How to Live a Worthy Life | Psalm 90

Special Release

Hello, welcome to Bible Wisdom Today, systematic Bible teaching for those willing to think deeply. My name is Stan Watkins.

Occasionally on this podcast, I take a break from our systematic progress through a book of the Bible to bring you a single episode on a specific topic. Generally, these special releases are taken from other parts of my ministry experience and allow me to take a short break from the recurring commitment to prepare new content for this podcast. That is the case with the episode today.

As I prepared to share with you a sermon that I gave as a member of my local church in January 2025, I found that the audio quality was not up to the standard that I wanted to share with you. I have recorded it anew in my home studio, but have left most of the content the same, including the reference to new years resolutions and the recent death of President Jimmy Carter, whose life so well illustrates the main question for this message, “How to live a worthy life?” I pray that you will find this message from God’s timeless word applicable in your own life, today.

Introduction

One week ago today, the world said goodbye to a man who lived a worthy life. Every retrospective of the life of Jimmy Carter begins with a discussion of his presidency including the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978 which ended the war between Israel and Egypt. 

But it is his nearly 44 years as a past president that show his true greatness

·         Diplomat without portfolio in various countries, with a particular focus on fair voting

·         In 1982, He and Rosalynn founded the Carter Center for the purpose of advancing human rights and alleviating human suffering. Part of their efforts led to the near eradication of Guinea worm disease by 2016

·         He was well-known for his concern for homelessness through Habitat for Humanity

·         In honor of his humanitarian efforts, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002

·         He was a prolific author, including 32 bestsellers

Nearly every article I have read, or News cast I have seen has also lauded his character

·         Focus on morality and human rights

·         77-year marriage to Rosalynn

·         His Sunday School teaching

·         The bedrock foundation of his Christian faith

As Carter’s death has coincided with the turning of the calendar page to a new year, his life gives extra weight to our annual ritual of life evaluation. How can I live a truly worthy life? How can I live so that others know that my life is firmly built on my relationship with Jesus Christ? These are the questions I would like us to consider together, today.

One passage of scripture that is particularly helpful in making such a spiritual evaluation is Psalm 90. We read a portion of the psalm earlier and now I would ask you to open your Bibles or your Bible app to that scripture again so that we can study it more intently.

The first thing we see is the superscription or title of the Psalm. Do you see it written just below “Psalm 90” and just before verse one: “A prayer of Moses the man of God.” We believe that these superscriptions were not part of the original inspired text but were added at some point during the gathering and editing process of the book of Psalms in order to provide historical background and help later generations understand and use the psalms in their spiritual worship.

While it is not absolutely certain that Moses wrote this psalm, it does sound like the kind of thing he would have written toward the end of his 120 years, the last 40 of which he led an obstinate people through the wilderness, and saw their repeated rebellion, and God’s repeated judgment.

The most significant event of Moses’ life was God’s giving of the law at Mount Sinai. The people encamped at the base of the mountain for a long time, while Moses went up the mountain to commune with God. Actually, Moses went up and down Mt. Sinai 6 times. I mention that because, this Psalm is metaphorically shaped like a mountain. By that I mean that Moses introduces various subjects in the Psalm until he comes to a significant conclusion about halfway through. He then retraces his steps, reconsidering the same subjects again but in reverse order. This is just like a mountain climber passing through various climate zones on the way up the mountain, reaching the summit, then revisiting all those places again on the way down. 

Safe home of our endless God

With this mental image in mind, we begin our journey in the safe home of our endless God.

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place 
 throughout all generations. 
 
 2 Before the mountains were born 
 or you brought forth the whole world,
 from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
 Psalms 90:1-2

 Notice that this Psalm begins with an affirmation that God is Lord. This is the Hebrew word Adonai, which means master. It has the connotation of power and authority. We use the English word lord in this sense when we talk about “the lord of the manor.” Our heavenly lord is the creator, the ruler. 

He also says that God is “our dwelling place.” We can understand how this would have been meaningful to Israel in Moses’ day. They were homeless and landless, but they had a dwelling place in the person of the Lord, if they had the faith to see it. 

This also could have been particularly meaningful to the generation of Israelites who returned to Judah from exile in Babylon. From studying the book of Psalms, it seems that they were collected over a long period of time but came into something similar to our current arrangement in the years after Israel’s return from Babylon. For an exiled people who had been rootless for 70 years, the promise of a dwelling place with God was good news indeed.

