Alright as has been announced, the sermon text today is Psalm 90. And so if you have opened in your Bibles to Psalm 90, now let me just read this psalm.

Psalm chapter 90. “A Prayer of Moses the man of God.” Verse 1: “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the Earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You turn man to destruction, and say, “Return, O children of men.” For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood; They are like a sleep.

In the morning they are like grass which grows up: In the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and withers. For we have been consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath we are terrified. You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; We finish our years like a whisper.

The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labour and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Return, O LORD! How long? And have compassion on Your servants. Oh, satisfy us with Your early mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!

Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us, the years in which we have seen evil. Let Your work appear to Your servants, And Your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands.”. Now let us look to God for help.

“Our Father in heaven, again we come this morning mindful indeed of what a blessing it is that You have accorded us to come together in worship, in fellowship, and also to come and hear Your Word. We know that by ourselves we cannot understand spiritual truth, and so we look to You once again for Your help that Your Spirit may enlighten us. Grant us understanding and humble our hearts that we may bow before Your Word in obedience, for these, we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Alright, we are still looking at this series called “Selected Psalms”, not all the psalms but just some of the psalms. And this morning we are looking at Psalm chapter 90. And if you look at the title or sometimes called the superscription of the psalms, now we read this. The title is “A Prayer of Moses the man of God.”. So it is obvious from the title itself what this psalm is about. So this is a prayer of Moses.

Now a prayer is a cry or a response to a realisation of a certain reality. For example, if you turn to Psalm 51, we have here the cry of David. And this is his cry in Psalm chapter 51 in verse 1: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.”.

This is a prayer of David. As I said, a prayer is a cry. It’s a cry in response to a realisation, and here is David realising his sin. Now that is the reality that he has come to see. And so in response to that, he cried out to God for mercy. He sees his guilt and his sin. And then in the book of Isaiah chapter 38. Isaiah chapter 38, and in the first two verses, now we read this about the king- King Hezekiah.

Isaiah 38:1- “In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.’” Then (verse 2) Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the LORD”. And so here we have the King Hezekiah crying out to God. We are told he prayed to the Lord because he came to this realisation that he was dying.

Now you might remember the story of Esther, where he (she) called the people of God to fast and to turn to God and pray. And the reason for that is the realisation that they are in danger. So they realised that there are people in danger, and so what should they do? They cry out to God for help. And so when we come back now to Psalm chapter 90, now here I say is the cry of Moses. Moses prayed, but why?

Do you pray? Have you prayed this morning, and why? You see, there must be a reason for prayer, and so we want to discover the reason why Moses is praying here in this psalm. As I say, we will probably never truly pray and never truly cry until we’re awaken to certain realities. Otherwise, your prayer is just murmuring or mumbling or just meaningless words, vain repetition. It is not the cry that the Bible speaks about concerning prayer.

And so here Moses prays. As I said, he prays because he came to a certain realisation. He prayed because his prayer is a response to a realisation that he mentioned in verse 10 for example: “The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labour and sorrow; And it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”. And we are no more.

How often do you give some thought to what Moses is saying here, the fact that we are all dying? And this is what this psalm is about. It is a cry of Moses in response to this realisation that we are all dying. We are all dying. How often must the Bible speak of this to remind us that we are mere mortals? We don’t live like mortals. We live like as if we are going to live forever because we do not plan for tomorrow. We do not plan for eternity.

And so Moses came to that realisation and he cried out to God because he realises that we are all dying. And so there are just two things here that I wish to point out from this psalm, and first is simply this: That what Moses does in the first place, therefore, is to awaken all of us to the reality of death and the brevity of life. The reality of death and the brevity of life.

If you have read this psalm before (I’m not sure how many of you have read it before. Maybe some of you have read it many times) and you do not go away with this sense of urgency, you have not fully understood this psalm, you have not fully grasped what Moses is trying to tell us here- the reality of death and the brevity of life. Look with me at verse 3, and Moses writes as he writes this psalm.

