Let Me Not Wander

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! (ESV) This is an excellent way to end this Psalm. "Favor" could also be translated as "beauty" or "pleasantness". This is what we desire. We want those beautiful qualities of the Lord to be upon us. We desire for our own character to match that beautiful character of God. And we also desire to have what we do be firm and solidified, but only if what we do is matching His beauty.

Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. (ESV) In the previous few verses the Psalmist is speaking of getting the heart right, getting the perspective right. After he says it though, he still calls out to God to "see" God. He still wants to see what God is doing while he is here on this earth. He knows his days are short, he knows he needs to be satisfied in God and find his joy in God, but he still has the desire to "see" God, and he doesn't want to wait until he is dead. He also wants his children (and the children of all who are seeking after God) to "see" God now. So he cries out for God to allow His work to be shown, for His power to be shown.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. (ESV) If you have lived on this earth for any significant amount of time, this verse will mean something to you. It might mean something different to you than it does to me or than it does to another person who lives on the opposite side of the the world or just the opposite side of the street, but if they sit down and they open their Bible and they read it... it will mean something . There will be some hard thing that you have gone through or are going through that will pop into your head. Maybe it will be multiple things or things that span the entire course of your life. But the moment that word "afflicted" entered your eyesight, there was something that popped in there. This is part of the human experience, to go through trials, to go through affliction. So, we cry out to God to make us glad in the middle of all of this. Though we only exist on this planet for a few ...

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (ESV) In this Psalm, there is this building sense that we don't have that many days... not really. When you begin comparing us to the generations of people that have lived, or to the length of time the earth has been here, or more importantly, when you compare us to the creator of us. We don't have all that many days here. This is why it is important for us to cry out to our God. Our time is short, but we want to rejoice and be glad all of our days, however few days we have. God is the eternal one who pays attention to His creation. His lovingkindness (or as it is translated here, His steadfast love) is satisfying to the ones who seek it.

Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants! (ESV) Don't forget us Lord. We are down here, and you are up there! When are you coming back? This idea of the servant who is waiting is an on-going theme throughout scripture. It is a topic that Jesus talks about with His disciples. It is a topic that the apostles write about in their letters to the churches. We are always to be waiting on the Lord. He will come. He is faithful.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (ESV) If I were to pick a key verse for this chapter, it would be this verse. In many ways it summarizes the main ideas of this Psalm. Correct evaluation of your time, with an eternal perspective is essential in gaining true wisdom. This is a wisdom that is beyond gaining head knowledge, it is a wisdom that resides in the heart, the control center of your life.

Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? (ESV) This is really a transitional verse. It is adjusting the thoughts from our perspective to God's perspective. After all of these thoughts on the fleetingness of our days, he immediately jumps to God's wrath, to God's anger. We don't like to make this logical leap. Especially in these modern times that we live in. Any mention of God and angry in the same sentence usually brings up mental images of some backwoods preacher screaming from a pulpit amoungst intermittent deep inhales and a crowd of amens. Here we see the two ideas tied together by Moses, a brilliant man of God, and a leader of a nation for 40 years. It is the natural outcome of the consideration of the shortness of men's lives. Why? Think about it through God's perspective or continue reading this Psalm or both.

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. (ESV) A drop in a bucket. 70 years, 80 years... The numbers matter so little in the scheme of eternity. They are just a drop in a very large bucket. The point that the Psalmist is trying to make here doesn't have anything to do with statistics. He is not trying to give us the average life expectancy of a Jewish male living during this particular century. He is trying to show that we, when we are thinking small, when we are thinking human, seem to think that 80 is a big number. I tend to think this way when I think about myself. I am 35, and I get excited about that. I can't believe I am that "old". Or when I think about how long I have been teaching, I am still a newbie, but I am in my 8th year. In my human ears, that sounds like a while. My oldest son is 9. He seems so old to me. It is weird sometimes. Rememb...

For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. (ESV) There are some verses that I sit down to write a commentary for, and it almost seems an injustice to try to rephrase them. This would be one of those verses. So, instead of giving a specific commentary, let me challenge you, as I have been challenged in these last few weeks. When you read the Bible, read it devotionally. In other words, read it with the knowledge that you are truly reading The very Words of God. Read it like there is something there for you. Pray before you read it. Whether it is your personal reading time or you just notice a verse in a book or a blog. It doesn't matter who quotes it, when you read it, remember that it is God's word. It is living and powerful. It is sharp. It will cut you all the way down to the soul and the spirit, even to where the thoughts and the intents of the heart lie. According to this verse, your days are passing away. So, read it wit...