Mary and I experienced this same feeling of having God as our dwelling place early in our marriage. In the first years of our marriage, we were involved in missionary work, and as such, we had to move many times. I tried to keep track of how many times we had moved, and I eventually lost track. But, counting all the times when we would leave our home temporarily, put everything into a suitcase and be gone for six months and then come back to the same house, we moved twenty times in fifteen years. Perhaps you raise your eyebrows. It does seem like a lot. But, you know, we never felt rootless, at least I didn't. I never felt like we were aimless because we had a calling from God, and that's what we were following. God was our dwelling place

This is a wonderful truth, that God is our dwelling place, but that is not Moses’ real emphasis. His emphasis is the end of that verse, “throughout all generations.” He is marveling at God’s endlessness. That is clear from the next verse where he says,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
 Psalms 90:2

By the end of his life, Moses had 3 generations of Israelites in his weary band

·         Oldest generation had known slavery in Egypt and salvation in the Exodus. They were dying off.

·         Middle generation, 30-40 YO, knew only desert, manna, and a pillar of fire

·         Young ones, who were destined to spend almost all their days in the land of milk and honey

These first two verses serve as Moses’ introduction, and prompt us to continue our reading. As we do, we leave the safe home of our endless God and find ourselves on the restricted path of our absolute God.

The restricted path of our absolute God

3 You turn people back to dust,
 saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.” 
 
 4 A thousand years in your sight
 are like a day that has just gone by,
 or like a watch in the night. 
 
 5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
 they are like the new grass of the morning: 
 
 6 In the morning it springs up new,
 but by evening it is dry and withered.
 Psalms 90:3-6

In these verses, God is the one in charge. The limitless power of God acts to confine the limits of our mortal life. As judge of the earth, God pronounces sentence, “Return to dust, you mortals” (v. 3). 

This immediately reminds us of the words of Genesis 3…

By the sweat of your brow 
 you will eat your food 
 until you return to the ground,
 since from it you were taken;
 for dust you are
 and to dust you will return.” 
 Gen. 3:19

Moses says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by." Even if people live to be 1000, that span is just “a day” in God’s reckoning, or even less “a watch in the night,” which is a 4-hour period.

We read, “you sweep people away in the sleep of death” Not only does God pronounce sentence. He himself executes that judgment. The image is of a great flood washing people away. 

Moses had seen a whole generation of faithless murmurers die. 40 years of God’s judgment on their sin. Forty thousand had died in plagues (Num 16:49; 25:9). Many died of poisonous snakes

In comparison with God’s eternity, our life is short, as brief as yesterday, as brief as a watch in the night, as quickly withered as grass.

This journey is becoming perilous. Do we dare venture on? 

Exposed slopes of our angry God

Let’s read, beginning with verse 7:

7 We are consumed by your anger
 and terrified by your indignation.
 8 You have set our iniquities before you,
 our secret sins in the light of your presence. 
 
 9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
 we finish our years with a moan.
 Psalms 90:7-9

Now we have moved well beyond the safe home of our endless God, beyond the restricted path of our absolute God, and we have now emerged out onto the exposed slopes of our angry God; open to the hot breath of His wrath.

In these verses, we learn the uncomfortable answer to the question, “Why is life so short?” The answer is simple. Our life is short because God wills it so. People don’t normally make this connection between their mortality, their sin, and God’s judgment. Our mortality is the primary way that we see God’s wrath. The immense consequence of our sin is understood in our brevity. 

Moses saw Israel’s repeated rebellion, God’s repeated burning anger, and the people’s continued suffering because of it. 

In verse 8 we read,

You have set our iniquities before you,
 our secret sins in the light of your presence.

Up on the exposed slopes, the sun of God’s wrath burns hot and bright. Nothing is secret in his light. 

And so, how can we deal with this grim assessment? Verse 9 tells us, “we finish our years with a moan.” Some other translations say that our years end like a sigh. I am sure that Moses—and his people—were acquainted with the sound of sighing at the end of every wandering day. 

Moses turns that experience into powerful poetry: “[sigh] and that is the end.” This is how Moses expressed the futility of 40 years in the wilderness. There were no high points to remember. No great accomplishments to tell about. Only despair, and repeat.

We have climbed this far; we need to press on. Just ahead we reach the summit, the goal of our journey.

The cold summit: life is brief, then we die

 Listen to verse 10…

10 Our days may come to seventy years, 
 or eighty, if our strength endures;
 yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, 
 for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
 Psalms 90:10

Here is the cold summit, the main point Moses has for us: God will live forever, but we will not.

