Real Talk (Psalm 90)
James Jackson / General Adult
Good morning. Please open your Bibles to Psalm 90.
You know how there are some sermons that just make you glad you came to church? The pastor’s funny, the music’s catchy, and you leave humming a happy tune on your way to lunch?
Well… this isn’t going to be one of those mornings." Psalm 90 doesn’t hum a happy tune. It makes us slow down, face reality, and ask hard questions about God, life, sin, and eternity. And sometimes those are the mornings we need most.”
Psalm 90 is Moses looking back over his life. At this point he is around 120 years old. He’s led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. He was supposed to lead them into the Promised Land. Yet because of their stubbornness and rebellion, what could have been a journey of a few months became forty years of wandering in the wilderness. During that time, he’s had to watch as the entire generation of those who were led out of bondage die in the desert. On top of that, he knows because of his own sin he will not step foot in the Promised Land.
Yet for all that, one theologian noted that ‘There does not appear to be any trace of bitterness or of undue pessimism. Just plain, realistic thinking marks these words.’
That’s what Psalm 90 is: real talk about about God’s sovereignty. our mortality. Sin’s depravity. But we’re also going to talk about God’s love for us, through all of it.
And my prayer is that by the time we’re done, you’ll walk out of here—not humming a happy tune, maybe—but glad you came.”
We are going to read Psalm 90 together, but I’m not going to ask you to stand like we usually do. I think Psalm 90 is one you have to sit with. You gotta let the weight of it sink in. So listen to these words from the oldest Psalm in the Bible:
[read psalm 90]
Setting the Stage: What’s on Moses’ Mind
“Before we get to the first verse of Psalm 90, its worth thinking about the context. Most scholars believe Moses wrote Psalm 90 in reference to the events of Numbers 20. In that chapter, several devastating things happen in rapid succession:
• Miriam dies — Moses’ sister, his confidant since Egypt.
• The people complain (again)
• Moses sins at the waters of Meribah and, in a moment of anger, disqualifies himself from entering the Promised Land.
• Edom refuses to let Israel pass through its country
• Aaron dies — Moses’ brother, his partner in leadership for forty years.
Moses now faces a hard reality: there are now only three people left from the generation that walked out of Egypt — Joshua, Caleb, and himself. Everyone else is gone.
Which is why Psalm 90 is so amazing to me. The first thing on Moses mind isn’t himself, or his grief, or his circumstances. Look at the first word of the Psalm:
Point 1 — Let’s Talk About God (Psalm 90:1-2)
Psalm 90:1–2 ESV
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Surrounded by death, Moses starts with the One who never dies. LORD… before the mountains were formed, before the earth was created, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
Think about verse 1— you have been our dwelling place.
Let’s play a game. Raise your hand if you are at least 40 years old. Ok. Those of you that are at least 40, take a minute to think about how many times you have moved in the last 40 years. For me, its 8. And that includes moving from single housing to married housing in seminary, and moving from an apartment to a house here in Prattville. 8 times in 40 years. Military families— I know you’ve got that beat. Anyone think they’ve moved the most in 40 years?
According to Numbers 33, the Israelites moved 42 times in 40 years. Can you even imagine?
But as Moses reflects on that history, he writes, ‘God, You have been our dwelling place.’
As hard as it must have been for Moses to hear that he would die without entering the land God had promised, Moses was able to accept it because he knew that no physical location is the ultimate dwelling place for one of God’s children.
Think about that: you might feel like your family is constantly on the move. Or maybe you’ve lost your home through fire or some natural disaster. But if you are a Christian, your ultimate dwelling place isn’t a place. It’s a Person. You will never be at home until you find your home in Him.
Let’s keep going: Moses moves from talking about God’s eternality to man’s mortality. Moses has just told us that
God is from everlasting to everlasting. And now he turns to us — finite, fragile, fading.
Point 2 — Let’s Talk About Death (Psalm 90:3–6, 10)
Psalm 90:3–6 ESV
3 You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” 4 For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. 5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: 6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.
