“Use your time Wisely” (Psalm 90:3-12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/21/2012 8:58:39 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                          Focus:  “Use your time Wisely”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                     Reference:  Psalm 90:3-12

 

            Message of the verses:  In yesterday’s SD we began to look at Psalm 90 by looking at the first two verses and also looking at several introductions to the Psalm.  In Dr. Wiersbe’s introduction he wrote the following at the end of his introduction: “Life was not easy for Moses, but he triumphed, and in this psalm he shared his insights so that we, too, might have strength for the journey and end well.”

 

We are Learners and Life Is Our School (vv. 3-12):  “3 You turn man back into dust And say, "Return, O children of men." 4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night. 5 You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. 6 In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away.  7 For we have been consumed by Your anger And by Your wrath we have been dismayed. 8 You have placed our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence. 9 For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh. 10 As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away. 11 Who understands the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? 12 So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”

 

            According to Acts 7:22 we learn this about Moses, “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.’”  Moses was educated in the best place on earth at that time, and yet he learned much more when he began to walk with the Lord that all he had learned from his education in Egypt.  Dr. Wiersbe points out:  “In the school of life (v. 12), we need to learn two important lessons:  life is brief and passes swiftly (vv. 4-6), so make the most of it; and life is difficult and at times seems futile (vv. 7-11), but this is the only way to mature.  Were there no sin in the world, there would be no suffering and death; but people made of dust defy the God of the universe and try to repeal the inexorable law of sin and death, ‘For dust you are, and to dust you shall return; (Gen. 1:19NKJV).”    He goes on to write, “The school of life is preparation for an eternity with God, and without Him, we cannot learn our lessons, pass our tests, and make progress from kindergarten to graduate school!” 

 

            We see in verse four something similar that is written in 2 Peter 3:8 “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”  I have heard many people take this verse and say that the Lord may not return for thousands of years because a thousand years is like a day in the site of the Lord.  I disagree with their logic completely, for what both Moses and Peter are saying is that God is outside of time, for it was God who made time whenever he made the earth and placed the earth in rotation around the sun making one year and the earth’s rotation makes up one day.  God made all of that but He lives outside of time and to Him a day is like a thousand years. 

            I have heard that life is like a roll of toilet paper, for when you get to the end of it, it goes a lot faster, and that is true, for the older you get the faster life seems to pass, but God is in eternity and is eternal and so life never ends for Him for He has been around forever, something that is hard to understand. 

 

            Moses gives illustrations of how fast life fades by using nature, how fast grass can disappear once it begins to grow.  (Vv. 4-6)  Dr. Wiersbe writes “In the school of life, those students learn the most who realize that the dismissal bell rings when they least expect it!”

 

            Verses 7-11 are Moses’ writings about what happened at Kadesh Barnea which is found in Numbers chapters thirteen and fourteen, and of course that is when Israel wanted to send out spies to look at the Promised Land and ten of them came back with a bad report and so God made Israel march around in the wilderness for forty years until all those who were over twenty years old died in the wilderness.  If there were two million people who came out of Egypt there would have been 140 funerals a day for forty years.  Joshua and Caleb were the only two people from the older generation who went into the Promised Land, for they were the two spies who believed that God could use Israel to defeat those who lived in the Promised Land.  What Moses was saying is that if the children of Israel marched around the wilderness for forty hears those who were twenty at the time of this great sin would be sixty years old when they would need to conquers the Promised Land and a person is fortunate to live 70 years and perhaps 80 years. 

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I suppose that the timing of this Psalm is great for it was on this day ninety years ago that my mother was born, and so today she celebrates he 90^th birthday.  Ninety years is a long life, but to God it is only a few seconds, and to us who are alive now it does not seem that long.  The important thing is to learn the things that the Lord wants to teach us in our stay on earth so that when eternity begins for us we will have some jewels in our crowns that we can place at the feet of Jesus.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Use my time wisely.

