Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Psalm 90: Numbering Our Days

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis walks through Psalm 90, the first Psalm ever written and the only Psalm written by Moses. In this episode, Jonny looks at four attributes of God that compel and propel us to live our short lives well. Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. In this episode, we're going to take a brief hiatus from our various series and we're going to look at one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 90. Let's dial in. Depending on how old you are, you'll probably remember church directories. You know, the whole family puts on their best outfit, matching old Navy shirts or something, and takes a photo together. The Art of Vantage family, there were parents Scott and Patty, and then the seven siblings, Christine, Kyle, Johnny, that's me, Lissy, Emmy, Lindsay, and Lauren. This was the typical format, the names of the parents, the names of the children.

But then beneath the names was what I personally loved the most, the names of the children, but then beneath the names was what I personally loved the most, the numbers. I don't know what books you read as a kid, but I read the church directory. Why? Because I like to memorize the phone numbers of each family, and as a kid, I would go up and greet people not by their name, but by their phone number. Hey, 630-870-yada-yada-yada. Shout out to Wheaton, Illinois. I used to recycle cans so I could buy packs of basketball and football cards, not really so I could look at them, but so I could memorize the numbers and stats of the athletes on the back.

I love numbers. I've woken up in the middle of the night not with great spiritual epiphanies, but because I forgot how many career rebounds Charles Barkley had or how many career interounds Charles Barkley had or how many career interceptions Deion Sanders had. But the number that I've thought about more than any other number in the last year is the number 16,472. That is the number, if I live to be 75, the number of days I have left in my life. One of the great thrusts of wisdom literature within the scripture is to get us to think, to consider who God is, and to consider who we are in light of the character of

God. And one of the predominant themes that wisdom literature compels us to contemplate is the brevity of our own lives. We've talked about this before, but Job says his days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle. In Ecclesiastes, we see that life is like a vapor, like a puff of air on a cold Chicago morning. That air quickly evaporates. Proverbs says that you don't even know what your life will look like tomorrow. As Christians, we are committed to living for the glory of God, but to be consumed with living for the glory of God

means that we effectively evaluate and examine the fragility and fleeting nature of life. Jonathan Edwards used to pray in this way that Christ would stamp eternity on his eyeballs. He wanted to view everyone with a proper perspective, that they had an eternal soul. He didn't want to live for the temporary. He wanted to live for that which was eternal. He wanted to live each hour as if it was the last hour. He was an unusual man in this regard, and that's why he was used by God in an unusual way. The question today is, how can I live my short life well? To answer that question, we'll be looking at the 90th Psalm.

Although 90th in its placement, this is the first Psalm to ever be written and the only one written by Moses. I love the Psalms. We live in a world of posturing and pretend, but in the Psalms, there is no stoic denial of emotion. The Psalms tell us who God is, how to respond to misery, heartache, pain, loss, and sorrow, how to respond to delayed answers to prayer,

how to deal with our own sin, and how to deal when we've been sinned against. They address many of the most pressing questions of our minds. The Psalms are our own articulation of Christian experience. And at the beginning of the 90th Psalm, it reads, by Moses, the man of God. This is a proper title for the lawgiver, leader, and prophet of Israel. This man of God wrote this psalm during the wilderness wanderings of Israel as they traveled to the promised land of Canaan. If you remember, when Israel arrived at Kadesh Barnea after coming out of Egypt, the Lord commanded them to what?

To take the land. But the people refused. Their lack of faith angered God, who sent them back in the wilderness for 40 years. Then, for 40 years, Moses led the children of Israel in circles through the Negev until an entire generation died. I remember going to Israel for the first time after college and realizing that Moses was leading the people in circles, not miles and miles and miles away from the promised land, but yards. Moses, the pastor of two million people, did more funerals than anybody else in human history. And if any generation wasted their opportunities and their lives, it was the people of Israel that Moses led. The wilderness became

a graveyard, a wasteland of bones. All of those funerals, all of those deaths served as a reminder of the transitory and fleeting nature of human life. You are going to die. James Montgomery Boyce rightly noted that this psalm is probably the greatest passage in the Bible, contrasting the grandeur of God with man's frailty. In order that the Lord would teach us to number our days, we are going to break down in this psalm four attributes of God that will compel you to live your short life well. We need to first consider in verses one and two, the eternality of God. Moses 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. Now, in order for us to wisely steward our short life, we must consider its brevity against the backdrop of God's eternality. Moses says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. This is not merely a recitation of doctrine about God. This is a prayer to God. Moses declared that as generations come and go, one thing remains the same. Lord, you have been our dwelling place. These people were nomads.

