The COVID-19 pandemic has led us to feel new levels of anxiety and fear we didn’t know we could feel. People have been pushed out of the security of knowing what will happen next to not knowing what will happen. Knowing God makes all the difference in a situation like this. If we find ourselves wrestling and poring over Scripture to ask, “is this true?”, that’s how we fight for faith. But if we stare at Netflix and the news and our immediate circumstances and not wrestling with who God is or what He desires then in normal times you won’t be much better. We’re being forced to confront what we really believe. We’ll see God as more mighty and glorious and beautiful than we’ve ever seen Him.
(A) The Eternal God (Ps 90:1-2)
According to the inscription on the psalm, it was written by Moses, “the man of God”. This inscription is in the original text. He is the man of God and not just a man of God. Why is he called the man of God and how does it help us understand the psalm? His relationship with God was so defining of him: he was known for his unique relationship with God as interlocutor.
The psalmist opens his prayer by speaking about God’s unchanging eternal nature—he is not creating a God but fixing his eyes on who God is. This might be strange to us because in our prayers, we often just go “dear God…” as if we are writing a letter. Notice what Moses does. He attaches theological content about God.
Moses is thinking about God as our dwelling place for all generations, a family God who has been with Moses’ family throughout time. He then pulls back and says that He is God of all things. Moses says God knows “how the mountains were brought forth”—not just that the mountains were there before. God has no boundaries of time and space: high and lifted up above time and space, immanent and transcendent. Moses is describing the God he knows. He is eternal, Maker of all things, and above all things.
How do you think of God and how will it change the way you pray? Our God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing He cannot do. And if this is true, how does it change the way you pray and ask Him whatever you are asking? How does it change the way you think about sin? How does it change the way you think about your day, and think, period? How does it change the way you pray about COVID-19? He knew that this will come, and what will come after it. In the grand scheme of things, this is just a blip in the mind of God. Surely this will bring a different tone, and mood
(B) Men like grass (Ps 90:3-11)
The psalmist also says that a thousand years to God are as the blink of an eye (Ps 90:4). We have no idea of comprehending how God experiences time, as if he were just there watching a thousand years real quick and boom, it’s gone. 2 Peter 3:8 states that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day.” God simply doesn’t experience time as we do. It’s philosophically confusing in a number of ways, but that’s what Scripture says.
There are three implications of the eternal nature of God, who doesn’t experience time as we do. From Ps 90:3 we know that God is the one who creates and ends men’s lives. When we die, we go back to being exactly what we were—bits of carbon, at God’s decree. The God who is eternal says that is what happens. The second implication is that our lives are “swept away like a flood”—with no trace of where we were because of how small we are. The third implication is that our lives shift from season to season, like grass that is there in the morning and fades away. These are absolute statements that press truth into three implications: all human life pales in comparison to God’s eternity, and all we think is precious actually isn’t. This puts everything into perspective. Men are like grass.
Mortal life has another key trait besides being short and fleeting. Moses hones on our fallenness. He says our lives are futile and mortal because of our sinfulness and God’s wrath against our sinful nature. Our seventy to eighty years of toil are there because of God’s wrath. Moses lays out a theological reflection on our anthropological reflection. We go not because we have full lives and go when it’s “our time”, but because God commands so. COVID-19 reveals how the world is broken. Yet it should cause us not to lament the state of the world, but to repent for our sins.
God’s wrath is still on this world. Though we have Christ, we are still going to die. In this COVID-19 period, as MOH reminds us daily of how many have been infected, let us also remind ourselves that those are men and women just like you and me are. Take that moment to ask God for mercy, mercy on those who are ill and on the brink of death. Ask also for mercy for us that deserve it.
This circuit breaker period is a time for us to understand who we really are. Our lives are still reeking of the sin that sent Jesus to the cross. Repentance and confession must be our habit.
(C) Covenant prayers for steadfast love (Ps 90:12-17)
As a result, the psalmist seeks a heart of wisdom and presents this request to God: “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). This request (intercession) come out of theology. Everything comes out of theology. Everything that we ask of God and ask of Him to do for us comes out of what we know and believe about God. This is why the first 2 sections are so important. Our theology and anthropology are the backdrop for what he is going to put forward in his request.
What is Moses asking here? God is eternal and in His sight, all time has no beiginning and ending. Therefore, he is asking for the right eyes to see our lives. By numbering our days, Moses is saying that humans should not lift themselves up to the eternity of God’s nature. Help us not to think of ourselves as eternal. When we number our days, we will not see ourselves too highly, and therefore gain a heart of wisdom.
What is wisdom? In the Bible, it is skill for right living and life. It is the ability to live life in a fallen world and to understand things for what it really is. It addresses 2 main sets of questions:
Where did we come from? How have we lived those days? What were our priorities?
As we look ahead, how are we spending out time? What is the end and outcome of our life?
There will be a final day. Life will not go on forever. Between now and then, what is the order with which we will live our lives? As young adults, we have a sense of artificial immortality. We also tend to live our lives without discipline, choosing to do what we want to do when we feel it. We often live with a “see how” mentality. This tentative approach to life and the unwillingness to commit to a purpose, goal and direction is a clear indication that w are making choices day to day based on our whims and fancy.
We can number our days during this circuit breaker period. Every one of those days, we have a choice to decide how we will spend those days. Infuse each day with purpose and structure.
The second thing the psalmist seeks is for God to satisfy His people (Ps 90: 13-15). God’s people have been seeking for a long time: they’re asking Him to bring about a morning to end the long and difficult night and satisfy them with His everlasting love. They are asking God outside time to come into time and save them. This is salvation according to His steadfast love, a plea according to the covenant of God that connects God and His people. Zechariah picks up on this imagery in Luke 1:68-79. When God shows His steadfast love, it will be like the morning after a long night of waiting. Here in Ps 90, Moses is praying from his lifetime to the future, the day when God’s covenantal love will rescue His people.
All this time that our hearts have been aching, give us this time of joy, prays the psalmist (Ps 90:15). He is asking God to work out His plan in our fleeting days so that in the grand covenant story, He will bring about salvation. God is working out a bigger plan than Moses can imagine. We all want to see the whole story in our lifetime right now. We cannot fast forward our lives like we do on Netflix. When we ask God to intervene in our life, He will stretch our patience. Things may not happen in our lifetime or according to our timeline. But we can be assured that the God outside of time will bring to pass in His right time.
In the closing verses of this psalm, Moses is asking that God will show His grand rescue work to His servants, and that His power can be witnessed by the children of Israel (Ps 90:16-17). Moses asks God in this benediction to take His great work of infinite proportion and scale to reveal it to His children. And for us, as we do our work, Moses is asking for God’s favour. Isn’t this amazing? There is a toggling between the infinite power of God and our grass-like lives.
What are we asking God for? We are reminding ourselves about this eternal God who has purposes for our lives that we can never figure out. We are asking for Him to show us what He is doing in the world.
In this psalm, we are trying to lift our eyes away from the flatness of our lives and to look to the depths and mystery of God. We are asking God to help us reset our lives and help us to think and plan as He would desire for us to. But we need to ask Him to give us this refreshing effect.