New Year's Eve thoughts from Psalm 90

Psalm 90

1. Mortal Man's problems:
   
   
   
   1. Our lives are short (vs 5, "like grass which grows up")
      
   2. We are sinful (vs 8, "You have set our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your countenance")
      
   3. We experience sorrow (vs 10, "The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away)
      
   
   
2. Contrasted with the Almighty's eternality (vss 1-4) (vs 2, "from everlasting to everlasting, You are God")
   
3. The Psalmist's plea:
   
   
   
   1. Teach us: (vs 12, "teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom."
      
   2. Satisfy us: (vs 14, "Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy")
      
   3. Establish us: (vs 17, "establish the work of our hands for us")
      
      
   
   
   

From Moses' Prayer:


So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

A few days after these words appear in print the old year of our Lord will have gone to join the long procession of years and centuries that move on into the shadows of a past that can come no more.

In the year just gone the world has been writing history, not with ink only but with blood and tears; not in the quiet of the study but in violence, terror and death in city streets and along the borders of nations; and other and milder but more significant history has been written by incredible feats of power in sending man-made objects out to circle the moon and the sun….

To each one fortunate enough to live out [this year], God will have given 365 days broken into 8,760 hours. Of these hours, 2,920 will have been spent in sleep, and about the same number at work. An equal number has been given us to spend in reverent preparation for the moment when days and years shall cease and time shall be no more. What prayer could be more spiritually appropriate than that of Moses, the man of God: "Teach us to number our d-ays aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12).

"So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Amen"

(A.W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership, December 30)

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Spurgeon: “We must consider the whole Psalm as written for the tribes in the desert, and then we shall see the primary meaning of each verse. Moses, in effect, says—wanderers though we be in the howling wilderness, yet we find a home in thee, even as our forefathers did when they came out of Ur of the Chaldees and dwelt in tents among the Canaanites. To the saints the Lord Jehovah, the self existent God, stands instead of mansion and rooftree; he shelters, comforts, protects, preserves, and cherishes all his own. Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the saints dwell in their God, and have always done so in all ages. Not in the tabernacle or the temple do we dwell, but in God himself; and this we have always done since there was a church in the world. We have not shifted our abode. Kings' palaces have vanished beneath the crumbling hand of time—they have been burned with fire and buried beneath mountains of ruins, but the imperial race of heaven has never lost its regal habitation.”

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1. We worshiped at 4th this morning and evening:
   
   
   
   1. AM: Jason Stamper on I Timothy 3:15, "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth"
      
   2. PM: Tom Zempel from Hebrews 4, The promise of rest
      
   
   
2. We are about entertained out. Coming up: Today Kathee is having her brother and sister-in-law by for lunch. They are leaving for Florida next Monday and we won't see them until mid-April. Tomorrow morning (New Years' Day) we are having 2 couples by the house for breakfast
   
3. Wednesday back to work and the realities of the stresses of earning a living.
   
4. We were thinking and talking today about being 8 years past all the Y2K hoopla at work and 8 years since my Dad died (12/22/1999)