Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 90, emphasizing the brevity of life and the importance of living wisely in light of eternity. He highlights Moses' reflections on mortality and God's eternal nature, urging the congregation to consider how they spend their days. The main point is to live purposefully for God, counting each day and committing to actions that matter eternally, while relying on God's mercy and guidance.
Welcome and Announcements
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Great job. Thank you, ladies, and for the children that led. It's a blessing.
If you have your Bibles, it will be in Psalms chapter 90. And if you have a young person who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, we'll have that for you as well. But Psalms chapter 90, this is the last Psalm of the summers that we'll be doing.
We did eight weeks of the summer in the Psalms, and we will pick back up in Acts next week, Lord willing.
And so if you have your Bibles, Acts chapter 90 is where we'll be at, and we'll read this entire Psalm and look at some things this morning as time allows. Psalms chapter 90, let's stand out of the reading of God's Word.
And thank you again, young people, for leading this morning. The Bible says,
It says, For you are consumed by your anger, and you are terrified by your wrath.
You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in light of your presence. For all of our days ebb away under your wrath. We end our years like a sigh. Our lives last 70 years, or if we're strong, 80 years.
For even the best of them struggle and sorrow. Indeed, they pass away quickly and fly away. Who understands the power of your anger. Your wrath matches the fear that is due to you. Teach us to number our days carefully, so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. How long, O Lord?
Turn, have you compassion on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your faithful love, so that we may shout with joy, and be glad for all of our days.
Make us rejoice for as many days as we have humbled us.
For as our many years as we have seen adversity. Let your work be seen by your servants, and your splendor by their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us. Establish for us the work of our hands. Establish the work of our hands.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Be with the word this morning as we've read it. Thank you for all that has been done even today as we worship you. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
This psalm is a different psalm than what we've looked at in the past. In the past, we've been looking at different psalms. One was a song of sorrow. One was a song of praise.
One was a song of just worship. This one is specifically looking at the time that we have here on earth.
Eternity in Our Hearts
And the way I'm entitled it is eternity in our hearts. And one of the things that makes it a little different is this psalm was not written by David. This psalm was written by Moses.
This was a psalm that Moses wrote as he was coming to the end of his life. As he's coming to the end of leading the children out of Egypt into the promised land.
And one of the statistics that I read was that in this period of time when Moses wrote this psalm, for 40 years, every single day, he experienced 80,000 deaths.
Now that's a hard number for us to comprehend. 80,000 people died every single day for 40 years straight.
This was the time when Moses was promised to go into Abraham. He hit the rock out of disobedience. And God said that this generation will not enter into the promised land.
And so according to historians, the number of people that were there, you times that out, you do all the math numbers, and for every day, 80,000 funerals were done for 40 years every single day. I mean, this is, it hits us like in a moment of thinking,
wow, we've experienced hard times, but could you imagine the grief and anguish that Moses would have every day he's losing 80,000 people? Every day, another 80,000 people die. Another day, a moment of time that just sort of hits him.
It's almost like a gut punch to our stomach when we get these moments in life where times just hurt us. And this is sort of what Moses is going through when he writes this psalm, when he looks to him. And this is what I love about the opening line.
He says, look, Lord, you have been our refuge in every generation.
You have been there for us. And so as I was thinking through this, just this last week, even as we were coming home, I believe it was last Sunday, we had came up here for Bible school and we're heading home. And a couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning out a drawer there at the house.
Does anyone have a junk drawer in here? Okay, it's the catch-all drawer, right?
Every screwdriver, every old battery, you've got to search through 10 different batteries to find the right one because half of them are dead. You've got random bolts and wires and cables that you don't know what they go to. They're just in a drawer.
And every once in a while, I'll just take the entire drawer out and I'll just sort through everything.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was doing this very thing and I came across an old picture that we had in there of me and I was holding Brody and Brody had a tooth missing.
And Jade was standing there and she had the old Velcro shoes on. She was young and I was just sitting there behind him and I was like, I don't even recognize that guy. Like he was, that was like 10 years ago. That was so long ago. It was young and I'm old now.