They were pilgrims for 400 years of bondage in Egypt and for 40 years in the wilderness. No one understood homelessness better than the people of God. But here in verse 1, Moses is struck by a precious and profound reality. No matter where their body has been, God has been the home for their soul. Spurgeon asks, have you ever known what it is to have God for your dwelling place in the sense of comfort? If you, like the Israelites, feel like a tumbleweed bouncing around in the wilderness, God tells you, I am your home. If you're a believer, your dwelling place is not a place.

He's a person. Your dwelling place is God himself. And then the text says, in all generations. Moses reflects on past providences, but details for readers today. God's sheltering, protection, and provision for his people didn't begin with the exodus from Egypt, nor did it end there. He is our dwelling place for all generations. You and I, we live in an ever-changing, dying, and divided world, but Moses says one thing always stays the same.

God is our home. Do you feel out of place? Do you feel nomadic? Listen to the words of this well-known hymn. Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home. Verse 2, Moses says, before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. As you may know, for a number of years, I lived in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains, right at the intersection of Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park. And there in the middle of these mountains is a lake, Hume Lake. I would often go up to children and ask them, who made that lake? And they would respond, God. And then I would say, no, not God. Hume Lake wasn't made by God. It was made by a man,

literally speaking. The 87-acre lake lies behind the world's first concrete-reinforced multiple-arch dam designed by John Eastwood and constructed in 1908 by the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company. During lumber operations, the lake stored logs for an adjacent mill and supplied water for a flume used to transport the cut lumber to Sanger, California. But if you've been to Hume Lake, you know that the lake is beautiful nonetheless. But the mountains that surround that lake, those mountains were not made by John Eastwood, the builder of arch dams. Those mountains were begotten by God. Before my great-grandpa Athanasius, Washington, Whitefield, Alexander the Great, or Abraham, those mountains were there. The mountains

in scripture are symbols of solidity and strength. Psalm 121 says, I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? Mountains draw our attention upwards. They draw our focus towards God. And the psalmist is reflecting, before the mountains were brought forth, before they were born, before you raise them up, you have always been God. Moses looks at the mountains and says, these mountains are ancient to me, but they are babes to you, O Lord. When in the midst of nature, sometimes I wonder, maybe you're like me, man, if these trees could talk, if they could share the stories of what has happened here before. But trees and mountains don't talk, but the God who made them does. And this is the God who is going to teach us to number our days. Years before, Moses had stood before Yahweh at a burning bush and heard Yahweh himself declare his eternality

when saying, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God of ages past, ages present, and future. I am eternal. And as Moses leaves that burning bush for a daunting task, Yahweh wants Moses to know Pharaoh has a beginning and an end, but I am from everlasting to everlasting. Sometimes this idea just trips off the tongue. Yeah, God is everlasting. But when the earth is shaking and the world seems to crumble, God is saying to Moses and he says to us, put this little Pharaoh against the backdrop of my eternal nature and that giant in your life will immediately shrink

and you will be able to rest in my everlasting arms. So first we see the eternal nature of God. And secondly, here in verses three through seven, we will see the sovereignty of God. In verse three, Moses says, you turn man back into dust and say, return, O children of men. Humanity lives under a sovereign decree of death. We all die. We are all dying. You are dying because we are conceived in sin. We all have a date with death. Hebrews 9.22 says, it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment. We return to the dust. I remember being at a gravesite when I was a boy, and I heard for the first time, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, we all return to the dust. And the question is, why? Well, Moses says, because the Lord sends us back to the dust.