He says: “You”. He was turning to God, says: “God, You return man to dust”, and that’s what it means there to turn man to destruction. We are made from dust, and God will return us back to dust. And that is what Moses is recognising. He said: “God, You return man to dust, and say, “Return, O children of men.” For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood; They are like a sleep. In the morning they are like grass which grows up: Yes in the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and it is gone.”.

And that is us. I say Moses is thinking about our temporariness as it were, how transient we are. We are just fleeting as it were. We are here for a moment and gone the next. We will all die. So he thinks about death, that is what he is mainly thinking about. Now the backdrop of this psalm, that is to say, what Moses probably was thinking about or the backdrop, the context which kind of prompted him to write this psalm.

This is if it were written by Moses is the oldest psalm alright- it’s the oldest psalm written probably during Moses’ day then included in the psalm. So what was in Moses’ mind? What was the backdrop of what Moses is writing here? Now it is believed that the backdrop of this psalm is Numbers 20. So if you turn with me to Numbers chapter 20, and here we read of what happened there.

Numbers chapter 20, you know earlier on Moses was leading the people of God through the wilderness and there were rebellions in the midst and not least, his own sister Miriam. And then we are told in verse 20: “Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there.” (Mistakenly mentioned “verse 20”, supposedly “verse 1”). So Moses buried his sister. She died. She died, and Moses experienced death in a very personal way. 

Very often we experience something similar. We hear of death every day, but then when someone this close dies, you experience death in a very personal way. And that is what Moses is experiencing here. And then we read the same chapter (chapter 20 of Numbers) and verse 28, Moses stripped Aaron of his garments as commanded by God as a punishment. “So Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there on the top of the mountain.”. And Aaron died.

Then we are told in verse 29: “when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, all the house of Israel mourned for Aaron thirty days”. Miriam died at the very beginning of the chapter; Aaron his personal assistant as it were, someone very close to him died at the end of the chapter. And then move on to the following chapter (chapter 21) and you look down at verse 6: “So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died.”.

There is a death theme. There is a death theme here in these two chapters and in fact, going forward. And Moses was experiencing death in a very personal way. He sees his close ones, his loved ones, his close friends, his close buddies. One by one, he sees them dying. And sometimes we see people have such experience. Your friend died, your neighbour died, then someone closer to home died. Death.

Now that is the backdrop of Psalm 90. Moses is now thinking of death. People are dying. People are dying, he says, and I see that and I experienced that. They are my loved ones, and they are gone. Now that in a sense is the pattern throughout Moses’ experience in the wilderness as he led the people of God to the Promised Land. And we are told that the whole generation of Israel was punished by God and they perished. God did not allow them to enter, and therefore the setting, the context here, the theme of those verses in those chapters in Numbers.

A generation of Israel died, which means what? How many people were there in that one generation? It’s estimated probably two million. Two million people died in forty years. Now do your math. On the average, how many people died per day? Many people will die. Now every day there will be people dying. If two million died in over forty years alright, then every day there will be people dying.

Imagine these people, Moses is their pastor. Moses is leading them to the Promised Land, and Moses is seeing them die one by one. And these people will come to Moses every day and say: Moses, my neighbour died. And then another one comes to Moses the next day: Moses, my uncle died. And then comes the next person: Moses, my mom died. Now every day Moses is faced with these stories and accounts and reports of death. Now wouldn’t he be thinking about death? Now surely!

In fact, we are given here the title, says: “A prayer of Moses the man of God”. He is the man of God. He knows very well what death means. Death is no small matter. When someone dies, we do not take it lightly. Now when we pass by you know like that day I was driving by which is just last Sunday, going back NPE. There was a jam just in front of the mall, and I was wondering why. Then I saw- a Grab rider dead on the road, and crowds were gathering that corpse. Why?

Because that is not a dog, because that is not a cat, because that is not a bird. That’s not a lizard. Because that is a human. And we know that when a man or a woman or a boy or a girl dies, it means something. And that’s what Moses is saying. I’m talking about humans dying, and I see death every day. Now amazing thing is that we are no different from Moses. Don’t you realize that? Every day we hear of death.

