Psalms 90 and 93: Contemplating Eternity

0:00We only have a certain number of days here on Earth and so we should seek to make the very best use of them. This is Mission 66 brought to you by TWR and the Bible Teaching Ministry of Dr. Luis Salau. Today, we're in the book of Psalms, a collection of praise and prophecies, many written by King David and originally, set to music. You can download your study guide at mission66.org and follow along with John and Esther. Let's get started. Greetings friends and welcome and thank you so much for joining in as we continue our series in the Psalms today, journey through Psalms 90 and 93. We'll be joined by our teacher John Matthews who will lead us with the theme, contemplating eternity. Thanks Esther and a very warm welcome to this latest episode of Mission 66 where we continue our adventure through the book of Psalms, which is the longest book in the Bible.

1:04And here we reach chapter 90 or Psalm 90, which we'll look at along with Psalm 93, which effectively begins the fourth of five collections of books that make up the Psalms. Now Psalm 90 may just be one of the most beautiful and well-known compositions in the whole book of Psalms as the only Psalm that's attributed to Moses. And it's a reflection of how God is infinite, specifically in terms of eternity, infinite as well in the aspect of time itself. Let's read it from verse one. 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, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You return man to dust and say return, O children of man.

2:08One begins by inviting us all to reflect and think and the Psalmist is talking about God's eternity, his everlastingness. He reveals that when we look at creation, when we look at history, when we can see that in the very beginning of the Psalm, it already says that God is eternal that he exists before the mountains themselves were created because he created them himself. And here then we have this reflection on the difference, the great difference between God and human beings. God is eternal and he simply says, return to dust, humortals. And immediately we die, we physically perish and we discover that God is eternal when we look at creation. And we see the Psalmist then continuing here with plenty of wisdom and indeed precision in his thinking because he says in verse four, for a thousand years in your sight, our butt as yesterday when it is past or as a watch in the night, you sweep them away as with

3:14a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed and the evening it fades and withers. So here as we consider the eternal nature of God, what do we see by looking at ourselves while we see the frailty and the weakness of humanity? We are subject to death at any time. We like the day that passes. We are so limited and God can call any of us to him at any time. And the Psalmist looks at this comparison at infinity and knows that he is aware of how finite he is by comparison. He sees his weakness, his limitations in the light of this eternal God, powerful, completely capable of doing absolutely anything that he wants, anything in keeping with his perfect

4:18divine attributes. And the Psalmist is going to after comprehending the greatness and the infinite nature of God, which will now realize his own limitations. And so he moves on in this journey of reflection in verse 7 by saying, 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 sinned 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. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away.

5:19So realizing his own weakness and contemplating the eternal God, the next step then in Moses' reflection here in Psalm 90 is the greatness, is the presence of wrath in the face of sin. This clear awareness of how much time we have appears as we realize the infinite eternal God. And we begin to see our limitation and we begin to see our sins. And the things that we do wrong. And there is a sense of this perfect God cannot exist with this sin. So there is a problem that needs to be solved and as we know Jesus Christ is the solution to that problem. But Moses continues here in verse 11 saying, Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

6:22Return O Lord, how long have pity on your servants? Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Truth is we desperately need God. We need His compassion, His peace, His joy, His satisfaction. When I know who God is, then I'll certainly realize how much I need Him, how much I need to depend on Him for my own spiritual wellbeing, physical wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, my eternal existence. And then the Psalm comes to an end saying, Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children.

7:23Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Here we are going to have the final requests in this Psalm Psalm 90 where Moses seems to say, I want everybody to discover what I know and that is your kindness. I want everyone to know your kindness. O Lord, because I am going to die, but what I have done will remain. I am going to request the Psalmist as making here is that the work of his hands may be established and remembered his faith in God and how God honored that, not for his own glory, but as a reflection of how God honors those who honor Him. He knows that for something to last forever, then it is completely dependent on the eternal

8:24God, the powerful God who is infinite, who is the Lord of the heavens and the earth and the universe, who is omnipresent, who is everywhere at once, who is omnipotent, he is all powerful and he too is omniscient. He knows all things. Now Psalm 93 continues really in the similar vein to Psalm 90. We don't know actually who wrote Psalm 93, but it emphasizes God as the King. In fact, this theme will continue on all the way to Psalm 100, or a feeling that God is powerful and regal and just like Psalm 90, it emphasizes the eternal nature of God and Psalm 93 says, The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed.