Wow, that is not the end I was hoping for. When you go out for a hike, don’t you look forward to some great view from the high summit, some grand overlook of beautiful fields, or valley, or river, or sunset? But here we find only the cold truth: Life is brief, then we die.

Moses says our days may come to “seventy or eighty” (v. 10) He did not suggest 70 or 80 as a promise of our lifespan, or as a limit. Rather, when numbers occur in two successive lines of Hebrew poetry, it was conventional for the second line to increase the number. For example, 

“There are three things that are never satisfied, 
 four that never say, ‘Enough!...[and then he goes on to list the four}
 Proverbs 30:15

Or in the very next Psalm, Psalm 91 verse 7 we read

A thousand may fall at your side,
 ten thousand at your right hand,
 but it will not come near you.
 Psalms 91:7

Using numbers in this way lends greater importance to what is described and a sense of increasing interest. In the case of Psalm 90, the increasing number speaks of an increasing meaninglessness. Even “the best of those years are but trouble and sorrow.” Whatever your age, 70 or 80 or 15, it is not too soon to come to terms with how brief your life really is. Life is short and everything is at stake in this short life.

Exposed slopes of our angry God (2)

After this seemingly unsatisfactory summit, we turn to begin our descent. As we do, we find ourselves faced again with those exposed slopes of our angry God.

11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
 Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. 
 
 12 Teach us to number our days, 
 that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
 Psalms 90:11-12

On our climb up this mountain, we learned a number of important truths about God. God is endless, God is an absolute God, God is angry. On the way down, we see these familiar places from a different perspective. We learn how we should respond to these truths. 

When we are out on the exposed slopes of our angry God, what should we do? The only proper response is fear. 

“If only we knew the power of your anger!” is another way of saying, “Nobody knows the power of your anger.” Please don’t rush to say, “Oh, I don’t fear God. I honor Him, I worship Him, that is what fear means.” Of course, we honor God and worship God, but first we must truly fear Him.

Moses says, “Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.” In this way he is saying, “if only our fear was equal to God’s wrath.” How great is God’s wrath? That is how great our fear should be. Our fear needs to level up.

He then says, “Teach us to number our days.” Because we have already been to the summit of the mountain, we know that the ultimate end of our life is death. Now we can reckon with our own mortality and brevity. This allows us to make each day count. 

How? By living each day in relationship with God. This is the wisdom that we learn when we pray, “Teach us to number our days.”

As we continue down the mountain, we continue to learn how to respond to God. How do we respond, then, as we enter again on the restricted path of our absolute God?

The restricted path of our absolute God (2)

13 Relent, LORD! How long will it be?
 Have compassion on your servants. 
 
 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, 
 that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. 
  
 15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
 for as many years as we have seen trouble.
 Psalms 90:13-15

If God is an absolute God, if He is in charge, perhaps we can ask him to use that power to bring blessing into our lives.

“Relent, LORD!” Relent is the same word that was used in v. 3 “return to dust.” It means to turn back and is a favorite biblical word for repentance. Moses asks God to return. Not that God has done something wrong and needs to repent of it. Rather Moses appeals to the covenant God to turn from anger and act in compassion.

“How long will it be?” This is a bold question. It is as if Moses is accusing God of being late with his help. 

This is not the first time that Moses has prayed with such boldness. In Exodus 32, the people of Israel sinned against the LORD by making a golden calf to worship. They did this while Moses was still up on the mountain, receiving instructions from the Lord. God told Moses what they had done and said, in essence, “Stand aside Moses, and I will destroy them. “Then I will make you into a great nation” (Ex. 32:10).

11 But [we read in Exodus 32,] Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. “LORD,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 
 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people...’” 
 14 Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
 Exodus 32:11-14 

Notice how similar that prayer sounds to our psalm here, “Relent, LORD! How long will it be? Have compassion on your servants” (v.13). This similar vocabulary is one reason to believe that this Psalm was actually written by Moses.

In verse 13, Moses again uses the name “LORD.” When you read LORD in verse 13, this is a different Hebrew name for God than we had in verse 1. There it was Adonai, which means master; here it is God’s personal name, his covenant name. Translators typically indicate the difference between those two words by the way it is written on the page. In verse one, Lord was written in normal script. In verse 13, LORD is written in all caps. This is a distinction that we cannot make when we hear the words aloud. We only understand it when we read in print.

