So this morning we are continuing our annual Stewardship Series on the Stewardship of Time.
It’s important for us to consider the principles of stewardship as they apply to time.
1. God owns everything, you own nothing.
2. God entrusts you with everything you have.
3. You can either increase or diminish what God has given; He wants you to increase it.
4. God can call you into account at any time, and it may be today.
I would invite you to turn to Psalm 90 this morning. This morning we will look at 3 ways to grow in stewarding your time during difficult times.
I. Trust you are secure in an eternal God. (v.1-2)
A. He is the dwelling place for all generations. – [v. 1.]
If you understand the background to this psalm, it will help to paint an understandable portrait for your mind as we walk together through this psalm.
Moses penned this psalm while Israel was being chastened in the wilderness by God for 40 years! What happened? Well…you have to go all the way back to Exodus 1-12 – the Lord has delivered God’s people out of Egypt.
After being delivered, the Lord told Israel that he would lead them to a land of “milk and honey.” (Exodus 3:8). Upon seeing the land and sending in 12 young men to spy out the land, they came back and discouraged Israel from entering the land.
“But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, because they are too strong for us.” 32 So they brought a bad report of the land which they had spied out to the sons of Israel saying, “The land through which we have gone to spy out is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are people of great stature.” – Numbers 13:31-33
The bad report by these young men frightened the rest of Israel (except for Joshua a Caleb) and see their response in Numbers 14, thus they began to rebel against the Lord and Moses.
Moses intercedes for Israel – God forgave Israel’s sin – but that doesn’t mean the consequences were lifted – in fact, let’s read what happened.
“I have forgiven them in accordance with your word; 21 however, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. 22 Certainly all the people who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, 23 shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who were disrespectful to Me see it.” – Numbers 14:20-23
In others, they didn’t want to enter into the promised land as shown by their incessant rebellion against the very redeemer who brought them out of Egypt. So God gave them precisely what they wanted! How? He would cause rebellious Israel to wander in the Wilderness in a circle for 40 years, until that generation of people 20 and older…were dead.
The only two over the age of 20 allowed into the Promised Land were (1) Joshua, (2) Caleb, and those under 20 allowed entrance by God were the children of the rebellious mob in the Wilderness.
By the way: Moses wasn’t going into the Promised Land either. You see, Moses seemed to have had a temper, and he lost it by striking a rock after the Lord specifically told him to “speak to the rock” so that it would bring forth water for the people of Israel (Number 20)
So while Israel is wandering in the Wilderness…Moses humbled by his many years in the Wilderness said in verse 1
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” – v. 1
You see, Moses understood this. He witnessed the God of wonder and how he acted on behalf of Israel during his days in Egypt. Both he and Aaron knew he was with them. God was…a dwelling place for them, which is a metaphor in the Hebrew for protection.
You know what Moses is doing? He’s recalling the attributes of his Creator while being under the chastening hand of his God. Yes, Moses was forgiven of his sin. Yes, Israel were forgiven their sins because of Moses’ intercession. He serves a mediator between God and Israel.
God’s sovereign grace was upon that nation in spite of all of Israel’s rebellion…they were still under God’s sovereign grace (cf. Deut. 29:5)
…Yet the consequences of their sin remained…they were forbidden to enter the Promised Land.
Moses learned that regardless of his circumstances in the Wilderness, his life was secured.
And because of his faith in the Lord, even if he never did see the Promised Land, he would ultimately see a far better and eternal Promised Land – the kingdom in all its glory.
God is his dwelling place – and God is ours…this verse reminded me of a song from Keith and Kristen Ghetty. The first part of this contemporary hymn
My dwelling place is God Most High
My refuge and my fortress
When plague and pestilence draw nigh
I’m hidden in His Presence
When terrors fall and arrows fly
His shield will be my safety
When stones across my pathway lie
On angels’ wings I’m carried
Transition: Trust you are secure in the eternal God. (v.1-2). He is the dwelling place for all his people.