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. (ESV) The words "have set" could be translated as "placed" or "positioned". It is active. The word "before" conveys the idea of a conspicuousness. It is directly in the face. So, in other words, God has actively set our sins directly before his face, even our secret sins. Why? I believe that the key is found at the end of this verse. It is just a hint, but the fact that these sins are in the light of God's presence is very important. Bringing our lives under the light is ultimately an act of love, it is not a way of God saying, "Look what you did!" Walk away from this verse with this: First, you need to know in your heart that there are no sins that are secret from God. Secondly, He brings these sins into the light for your own good.

For we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed. (ESV) Here the Psalmist makes a connection between the length of our days and the wrath of God. This is an interesting connection, but just consider that first phrase, "For we are brought to an end by your anger;" I know that we are in modern times and only those backwoods mountain preachers still talk about God being angry, but we are only reading the verse. We (as humans) are brought to an end by God's anger. I suppose that this could be referring to the curse of sin. After Adam sinned, part of the curse would be that he would die, but God (in His grace) banned us from the tree of life. I believe that He did not want us to eat of that tree, and end up stuck in this sin-cursed state. I believe, though, in this Psalm, that the anger of God shortening our days is an overall statement. We are still sinners today, and especially as a whole group (the entire human race) we arouse God's anger o...

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. (ESV) It is so important to remember, as we wake in the morning and as we go to sleep at night, that the coming and going of days is not ultimately because our earth is spinning on an axis. Our seasons are not because of this planet's revolutions around the sun. These physical, planetary motions are only a showing of God's extreme power. The days, weeks, months and years are flowing past because He proclaims that is the way it should be. Remember, there was an evening and a morning several days before there was a sun or a moon or any star in heaven. If the biblical account is true (which it is) then the earth is the oldest bit of matter in the universe. He proclaimed an evening and a morning, and it was so. So wake in the morning and thank the God of all that there is a morning. Go to ...

For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (ESV) Continuing in our acknowledgment of our own dustness , we can consider the passing of time in God's eyes. As I get older, time seems to pass ever faster. I used to contemplate why this would happen. Why would my age cause my perception of time to change? Think about it though. When you are 2 years old, a year is half of your life, but when you are 20 years old, a year is only 1/20th of your life. When you are 1 year old, a day is 0.27% of your life, but when you are 80 years old, a day is 0.00003% of your life. Each day is increasingly insignificant compared to your entire experience. So, just take that out to the infinite. God has always been. God always will be. A thousand years is but a moment to Him. I also believe that God exists outside of time. Compound this with His omniscience, His omnipresence, and His omnipotence, and it is no wonder that He can work out...

You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” (ESV) Have you ever stopped to try to consider this world and all of its people from God's point of view? He knows we are just dust. He made the first one of us from the dust of the ground, and he watches as generations come and go, and these people, who were once dust return back to dust. It is important, as we read through this Psalm, that we acknowledge our dustness. It is amazing that we read the Psalm. It is amazing that we can read of God, and learn about Him. It is amazing that we have enough self-awareness to acknowledge that we are truly dust. As you visit the store today or drive down the street or take a walk or even look at your children... remember, we are all dust.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (ESV) To . That is the word that I am going to focus on in this verse. The word "to" stuck right between the "everlasting" and the other "everlasting". That little word to means 'as far as'. Hold out your arm to the left. Now hold out your other arm to the right. Now stretch each one of them to infinity. That is how much God is God. From infinity as far as infinity, He is God. In fact, He was God before your arms were made. Before there was a human to consider His God-ness, He was God. Before any of this matter or any of this energy, He was God.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. (ESV) For the Lord to be your dwelling place, there are two things that need to happen. First, the Lord needs to be a dwelling place, and if you know Him, you know that He is exactly that. He is a shelter from the storm. He is a refuge. He is our rock, our fortress. He is our comforter. He fulfills His role of dwelling place beyond any human understanding. But secondly, for the Lord to be our dwelling place (emphasis placed on "our"), we need to enter in. We need to enter into fellowship with this God of refuge. For Him to be our God, is more than acknowledging the existence of that dwelling, it is to actually dwell there. To walk there, to talk there, to live there, to lay our heads down and rest there. He has been a dwelling place in all generations of man, and there have always been men who made Him their dwelling. Where do you dwell?