9:25He is put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established. It shall never be moved. Your throne is established from old. You are from everlasting. The floods have lifted up, O Lord. The floods have lifted up their voice. The floods lift up their roaring. Mightier than the thunder of many waters. Mightier than the waves of the sea. The Lord on high is mighty. Your decrees are very trustworthy. Holiness befits your house, O Lord forevermore. Everything is derived. All good things are derived from the infinite God, from the eternal God. Divine infinitude, the eternal God is the basis for many of his other attributes.

10:34And here we're going to end our reflection, actually, emphasizing how, when, what we see the psalmist emphasizing, and that is that it's only possible to have a wise heart to act in the right way in life when we discover who God is, that he is eternal. And when based on this knowledge of God, we then begin to understand correctly who we are in this world. And we see ourselves for who we are. And then when we see ourselves for who we are, we start to begin to understand our frailty, our fallenness, our sin, our need of saving. And then, God willing, we start to look for the Savior Himself. Or maybe by this time He has already found us. Only the eternal God can enable strength through our recognised weaknesses.

11:38And so time and space, well that's no problem for God. May He bless us all. May He give us a wise heart so we can fully understand who we are, understand the limited time, so limited time that we have here on earth. And that the works of our hands, every single thing that we do for God, may be established for the benefit of future generations. This is Mission 66, a programme that is heard around the world each day in several languages, including English, Spanish, Indonesian and others. And friend, we want to thank you so much for your prayer partnership as well as your financial partnership of this ministry. And truly the hope here is to produce programmes in more languages so that more people can hear of the saving grace of Jesus Christ through Mission 66.

12:42So if you would like to make a donation to this ministry, I'd invite you to visit mission 66.org. That's mission 66.org today. Well friend, this is a time in which we can now delve into a question and answer time after reading through these Psalms. And we're going to receive some wonderful observations here from our teacher, John Matthews. Now John, let's start off with Psalm 90 because we've established that it's written by Moses. But what's interesting to me is that aren't these Psalms written at a much later time than the time of Moses? Certainly these were written in the time of David, right? Yeah, it's a good question and you're quite right. These, or this Psalm has written a long way before most of the other Psalms. And that has raised the question of many generations. Why is a Psalm of Moses inserted at this particular place?

13:43Well, the suggestion is that the elaboration of this Psalm has to do with the experience of Moses in the wilderness, in the desert. And now let's remember that Moses saw and climbed many a mountain, not only Mount Sinai, but many others on that long journey to Canaan. And so there's this clear connection between this Psalm and Moses. In many ways, it's quite something that it appears all this time later. We know very clearly how important the presence and the practice of oral tradition was in these time and ancient times when these stories were preserved through that accurate passing on of information. So we can certainly attest to that happening here. And we've mentioned this before, but the book of Psalms has and contains Psalms that were written 500 years apart from one another.

14:43Fascinating stuff. You know, some 90 actually talks about the self-existence of God, the infinite nature of God. I love what verse two says. It says, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Verse four talks about a thousand years in his sight as being like yesterday when it passes. I don't know, John, how can we truly understand the infinity of God? You know, God being outside of time in the way that we understand it. Is there a way for us to wrap our head around timelessness? Absolutely not. No chance far too infinite and magnificent for us to understand. But we can certainly marvel and worship. And I think that's what God loves to see us doing because when we see him for who he is and who is he's kind, he's loving, he's generous.

