Psalm 90
Sunday 1 October
1
God is bigger than you If we spend our days busily shuttling from one thing to the next, it’s easy to start feeling important. If we don’t, it’s easy to wish we did and envy those who do.
Psalm 90 bursts our bubble.
God’s bigness, our smallness Read Psalm 90 v 1-6
y How does the human lifespan (v 3, 5-6)
contrast with God’s “lifespan” (v 1-2, 4)?
y What comfort is there for fragile human beings in verse 1?
The sovereign Lord, who turns people back to dust and sweeps them away like grass, is also his people’s “dwelling place”. It’s a phrase that implies security, permanence and intimacy. As one old hymn puts it, “Be thou our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home”.
r Apply y People are like grass. Do you ever lose
sight of that perspective? At what times is that most likely to happen?
God’s wrath, our sin Read Psalm 90 v 7-12 These are sobering verses.
y Sin carries consequences. In what ways
do we see God’s judgment against the sin of humanity-in-general (v 9, 10, 11)? This psalm is “a prayer of Moses”. Can y you think of examples of God’s judgment
against the sins of the Israelites (v 7)? (You could look up Exodus 32 v 1-4, 2535; Numbers 21 v 4-9.) What does it mean to “number our y days”, do you think (Psalm 90 v 12)?
God’s love, our joy Read Psalm 90 v 13-17
y What does Moses ask God to do? y How has God already shown his
“compassion” and “unfailing love” to us (v 13, 14)?
Christians are not living “under [God’s] wrath” (v 9). So although we will still face “trouble and sorrow”, believers standing this side of the cross can have even greater, and more confident, hope than Moses did in verses 14-15. Read 2 Corinthians 4 v 17.
y What do we look forward to? “Teach us to number our days” (Psalm 90 v 12). And those days are “few!” Yet the writer ends by asking God to “establish the work of our hands for us”. With God in the picture, mortality does not equal meaninglessness—but it does turn our eyes from earthly goals to eternal ones. The work of building God’s church is eternally significant—but it can only be done in God’s strength.
n Pray Turn verses 12 and 17 into your own prayers to God. Bible in a year: Ezekiel 27-29 • John 14
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