And I say I'm old, but you know, there's people here older than me. But you begin looking back and you think, man, that's a completely different lifetime. Where did the time go? Where did the energy go?
Where did the, I mean, the things that we had at that time? And as I began to think back, it almost felt like it was just a blinking time. They're growing up and I began to just think and hold and understand that life goes on.
Life moves. Life begins to process. And I want to be honest with you.
This was a feeling of both gratitude and sadness. Gratitude that the Lord would allow me to be a father. But the sadness of I don't get to hold that little baby girl. I don't get to hold little baby Brody, little baby Hudson. He's four now. He's running around. He's going crazy.
You know, all of a sudden our life, it begins to go on. And I look back on those years and the days feel long, but the years just fly by.
And you can relate to that as well as we think through that. And Psalms 90 opens up with this reality. Life is short. Time is swift.
But one thing that's eternal and one thing that we can hold on to is that God is eternal.
Moses, the man who saw the burning bush, who parted the Red Sea, who led his people on dry ground through the Red Sea, who led them through the desert, writes this psalm, not as a worship psalm, but almost
as a wake-up call. He's saying, listen, generation. Listen, church. Listen here.
I've got some things to say. And he wants us to stop and ask us a question. The question is, am I spending my short time on earth in a way that will matter in eternity?
Am I taking the time that I have? Am I grounding my heart in the eternal God? And am I living wisely as a servant of God would live?
As Jesus led his disciples and spent time with them, he modeled for them what it was going to look like. And we've got to ask ourselves, are we living the model of a disciple?
Are we living the model of someone who is living every day on purpose for God in a current society and saying, God, I want to be so grounded on you.
As we talked about in Sunday school, it doesn't matter what waves come on me when the rivers crash against my house, my house is going to be firm and stand and secure on you because you are my God.
Timeless Truths of God
And so the first 15 verses, what we're going to look at first, this is the timeless truths of God. The timeless truths of God as we begin to live our life. Oftentimes, the life we live is on shifting sand.
You begin to stand and where you were at one moment has changed from day to day, month to month, even minute to minute, all around us. And everyone around us is asking this deep, desperate question, where can I stand on the rock?
Where is the firm foundation that I can build my life on? Barna just did a recent study. I follow statistics and studies, especially when good, reputable sources come out with it.
And one of the things that Barna said is that this generation right now is a generation that is seeking after God more than any other generation prior to its time. The young people,
the college age students, they are seeking after answers to their faith that they've got more than anyone else.
And the question we have to ask is, are we living a life that they're going to be able to look at our life and they're going to say, I want what he has. I want what she has.
And I want to do the things and listen to the things that they are doing because their life is grounded on something secure. I don't know what it is.
I don't know why their life is like this, but I want to go and find out what it is. And then you can come and you can say, hey, I've got a God.
I've got a Savior that loves me, a Jesus that loves me, that gave his life for me. And I can experience the goodness of God and you can too.
Verses 1 and 2 open up with just this praise of God as an eternally glorious God.
This is a time where we can begin to ask ourselves, are we worshiping God this way?
Are we looking at God and we're saying, God, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God is how the scripture says it.
From there is no beginning, there is no end, you have never changed, you're the same yesterday, you're the same today, you're the same forever. And I just want to fall before you and I just want to worship you because you are glorious. Now, remember the setting.
80,000 people had just died the day that Moses had wrote this. And he said, God, you're good. God, you're glorious.
There's no beginning, there's no end. You haven't changed your everlasting to everlasting. You are God.
And he makes this statement, while generations come and go, I know God is remaining steadfast.
God is this force to be reckoned with that I come to him and all I can do when I get up to him is say, God, you are glorious. You are good. You are holy. You are precious in my sight.
We play, me and my family, we love playing board games and different type of games. And I asked a couple of ladies in here that collect knickknacks.
And I said, hey, does anyone have a giant hourglass? I wanted a giant hourglass because I wanted to turn it. I want you to see the sand coming through that hourglass. You can imagine that in your mind.
If I had a small one, you wouldn't be able to see it. That's why I didn't bring one. But you can imagine that sand coming through that glass. And there's nothing you can do to stop that glass. It just slips through.