Yesterday, three, four thousand people in India died of Covid. Every day there are thousands and thousands of people dying just of Covid alone, and not to say of other causes, other diseases. What about those who died in Syria, died killed by not virus but killed by fellow humans? What about those people who were killed in car crashes or a building collapsed on them or buried underground because of the mine collapse and so on?

Every day we hear of people dying, and that’s what Moses is saying. Do you? Moses said: Yeah, I do. I see people dying, I hear people dying. You don’t? Moses said let us think about it. Let us think about this fact, this reality of people dying. So we find here Moses does not just… First of all, he awakens to this reality- the reality of death. But he does not just awaken us to the reality of death but also the brevity of life. The brevity of life.

Think of the people who died today. How old are they? How old are they? Five million years old? Ten million years old? No, we don’t have millions. We don’t even have thousands. We don’t even have hundreds. You realise how short life is? We don’t even have hundreds, and that’s what Moses is now impressing upon us. He says in verse 6: “In the morning it flourishes and grows up; In the evening it is cut down and withers.”.

That’s it. That is life: Here today, gone tomorrow. And Moses at the very beginning of this psalm, he provides a kind of a compelling contrast because he begins this psalm that way. He turns to God and says: “Lord, You have been our dwelling place (or our hiding place) in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the Earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”.

So he begins the psalm by drawing attention to God that God is from everlasting to everlasting. But that is not us. That is not us. We are not from everlasting to everlasting. And so then he brings the comparison or the contrast as it were. By contrast, he said, in the morning we flourish like the flower, and then in the evening it is cut down and gone. And it’s over, over for us. Very soon it will be over for you. Now that is what Moses is thinking about: Dying. We are dying, and our life is so what? So short. So short. How short?

Like he says in verse 10: “The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength eighty years”. That’s it. That’s all we have- seventy or eighty years. Now that is the stark reality that Moses is bringing to our attention here in this psalm. Now ever wonder why? Maybe there is no great need to tell you you know, to convince you about the reality of death. You know it. You see it. Maybe you don’t think much about it, and that’s why we need to read this psalm.

But do you know why? Do you know why people are dying in this world? Do you know why your friends are dying? Do you know why your neighbour died? Covid? Now it’s easy to blame today alright. Covid alright, that’s the culprit. Or maybe there are other reasons we can think of- cancer, accident, plane crashes, fire, and so on. But Moses, he understands the real reason why we are dying. Do you? Do you know the real reason why we are all dying?

Look again at Numbers alright, this time to Numbers chapter 12. Numbers chapter 12, I’ll read beginning in verse 1. Beginning in verse 1, now here is the rebellion against Moses: “Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. So they said, “Has the LORD indeed only spoken through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?” And the LORD heard it.”.

They are not supposed to say that. They are not supposed to rebel against Moses because he occupies a special position. They sinned against the Lord. Verse 3: “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men who were on the face of the Earth.) Suddenly the LORD said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting!” So the three came out. Then the LORD came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward.

And He said, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, will make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, even plainly, not in dark sayings; And he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?” So (verse 9) the anger of the LORD was aroused against them, and He departed.”.

And that’s why earlier on I read in Numbers 20 that Miriam died, Aaron died. Do you know why they died? Do you know why we die? Back to Psalm 90. Back to Psalm 90. Now you see Moses understands that. I said that Numbers, the Numbers is the context of this psalm here. The reality of death, the brevity of life, and the reason for that- the reason for that. And so Moses writes in verse 7 of Psalm 90: “For we have been consumed by Your anger”.

God was angry in Numbers 12. He was angry because why? Miriam sinned against the Lord, Aaron sinned against the Lord, and we are told that the Lord was angry. And Moses said you know. Moses knows that. Moses sees that. He says: “For we have been consumed”. Moses did not say for they have been consumed, for Miriam have been consumed, and Aaron have been consumed by the anger of the LORD. But he said we.

“For we have been consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath we were terrified. You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; We finish our years like a whisper.”. Moses is saying here the reason why we die is not because we say that is you know natural, that is you know biology that a baby will be born and that he’s destined to die. That’s just a natural process. It is not natural.

