Use Your Time Wisely (Psalm 90:3-12)

SPIRIRUAL DIARY FOR
5/21/2012 8:58:39 AM
My Worship Time      Focus:  Use your time wisely
Bible Reading & Meditation     Reference:  Psalm 90:3-12
 Message of the verses:  In yesterday’s SD we began to look at Psalm 90 by looking at the first two verses and also looking at several introductions to the Psalm.  In Dr. Wiersbe’s introduction he wrote the following at the end of his introduction: “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 well.”
We are Learners and Life Is Our School (vv. 3-12):  “3  You turn man back into dust And say, "Return, O children of men." 4  For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or as a watch in the night. 5  You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. 6  In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away.  7  For we have been consumed by Your anger And by Your wrath we have been dismayed. 8  You have placed our iniquities before You, Our secret sins in the light of Your presence. 9  For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh. 10  As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away. 11  Who understands the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? 12 So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”
 According to Acts 7:22 we learn this about Moses, “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.’”  Moses was educated in the best place on earth at that time, and yet he learned much more when he began to walk with the Lord that all he had learned from his education in Egypt.  Dr. Wiersbe points out:  “In the school of life (v. 12), we need to learn two important lessons:  life is brief and passes swiftly (vv. 4-6), so make the most of it; and life is difficult and at times seems futile (vv. 7-11), but this is the only way to mature.  Were there no sin in the world, there would be no suffering and death; but people made of dust defy the God of the universe and try to repeal the inexorable law of sin and death, ‘For dust you are, and to dust you shall return; (Gen. 1:19NKJV).”    He goes on to write, “The school of life is preparation for an eternity with God, and without Him, we cannot learn our lessons, pass our tests, and make progress from kindergarten to graduate school!” 
 We see in verse four something similar that is written in 2Peter 3:8 “But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”  I have heard many people take this verse and say that the Lord may not return for thousands of years because a thousand years is like a day in the site of the Lord.  I disagree with their logic completely, for what both Moses and Peter are saying is that God is outside of time, for it was God who made time whenever he made the earth and placed the earth in rotation around the sun making one year and the earth’s rotation makes up one day.  God made all of that but He lives outside of time and to Him a day is like a thousand years. 
 I have heard that life is like a roll of toilet paper, for when you get to the end of it, it goes a lot faster, and that is true, for the older you get the faster life seems to pass, but God is in eternity and is eternal and so life never ends for Him for He has been around forever, something that is hard to understand. 
 Moses gives illustrations of how fast life fades by using nature, how fast grass can disappear once it begins to grow.  (vv. 4-6)  Dr. Wiersbe writes “In the school of life, those students learn the most who realize that the dismissal bell rings when they least expect it!”
 Verses 7-11 are Moses’ writings about what happened at Kadesh Barnea which is found in Numbers chapters thirteen and fourteen, and of course that is when Israel wanted to send out spies to look at the Promised Land and ten of them came back with a bad report and so God made Israel march around in the wilderness for forty years until all those who were over twenty years old died in the wilderness.  If there were one million people who came out of Egypt there would have been 70 funerals a day for forty years.  Joshua and Caleb were the only two people from the older generation who went into the Promised Land, for they were the two spies who believed that God could use Israel to defeat those who lived in the Promised Land.  What Moses was saying is that if the children of Israel marched around the wilderness for forty hears those who were twenty at the time of this great sin would be sixty years old when they would need to conquers the Promised Land and a person is fortunate to live 70 years and perhaps 80 years. 
 Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I suppose that the timing of this Psalm is great for it was on this day ninety years ago that my mother was born, and so today she celebrates he 90th birthday.  Ninety years is a long life, but to God it is only a few seconds, and to us who are alive now it does not seem that long.  The important thing is to learn the things that the Lord wants to teach us in our stay on earth so that when eternity begins for us we will have some jewels in our crowns that we can place at the feet of Jesus.
My Steps of Faith for Today:  Use my time wisely.
5/21/2012 10:56:26 AM