God Is Our Home (Psalm 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 honly 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 on 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 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