Death is unnatural, that’s why we revile against that. That’s why we cannot accept that because death is not natural. God did not mean it that way. When God created man, He did not create man to die because God told man, He told Adam in the Garden of Eden: If you do not obey Me, if you eat of the fruit of this tree in rebellions against My command, then I will be angry and you will surely die. So what did Adam do? What did Eve do in rebellions against God? They dare to take the fruit that God has forbidden and ate it.

That is the audacity of these two persons. They dare to go against the command of the King of kings. Not just the king but the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the Master of the universe, our Creator, the almighty God, and they dare to go against this God. They dare to go against this God. You know what? We dare to go against this God. That’s what we are about. Every day in our lives we go against His clear command. We do not do His will, and we go against what He told us what we are not supposed to do. That characterises the life of every human on Earth: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

Now you know why we are dying. Do you know why we are dying? Don’t blame Covid alright; Blame us. Our sin. “For the wages of sin (the Bible says) is death”, that’s why we die. And so Moses sees that. He comes to that realisation. And because he sees that we are all sinners, we are all sinners, we have incurred the wrath of God, we will all die, and that our life on Earth is only this short. With this realisation, I say that’s the first thing he does here is to just impress upon us. Do you see that? I see it. Do you see that?

And then the second thing alright in this psalm is and then he prays. And then he prays. And so what is his prayer? So what does he pray for? What does he pray for? Verse 12 alright- verse 12: “So”. You see when he comes to verse 12, then he says: “So teach us to number our days, that we may (get or) gain a heart of wisdom.”. Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. That is his cry in response to this realisation that we are dying because of the wrath of God. And so he cries out to God and says: God, teach us to number our days.

So what really is he praying for here? Well, let me first say what it is not. It is not to lengthen our days. Now sometimes we hear people: O Lord, I want to live as long as possible. If possible, eternal alright life on Earth. Eternal life on Earth? Every day lockdown, and you still want to live on Earth? Now you see how unthinking we are so often. We think this world is everything, this world is Heaven.

No, that is not what Moses is praying for. He’s not praying to lengthen his days. He’s praying to number. He said: Teach us to number our days. And to number our days means this: It means to recognise the brevity of life. We need that. We need God to teach us, to help us recognise that our life is short because we just don’t get it. We just don’t get it. We can tell people. We can tell all the young people you have not much time left on Earth, and they laugh. You tell old people also they laugh alright. They said long years of retirement, I don’t know how long alright.

And that’s what Moses is praying for, he said. Teach us to recognise this, to recognise what the psalmist writes in Psalm 39. Now Psalm 39, and here is exactly the same prayer as it were alright in Psalm chapter 39 beginning in verse 4 alright. The psalmist again here cry out to God and said: “LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am.”. That is wisdom. That’s the wisdom that we need that we know how frail I am.

Verse 5: “Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; Certainly every man at his best state is but” what? “Vapor.” Verse 6: “Surely every man walks about like a shadow; Surely they busy themselves in vain; He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them.”. How characteristic of human on Earth, but here is the psalmist saying that please teach me not to live like everyone else in this world. Look at all these people. They live as if they’re not going to die. That is what the psalmist is praying about.

Or as last week when we were looking at Psalm 103, you remember verses 15 and 16 where the psalmist said the same thing here: “As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.”. You see, pages after pages in the Scriptures we are reminded of this reality. Why? Because we don’t get it. The Bible has to keep reminding us that life is short- that life is short. That life is short.

And Moses said I don’t have that wisdom. Teach us to number our days in the sense that to recognise the brevity of life. Moses is saying that we have a brief life. And then you might ask: How brief or how long will you live on Earth? As I read to you earlier on when Moses writes in verse 10 and he says that “seventy years; Or if by reason of strength maybe eighty years”. But you don’t believe it. But you don’t believe it.

Seventy years. But if you’re healthy, eighty years. That means how much left? How much left? Our prime minister said a few weeks ago, he said not much left (but he was referring to money). But we are talking about life alright. Money, not much left; life also not much left. Alright, that is what Moses is saying alright. So the older ones, just think about it. If it is seventy or eighty years, how much left?