 

5/21/2012 10:56:26 AM

“God is our Home” (Ps. 90:1-2)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/20/2012 7:19:39 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                 Focus:  “God is our Home”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                       Reference:  Psalm 90:1-2

 

            Message of the verses:  In today’s SD we will begin to look at Psalm 90 which is the first psalm of the forth and last book that make up the book of Psalms.  We will look at several introductions from different Bible commentators to aid us in our understanding of Psalm 90.

 

            “TITLE: A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Many attempts have been made to prove that Moses did not write this Psalm, but we remain unmoved in the conviction that he did so.  The condition of Israel in the wilderness is so preeminently illustrative of each verse, and the turns, expressions, and words are so similar to many in the Pentateuch, that the difficulties suggested are, to our mind, light as air in comparison with the internal evidence in favour of its Mosaic origin. Moses was mighty in word as well as deed, and this Psalm we believe to be one of his weighty utterances, worthy to stand side by side with his glorious oration recorded in Deuteronomy. Moses was peculiarly a man of God and God’s man; chosen of God, inspired of God, honored of God, and faithful to God in all his house, he well deserved the name which is here given him. The Psalm is called a prayer, for the closing petitions enter into its essence, and the preceding verses are a meditation preparatory to the supplication. Men of God are sure to be men of prayer. This was not the only prayer of Moses, indeed it is but a specimen of the manner in which the seer of Horeb was leant to commune with heaven, and intercede for the good of Israel. This is the oldest of the Psalms, and stands between two books of Psalms as a composition unique in its grandeur, and alone in its sublime antiquity.  Many generations of mourners have listened to this Psalm when standing around the open grave, and have been consoled thereby, even when they have not perceived its special application to Israel in the wilderness and have failed to remember the far higher ground upon which believers now stand.

 

“SUBJECT AND DIVISIONS: — Moses sings of the frailty of man, and the shortness of life, contrasting therewith the eternity of God, and founding thereon earnest appeals for compassion. The only division which will be useful separates the contemplation #Ps 90:1-11 from the #Ps 90:12-17 there is indeed no need to make even this break, for the unity is well preserved throughout.” (Charles H. Spurgeon)

 

            “The thrust of this magnificent prayer is to ask God to have mercy on frail human beings living in a sin-cursed universe.  Moses begins the psalm with a reflection on God’s eternality, then expresses his somber thoughts about the sorrows and brevity of life in their relationship to God’s anger, and concludes with a plea that God would enable His people to live a significant life.  The psalm seems to have been composed as the older generation of Israelites who had left Egypt were dying off in the wilderness. (Nu. 14)” (The John MacArthur Study Bible)

 

“This is the oldest psalm in The Psalms and it was written by Moses, the man of God (Josh. 14:6; Ezra 3:2).  It deals with themes that began with the fall of our first parents and will continue to be important and puzzling until the return of our Savior:  eternal God and frail humans, a holy God and sinful man, life and death, and the meaning of life in a confused and difficult world.  It’s possible that Moses wrote this psalm after Israel’s failure of faith at Kadesh Barnea (Num. 13-14), when the nation was condemned to journey in the wilderness for forty years until the older generation had died.  That tragedy was followed by the death of Moses’ sister Miriam (Nu. 20:1) and his brother Aaron (Num. 20: 22-29), and between those two deaths, Moses disobeyed the Lord and struck the rock (Num. 20:2-13).  How did Moses manage to become a ‘man of God’ after forty years in pagan Egypt that ended in failure, forty years in Midian and as a humble shepherd, and forty more leading a funeral march through the wilderness?  Life was not easy for Moses, but he triumphed, and in this psalm he shared his insights so that we too, might have strength for the journey and end will.”  (Dr. Warren Wiersbe “Be Exultant”) 

 

We Are Travelers and God Is Our Home (vv. 1-2):  “1 A Prayer of Moses, the man of God: Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”   

 

            I believe it is a wonderful experience to go through the entire Bible in order to study each verse that it contains.  I knew from reading the Psalms on many different occasions that Moses had written one of the psalms, but I did not realize the background in which he had written this psalm.  It truly must have been difficult for Moses to travel those forty years in the wilderness knowing that every person who was above twenty years old would die along the way.  If there were two million Israelites who left Egypt and this would include all the women and the children, there would be around 140 deaths a day over the period of forty years.  “The wages of sin is death.”