From our human perspective, someone might die prematurely, but ultimately it was God himself that turned that individual back into dust. Because you and I won't exceed the number that has been given to us by one day. This is how priceless and precious our time is. It has been determined by God. Psalm 139 says that no one exceeds the number given to them by God by a single day. In verse four, Moses says, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night. God superintends what happens in time. Moses says, a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday. God superintends what happens in time, but he himself dwells outside of it. Here are some of the empires of the last 1,000 years. I want you to listen to me, and this is

from a simple Wikipedia search, highly reputable. We have the Holy Roman Empire, not to be confused with the Roman Empire, the Western Chalukya Empire of South India, the Western Qi Dynasty in China, the Second Bulgarian Empire that lasted for 237 years, the Mongol Empire from 1206 to 1368 AD,

the Ottoman Empire that lasted for 623 years until 1922. We have the Aztec empire, the British empire, the German empire, the American empire. And God says, yesterday, the glory and destruction of empires are forgotten. New inventions are ancient history Hitchens says that the ambition to locate oneself within history is as absurd as trying to locate oneself within astronomy. Even beyond a thousand years, the most lengthened stretches of time are merely blips on the radar to the eternal God we serve. And Moses says, A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday, O Lord.

In verse 5, he gives consecutive metaphors for the brevity of life. He says, You have swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep. He says, Life is like a flood. Now in the Middle East, the riverbeds are dried up. The rains come and it's like a flash flood. And a wall of water comes and sweeps away everything

in its path. How is this like death? Well, like a flood, death comes in a flash, and it sweeps away all the generations of men. And then Moses says, men, they fall asleep. Moses says, life is like a dream. It's so quick. You wake up and think, what did I dream last night? But you can't remember. The dream was too brief. In that same way, life is like a dream. Yet many people today are asleep to life's brevity. Dreams don't last forever and neither will your life. Moses then says, in the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. The psalmist says that we are like grass. We're not cedars or oaks. We are like grass. Grass fades and withers, but sometimes grass is cut. You and I might expect to pace out the end of our life by an awareness of our fading and withering.

We never think that the person who will get struck by the car will be us. Spurgeon says, here is the history of grass. Sewn, grown, blown, mown, gone. And the history of man is not much more. Isaiah 40 verse 6 says, all flesh is grass and all of its beauty is like the flower of the field. Grass withers, flowers fail. God is forever. Don't you see how important it is to use your life for the glory of God? Now, third here, we are going to look at the justice of God. We've looked at his eternality. We've looked at his sovereignty. But now we're going to look at his justice in verses

7 through 12. Moses says in this third section that death is a fixed reality because we are sinners. The holy justice of God demands sin be punished. Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death. Moses says in verse 7, For we have been consumed by your anger, and by your wrath we have been dismayed. When we receive the news of someone's death, we ask, how did he die?

The circumstances differ, but the reason is always the same. Death is by sin. Sin kills us. Sin is at the bottom of life's brevity, fragility, and tragedy. Think about the context. Moses is wandering around in the desert. They didn't trust God. They sinned against God.

And as a result, an entire generation died and missed out on the blessing of God. Why do we die? Why do we have a relatively small number of days on earth? The answer is that we all die because we are all sinners. H.B. Charles says, we get angry about the wrong things for the wrong reasons and express it in the wrong way. But God's anger is a holy anger and his wrath is his divine response to the unrighteousness of man. In verse 8, Moses says, you have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. He says, there is no secret sins before God. They've been placed before him. You may be able to hide your sin from people,

but you cannot hide your sin from God. The camera is always rolling. The microphone is always on. You may delete your internet search history, but the omniscient God searches your heart. But God is not just aware of our actions. Ezekiel 11 5 says, for I know the things that come into your mind, every single one of them. In verses 9 and 10, Moses says, for all of 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. He's saying this is how quick our life is. And then watch what he says in verse 11. He says, who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due to you? He says, who considers how

much you hate sin, God? Who actually contemplates how much sin angers and grieves our heavenly father. Steve Lawson says, no one fears God too much. I like that. Do you want to know how much God hates sin? Well, we can look at the cross where Jesus died in the sinner's place. God punishes sin because he is just. Everyone you know will have their sin paid for by God's son or will be punished by God forever in hell. And Moses says, who understands the power of this anger? Hell is never described as a temporary place. It never ends.