If you were at the beach, some of you were at the beach this summer, you can pick up a pile of sand and you can let the sand just fall through your fingers. And as Moses is writing this psalm, he's saying, listen, time slips through our fingers.
But God is the God that's outside of time. He's outside of our human comprehension of time. He doesn't grow old. His strength doesn't fade.
He is the same yesterday, today and forever. As I begin to think back to that little picture that I saw there that reminded me of that, I've grown older. I've grown with less strength.
I do a week of EBS and I've got to take a couple of hours extra to sleep in the next day. And I do a week of camp and I'm not as energetic as I used to be. And I just understand that these bodies can begin to fail and fall apart.
But God, who's been here since before time and will be here after time, says that I'm the same yesterday, today, forever. My time never runs out. My strength never grows old. I am the same as I've always been.
And when I begin to think of that, I begin to ask the question, do I live as though God is eternal? Am I living as a way and going to God in the morning and saying, God, I need your strength today. God, I can't go and take another step in my work.
I can't go and take another step in my school unless I've got you in my life. Or am I treating him like a temporary solution to my problems?
I got a flat tire and I got to put my spare tire on real quick because, well, that's the best thing I can do. And am we treating God like that spare tire, like, well, God, I got another problem.
I'm coming to you today. I know you hadn't heard from me in a while, but I'm coming to you and I need to put you on my tire today because I've got some problems. Or are we going to him every day saying, God, I can't go on tomorrow or today or my next step without you.
So God is eternally glorious. And verses 3 through 8, we see that sin has eternal consequences.
We read these verses and it says from dust to dust will return. And I began to write down just a couple of things. I didn't put these in your notes, but I want to just give them to you as the Lord gave them to me. Sin robs us of our vitality.
Sin takes away our strength. The Bible says that you return man to dust.
As sin comes in and sin introduced death into the world, as we looked at from Bible school this week,
sin came in and destroyed this perfect union that we had with God.
I envy Adam and Eve. I envy what they had where they got to wake up every morning. They got to walk with God uninterrupted.
They got to see him. They got to interact with him. They got to hear his voice and they got to experience the goodness of God. And yet in that moment, they chose to disobey him and try to be more like God.
They fell into the temptation of the world and death was brought in. Destruction was brought in. And their vitality of immortality was taken away. Sin also reveals our need for grace.
You've made mistakes. You've made problems in your life. And oftentimes when we begin to see something wrong in our life and someone gives us grace, we begin to be so thankful and we begin to get this revealing understanding that grace is so much greater than we can
ever imagine. Getting the thing that we don't deserve. The benefit of someone else's glory. The Bible says like this, our years have come to an end like a sigh.
It's this eternal wait where we get to the end of our life and we're just like, man, I wish I could go back and change some of the mistakes I made.
I wish I could go back and do these things different with my kids. I wish I could go back and change the mistakes that I made. And it's just like, I can't do that.
This reveals the need for our grace in our life, but also sin results in judgment. The Bible says that every hidden sin or laid bare before God in his sight.
It's like a kid that takes a marker that is a glow in the dark marker. We had some black light markers down the hallway here that Hannah and Allie had done a great job on.
And it's like a kid taking that black light marker and marking all down their halls. And you come home and you don't see anything that's wrong. But all of a sudden you open up the black light and you see all the scribbling down the walls. And you're like, who did this?
I can't believe this happened. This is what happens in our life. All of a sudden, sin before God is always seen. It's never hidden and it's always uncovered.
We will never run away from our sin and sin destroys our life when we live in it. What are we holding on to?
What are we treating like harmless that God says is fatal in our life? That we need to repent of, that we need to turn from, that we have done wrong with because sin separates us from God. Verses 9-11 continues on to say that God's wrath is real and righteous.
Understanding God's Wrath
God's wrath is real and God's wrath is righteous. Now this is a hard part for us to understand because we only see wrath one way. And we're going to talk about that in just a minute. But he says this, who considers the power of your anger? You see, God is not petty.
The way I explained it this past week at Bible school with our young people was, love in every single one of our lives is conditional.
You love other people because of what they've done for you and now your love grows for them. God says that he doesn't need anything from us and yet he loves us so much. And God's wrath is the same way.