 

            Dr. Wiersbe writes that in “Numbers 33 names of forty-two different places Israel camped during their journey, but no matter where Moses lived, God was always his home.  He ‘lived in the Lord.’  He knew how to ‘abide in the Lord,’ and find strength, comfort, encouragement and help for each day’s demands.  Moses pitched a special tent outside the camp where he went to meet the Lord (Ex. 33:7-11).  This is the Old Testament equivalent of the New Testament admonition, ‘Abide in me’ (see John 15:1-11).  We must all make the Lord ‘our dwelling ‘(Psalm 91:9).”  The Greek word used as “abide” can also mean to “remain.”

 

            The children of Israel lived in tents as they made their way across the wilderness and when Paul writes to the Corinthians he says, “1 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 3 inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. 4 For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”

 

            Moses uses the word “Elohim” for God in these two verses, and that name means “strength and power.”  Moses speaks of God making the mountains, something that the heathens of Moses’ time was a symbol of that which was lasting and dependant, but to the children of Israel the mountains spoke of the everlasting God.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Moses was a great man of God, a man that the Jews still look to with high regard.  Moses will bring out in this 90^th psalm things that I as a believer need to be reminded of, and that is the shortness of life.  Tomorrow my mom will turn 90 years old, and that is quite a milestone, but as I look back it doesn’t seem like a very long time compared to eternity.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  That I would be taught by the Lord through our Pastor as He breaks the bread of life today at our church.

5/20/2012 8:13:32 AM

 

“More on God’s Faithfulness” (Ps. 89:39-52)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/19/2012 8:48:07 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  “More on God’s Faithfulness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                   Reference:  Psalm 89:39-52

 

            Message of the verses:  In today’s SD we will continue looking at Psalm 89, remembering that we are looking at this psalm by looking at it through the prism of God’s faithfulness.

 

God Is Faithful in His Chastening (vv. 39-45):  “39 You have spurned the covenant of Your servant; You have profaned his crown in the dust. 40 You have broken down all his walls; You have brought his strongholds to ruin. 41 All who pass along the way plunder him; He has become a reproach to his neighbors. 42 You have exalted the right hand of his adversaries; You have made all his enemies rejoice. 43 You also turn back the edge of his sword And have not made him stand in battle. 44 You have made his splendor to cease And cast his throne to the ground. 45 You have shortened the days of his youth; You have covered him with shame. Selah.”

 

            I want to look at these verses in whole by the covenants that the Lord had made with Israel.  We know that the first covenant that the Lord made with Israel was through Abraham and that can be found in two places, Genesis 12:1-3 and also in Genesis 15:18-21.  When Israel was about to cross over the Jordan River to take possession of the Promised Land we read in Deuteronomy 28 of another covenant that God made with Israel, and this one unlike the other two was a conditional covenant which is at times called the Palestinian Covenant.  In that conditional covenant we find that the Lord told the children of Israel that if they obeyed the Lord and kept His laws that He would bless them, but if they disobeyed God’s law then the covenant stated that the Lord would remove them from His land.  Now we move to 2 Samuel 7 where the Lord makes an unconditional covenant with David stating that there would always be one of David’s sons on the throne.  Here we see the problem that Ethan, the author of Psalm 89 saw, and that was that if Israel was defeated then how could there be one of David’s sons on the throne?  What I see here is that God did not supersede His unconditional covenant with His conditional covenant, for it was because of Israel’s sin in breaking the conditional covenant that they were defeated by Babylon.  The two unconditional covenants are still intact for it is because of God’s faithfulness that He will fulfill those covenants, for Jesus Christ is now on the throne in heaven ruling over all the earth and will someday soon return to take up His father David’s throne in Jerusalem and rule all the earth from there for 1000 years, and this will fulfill both of the unconditional covenants that God made with Israel, and David.

 

            Let’s us look back at verse 37 “"It shall be established forever like the moon, And the witness in the sky is faithful." Selah.”  Dr. Wiersbe writes “The ‘witness’ in verse 37 is probably the Lord Himself in heaven, but the constancy of the heavenly bodies is also a witness to the faithfulness of the Lord’s promises (Genesis 8:20-22; Jer. 31:35-36; 33:19-26).”