Whitefield and others used to preach with tears in their eyes over the thought that thousands who listened to them would spend an eternity in hell. And at the conclusion of a million years in hell, the unbeliever will be no closer to the end of their torment than when they first arrived. They will never ever be delivered from the place that they are in. Our eternal God is preparing an eternal home for his children and an eternal place of punishment for those who reject him.

I know you know this if you've grown up in the church, but do you actually think about this? Because it's only after considering this that Moses reaches the high point of the song. If God, you are eternal, if you are sovereign, if sin is serious, how are we to live? Moses prays in verse 12, so teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. This is Moses's prayer, and this is the high point of the psalm. Calvin says, although we know we are going to die, we are so tied to the transient that we imagine we are going to live forever. But to enroll in God's school of wisdom, we need to ask God and plead with God and pray to God that he would teach us to number our days. And this idea isn't about

just marking days off the calendar. It is about living every day in light of the reality that it may be your last. It is to measure today in light of eternity. You are an absolute fool and I am an absolute fool. If we live our life as if there is no end to it, you cannot present to God a heart of wisdom if you don't properly number your days. A boxing legend won the Olympic gold in 1968 and then went on to dominate for years, winning the heavyweight championship in 1973. However, this athlete filed for bankruptcy in 1983. He had lost everything. It sounds like Rocky V, but this is a true story. This man lost everything, but he turned a corner in his late 40s and made it all back and then some, not by boxing, but by marketing portable electric heated grills called George Foreman grills. He lost it all and now today is worth hundreds of

millions of dollars because of panini makers. Fortunes are lost and rebuilt, but no one, no one can have back yesterday. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. And so Moses pleads with the Lord to teach us to number our days, that we wouldn't waste our life, that you wouldn't waste your life. Don't waste your neighbors or the parents on your children's sports team. Once those opportunities are gone, they are gone forever. We consider the finitude of our retirement accounts or of our inventory, of our cattle, our sheep. We know that number. But have you considered the fleeting number of your days? As Moses led this funeral procession through the wilderness, he taught the people to sing truths about their circumstances, about God, that God is sovereign,

that life is short, that death is sure, that judgment is coming. And then he says, number your days. Yet the song is not just pessimistic. It is filled with hope. Life, death, and judgment are in God's hands, but so is his grace. And fourth and finally here, the psalm leads us to view the grace of God in verses 13 through 17. Moses the psalmist gives us hope. Time demonstrates God's kindness and love, and as Moses reflects on time, he knows it would be unbalanced to merely reflect on the difficulties of life's journey and on the consequences of sin, but a realistic reflection here propels him to consider one of the marvels of God's character, and that is his grace.

In verse 13, Moses says, Do return, O Lord, how long will it be? And be sorry for your servants. And then he says, O satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all of our days. He says, satisfy us, O God, with your loving kindness. This is God's has said love, his loyal, unbreakable love. This is his kindness. And this kindness

and love of God is not merely a truth we affirm. It is a wonder that satisfies the deepest cravings of our soul. My friend Harry says, hungry people eat. And only the unsatisfied person prays to be satisfied. You will seek to be satisfied by something or someone. Moses knew that only God can fill the groove in our soul in a way that lasts. And the only thing that can fill the groove is the loving kindness of our creator and father. The Bible asks us questions. Do you want satisfaction? Do you want to be filled in a way that no earthly possession or person can offer?

Well, then you need to ask God to satisfy you with his love. Maybe the reason you tend towards ingratitude is because you're not satisfied with the bread that never perishes. Stewarding our time and living for the glory of God doesn't start with a long to-do list. It begins with verse 14. By having God satisfy us with his love, and when he satisfies us with his love, it fuels everything else in our lives. This is what Paul says, is it not? That the love of Christ compels him. For a moment, I want to draw our attention to the reality that many professing Christians rarely exhibit any satisfaction in the reality of God's love. How many people do you know exhibit a contagious

satisfaction that they are thrilled with the love of God? Well, this is the psalmist's prayer. Many studies are done on why so many students are leaving the church in droves after high school. Can I postulate? Maybe because they've rarely seen anyone thrilled and satisfied by what they sing is amazing. What's striking about God's love is to consider it in light of his omniscience,

meaning that his love is never disillusioned by some postured facade that I present to him, but his love is extended to me even though he knows the darkness of my own heart. This wondrous love is not merely a truth to affirm. It is a reality to be experienced within our heart, and once it is experienced, and only then will our hearts be satisfied. And once we have tasted that love, what's the ensuing effect? It says in the Psalm, Moses says that we may rejoice and sing for joy and be glad all of our days in a world of uncertainty and confusion.

