Teach Us to Number Our Days
Faith or Fear
Which one will win today?
A well known commentary, Adam Clarke’s,
claims the title of Psalms 90 cannot be correct.
The title is,
“A prayer of Moses the man of God.”
His reason is the universal age of man
70 to 80 years had not yet been established.
All
the versions ascribe it to Moses;
but
that it could not be of Moses, the lawgiver,
is
evident from this consideration,
that
the age of man was not then seventy or eighty years,
which
is here stated to be its almost universal limit,
for
Joshua lived one hundred and ten years,
and
Moses himself one hundred and twenty;
Miriam
his sister, one hundred and thirty;
Aaron
his brother, one hundred and twenty-three;
Caleb,
four-score and five years;
and
their contemporaries lived in the same proportion.
(from Adam Clarke's Commentary)
I have attributed this Psalm to Moses,
after he had gone through the wilderness.
It was to be an 11 day journey. Deuteronomy 1:2
Because the Israelites refused to trust God
and take the promise land…
God said,
“not a man of
this evil generation shall see
the good land I swore to give your forefathers.”
Deuteronomy 1:35
Over a forty year period,
Moses conducted funeral services.
He watched his fellow Israelites
that came out of Egypt die.
Because of this judgment of God,
I content that for forty years
Moses saw the people had
a life expectancy of 70 to 80 years.
Moses saw the wasted days.
Days without meaning
because fear and doubt
filled the hearts of the people.
This is a sad Psalm not because
life passes quickly or because it
is full of suffering and sorrow.
It is a sad Psalm
because the people Moses is
writing about lacked faith.
Their lack of faith kept
them in the wilderness
when they could have been
in the land of promise.
Maybe the first lesson
in numbering our days is…
start each day with faith
that God will give you
what He has promised.
Scripture Reading
Psalm 90:11-12 NIV
10 The length of our
days is seventy years — or eighty, if we have the strength;
yet their span is but
trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the
power of your anger?
For your wrath is as
great as the fear that is due you.
12 Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of
wisdom.
Deuteronomy 1:1-40 NIV
1:1 These are the
words Moses spoke to all Israel in the desert east of the Jordan
— that is, in the
Arabah — opposite Suph,
between Paran and
Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab.
2(It takes eleven
days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)
3 In the fortieth
year, on the first day of the eleventh month,
Moses proclaimed to
the Israelites
all that the LORD had
commanded him concerning them.
4 This was after he
had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon,
and at Edrei had
defeated Og king of Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth.
5 East of the Jordan
in the territory of Moab, Moses began to expound this law, saying:
6 The LORD our God
said to us at Horeb,
"You have stayed
long enough at this mountain.
7 Break camp and
advance into the hill country of the Amorites;
go to all the
neighboring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains,
in the western
foothills, in the Negev and along the coast,
to the land of the
Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates.
8 See, I have given
you this land.
Go in and take
possession of the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers
— to Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob — and to their descendants after them."
9 At that time I said
to you, "You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone.
10 The LORD your God
has increased your numbers
so that today you are
as many as the stars in the sky.
11 May the LORD, the
God of your fathers,
increase you a
thousand times and bless you as he has promised!
12 But how can I bear
your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself? 13 Choose some
wise, understanding and respected men from each of your tribes,
and I will set them
over you." 14 You answered me, "What you propose to do is good."
15 So I took the
leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men,
and appointed them to
have authority over you
— as commanders of
thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials. 16 And
I charged your judges at that time:
Hear the disputes
between your brothers and judge fairly,
whether the case is
between brother Israelites or between one of them and an alien.
17 Do not show
partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike.
Do not be afraid of
any man, for judgment belongs to God.
Bring me any case too
hard for you, and I will hear it.
18 And at that time I
told you everything you were to do.
19 Then, as the LORD
our God commanded us,
we set out from Horeb
and went toward the hill country of the Amorites
through all that vast
and dreadful desert that you have seen, and so we reached Kadesh Barnea. 20
Then I said to you, "You have reached the hill country of the Amorites,
which the LORD our
God is giving us.
21 See, the LORD your
God has given you the land.
Go up and take
possession of it as the LORD, the God of your fathers, told you.
Do not be afraid; do
not be discouraged."
22 Then all of you
came to me and said,
"Let us send men
ahead to spy out the land for us
and bring back a
report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to."
23 The idea seemed
good to me; so I selected twelve of you, one man from each tribe.
24 They left and went
up into the hill country,
and came to the
Valley of Eshcol and explored it.
25 Taking with them
some of the fruit of the land,
they brought it down
to us and reported,
"It is a good
land that the LORD our God is giving us."
26 But you were
unwilling to go up;
you rebelled against
the command of the LORD your God.
27 You grumbled in your
tents and said, "The LORD hates us;
so he brought us out
of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. 28 Where
can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart.
They say, 'The people
are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large,
with walls up to the
sky. We even saw the Anakites there.'"
29 Then I said to
you, "Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them.
30 The LORD your God,
who is going before you, will fight for you,
as he did for you in
Egypt, before your very eyes, 31 and in the desert.
There you saw how the
LORD your God carried you,
as a father carries
his son, all the way you went until you reached this place."
32 In spite of this,
you did not trust in the LORD your God,
33 who went ahead of
you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day,
to search out places
for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.
34 When the LORD
heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore:
I swore to give your
forefathers, 36 except Caleb son of Jephunneh.
He will see it, and I
will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on,
because he followed
the LORD wholeheartedly."
37 Because of you the
LORD became angry with me also and said,
"You shall not
enter it, either. 38 But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it.
Encourage him, because he will lead Israel to inherit it.
39 And the little
ones that you said would be taken captive,
your children who do
not yet know good from bad — they will enter the land.
I will give it to
them and they will take possession of it. 40 But as for you,
turn around and set
out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea."
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