God's wrath is not petty, it is perfectly just. His wrath is not like our wrath, it's not emotional, it's not irritable, but it's holy.
You see, there are times where as my kids do things wrong and my anger goes up because they've disobeyed and because they've done things that they shouldn't have done, that I discipline them out of anger.
Now I regret that and I apologize for those things, but as a human I will discipline out of anger. God says he never disciplines out of anger, he disciplines out of pure holiness. It's almost like a dam that's holding back water. God patiently restrains his judgment.
He restrains his eventual judgment upon unrepentant sin, but eventually the dam is going to be released and God's judgment is going to come through. Not as a tantrum, but as justice that's been long delayed.
And God says in this mindset as we look through his real and righteous judgment that he will judge the world and he will judge those, the quick and the dead, those who are living, those who are not. And he will ask us what we have done in our life.
Does my understanding, does our understanding of God's justice and God's judgment bring a better reverence to my holiness?
Do I worship God more wholly because I know that he is a just God?
I know that when difficult times come in my life, he's doing this because he loves me. Not because he's mad at me, not because he's angry, but because he loves me and he wants me to turn to him. So God's wrath is real and righteous.
And number four, verses 13 through 15, God's salvation is eternally satisfying.
When we begin to study the salvation the Lord's given us, and I hope we never get over the glory of God's salvation.
The glory that God loved us so much that he sent his son to die for us.
Not so that we could one day look and love him, but so that we can have a relationship with him so that we could renew this broken relationship that was in the garden. And now we can have this relationship with him and we could worship him fully.
And as we begin to understand this, the Bible says it like this in Psalms 90, God, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. Though our lives are short and our lives are sustained, God's mercy is longer than anything we can ever imagine. I've experienced the mercy of people.
I've experienced the mercy of friends and family. And I've never experienced the mercy that God gives us.
We can simulate this many different ways in our mind, but God looks at us and he says that the salvation that we have is so satisfying that you'll never have need of anything else ever in your life. In the morning, oftentimes,
how many of you like coffee in here? I'm a coffee drinker every morning. I have my two cups of coffee and sometimes I get to the church and I've already drank both cups of coffee and I've got to brew a couple more while I'm here in my office.
And I've got a couple of machines in my office and I go off of coffee. And drinking that coffee first thing in the morning, it's like a restoration to our soul, right? It wakes you up, gives you a kick, it gets you going.
God's love is the only thing that can do that to our soul.
It's the only thing that when your soul is downtrodden, as we look at Moses as his soul is so heavy, his soul has this weight of what is going on as he's leading his people, he looks to God and he says, God, you're the only thing that I can go to.
You're the only thing that's going to satisfy my steadfast love for you.
As I was thinking through this, my mind ultimately went to this question, what am I looking to for satisfaction? Am I looking to eternal things,
God's value system? Am I doing the things that God wants me to do as he lays out in scripture for what we should do? Or am I looking to the world for its satisfaction? That God says it's only through him that we can get. Number two, eternal encouragement for temporary people.
Eternal encouragement for temporary people. You see, our lives are temporary. We have lived in this world. We have seen funeral after funeral.
We have lost loved ones. We have been by the gravesite of those who we care about. And we go by and we remember those things. I've lost grandparents and I've lost family members. And they're hard times. They're difficult times. But God says,
look around and see the glory that I've allowed you to see around you. And ultimately, look to God for the encouragement that we need. The encouragement that we so often need.
Living Wisely with Time
We must go to God. We must say, God, you are the one that we are going to worship. So, first thing I'm going to look at is how we live wisely in the short time you have. Verse 12, I'll read it real quickly.
Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. So, how do we live wisely in the short time we can have? Three C's. You ready? Count your days.
Teach us to number our days. Count your days and say, God, allow me to look at my days. Allow me to say, this is, I'm given 70, maybe 80 years.
Allow me to look at my life and say, what am I doing with my life? What am I allowing my life to be in and of and around? And who am I putting my life in? And who am I allowing to be in my life?