And by the way
His eternality means you can never escape his presence - v. 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 love the kind of metaphors Moses applies to the created earth – he does this because he wants God’s people to see the marked distinction between the creation from the Creator – between created humanity from the uncreated Creator. Theologians over the centuries have looked at verses like this and coined a term to describe what they were reading – and they called it.
The Aseity of God – refers to his self-existence.
To put it simply, God is not a created Being. He’s the uncreated Creator of the universe. For example, in Genesis 21:33, Abraham referred to God as “everlasting.”
“Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.” – Genesis 21:33
In Isaiah 44:6, the prophet writes about the eternality of the Triune God.
“This is what the Lord says, He who is the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of armies: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.” - Isaiah 44:6
In John 1:1, the Apostle John echoed the same thought in describing the eternality of the Son of God when he wrote,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1; cf. Genesis 1:1.
John alluded to Genesis 1 and the creation of the universe. That is to say, when all things began….the Word already was!
In other words, one of the primary attributes or qualities about the Being of God is his eternal nature that separates Him from his creation!
One of the quintessential truths in all of Scripture that centers around the deity of Christ is his eternality! If you don’t get this truth, neither will you understand Moses.
John 8:24, “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”
John 8:58, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.”
John 13:19, “From now on I am telling you before it happens, so that when it does happen, you may believe that I am.”
In other words, God is the self-existent One!
RC SPROUL
You know what the real difference is between God and me? His being. He alone has being in and of Himself. He alone has eternal being. Any being that I have is transitory. Any being that I have is dependent, it’s contingent, it’s derived, it’s a subset of pure being. That’s what the Apostle Paul said to the Athenian philosophers with respect to God: “In Him, we live and move and have our being.” (emphasis added)
Transition: Moses’ point couldn’t be more important for this reason…
B. His eternality provides hope that those who come after you can also enjoy his presence.
Transition: Since that’s the case, and God sees everything you do and knows your rising up and laying down on this earth.
II. Make the most of your limited time - vv. 3-12
Meaning,
A. View times of suffering from God’s perspective - vv. 3-4
“For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.” (v.4)
In other words, time doesn’t mean anything to God. He created time. We are transient beings and subjects to time and decay. We are subject to the curse stamped upon God’s creation by God Himself. And our life is so very short lived, if our very lives are so subject to time and decay, how much more are we subjects of our God? We cannot run and we cannot hide from the face of Him who sits on the throne!
Our lives are in the palm of God and Moses provides
B. Three pictures to teach us how short life is
1. Like a body decayed to dust – v. 3
“You turn man back into dust and say, “Return, O children of men.” (v.3)
2. Like being swept away by a flood – v. 5a
“You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep”
3. Like the grass that flourishes and dies – vv. 5-6
“In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; Toward evening it fades and withers away.” (v. 5b-6)
Let me summarize these verses so as to get the big picture: Don’t be like the rich fool Jesus referred to who thought nothing about his limited time here on earth and thought nothing about being accountable to the One who inhabits eternity!
When the appointed time came for this man to give an account Jesus tells us what happened in Luke 12:20
"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?' – Luke 12:20
The book of Job paints this startling reality for those who are on borrowed time.
“For what hope has the godless when he is cut off, when God takes away his life?” – Job 27:8
In Psalm 39:6 King David understood that the fleeting unpredictable nature of this life can be withdrawn at a moment’s notice -- precisely what Moses’ is describing here in these verses.
“Surely every man goes about like a phantom; surely he bustles in vain; he heaps up riches not knowing who will haul them away.” - Psalm 39:6
This ought to compel you to consider the fleeting nature of your life and to
C. Consider God’s anger against sin so we number our days. vv. 7-8
“For we have been consumed by Your anger and by Your wrath we have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.” – vv. 7-8
Moses is calling for God’s people to be circumspect about who God is and who we are. God is eternal. We are not. As Job 5:7 put it,
“Man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward.” – Job 5:7
1. Our lives on earth groan under the curse of sin – v. 9
“For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh.”- v. 9
That’s what sin does, it decays man’s life under the sun until he’s no more. There seems to be a weightiness to Moses’ heart in these verses. I believe he’s really feeling the weight of who God is here and who he is…..