“Dust” isn’t just poetry. Moses has Genesis 3 in mind (which he also wrote). When sin entered the world, God told Adam in Genesis 3:19
Genesis 3:19–20 ESV
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
And Moses has watched that reality unfold across forty years in the wilderness. Back in Numbers 13-14 God had decreed that everyone twenty years and older would die before entering the land. That was over 600,000 fighting-age men. Gone in less than four decades. That’s an average of forty-three funerals every single day.
I remember at the peak of Covid, I conducted five funerals in six weeks. and it wrecked me. I remember the feeling of exhaustion, of being overwhelmed, of feeling like I didn’t have any answers for the questions people were asking me as a pastor.
But for Moses, five funerals would be a typical Tuesday before breakfast. He’s presided over hundreds of thousands of graves. And you can feel the weight of that in verses 5-6:
“You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.”
(Psalm 90:5–6)
And isn’t that how it feels?
• One day you’re sitting in a high school cafeteria, The next you’re sending your kids to college.
• One moment you’re starting your first job, The next you’re wondering when you can retire.
Life flies.
Moses says it another way in verse 10:
“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”
I read this week that if you take the average human lifespan — about 28,000 days — and you put a grain of sand in a jar for every single one, it fits in a single coffee mug. That’s it. One small mug. That’s your life.
The older I get, the faster the sand slips through. The days I thought would last forever — seasons where I assumed I had endless time to decide, to grow, to love, to follow God — they’re gone before I even realized they were passing.
And here’s what Moses is doing:
He’s teaching us how to stare mortality straight in the face. Not so we’ll despair, but so we’ll live wisely. He wants us to feel the brevity of life because until we reckon with that, we’ll never learn to number our days.
And here’s where Moses takes us next. Because death isn’t just natural decay. It’s not just the circle of life. Moses says the reason life is short is because sin is serious.
Point 3 — Let’s Talk About Sin (Psalm 90:7–9, 11)
Moses doesn’t sugarcoat the reason why our days are cut short. Look at verses 7-8:. He loves us enough to tell the truth:
“For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.” (vv. 7–8)
This isn’t God losing His temper. This is God’s holy love refusing to make peace with what destroys us. “This is what sin does. It kills joy, it kills trust, and eventually it kills us.” Jesus said the same thing in John 10:10— the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
“
Secret sins” aren’t secret in the light of God’s presence. The things we hide from one another—our motives, our resentments, our compromises—are fully known to Him. And yet the One who sees us best still invites us near.
That’s why Moses talks this way: not to crush us, but to bring us into the light where healing can begin.
“For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” (v. 9)
Some of you know that “sigh.” You’ve fallen into bed at night with regret—words you can’t take back, choices you wish you could unmake, time you can’t recover. Moses names it so we don’t have to pretend.
Then he asks the piercing question:
Psalm 90:11 ESV
11 Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?
I actually prefer the NIV translation of verse 11: Or as the NIV puts it, “Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.” In other words, God’s response to sin is not disproportionate; it matches His holiness. We tend to treat sin lightly because we treat God lightly. If we saw His glory more clearly, we would take our sin more seriously.
So what do we do with this?
• We stop minimizing. Call sin what God calls it—no excuses, no euphemisms.
• We stop hiding. Bring it into the light of His presence. Confession is not the enemy of joy; it’s the doorway to it.
• We start remembering. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” A right view of God leads to a right view of sin—and then to a right way of living.
Once we face the truth about sin, we are ready for the prayer that comes next. It’s on the front of the bulletin:
“
So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (v. 12)
And that’s where we’re headed—Let’s Talk About Hope.
Point 4 — Let’s Talk About Hope (Psalm 90:12–17)
After everything Moses has said about the brevity of life and the weight of sin, verse 12 marks a turning point. It’s the hinge the whole psalm swings on:
“So teach us to number our days,
that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
On some level, we all know how short life is. But we don’t naturally live like that’s true. That’s why Moses prays,
“Teach us.”