Consider your ways. Count your days. Consider your ways. We're tempted to live like we have forever. I can imagine you've been around teenage drivers,
right? I was once a teenage driver. And my dad was so wise that he gave me a 1994 Ford Ranger, two-door, four-cylinder.
It went zero to 60 in about 10 minutes. Okay, it was the slowest truck ever. I would push the gas pedal down and it would be like, nothing. There was no power whatsoever. It was absolutely the slowest vehicle ever made in mankind's history.
I think a Ford Pinto would have gone faster than that Ford Ranger if they were to be put on a drag strip together. My dad understood that as a young person, I would have this mindset that I'm going to live forever. I'm invincible, right?
I'm playing football. I'm doing things. No one can hurt me.
And I get behind the wheel and that can be our mindset. And God says, no, no, no. Consider your ways you don't have forever. You only have a finite amount of time. And what are you doing with the days you've given?
And then commit your life to what matters the most. Wisdom comes not just from learning, but from learning to lean into eternal wisdom.
Saying, God, give me this wisdom that I need so often. This wisdom that I have, it's fell, it's futile, it's fleeting in my life. I need you in my life. And I need your wisdom.
Imagine for a moment, a countdown clock on a basketball game. Michael Jordan's got the ball and he's coming down the court and he's down by one point. And he's watching that countdown clock because it's going down five, four, three. He's dribbling. He steps up. You see that iconic step.
He's watching the clock because he wants to shoot the shot, to make the shot so that the game's over and they win the game. And our life is the same way. We've got a countdown clock. We don't physically have a countdown clock.
We can't see it. We can see a general wisdom of how much time we've got left. But what are we doing with the time that we've got? I wanted to put it like this in the form of a question. If you only had 30 days left to live, what would you change?
If you had 30 days, you knew that 30 days from today, you were going to draw your last breath, you were going to stand before God eternally, what things in your life would you change or would you continue to do the same things you're doing right now for those next 30 days?
Maybe there's a person that's in your life that's been a bad influence.
Maybe there's something or someone that's around you that you need to just cut out and you need to say, listen, this is not for the glory of God. This is not how I can consider my ways or committing my life to you.
God, I want to be more like you and I've just got to understand that sometimes separation is good for salvation. Sometimes separation is good for sanctification in our life.
What would you change in those short times that you've got? And then lastly this morning, cling to the hope of God's mercy and glory.
Verses 13 through 17, he lays out the glory and the mercy that God gives us.
He says this, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us. Let the favor of God's glory be on us so much so that our hope is not in that a life will be long, but that our life will be lived in him.
So that we can look back and we can say, God, look at my life. Oh, I may have only had 35, 38, 37, 45, 80 years.
I may have only had a short amount of time, but I'm thankful that I was able to live it for you. And understand that as he says here in the scripture, God, establish the works of my hands. God, give me the wisdom,
give me the establishment of my hands to do the things that you would want me to do. Not for my glory, but for your glory. Am I building something that God is blessing
or am I building something that is just simply gonna be washed away? You've been there. You can remember a time where maybe you took your kid to the beach and they began building a sandcastle and they had all this open sand and you began to see the tide coming in.
And you told them, hey, you probably shouldn't build your sandcastle there because the water's gonna come in and take that away. And they think, I know better than dad. I can do this. I'm gonna build my sandcastle where I want it. I'm gonna do my thing, my way. And they began building.
And before they know it, I mean, it's like within a matter of moments, all of a sudden, the water's right there beside them. And they're trying to stop the water. They began building a little dam around the sandcastle.
I've got to protect my little investment that I've just spent all my life building. And the water begins to come and wash away the dam. And then before they know it, their entire sandcastle is now leveled because this water came in. Oftentimes, this is our life.
We say, God, I'm gonna do my own thing.
I'm gonna build my own thing. I'm gonna do it the way I wanna do it. And when I need to come to you, I'll come to you, but I'm gonna be over here. And all of a sudden, the water's coming in and it begins falling apart. Our houses are falling apart.
God, what are you doing? And he's just standing up here, listen, I'm just trying to give you wisdom. I'm just trying to give you guidance. I'm trying to help you out in your life. And you're not listening.
