I want to welcome you to Drive Time Devotions and our look at Psalm 90 today. Psalm 90 tells
us in the beginning that it's a prayer of Moses. It's the only Psalm written by Moses,
and so it's the oldest of the Psalms. The people of Israel would have been singing this
song for hundreds and hundreds of years, and now it gets recorded in Psalms in God's eternal Word,
and now we get to read it today, and we get to hear the music of this Psalm of David,
this song of David today. And you find the theme to Moses' Psalm in verse 12. Verse 12 says,
"Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." So it's a Psalm about
our days, about our time. All my life as a pastor, I've wanted to use my time in the best way that I
could. I've always loved books on time management, books that are filled with tips and tricks on how
to get the most out of your hours, how to use them in the very best way. And while those books have
their place, Psalm 90 is here to remind us that it shouldn't be first place. There's something that
comes before the tips and the tricks, before the time management. You don't begin with how you use
your hours. You begin with how you number your days. You don't begin with management of your time.
You begin with the stewardship of your time. The word stewardship means you are taking care of
something that's owned by someone else, and God owns our time. He owns our days. So instead of
managing what I have, my time, it's taking care of what another person owns, and the truth is God
owns it all. I am a steward of the time that he has given me. Teach me to number my days right.
So sometimes in the management mode, instead of treasuring time as a gift from our Creator, this
daily present, to be opened with delight, treated as special, we treat it like a resource, a resource
from which we should extract the maximum amount as fast as possible. And you know what strip mining
is? Getting the resource out of the ground as quickly as possible with no regard with what it
might do to the surrounding area. A lot of us strip mine our time. We get the most out of it in the
quickest way. Who cares what it does to our relationships? Who cares what it does to my
health? Who cares if it hurts those that I work with? I got it done quickly. There is a reason why
scheduling books and programs and apps sell so well. We are a desperate people in search of a
solution. My life is a mess, but at least I have the coolest new scheduling app. We need a plan.
And while that plan certainly does include scheduling and calendaring and managing our time,
I'm not speaking against that. I'm speaking about starting in the right place. The right place to
start is teach me to number my days are right so that I might have a heart of wisdom. And here's
the wisdom. Time is a gift from God. I wouldn't have one second of life if it hadn't been given
to me. Time should be treated as a gift, not a commodity. As a commodity, it's something to be
spent, to be invested, even to be saved. But as a gift, it's something to be treasured, something to
enjoy using. And Psalm 90 points us to some new ways of thinking about time, a different view of
time, God's view of our time. Here are four things that you start to do when you number your days
well. First, you view your time in light of eternity. Verses one and two, "Lord, you have
been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born, oh, you brought
forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting your God." When you do that, when you
view your time in light of eternity, here's what begins to happen to you. Some things start to
change in your heart. You start to have some time to be honest about the short time we have on this
earth. Verses three to six, he says, "You turn men back to dust, saying, 'Return to dust, oh, sons of
men.' For a thousand years in your sight, or like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the
night, you sweep men away in the sleep of death. They're like new grass of the morning, and though
in the morning it springs up new, by evening it's dry and wither." So when you have this numbering
your days are right, you don't have to pretend any longer. You have to get it all done in 70 or 80
years. You don't have to pretend any longer that somehow you can become superhuman. You're soon
going to return to dust. You're like the grass that springs up in the morning. It's gone in the
evening. But God, for him a day is like a thousand years. A thousand years is like a day. And this
leads to a deepening trust in God, beginning to enter into eternity now. And recognizing that
although I don't have the quality of eternal life when I get to heaven that I'm going to have,
I do have the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. And I can live in that life now. I don't
have to live an anxious life. I can live a trusting life. And there's a second truth. This psalm tells
us about numbering our days are right. It tells us that when you do that, you take time to consider
your spiritual condition. Verses 7 to 11. "We're consumed by your anger and terrified by your
indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath. We finish our years with a moan. The length of
our days is 70 years or 80. If we have strength, yet the span is but trouble and sorrow. For they
quickly pass and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the
fear that is due you." So he talks about the sense of God's wrath that he has because of his sins.
We know that Jesus Christ took the wrath of God upon himself on the cross so that our sins could
be paid for. That is our spiritual condition. But the truth is the way we handle time today,
we're too busy to even think about any of this. Many people will miss heaven because they were
too busy. Too busy to consider their spiritual condition because they were always rushing ahead
to the next accomplishment, the next task. Even many of us as believers, we are missing out on
the growth that the Lord wants to happen in our lives because we're too busy. Sometimes it's with
church things. We're so caught up in the task of following him that we don't stop to think about
what it really means to follow him. What's happening to my heart as I follow him? So to
number my days aright means I have the time to consider where my heart is before God.
And if I don't have time to do that, then I'm managing my time. I'm not treating my time as
a gift from God. There's a third thing he talks about here. He says when you're numbering your
days aright, you are set free to live with joy. You open up time in your life to open up your heart
to joy. Verses 14 to 16, "Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy
and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble. May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children." The truth is you're never going to be satisfied,
really get the deepest kind of joy by your accomplishments in this world.
You might get a moment of accomplishment and happiness, but you won't get deep joy.
There's always more to do. You could always do it better. Good days make you feel like you can
make it work, but then come the bad days and you feel like it'll never work. In these verses,
he talks about the days of affliction, but he's able to have joy even in those days
because he's looking to God. When you sense that your satisfaction comes from God's love instead
of your time management, your satisfaction comes from God's love, not your time management. Then
you're free to live with joy. Then you're able to be glad all our days, on the days when it works
and on the days when it doesn't work. And then there's a fourth thing he talks about here.
When you number your days are right, you're able to trust your legacy into God's hands.
Verse 17, "May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us."
Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
You might be living under the burden of building your own legacy.
Whether you're succeeding or failing, it's quite a burden to live under.
But when you start to see time as a gift, to be used as God directs, then the legacy is in
his hand, not your hand. Then the legacy you look forward to is not on this earth,
which any legacy on this earth is not going to last. The legacy is in eternity. And that
inevitably causes you to know that our legacy isn't in buildings or in awards. Our legacy isn't in
what I've built, it's in what God is building. And he's building people. God is building
his will into people's lives. His purpose is forever. And that is your legacy. And living
for that legacy will bring a new sense of joy into your life. Now, he tells us, "Teach us
to number our days right." So I need God to teach me to do this. Let's ask him to do it right now.
My father, we've read these words about our legacy, about a new kind of joy, about having
the time to consider who we really are in you, about taking the time in our lives to know that
time is a gift from you. But we need you to teach us this. We're surrounded by a world that's
teaching us everything different. And many of us, we've been taught different than this all of our
lives. Would you, through your spirit, teach some new truths into us about where our legacy really
is? We need you to teach us about where our joy truly is found. Teach us, Lord, about this,
about the need to spend time before you considering where our heart really is. Teach us,
Lord, like only you can. About the security that the true and deepest use of our time is found
in loving you. Teach us that truth, Lord, through your spirit, we pray. Teach it into our lives,
day after day after day, and help us to listen to you, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.