Teach us perspective, God. Make us aware that our time is short so we don’t waste it on what doesn’t matter.
This is how we gain a heart of wisdom: the ability to see our lives through the lens of eternity.
But Moses doesn’t stop there. Verse 14 takes us to the heart of our hope:
“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
This is the first time in the psalm Moses talks about joy. It’s like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
And here’s the key word: “steadfast love.” In Hebrew, it’s the word ?esed — one of the richest, deepest words in the entire Bible. ?esed means God’s faithful, covenant-keeping love. It’s His loyal, unbreakable, never-let-go love for His people.
Moses knows what we’re tempted to do when life feels short: chase satisfaction somewhere else. Build something for ourselves. Make our own name last. But he says true joy doesn’t come from any of that—it comes from being satisfied in God’s ?esed.
Only God’s love is deep enough to hold us, strong enough to sustain us, and permanent enough to outlast us.
That’s why Moses prays, “Satisfy us in the morning.” In other words: Start every day here, Lord. Start my heart here. Let me wake up rooted in Your love before I chase anything else.
Then Moses closes his prayer with this:
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!” (v. 17)
God can make our short lives matter forever.
That word “establish” means to make firm, to make lasting. Without God, all our work eventually fades. Our names get forgotten. Our achievements get buried. But when we entrust our days to Him, He he can fill our ordinary days with extraordinary purpose:
• A word spoken in kindness can echo into eternity.
• A prayer whispered for your kids or grandkids can outlive you by generations.
• A decision to forgive when the world says “hold a grudge” can ripple further than you’ll ever see.
Beloved, your life is short, but it is not meaningless. When God’s favor rests on you, nothing offered to Him is wasted.
Paul picks this up centuries later in 1 Corinthians 15:58: Go ahead and turn there, because I want you to see something amazing:
“Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
It’s amazing to me the difference between Psalm 90 and 1 corinthians 15. Moses says our days “end like a sigh” and our bodies return to dust. But Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 that because of Christ’s resurrection, that’s not the end of the story. “The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (v. 53). One day, these fragile, fading bodies will be raised in glory. That’s why Paul concludes, “Your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (v. 58). What feels temporary now will one day be swallowed up by victory. Death does not get the last word — Jesus does.
In Christ, even your fragile, fleeting days are folded into something everlasting.
So here’s the prayer of hope Moses gives us:
• “Teach us” — give us wisdom.
• “Satisfy us” — fill us with Your love.
• “Establish us” — make our short lives count for eternity.
That’s what it means to live wisely, joyfully, and hopefully when our days are few.
Final Conclusion + invitation
This is real talk. Life is short. Eternity is long. And wisdom is living every single day with both of those truths in view.
I did some math this week. If I live to the average American lifespan of 77 years, I’ve got about 6,627 days left. That’s it. Six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven mornings to wake up. Six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven chances to say ‘I love you.’ Six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven opportunities to walk with God.
But here’s the truth: I don’t know if I actually have that many. And neither do you.”
“Some of us are living like we have unlimited days. We assume there will always be time later — to forgive, to reconcile, to slow down, to start seeking God. But Psalm 90 reminds us: you and I don’t have forever.
And that’s why Moses prays, ‘Lord, teach us to number our days.’ He wants us to feel the weight of how short life is… so we’ll stop wasting it.”
This morning, that’s the invitation. To stop drifting. To stop chasing what won’t last. To ask God to give you a heart of wisdom.
Maybe for you, today is about surrendering your life to Jesus for the first time. Maybe it’s about laying down regret or sin that’s been eating at you. Maybe it’s about asking God to realign your priorities, to establish the work of your hands, to satisfy you with His steadfast love.”
“However He’s speaking to you today, don’t wait for tomorrow. You’re not promised tomorrow. The altar is open.
Come pray Moses’ prayer:
‘Lord, teach me to number my days… and give me a heart of wisdom.’
Come ask Him to make your days count — not by length, but by meaning.
Come let Him satisfy you with His love.”