The believer has a certain and clear reason to rejoice. We are, you are, I am loved by God, not just on the macro level, but on the micro level, on the personal level. Our hearts are wired to resist this idea of God's love. I remember reading Augustine when he says that he cares or he loves each one of us as if there were only one of us, meaning that God's love is not divided by a billion people, but it's so intentional and so intimate, it's personal. And I remember thinking, man, I didn't know that Augustine was so seeker sensitive.

But as we look to God's word, we see that this wondrous reality of his love is not a strategy of pragmatists, but the declaration of God himself. He loves us and this love satisfies your hungry heart. And now those who have tasted his love can always have the necessary amount of joy to enable them to face life's difficulties. In verse 15, he says, make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil. And then in verse 16, Moses says, make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil. And then in verse 16, Moses says, let your work appear to your servants and your majesty

to their children. Moses is essentially praying this. God, I've been so satisfied with your love. And now for the rest of my life, I don't want to be in the stands. I don't want to be on the bench. I don't want to be on the pine. I want to be on the bench. I don't want to be on the pine. I want to be in the game. I want to live my life for something that matters for your majesty. One of the key components being

made in the image of God is that we are active to make this personal. God has given you and I a work to do. And as long as you are alive and breathing, you have been given by God something to accomplish. In verse 17, Moses prays in the final verse, Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands. Yes, confirm the work of our hands. I want to just remind you that these psalms, this psalm by Moses, is taking us by the hand and leading us to an answer that helps us so that the reality of mortality no longer brings us sorrow or despair. Moses says, confirm, establish the work of my hands, oh God.

He's saying, God, put my hands to the plow because God, if you are with me and if I work and live and serve you, only then will my life matter. In glory, we will be embarrassed by how much we posted and tweeted about what's happening in the world and how little we preach that Christ is the only light of the world. God has given each one of us an allotted amount of time and the way that we glorify God is by leveraging and maximizing that time for his glory, by doing and accomplishing a work. Moses has confirmed for us. Moses's final testimony is a recognition that anything he has done or will do is of no eternal value apart from the blessing and hand of God. C.T. Studd is known for the line, only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. This much is true,

but the psalmist draws our attention to a certain reality, that the endeavors that last are only those that are established and confirmed by God. Almost two years ago, a friend of mine passed away suddenly. It was shocking. The predetermined days of his life had ended. And the following Monday at his funeral, there was a video tribute to him. And the song that played in the background of that tribute was a familiar one to me. And in it were these words, I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow, a wave tossed in the ocean, a vapor in the wind. It was a testimony of the fragility and brevity of life. Well, someone else understood the transitory nature of humanity and went before us as an example of what it looks like to leverage and maximize our

time on earth. Jesus says, we must do the works of him who sent me. As long as it is day, night is coming when no one can work. There must be a sense of urgency in our life that is reflective of the urgency that Jesus lived his life. He never procrastinated. He never put off the work that had been given to him by the father. His life was on the clock. Jesus understood that his life was on a divine schedule because God had set before him a divine purpose.

And do you know what? God has done the exact same thing with you. He has given you a divine purpose and an allotted time. Well, how do we live in light of Moses' psalm? How do we steward our short lives well? Well, if I could just point you to one main idea, God saved you for a reason. And the reason is not a mystery. It says in Peter that he saved you

so that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Numbering your days isn't merely an exhortation for you to manage your calendar, but is a reminder for you to remember your mission. The brevity of life, the hope of the gospel, and the love of Jesus Christ compels you to proclaim the hope that you have to your neighbors and the dying world around you. Can you consider your eternal God and your eternal home and not be burdened for those who are on their way to an eternal hell? Moses' resolution should be ours. Oh God, put my hand to the plow and please go before me. Teach me to

number my days. I want to live wisely. I want to steward the life you have given me for your glory and for your honor. Well, till next time, stay dialed in.