Psalm 90: Teach Us

Sin, sorrow, wrath, death—not exactly light or joyful topics, not the stuff of our modern worship songs or our most popular sermon series, but all necessary topics for conversation and all found in the only psalm said to be written by Moses. Some argue with the idea that “A Prayer of Moses” means that Moses was actually the author of the psalm. The argument is largely that the psalm is familiar to others that were written during Judah’s exile into Babylon and so an assumption is made based on its similarity. But cannot something be similar but not the same? Cannot there be familiar circumstances, familiar words, familiar feelings but be a totally different place, people, or outcome? Cannot we face what we believe we have faced before and have a different understanding and a different response? What if it does not matter if this psalm was written when Moses was a shepherd in Midian, the leader of Israel in the desert or written by someone else while Judah was in Exile? What if sin, sorrow, wrath, and death are truths we all must face, truths we must be taught so that we can live with a new understanding?

We live in a world that is constantly trying to figure out how we can live longer while ignoring this one hard truth, we die because we are sinners. God told Adam, in Genesis 2:16-17 that he and Eve were free to eat from every tree in the Garden of Eden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying, “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” In all that God gave to Adam, in all the instructions He gave, authority and dominion He shared the only time God mentioned death was in this conversation about the fruit of this one tree. Death was not then what it is now. It was not inevitable. It was not appointed unto man to die (Hebrews 9:27) until Adam chose the way of death. Death was not predestined or predetermined. Of course, God knew what would happen, He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), but death was born of sin. “For the wages of sin is death” means that death is the outcome of sin but also the outcome for sinners is death. 

Adam had no end date until he ate from the tree that promised death. While we know that is the moment when death came to life, did not it start to stir when Adam and Eve entertained the serpent? When she did not dismiss the serpent’s contradiction of God, “You will not surely die”? When she chose to study the fruit rather than listen to God, to believe what she saw, that the fruit was good for food, a delight to the eyes and desirable for wisdom, rather than to trust what God had said, that the fruit’s end was death? Is not the beginning of their death, our death, all death, the disregard for God’s Word? 

When Korah became arrogant and opposed God’s leadership through Moses and Aaron’s the ground opened up and swallowed him to his death. When Israel rejected God’s Word to go into the Promised Land God led them to wander for 40 years in the desert until that entire generation died. When Ananias and Saphira lied about the amount of money they sold a piece of land for and gave to the church they each dropped dead. Each of these examples (and plenty of others) show us that death comes from a disregard for God’s Word. It could be argued that all of these people would have died anyway, but they would not have died as they did or even when they did. The wages of sin is death because the essence of sin is a disregard of God’s Word which is a disregard of God Himself. Both Moses and Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If man lives by the Word of God, then without the Word of God man dies. 

Moses combines two difficult topics in Psalm 90 that we often attempt to avoid, our death and God’s anger. Verses 7-9 say “For we are brought to an end by your anger by your wrath we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” There is a reality we must face, sin angers God. 

The Bible is filled with statements about God’s love, His patience, His kindness, and His mercy, but it is also filled with truth about His anger. At least seven times, in Exodus, Numbers and the Psalms we are told that God is “slow to anger”. That does not mean that God does not get angry, it means that He is in control of His anger. I think one of the reasons we avoid talking about the anger of God, even at times refusing the truth that God gets angry, is that we fear that His anger might be like ours. When we get angry, we tend to lose control of ourselves, we act out of character, we say things we wish we could take back, we forget self-control, we lash out, we blow up. This is why James tells us that “man’s anger does not produce the righteousness of God.” But God’s anger is not like ours. His judgement offers mercy, His discipline produces perfection, His anger is born from and reveals His love. Jesus turned over the tables in the temple in anger, but He was not rejecting the people there, He was extending grace to them, calling them to repentance. When Paul called out Peter’s hypocrisy born in prejudice it was not to shame him but to invite him to deal with a heart issue that was causing sin. God is love, which means that all of His actions, even those done in anger are birthed from love. God is the Redeemer, which means that all His works, even those done in anger are His effort to lead men to redemption. His anger is not like ours, but that does not mean that He is not now or ever angry. Sin angers God.

But in the midst of all the weighty and even dark topics of Psalm 90, there is a bright shining light, verse 12 says, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” The reality of sin, sorrow, wrath, and death must make us live differently, but Moses makes something very clear, we don’t know how. Verse 12 is a prayer, he is asking God, “teach us to number our days”, which means, “teach us to live differently from now on than we have lived up until now, teach us to take hold of each day rather than allowing the days to take hold of us, teach us how to live the life You have created rather than the life we have craved.” Praying to be taught is also a confession of not just a lack of knowledge, but a lack of understanding. That might be the most important confession we can make; we just do not understand what this life is all about. Colossians 1 tells us that we were made by Christ and we were made through Christ, but it also says that we were made for Christ. We were born and we live to bring Jesus glory, to display His beauty and to lead others to redemption. Our days cannot be numbered any longer with our desires, with our goals, our dreams, our families, or our comfort because God has already ordered our days for the glory of His Son. And so Psalm 90 is a confession that we have sinned, that we have angered God, that our lives are short and our death is imminent, but in the midst of that confession is this prayer, “Teach us how to live”. I cannot speak for you today, but I will speak for myself, I do not need a new life, I need a new way of living. I need to not just live with Jesus, but I need to live for Him by living like Him. I pray with Moses that God would establish the work of my hands, but I pray that the work of my hand will always and only be for the glory of His Son.