MPC
27th September 2020.September 27 - Psalm 90 - "Numbering Our Days"
MPC
27th September 2020.
Pete Kutuzov
Have you ever noticed that the older you get, the faster time goes?
When I was 5, being told to lie on my bed for 5 minutes felt like a long time. An hour was a very long time.
Now, I blink and they go. When I was a 5, a year was an eternity!
Like, do you remember, having to survive that seemingly eternal barren desert of presentlessness until the next one?
And now, with the possible exception of 2020, I get to December and think, "Where'd that year go?".
What did I do?
And it makes sense, because when I was 5, a year was one-fifth of my entire life. 20%.
Now, a year is more like 2.63% of my life.
Watch the maths people now sit there, "If I carry the 1... "
And I'm told by people older than me, that by the time you reach 90, time goes even faster.
This Psalm asks us to take the 5 year old's inability to sit still for 5 minutes and not compare it to the patience and perspective of a 90 year old... but to compare that to God.
God, he says, before the mountains were born,
Like mountains Jerusalem was built on.
Before you gave birth to the world,
Before the time... that you invented... came to be
You were, are and always will be... God.
It's kind of obvious. But it's so obvious that it's worth thinking about some more. Because sometimes, I forget who it is I'm dealing with.
A thousand years. A length of time beyond our experience. That's a day to him. A watch in the night. An episode of your favourite drama.
And yet we, the ones who think about God who pray to him who write songs about him, goodness, in comparison, our perspective is... infantile.
You can imagine in the dry mountains of Israel, the sprig of grass that springs up, having just sucked up enough of the morning dew to pop up into leaf...
But by the time that same day has reached its peak is withered. And shrivelled. This is us! Says the psalmist. We... are temporary.
When you're thinking of God. When you're praying to God. Who do we think we're talking to? Because he is not like us.
This being you are doing business with, is eternal.
And we, even the 90 year olds among us, are 5 year olds in comparison to him, too impatient to sit still for 5 minutes.
Who's the oldest person here? Too fresh faced and new to the universe to have any sense of perspective on life and the universe.
To speak to God without that recognition. It's the kind of stupidity regularly seen when people are on the couch with their friends watching State of Origin yelling at the players. Oh, you're useless! I'd have passed it to the winger, easy try. Even I could have made that tackle! You have no idea what you're talking about.
With this spiritual musician working so hard to put things in perspective, you have to ask, "Why so serious?"
What's got the Psalmist feeling so philosophical? What is happening in their life, in the life of Israel, that's made them sit down and put pen to parchment. To make them put this psalm, here?
Often with Psalms we don't really know. But luckily, in Psalm 90, we've actually got a fair bit of back story. There are some definite clues.
First, its location.
Did you notice it said, "Book 4" at the start?
Psalms is divided up into 5 collections of Israel's greatest hits, and this Psalm kicks off collection 4.
Now, Book 3 ended with songs of lament. Sad songs, to help you through sad times.
And in particular, it was to help them through the grief of the failure of David's line. God made a covenant, a divine contract, with David, their greatest King. But David's line were unfaithful to the God who gave them the throne.
And so eventually, God took that throne away, and kicked Israel out of their land.
And if you just look back half a page, you'll see how Ethan the Ezrahite, the bloke who wrote Psalm 89 is struggling with this.
I know they stuffed up, God. But you made a promise. Where's your faithfulness to your promise?
And you can imagine Ethan, as an ethnic minority, writing his sad song as a refugee in Babylon, far from his home.
Ok, so how does this help? Come with me here.
Imagine you've just bought the box set of the Psalms, but only the first 3 books.
And you're finishing Book 3, ending in confusion and grief. Exile and abandonment. Far from home.
And it's then that this musician who's compiling book 4, reaches further back for his inspiration.
Back past David, to an earlier hero, and an earlier covenant. "A prayer of Moses, the man of God"
Did you notice the little heading at the start? The muso who put book 4 together took inspiration from a prior covenant.
Not a promise when David was on Israel's throne, but when he used Moses to bring the people into the land of Israel.
The covenant that God made with Israel in the Sinaii wilderness.
Not from the times they were settled in the land, but unsettled in the wilderness. When they had no place to call home.
So this Israelite muso. Far from home. Remembering a time when Israel didn't yet have a home... writes: "God, you were our home."
It's about all the refuge that Israel's got, at this point. They're exiles, a few steps down from being refugees. So far from home.
The Psalm invites those Israelites to sing to their God,
You were our home.
You are our home.
Home will always be, where you are.
You're greater than the mountains we built our homes on.
You were there before you made them.
God, you are, and have always been, our home. How did it come to this? They're confused about how things ended up like this. How did it get so bad? Maybe you've felt like this.
Well the Psalmist doesn't pull any punches.
It's not just that they're temporary and vulnerable to death in comparison to God. They're temporary and vulnerable to death because of God. Did you notice that?
Have a look at verse 3.
You turn people back to dust, saying "Return to dust, you mortals"
If you're a Marvel fan, you'll know the scene. A click of Thanos' fingers, and people return to dust.
In verse 5, it's God who sweeps away people in death.
In verse 7, it's God's anger that has consumed Israel.
Why? Because God has stopped overlooking Israel's sin.
It's a powerful image in verse 8. Have a look. "You have set our iniquities before you."
This is the opposite of forgiveness. Leaving behind. It's the opposite of overlooking.