For some of us, I don’t know what is your long-term plan. My long-term plan is very short alright because it’s not very long to go. Twenty years? What about the young people? Now you think that your long-term plan is also very long. It’s not. Another forty years, fifty years? What is that compared to from everlasting to everlasting? Nothing. Nothing. It’ll be gone in a very short while. Like I say we need to be constantly reminded of this, and that is what Moses is praying here.

O LORD- O LORD, teach us to understand, to realise how short life is. And then he says so that- “so that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. Now teach us to number our days, that is to say, to understand, to realise how short life is. And then to gain a heart of wisdom, what does it mean to gain a heart of wisdom? You see in the Bible Jesus tells a story of a very stupid man. I’ll show you who that man is in Luke chapter 12.

Luke chapter 12, now it’s not my words alright. It’s what Jesus said that this man is. He’s a fool alright. And you read in verse 19 of Luke chapter 12, now Jesus said of this man who said to himself alright: “I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take ease; eat, drink, and be merry.””. How many people say that to themselves: I have many years to live. I don’t know the many means what, but it’s almost like eternity. I have many years to live, so take it easy.

But God said in verse 20: “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night (your many years is only until this night) your soul will be required of you’”. And that’s why this man is a very stupid man. He’s a fool, that’s what God calls him. I don’t know whether God will call every one of us here this morning the same way: You fool! You’re always thinking about many years. You don’t realise tonight. Better go for your Starbucks alright before you die. Enjoy because only one more cup.

Well remember when Jesus tells the story of this young man, He’s actually talking about us. He’s talking about us. And so we need wisdom, and that’s what Moses is thinking about. You know in Psalm 90 he said: God, I need wisdom. I’m such a fool. I am such a fool because I think I have many years. I have long-term plans. No, I have this, I have that, I live like I’m not going to die. I’m a fool if I live like this. And so we need wisdom.

We need the wisdom of what the Bible tells us or what Paul tells us in Romans 13, the wisdom of Romans 13:11. See what it says there. Paul writes in Romans 13:11- “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”.

Verse 13: “Let us walk properly, as in the day, and not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.”. Now let us do away with these things. The time is near, let us learn to live properly. That is wisdom. Now that is wisdom to know that there’s not much time. Put your life in order. Put your life in order.

Or the wisdom of what Paul tells us in First Corinthians chapter 7. 1 Corinthians 7:29, where Paul writes and said this: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not weep, those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use this world as not misusing it. For the form of this world is passing away.”.

Everything is passing away. We are passing away, the world is passing away. Live with a correct sense of priority- with the correct sense of priority, not be bogged down by the things of this life. That is what he’s saying here- not be bogged down by the things of this life. We should live and we should have the wisdom of Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians 5:15-17, where the Apostle Paul again says this: “See then that you walk circumspectly (that is wisely), not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise (be wise), but understand what the will of the Lord is.”.

That is the wisdom to remember that the time is short, therefore you redeem your time. And the way to redeem your time is to live according to the will of God. Know what the will of the Lord is. That is wisdom and live accordingly. What wisdom? The wisdom of Ecclesiastes 12:1 which says: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth”. Now that is wisdom, young people, to remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Otherwise, you are a fool as far as the Bible is concerned. 

If you are going to live your life forgetting God, not remembering Him, you are a fool. Maybe for some of you- for some of you this morning, wisdom is this. Wisdom is Isaiah 55 (Isaiah 55:6). For some of you this morning, maybe wisdom that you need is to “seek the LORD while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near.”. That is wisdom. That is the wisdom that we all need to “seek the Lord while He may be found, and call upon Him while He is near.”.

This is the prayer of Moses. This is his cry to God. What are you crying out to God for this morning? What are you crying out to God for this morning? Should it not be the same? Give us. “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”. Let us pray.

“Our Father in heaven, we know that we need the Bible to awaken us to this reality, for by ourselves even though we see death every day, we hear of death every day, we are not moved. And we pray that You might convict our heart as You have moved Moses’ heart and help us to see this reality and to turn to You and to cry out to You for that wisdom that we who are so foolish in this world might learn to live life according to Your will. And so we pray that You’ll bless the Word to our hearts and help us to indeed meditate upon it, for we pray and ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.