15:45You know, those incredible attributes come from God. Why because he created love? He is love. And yet he's this incredible God who's beyond description and beyond our being able to fathom, but yet he's also a personal God who through the blood of Jesus Christ and through his own Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts. That is absolutely incredible. He's the beginning of the end. What does that mean? Well, he creates our world. He'll end it. He created New Heaven and a new earth says the Bible. So we can't comprehend God in his wholeness, but yet comes to us as a loving Heavenly Father and makes us feel completely at home and at peace with him in his love because he loves us beyond measure. And that's an incredible thing, Esther. Well, even that is hard for us to get ahead around that this eternal God who's beyond

16:46history, outside of history, enters time and history to be in this personal intimate loving relationship with us and one day will take us home to be with him forevermore. Jesus Christ was the representation of God on earth who lived this perfect life and died and rose again so that we can be forever with him. And one day Jesus will take us home, those who believe in him to be with him forever. I can't wait for that day and what a day that will be. I'm right with you there, John. Right with you there. And honestly, this is, it's so awe-inspiring and it's truly humbling to just at the very least try to contemplate easy, eternal nature. But wow, God is incredible. He is. I think, let's move to verse 12, right? Because here it teaches us that we ought to number our days so that we may gain a wise

17:47heart, gain wisdom. So in a very practical sense, what does it mean to number our days? Yeah, it's a good question. I think it means that we have an awareness or develop an awareness that we only have a certain number of days on earth. And so we should seek to make the very wisest possible use of those days. And actually, we do not know how many days we have on earth. Only God knows that. He knows that already. You know, the day we were born and the day we die is known to God already. We don't know that. And the statements that we see in this Psalm is effectively a conclusion, perhaps, the most important conclusion that comes out of Psalm 90. And in the context of the way that we live in our culture, sometimes we live under this illusion and our sin and our weakness can blind us towards the fact that we are finite. And so sometimes we act as though we're going to live forever.

18:51Nobody is planning to die tomorrow. We always think that time is something we can control. You know, that we have time in our hands, something that's under our power. And when the Psalmist presents his meditation, he says, look at a mountain. Just look at it. You may spend years and years looking at that mountain. You'll see no change. Well before these mountains were even born or created by God, he already existed. He had no beginning. He has no end from endless eternity past. Now when we start to get a concept of that, it contrasts how limited we are in time. Therefore what is wisdom as we look at this question? Well being wise is discovering that we have a limited number of days allowed to us by God here on earth. When we get that, I think it gives us a sense of urgency, a sense of responsibility,

19:55a sense of wanting to work out what our God-given priority should be. Now God will show us what those priorities should be if we allow him. And perhaps when we live irresponsibly, we waste time. Time has a way of slipping by from day to day to day. And then one day we may wake up and think, what was all that for? All the time I dedicated to that, even though at the time it may have seemed a very laudable thing to put so much time and perseverance into it yet, I get to a stage in life when I realise that it's hollow, that it doesn't meet my deepest need and that there's only one thing that meets my deepest need and his name is Jesus Christ. The sartmist is saying here, listen, your days are limited and only one thing matters and that is where you will spend eternity and you have an opportunity now to live your life

21:00for the one who gave you your life. You have an opportunity to fill that longing that can only be filled by salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ and you can do that now. And so eternity can begin now if you believe in Jesus. So beautifully said, John, thank you so much for that. You know, I'd actually like us to explain verse 7, right? It says, we are consumed by your anger. Now look, some might read that and think, well God is angry, he's furious, he's full of indignation all the time. How are we to rightly understand these words? Well, let's make no mistake. God is a God of love, but because he is a perfect God of love, it means he has a very direct approach towards sin and pride and the wrong that the devil brings into our world.

22:05And it's not some kind of passing eye, it'll be okay type of thing, don't worry about it. It's this is serious. And so what the actual text is underlining here is that sin is a serious business. And there is a catastrophic consequence to the things that we do wrong. Now, either that judgment from a perfect God falls on us or it falls elsewhere, where else would he put it, where else would a loving God put it? Well it remarkably, he puts that judgment on his own son Jesus and says, look, you bear the wrath, my wrath, because there has to be justice. You take the punishment so that they don't have to. It's remarkable. But maybe we have a tendency to downplay these things. All these verses will stop us then in our tracks because they say, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath we are dismayed.

