplished your purpose to perfection, and nothing will have hindered. There will be no diminishment of what you intended to accomplish. You will do it all because of your great sovereign, eternal power and purpose.

And his point here as he continues on where he's about to go with this is this. He's setting forth the fact that we as the people of God, you could say and expand it to all of humanity for that matter, humanity is living, history is unfolding in the context of the eternal purpose of God. There is nothing that is happening outside of God's eternal purpose. Even the sin of man is calculated in the eternal purpose of God, and he uses it to accomplish his purposes. The hand of God, beloved, is in absolutely everything that happens. His eternal purpose will be achieved.

It will prove to be good in the end. In another book of Moses, in Genesis chapter 50 verse 20, he records how man meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. In Acts chapter 2, godless men nailed Christ to the cross, and they were merely carrying out the eternal purpose of God when they did. You really need to factor this into the way that you think about life. The things that we are talking about here shape your entire mind.

They inform the entire way that you think about life. What you think about the sovereignty of God and his ability to work out his purposes changes everything. And a man who does not understand these things or who denies these things will live much differently than the man who affirms and believes them, having been saved by the power and the blood of Christ.

This matters, I'm telling you. And if it didn't matter, it wouldn't be in Scripture. And so, Moses briefly starts out with this statement of the surpassing eternality and sovereignty of God, and that's the start of his meditation. Now, he goes on, having said that God is eternal, he now changes focus. Having looked up vertically, so to speak, at God and praising and honoring the eternality of God, he now turns his focus to the nature of man.

He does this without a real transition, but the contrast is certainly clear enough. We come to point number two here, the mortality of man. The mortality of man. Now, Moses is still talking to God here. He is still praying, in a sense, here as we go to verse three, as we see, because he's still speaking in the second person, you. Look at it there in verse three with me. He says, you turn man back into dust.

Well, who's the you? It's the same Lord that he had addressed at the beginning of the psalm. You turn man back into dust and say, return, O children of men. For a thousand years in your sight, or like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night, you have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep.

In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew, toward evening it fades and withers away. What's he doing here? In poetic language, he is now talking about the brevity and the mortality of man. He's had such an exalted view of God as he opened it up, but now he turns to a contemplation of man and says, man is not like you at all. You, who are the same from generation to generation, transcendent over ages, living beyond and existing beyond the realm of time, God, by contrast, we live in this transient temporary realm where we flourish for just a short period of time and then the wind blows on us and we are gone. He is making a grand statement, a grand contrast, between the eternality of God and the mortality of man. What he is saying here is that God, unlike you, we are subject to death.

We die and our time span is insignificant. Look at verse 4 as he contemplates time from God's perspective. He says in verse 4, for a thousand years in your sight, or like yesterday when it passes by, a millennium, a day, there's no difference in the sense of God. The time span is insignificant from God's perspective because he dwells outside of time. It's not that God is unaware of time. It's not that he doesn't act in time, but his perspective on time is completely different from ours.

Twenty-four hours to us and a thousand years is vastly different. To God, he's so far beyond time that the distinction is insignificant. A thousand years to God is the same as a four-hour watch in the night to him because he dwells outside the realm of time. Time is no restraint on his character or being. Time is no restraint on the fulfillment of his purposes or what he intends to do. That's from God's perspective, but for us, it's important for us to realize that time has a much different significance to us. And unlike the eternality of God, we are transient and passing. Look at verses 5 and 6 as he contemplates men who die and go back to the dust.

He says in verse 5, you swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep. In the morning, they're like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning, it flourishes and sprouts anew.

Toward evening, it fades and withers away. We know this, especially in springtime. I love springtime. It's my favorite time of year by far. I love the flowers that bloom up and the trees that bloom, and I just love that.

But every year, every year it's the same. The beauty of it is passing. The flowers fade and the petals start to peel back and they wither up and they blow away. The beauty is transitory. As real as the beauty is, it's transitory.

With each passing year, I realize that I have fewer springs to enjoy as life moves on this way. And what Moses is doing here is comparing the life of man to the passing grass of the field. Man flourishes for a time? Oh yeah, it's longer than the two-week span of a flower, but it's really in the context of God's eternality, it's exactly the same principle.

It flourishes for a while, the breath comes on it, and it withers and goes away. And that is the only proper way to think about the nature of the life of man. Moses answers an important question. He answers a theological question beginning in verse 7.

Why is it like that? Why is it that our lives are brief? As God is eternal and we're made in the image of God, why are our lives brief?