 

            Dr. Wiersbe goes on to say “Ethan told the Lord what He had done to Judah’s anointed king, the descendant of David.  The Lord was angry with the kings because of their sins, especially idolatry (v. 38), so He permitted the Babylonians to come and ravage the land, destroy Jerusalem, and burn the temple, (v. 40-41).  To Ethan, the Lord was actually aiding the enemy!  (vv. 42-43).  But the glory had once more departed from the temple (v. 44; see 1Sam. 4:21-22; Ezek. 8:1-4; 9:3; 10:4, 18; 11:22-23) because the leaders had turned their backs on the Lord and turned to idols.  It appears that verse 45 applied especially to King Jehoiachin, who was but eighteen years old when he became king and reigned for three months and ten days (2 Kings 24:8).  He became a captive in Babylon for thirty-seven years.”

 

God’s Faithfulness Will Never Cease—Wait for Him (vv. 46-52):  “46 How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath burn like fire? 47 Remember what my span of life is; For what vanity You have created all the sons of men! 48 What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah. 49 Where are Your former lovingkindnesses, O Lord, Which You swore to David in Your faithfulness? 50  Remember, O Lord, the reproach of Your servants; How I bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many peoples, 51  With which Your enemies have reproached, O LORD, With which they have reproached the footsteps of Your anointed. 52 Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen.”

 

            As we begin this last section it is good to note that this is the last section in the third book of the book of Psalms.  Psalms is made up of four books and with this last section we have covered the first three books of Psalms with one more to cover which contains sixty Psalms in it and has the longest chapter in the book, and in the entire Bible, Psalm 119 which has 176 verses and will take many days to discover what gems we will be able to mine there.

 

            I see a flavor of Job in verses 46-48, and perhaps Ethan had read the book of Job before writing Psalm 89.  We also see in these verses that Ethan asks a question that he probably already knew the answer too and that question is “How Long.”  The answer to that question is found in Jeremiah 25:1-14 and 29:4-14.  How long will Israel be in exile?  Jeremiah writes that it will be for seventy years. 

 

            In verse forty-nine Ethan looks back and asks the Lord what had happened to His lovingkindness, but the Lord’s lovingkindness had not changed, however Judah’s love for the Lord had waned.  Dr. Wiersbe writes these insightful words, “Like any good parent, God shows His love to His children either by blessing their obedience or chastening them for their disobedience, but in either situation, He is manifesting His love.” 

 

            We see in verses 50-51 that Ethan looks around and sees the reproach of the enemies.  The nation had been taken into exile and the beloved city of Jerusalem was devastated along with the temple of the Lord, and worst of all the glory of the Lord had departed from the temple and would not return until the Lord Jesus Christ would enter into the temple, but what He saw was displeasing to Him.  Many would think that the god’s of the Babylonians were more powerful than the God of Israel, and that is not and never will be true.

 

            When will looked at the last verse in Psalm 72, which was the end of book three in the book of Psalms and found out that it was not really a part of Psalm 72 we see that verse 52 is not really a part of Psalm 89.  Dr. Wiersbe writes as he conclude his commentary on this section “no matter how much we suffer because of the sins of others, and no matter how perplexed we may be at the providential workings of the Lord, we should still be able to say by faith, ‘Praise the Lord!  Hallelujah!’ And our fellow sufferers ought to respond with, ‘Amen and amen!  So be it!’

            “That’s the way of trust—faith in the faithfulness of the Lord.”

 

Spiritual meaning for my life today:  It is wonderful to remember the great promises of the Lord, especially when trouble comes, and there are great friends of mine who are going through some deep waters so I will pray that I will be able to comfort them with these great promises from God’s Word.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust that the Lord will give me the courage and strength to tell others of the wonderful truth of becoming a born-again believer in Jesus Christ for there are only two kinds of people on this earth, those who believe and those who do not believe:  “"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.’”  (John 3:36)

 

5/19/2012 10:15:06 AM