We don’t really know how to pronounce God’s personal name, because the ancient Jewish people refused to say it, for fear of possibly “taking the name of the LORD in vain.” We know that it is spelled with 4 consonants, which generally come into English as YHWH, but we do not know what vowels should be inserted to give us a complete pronunciation. You may hear it pronounced as “Yahweh” or sometimes as “Jehovah” but the important thing to know is that it is based on the verb “to be.” This is His covenant name. God is the one who is. Everything that is finds its source in God.

One way to understand it is to think about all the various attributes of God, all that God is. God is kind, God is gentle, wise, powerful, gracious, all powerful, all knowing, and so on. All that God is, He will be to me. He is MY GOD. This is His covenant name.

Now, when we remember our covenant God, YHWH, our journey begins to brighten.

Verse 13 also introduces us to a new name for God’s faithful pilgrims, “your servants” This is a new kind of confidence which allows Moses to begin a series of prayers to God, our absolute God, that he may bless us. He asks God to relent (v. 13), to have compassion (v. 13), to satisfy (v. 14), and to make us glad (v. 15)

“Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love.” This term “unfailing love” is sometimes translated “steadfast love,” sometimes loving-kindness, but it is a common word to describe God’s eternal, unbreakable commitment to love his people. This is the kind of love that flows from his character, because our absolute God is absolutely reliable. 

The Psalmist asks for God’s unfailing love “that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days” (v. 14) Even one experience of God’s unfailing love will be enough to satisfy, to bring us joy for a lifetime. Has God ever shown His unfailing love to you? Then that is enough. Now you know what kind of a God He is.

Verse 15 says, “make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us.” After meditating on the way up the mountain on God as Adonai, the master of time and eternity, now, on the way down, Moses turns to Yahweh, our dear covenant God, to re-balance our life. As life turned to dust in verse 3, now may suffering turn to joy.

We have now almost completed our trek up and down this mountain. We began in the safe home of our endless God, we walked the restricted path of our absolute God and braved the exposed slopes of our angry God. When we reached the summit we found the cold, hard truth: life is short, then we die. While at first this seems disappointing, it is also sobering. This truth colors our thoughts as we return down the mountain with a revised perspective. On those exposed slopes of our angry God we discover wisdom, the wisdom of fear. As we trek along the restricted path of our absolute God, we realize that if God is absolutely in charge, then He can absolutely bless us. In fact, He has already made covenant with us to show us his unfailing love. 

We now return to the place that we started, the…

Safe home of our endless God (2)

Verse 16:

16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
 your splendor to their children. 
 
 17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
 establish the work of our hands for us—
 yes, establish the work of our hands.
 Psalms 90:16-17

Again, we arrive with a changed perspective. At the beginning of this Psalm, we saw how the Lord had been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Now we look to the future. “May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children” (v. 16). Israel had seen God acting in history, disrupting the natural order with plagues, a miraculous sea crossing, and heavenly bread every morning. Now, may God continue to work in the next generation

Psalm 90 ends, like it began, with an acknowledgement of Adonai. “May the favor of the Lord (i.e. Adonai, master) our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands.” Because of the parallelism between the first half of the Psalm and the last, we need to ask the question “what is the connection between an eternal God in verse one and this prayer to establish our work at the end?” I think it is this: if God is an endless God, then our work will also be enduring if we are doing His work. In that way, our transient life need not be a futile life.

It is a common urge of humans to leave something behind in this world, to leave a memory of ourselves. For this reason, some will construct monuments, build buildings, endow foundations, or write books. How can we do the work of God, and thus be assured that our work will last?

Let me suggest three simple ways.

·         Whatever ability that God has given you, do that. We are not all good at the same thing. You don’t need to do what others are good at, concentrate on doing what you are good at, because that is God’s gift to you.

·         Whatever ministry passion God has given you, follow that. We don’t all have the same yearnings and desires. Some may be moved by the plight of the poor, others by injustice, others by the need for fellowship in the body of Christ, or the need for Biblical education. Whatever your ministry passion, that is God’s calling to you. Follow that.

·         Whatever work you see God doing, join Him. Do you see God working in your church small group, in a particular relationship, or among a certain people group? Wherever you see God working, join God’s work.

These are three ways that you can do the work of God and be assured that He will establish it as an enduring work in this world. You may not rid the world of tropical diseases, or become president of the United States, but you can live a worthy life, even beyond your own years, when you live in union with our endless God.

Final Comments

Our reflection today has been quite a sobering journey of discovery, as we face the cold truth that life is brief, but also rest the blessed warmth of God’s steadfast love. We can live a worthy life that will outlast our years, when we live in union with our endless God.

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