Israel were hurting because God had chosen to take note of their sins. All of them. Including the ones that they thought no-one knew about.
And he brought them out, to face them. To react to them... appropriately. And the result, is verse 9.
Now, that sounds very dramatic. And in one sense, it very much was for these people in exile. At least at first.
But after a while, life away from home seems to have become very mundane.
The Psalm talks about the terrible wrath of God, but somehow, while under that wrath, he talks about living for 70 or 80 years.
In fact, verse 11 seems to imply that the people have been becoming blasé about God's wrath. As if there's no extreme example of it in their faces to remind them.
So what's he asking to be rescued from? He wants rescue from the mundane things of being away from God.
In a way, he wants rescue from all the things that humanity's lost since we were exiled from the garden, right back at the beginning.
He wants rescue from dying of old age. From years of trouble and sorrow. From things we've come to consider... normal.
But are actually the wrath of God against sin.
Not 1 for 1 sin causing suffering, but the regular mundane grist of the mill, of life away from being home with God.
In the mundane ... the normal rhythms of life... being away from God ... and all its consequences... has become... normal, somehow.
And yet here, Moses' prayer is extremely audacious.
Especially for someone who's been all about fearing God, remembering your sins, remembering how much bigger God is than you are, all of a sudden, Moses the man of God says to God, "God, change." He prays. Relent. How long are you going to leave us trapped away from home? Hasn't it been long enough?
Wow. How honest is that?
Why can't I go to sleep tonight and it be different in the morning? Instead of misery, how about some joy?
Why can't we go back to how it was when we were with you, in the land and we were satisfied with your presence?
He's not philosophical about the situation, ah well, just gotta accept it.
Pleads for God to reverse the frustration of life away from home with Him.
Doesn't just accept it philosophically. He's asking for more. He's got no cause. No leverage on God.
It's just an audacious hope, from a man who knows God. God, you can do this? Can you make us happy for as many days as we've been miserable? (What an amazing sentence.) God, make us happy for as many days as we've been miserable.
Please. Establish the work of our hands. We're grass God! When we do things, they don't last! If you are not in a thing, then it will not succeed and it will not last. And so God, we beg you, please... be in what we do. Make it last. Make it matter.
How does that story end?
This Psalm is a powerful cry for help from someone in the middle of a story.
A request for things to be different, without pretending that they deserve it to be different.
A request for restored relationship with God, while acknowledging all the barriers that stand in between us and Him.
But how does the story end? The story ends when God himself shows up, and becomes finite. The everlasting, becomes limited.
A far cry from 80, he only makes it to around 33 years old.
But as he came to us, and made his home with us, he took on that sin that was in God's presence, and wore it himself.
And he took it from God's presence, and crucified it on the cross.
But he didn't just take God's wrath away from us. He rose from the dead, defeating it.
Let me read to you, from this story's final chapters. Revelation 21:3-4
God has been the true home for his people since forever, and his spirit lives in the hearts of his people now, but on that day all those who trust in Jesus will be with him face to face.
You will be in the one place that your heart has been aching for since the day you were born. So normal is it for us, that we don't even realise.
70 years will not be your limit, if you trust in Jesus, brother and sister. 80 years won't be the end of you. Your suffering now will not be your end either.
God will make you glad for many more days than you have been hurting. God will make you glad for many more days than you have been sad. Many. More. Days. Number those days too. That will make your heart wise.
Three things
How do you go at facing?
At honestly, coming to terms with who you are.
At recognising yourself,
At recognising your limitations
At recognising your sin.
As a son. As a daughter.
As a husband. As a wife.
As a friend.
As a worker.
As a parent.
As a human being.
Do you face those things? How do you go at facing your desire not to have those limitations and sins?
This Psalm invites us to face the truth, and take it to God.
There are other ways of approaching yourself, your limitations and your sin.
And some of those ways can actually seem like you're facing when you're not.
They all start with F, which helps.
We can flee from ourselves, our limitations and our sin. Running away and avoiding the issues. That's common.
We can fight them. Which seems like a good thing! But without facing them, it doesn't take our limitations and sins, our being dust, seriously enough.
It pretends that we can establish the work of our own hands, without God.
Or you might fake it, pretending that you don't really have serious limitations or sins.
Brothers and sisters, hear this Psalm's call to face reality. And then to be real, with God.
He knows everything, and he knows it better than you do. We go to the one who gives us hope.
Second, maybe you do need some help in numbering your days. I had a crack at it.
So, some calculations based on my current age as previously determined. Days calculated... 17,250 days left. Best case scenario. Tomorrow, I'll have 17,249. Or 3. Hard to tell.
But either way, in the light of eternity, either of those numbers is very small. And each day, whichever one is true, it gets smaller.
One of my mates told me the other day that he prays Psalm 90 for himself every day. And each birthday, he calculates the number of days he has left. Legit suggestion. Enacted application of the talk. It makes the literal doing of what's obviously a metaphor the actual doing of the metaphor.
God, please teach us to number our days. We were made from dirt, and we'll be dirt again soon. And that whole time is the blink of an eye to you.
God please help us to realise your anger at sin.
If death has ended, and eternity at home with our God is opened to us, it changes the figures. The numbers look different.
One part of the wisdom gained from numbering our days will be changing where we invest based on those numbers.
Living for that kind of time-frame will end up being very short-sighted indeed once you gain the type of perspective that comes from eternity.