23:10It's frightening. You have set our inequities, the things we've done wrong before you are secret sins in the light of your presence. Those two things are almost in Congress, the darkness of our secret sins heading away in shame in the light of your perfect, pure presence. They can't coexist. And Jesus is the answer to enable those sins to be cast as far away from the perfection of God as possible. And then he sees us in the righteousness of Jesus when we say, Lord, save us. And that is the good news, Esther. Jesus dies on the cross so that we don't have to die eternally. He dies on the cross on behalf of us sinners. He becomes sin for us on that cross. And he suffers the wrath of his own father, God the father himself. And then three days later what happens he rises again.

24:13Knowing that the wrath of God is now satisfied by his ultimate act of sacrifice. So in believing on him in Jesus we accept the pardon that he and he alone can bring us. We go free. We don't deserve to go free. No way. But we go free because of him. And it means when we believe on him we spend eternity with him in heaven. Well as we consider our number days here on earth, verse 10 actually says that the human lifespan is 70 or 80 years. That may make a few of us a little uneasy because it sounds like it's a guarantee. But is this true for us today John? Broadly speaking it is. You look, King David, strong as he will. He only lived to the age of 70. It's a kind of generic statement. It certainly doesn't mean that everyone who loves God is guaranteed a long life, not

25:17a tool. The Psalmist though is not telling us anything new. We see this today. It's observable isn't it? That people in many many countries usually live. The lifespan is generally at the average is between 70 and 80 years. But some live far far shorter lives. Some actually will live longer lives than that. But the point of the Psalm is make wise use of the time that God gives you because he gives you a specific defined amount of time. Oh yeah. Well, thank you so much for those insights and may God give us wisdom with each day that he has given each of us. Well done. I think we should continue now to concluding these two Psalms that we've read today. Yeah, Psalm 90 and 93 they were Esther and the female or main focus was really to discuss eternity. What I think to discuss. And Psalm 90 reflected on the eternity and the sovereignty of God, contrasting that

26:22awesome, endlessness to the brevity and the frailty of human life. And attributed to Moses, the Psalm begins by acknowledging God is the eternal refuge for all generations through all time. And it highlights human mortality and emphasizes that life is fleeting, almost like a passing dream or the grass that in the morning it flourishes, but by the evening it's withering. That's life. That's what life is like. It's so fleeting and the Psalmist acknowledges God's righteous judgment of sin which sometimes brings about human suffering and death. In response, there's this heartfelt plea for God's mercy, his wisdom, his favour. And then Psalm 93, well, it celebrates the majesty and the reign of God over all creation portraying God as robed in this perfect, beautiful strength, firmly establishing the world,

27:27which cannot be shaken. The Psalm emphasizes the power of God's voice over the chaotic forces of nature that we see around us even today. And those forces of nature in the Psalm are symbolized by this mighty rushing of water and yet God's voice is resonant and omnipotent above all that. It also concludes by affirming God's reliability that his promise is true, his decrees are true, and the holiness, the perfection of his house forevermore. And the point of it all, Esther, really, is that nobody gets to live on earth forever, far from it. So we need to make wise use of the time that God gives us. Well, that is how we conclude Mission 66 for today, dear friends.

28:30Thank you so much for joining us. And hey, Mission 66 is available on all podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple podcasts. So if you'd like to refer back to some of our previous discussions in our episodes, you are most welcome to do that. And you can also listen to our episodes on mission66.org. Well, as always, thank you so much for being with us. For me, Esther, and our entire team, we'll see you next time. As Mission 66 comes to a close, be sure to download your free study guide at mission66.org. Open your daily devotion within science from each episode and let John and Esther lead you through the scriptures. Get your study guide at mission66.org and be prepared for next episode. There you can also connect with us. Ask questions or donate to help Mission 66's worldwide outreach. Head to mission66.org. Mission 66 is made possible through Transworld Radio in partnership with Dr. Luis Seiao.