Preacher: Mason Kiple

Order of Service

• Scripture Reading — Psalm 90
• Sermon
• Closing Prayer

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Sermon Title: The Eternal God and Fleeting Man

Scripture: Psalm 90

I. The Eternal God (vv. 1-2)

• A. Context: the beginning of Book Four of the Psalter (Psalms 90-106)
  1. Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses, the oldest psalm in the Psalter (around 1450 BC).
  2. Book Three ended on a sour note, with the Davidic covenant questioned in Psalm 89 and likely recited during the Babylonian exile.
  3. Book Four goes back to Moses for perspective, with a psalm about God's wrath on all fallen mankind, not only Israel.
• B. God is described as "from everlasting to everlasting"
  1. Moses heaps up language to express the incomprehensible God who is eternal.
  2. Eternity is an incommunicable attribute of God, one he does not share with humanity (unlike communicable attributes such as righteousness, holiness, and love).
• C. Contrast with pagan deities
  1. Pagan gods have origin stories, such as the Mesopotamian myth of Tiamat and Apsu, or the Egyptian god Atum who creates himself.
  2. This shows the noetic effects of sin: the fallen finite mind cannot think beyond temporality, so its gods become bigger versions of humanity.
  3. The Mesopotamian myth of a primordial beginning from slime resembles modern evolutionary and Big Bang accounts, since there is nothing new under the sun.
  4. The eternality of God must be revealed to us.
• D. Because God is eternal, he is our dwelling place in all generations
  1. The refuge for temporal man must be the One who is above time.
  2. Only the God who is from everlasting to everlasting has the right to be our refuge and can satisfy the soul.

II. Temporal Man (vv. 3-11)

• A. Verses 3-11 are likely Moses' reflection on Genesis 3 through the flood
  1. Verse 3, man returning to dust, recalls the curse in Genesis 3:19.
  2. Verse 4 probably reflects the long lives in the genealogy of Genesis 5 (Adam 930 years, Methuselah 969), where the refrain is "and he died."
  3. Verse 5, "You sweep them away as with a flood," likely alludes to the flood of Genesis 6-9.
  4. Verse 8, on secret sins, echoes the wickedness of man's heart in Genesis 6 and 8.
• B. Man's fleeting nature is due to God's will and action, and specifically his wrath
  1. Wrath appears throughout verses 7, 9, and 11.
  2. Moses attributes bodily frailty, such as aching bodies, disease, and old age, to God's wrath on sin.
• C. Christ and the propitiation of wrath
  1. Propitiation means God's wrath is appeased as it is poured out on Christ (see Romans 3).
  2. The cup is an Old Testament metaphor for God's wrath, which Christ drinks to its dregs at the cross.
  3. Christ's healing of the blind, the paralyzed, and the dead was a foretaste of removing the effects of God's wrath.
  4. Our aching bodies should drive us to flee to Christ and thank him for satisfying God's wrath.

III. The Happy Man (vv. 12-17)

• A. Verse 12: "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom"
  1. An honest reflection on the frailty of life leads us to set our hearts on God and his wisdom.
• B. Poetic symmetry with the earlier verses
  1. "Return, O Lord" (v. 13) answers "You return man to dust" (v. 3).
  2. "Satisfy us in the morning" (v. 14) answers the grass renewed in the morning (v. 5).
  3. "Be glad all our days" (v. 14) answers "all our days pass away under your wrath" (v. 9).
  4. Verse 15 asks for joy matching the days of affliction, which concerns daily life under the sun and not only the life to come (compare Psalm 30:5).
• C. The work of God and the work of our hands (vv. 16-17)
  1. "Let your work be shown" points to Christ's finished redemptive work as the propitiation for wrath.
  2. "Establish the work of our hands" means to stabilize and bless our work.
• D. Illustration from Dale Ralph Davis
  1. An old Christian plowing a field was asked what he would do if Christ were returning in an hour, and he answered, "I'd finish the furrow."
  2. God promises to bless our work, so we want to be found doing our calling to his glory.
  3. The Reformation, through Martin Luther, taught that any vocation, even the most menial, can be done to God's glory.
• E. Conclusion
  1. Praise God for the propitiation of his wrath in Jesus Christ, who gives wisdom to live in keeping with our Redeemer.