You need to come to me and you need to understand that the satisfaction in the morning is through the faithful love of God. As Terry comes, as we begin to close out our message, Psalms 90 is a psalm that humbles us.
It also helps us, but it humbles us in our understanding of knowing that the time that we have here on earth is not forever.
Investing in Eternal Rewards
It reminds us that we don't have forever and it reassures us that we have God who does have forever. Moses doesn't end with despair. He ends with this wonderful prayer that says, teach us to number our days,
satisfy us in the morning and establish the works of our hands. This is the posture of someone who's figured out what it means to not build a life that looks good on social media,
that's not stacking up money that we can't take with us and not just surviving the week and waiting for the weekend, but he's using every day that he's got.
How many of our years the Lord's given him to outlast for what God has done? You see, if we live in the light of eternity, you won't waste today.
If you live the life that you've got today for eternity's sake, everything you do for today will be glorious to God.
If we remember how short our life is and we invested in what lasts forever, we'll begin to see the rewards of that foreverness.
As we begin to close out this Summer of Psalms series that I've done, the question I want you to ring in your heart is, what are you doing with the time that you have? What are you doing with the simple time that God has given you? Are you chasing shadows?
Or are you clinging to the solid rock and saying, God, I need you today more than I ever have. God, I need you for my children more than I ever have. God, I need you for my grandchildren more than I ever have. God, I can't take another step without you there.
Or are you just existing and hoping that you'll live for something and one day that'll echo into eternity. God lays it out for us.
He says, these are some things that you can do. Count your days, consider your ways, commit your life to the Lord. And so are you numbering your days this morning? Are you anchoring your soul and are you living this life, this one and only life? As C.T.
Studd said, I've only got one life and it's only for what you have done. And what you will do is I will live that life. Are we living our life for the glory of God? In Psalms 90, he ends with a prayer. Not necessarily a plan, but a prayer that says,
Lord, establish the works of my hand. Why does he want you to do this? It's because God is the only one that can make our days and our deeds matter forever. And are we living our days for the glory of God?
One thing I've learned in my long life of 36 years, and I know that's a young for a lot of you, is no matter how much I want to, I can't go back and rewrite my beginning.
I can't go back and rewrite what I did yesterday or five years ago or 10 years ago. And there are regrets that I have.
But what I do know is God can begin to redeem me today for my ending.
And God can begin to rewrite today's story and tomorrow's story and the next day's story so that when I get to the end, I can say, God, I may have not started right. I may have made mistakes back when I was a teenager, back when I was a young person.
But God, I wanted to refix and reorder my life so that when I come to the end of my life, I can say, you know, I may not have started well, but I know that I finished well because I allowed you to rewrite my life and rewrite the ending of my life.
Maybe you're here today and you're a believer and you say,
Living with Eternity in Sight
Pastor James, I've been a believer my whole life. Are we continuing to live with eternity in sight?
Are we continuing to allow our life to not be caught in the busyness of now, but in the busyness of God's plan and say, God, put me in the center of your will and allow me to live with eternity in sight.
Maybe you're here today and you say, Pastor James, I don't know that I have a relationship with Jesus. I don't know that I have ever committed my life to Jesus and I want today to be the beginning of my story for Jesus.
I want it to be that on this day, when I look back 10 years from now, this was the time that I understood my time was running out and I wanted to commit my life to you. Where are you at this morning?
How are you living your days and what do we need to do to grow closer to the Lord?
Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done.
You're such a holy, just God and Lord, I have been so encouraged these last couple of days of Bible school and just being around your people and studying your word, Lord, it's been so impactful in my own life.
I have really re-evaluated where my life is at, where my family is at and just said, God, I want you to commit my days today so that tomorrow when I wake up, it's going to be to you
so that the next day when I wake up, I'm going to be so focused on you that when I step into eternity, I'm just going to be like another day of waking up and walking around with you. God, help us today.
Help us to respond appropriately as we pray this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.
Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
Auto-generated transcript · 6,257 words. May contain errors. Select a timestamp to play from that moment.
More from Summer of Psalms
View all
Psalms 51
Psalms 150
Psalms 110
Psalms 76
Psalms 133
Psalms 63
Listen to this sermon