King Solomon portrays a similar sentiment about life under the curse
“I took all this to heart and concluded that the righteous and the wise, as well as their deeds, are in God’s hands. Man does not know what lies ahead, whether love or hate. It is the same for all: There is a common fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who makes a vow, so it is for the one who refuses to take a vow. This is an evil in everything that is done under the sun: There is one fate for everyone. Furthermore, the hearts of men are full of evil and madness while they are alive, and afterward they join the dead.…” – Ecclesiastes 9:1-3
2. The curse means that life is short and difficult – vv. 10-12
“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. Who understands the power of Your anger And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”
In other words, Moses is saying, ‘Lord teach me to evaluate the time that you’ve given to me on earth so that I may steward it to glory of your great name.’
In the 1700’s lived a man named Jonathan Edwards. When he was nineteen years old he wrote what is famously known as the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards.
He wrote this to keep himself accountable before God and his service to him. Under his time management, he wrote 13 resolutions about the use of his time.
I hope to God this morning that we would all waken up, learn and live out some of these resolutions
[The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards]
Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.
Resolved, to live so at all times, as I think is best in my devout frames, and when I have clearest notions of things of the gospel, and another world.
Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if I expected it would not be above an hour, before I should hear the last trump.
Resolved, I will act so as I think I shall judge would have been best, and most prudent, when I come into the future world. July 5, 1723.
Resolved, that I will act so, in every respect, as I think I shall wish I had done, if I should at last be damned. July 8, 1723.
I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age. July 8, 1723.
Faith, be resolved like Moses – be resolute in your mind to so live for Christ until you burn out like a comet passing through the world with the seal of the living God!
Saying all creatures of our God and King lift up your voice and with us sing, alleluia, alleluia!
You who long pain and sorrow bear, praise God and on him cast your care, O praise him, O Praise him, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia,
Transition: My friends, although we are still living under the curse, our reformation is coming! It’s coming. Lets pray. Let’s
III. Ask the Lord for grace to live joyfully (vv. 13-17)
A. For daily satisfaction in God’s mercy and love – vv. 13-15
“Do return, O Lord; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days You have afflicted us, and the years we have seen evil.” – vv. 13-15
There’s a lot to unpack here – so here goes. Here’s what the psalmist is saying
Do relent, Lord – how long will it be? [ he’s referring to God’s chastening upon Israel in the wilderness] how much longer will we be in this wilderness? Have compassion for your servants. Cause this affliction to end.
The psalmist prayed to the Lord to return to his people, not with judgment, but with lovingkindness.
This is the heart of a repentant man. I see a beautiful portrait of repentance…
God (1) relents from eternal judgment (2) His loving kindness is seen in salvation (3) He satisfies the heart with the Holy Spirit (4) and we sing for joy…
Happy day, happy day, When Jesus washed my sins away! ’Tis done—the great transaction’s done; I am my Lord’s, and He is mine; He drew me and I followed on, Rejoiced to own the call divine.
Transaction: Ask the Lord for grace to live joyfully. Ask for daily satisfaction in God’s mercy and love. And finally, ask
B. For God to work and make us productive – vv. 16-17
“Let Your work appear to Your servants and Your majesty to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”
This last section is a prayer – a prayer by Moses for God to work in the life of his people. Do you pray like a Moses? Do you pray like a Jonathan Edwards to redeem what’s left of your time here on this earth? It’s not too late. So long as you traverse through this planet, you can still give God glory and to ask him to bless the work of your hands for his glory.
My friends, redeem the time, for the days are evil. Pray to the Lord that he would help you steward the time he has granted to you.
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