Why is it that we flourish for a time and then we fade away? Well, he answers that question in verse 7. I love this psalm, it's just so profound. He says in verse 7, four.

Four. He's explaining what he had just said, he's giving a reason for it. Why do we flourish and then wither away? Verse 7, four, we've been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we've been dismayed. You've placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh.

As for the days of our life, they contain 70 years, or if due to strength, 80 years. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away. We leave this earthly existence behind. Verse 11, who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you?

What is he talking about here? Well, remember that he's writing in the context of a generation of Israelites falling in the wilderness, every grave a fresh reminder about their disobedience to God. What he is saying here is that we are experiencing this realm of death because we are experiencing your wrath and anger against our sin. We are being punished for our sin. Your fury and wrath is against our rebellion and disobedience against you. And every grave was a fresh reminder, if they thought about it rightly, about their disobedience when they wanted to return to Egypt instead of following the pillar of cloud and fire into the promised land.

Inexcusable. And you expand it out and you realize that what was true in a microcosm of Israel is true for all of men. Look at Romans chapter 5 verse 12 with me, just as a brief reminder for you about where death comes from. Where does death come from? It wasn't present in creation before the fall of man, but when Adam disobeyed, he brought death upon the entire human race.

Romans chapter 5 verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man, speaking of Adam, sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Why is there death? It's because man sinned against God and the penalty for sin was death. Death in terms of immediate alienation from God, death in terms of physical death when the soul is separated from the body, and ultimately eternal death for those who are not redeemed from their sin. Death is a multifaceted reality of existence since Adam sinned, and we all shared in it with him. Not only shared in it with him as the representative head of the human race, but shared in it by our own nature and by our own choice and by our own desires.

You, we're talking about here. And so the reason that there is death, the reason that life is mortal, the reason that life is brief and transient is because of the sin of man that invoked the wrath of God against humanity. Death was the judgment for sin. The wages of sin is death. And that's what Moses is referring to. In a humble expression of worship and meditation to God, he says in verses 3 to 6, our life is brief, mortal, and transient. And he goes on to say, God, the reason that it's like that is because your wrath is against us. We've sinned against you. Your fury is invoked against our rebellion and disobedience. And God, this is really, really sad.

Look at verse 10 again with me. As for the days of our life that contain 70 years due to strength 80 years, if we go really well, we go 80 years. He says, but the pride of our life is just labor and sorrow.

Then it's gone and we fly away. You know, if I can go back to the cemeteries with you for just a moment. It slightly amuses and saddens me at the same time when I go to an unfamiliar cemetery. There's always somebody who at one time was a big community leader and a prominent guy whose family built him the biggest monument in the place, right? You know, and you've got the smaller stones like most of us will have if we're buried in a cemetery like that. You know, the modest stones may be as wide as the pulpit and, you know, a fraction of the height.

And, you know, here lies so and so or whatever. But somebody's got to have the 30 foot tall monument or the big mausoleum that looks like a small house in it. And you come to that afterwards and the whole point is to speak to how prominent and great this man was or this woman was.

You know, with the passage of just a few years, it just becomes a mockery of the very thing that it was supposed to be commemorating. If you don't know who the guy is, that monument just looks like a big waste of money and it was. This man was important, really. Who was he?

I don't even recognize his name. And the pride of all of that was just meaningless. He was trying, his family was trying to keep his name perpetuated for generations. One or two generations later, people are scratching their head and saying, why did they put so much stone into that? This, beloved, why does this matter?

Why are we talking about this and why am I illustrating this way? This shows us, it illustrates for us the truth of what Moses is talking about. The pride of life is just labor and sorrow.

There is nothing lasting or permanent about this life, not even the significance that is communicated by your headstone at a cemetery. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, with part one of a message titled Wisdom for This Mortal Life. Don will have part two for you next time as we continue our journey in Psalms 90 through 92 and our series Here You May Safely Dwell. Do be with us then.

Right now, though, Don's back here in studio with some closing words. You know, friend, we realize that you may not be close enough to our church to be able to join us as you would like to on any given Sunday. So let me invite you to join us on our live stream that you can find at our website, Sundays at 9 a.m. Eastern Time, and also we have a midweek service on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. We would love to have you join us in that way.

A lot of people do. You might as well be one more to join us for those special studies of God's Word and our church services on Sundays and Tuesdays. Here's Bill with some final information to help you find us. Just visit TheTruthPulpit.com, where you can also learn more about podcasts and free CDs of Don's teaching. I'm Bill Wright. See you next time on The Truth Pulpit.