LIVING
YOUR PURPOSE: Psalm 90:1-12
Introduction: The Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful
and costly tombs ever built, and there is something fascinating about its
beginnings. In 1629, when the favorite wife of Indian ruler Shah Jahan died, he
ordered that a magnificent tomb be built as a memorial to her. The shah placed
his wife’s casket in the middle of a parcel of land, and construction of the
temple began around it. But several years into the venture, the Shah’s grief
for his wife gave way to a passion for the project. One day while he was
surveying the sight, he reportedly stumbled over a wooden box, and he had some
workers throw it out.
It
was months before he realized that his wife’s casket had been destroyed. The
original purpose for the memorial became lost in the details of construction.
Similarly, those of us who are in our prime life if we are not careful, we too
might be in the danger of losing the original purpose for which God has called
us in the first place.
Have
you ever thought about what your purpose is in life? Some of us live our entire
lives, trying to figure out the purpose of our existence. Some people fail, and
some people succeed. And then there are those people who know their purpose,
but still, they get diverted from it. Robert Bryne once observed, “The purpose
of life is a life of purpose.” In order to get somewhere, you need to define
your end goal. ... And the sooner you define it, the clearer everything else
will become. A life without a purpose is a life without a destination.”
This morning I seek to answer some fundamental
questions regarding life. Where did I come from? Is there a meaning to life? If
God has a purpose for my life, what is it? How can I live out the purpose God
has for me? In the passage we read from Psalm 90:1-12, we will meet the man of
God who wrestled through these most critical questions in life. His quest led
him to the creator of the universe who only can solve all of life's most
complicated problems.
A
bit of background of Psalm 90 would help us appreciate the Psalm even more. It
was called a prayer of Moses, the man of God. It was written on the occasion of
the sentence passed against Israel, in the wilderness of their unbelief, grumbling,
and rebellion. It exposes God’s severe dealings of Israel’s sin we can read
about it in Numbers 14.
For
the past several weeks, we have studied Psalm 91 in depth. I believe chapter 90
is the basis for all the promises and blessings that are there in chapter 91,
hence our study on chapter 90 this morning. Verses 1-12 can be divided into
three sections. The first section verses 1-4 deals with the eternity of God and
his enduring dwelling among His people. The second section verses 5-9 deals
with the brevity of life. The third section verses 10-12 deals with our response.
I. GOD’S ETERNITY
(1-4)
Vs.
1-2, “Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! 2 Before the
mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from
beginning to end, you are God.” The essence of our Christian faith is that our
God Jehovah is the creator of the heavens and the earth, and He is the everlasting
God. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and everything in
between. In other words, God is
all-encompassing.
Unfortunately,
there are so many people in the world who try to run their lives as if they are
the center of the universe. God does not appear on their radar. On the
contrary, Moses saw the hand of God in everything that was created and
sustained. God was, in the beginning, created everything in the world and had
been maintaining it ever since by His power.
You
may wonder why did God create the world and make humans in the first place? Everything
has been designed for one paramount purpose from which every other purpose flow,
that is to bring glory to God. Isaiah 43:7, “Bring all who claim me as their
God, for I, have made them for my glory. It was I who created them.” The world
and we were made for His Glory.
The
apostle Paul echoes the same sentiment while writing about the supremacy of
Christ to the Colossian believers. Colossians 1:15-16, “Christ is the visible
image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created
and is supreme over all creation, for through him, God created everything in
the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things
we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen
world. Everything was created through him and for him.”
This
scriptural truth debunks every popular belief of the atheists, evolutionists,
hedonists, and nihilists. It is not what they say about how the world came into
existence and what we are to make of the world and live our lives. It is apparent
to me from these passages that it was Jesus who created everything, including
us for His glory. Unfortunately, many do not realize this truth.
But
I am here to tell you that you and I are not an accident nor merely a result of
our Mom and Dad’s passionate lovemaking. We are here because God has intended
for us to be here, and he has a purpose and a plan which is to glorify Him
through all that we are, and all that we do. It is up to us to recognize and
seek to find ways how we are to glorify Him through our lives. Whether
you are young or old, man or single or married, working in a job or retired
what an awesome truth to know that you are created by God to bring glory to His
name. After recognizing God is eternal, Moses exclaims in his prayer how God
deals with people who at times think they are gods in their own eyes.
II. GOD’S DEALINGS
WITH MAN (3-6)
Vs.3-6,
“You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals!” For you,
a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours. You sweep
people away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that springs up in
the morning. In the morning it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it is dry
and withered.”
Think
about this great control of God and insight over “time,” in his eyes; a
thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours. We will
have a hard time remembering what happened a week or a day ago, whereas God
commands the history of thousands of year because they are just like a few
passing hours before him. If that is the case, can he not know what is going in
your little world? Think about His
immense power over people.
What
did God do to all the so-called great men and women in the History of humanity?
He said to them, “Return to dust, you mortals! No matter how powerful,
influential, wealthy, famous we are, one day we will have to return to the dust
from whence we came. Moses aptly described the fading glory of human
beings. Vs. 5-6: You sweep people
away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that springs up in the
morning. In the morning it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it is dry and
withered.” Given this, how are we to live our lives?
III. LIVING YOUR PURPOSE
(Vs. 10-12)
Vs.,
10-12, “Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the
best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly
away. Who can comprehend the power of
your anger? Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve. Teach us to
realize the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom.”
I
believe these two verses are the most sobering verses in the Bible, which we
need to pay attention to. They make us pause and have a reality check of our
lives and perhaps do some adjustments to our plans. According to these verses,
we don’t have eternity to live. The life span of human beings has been cut
short. Before the universal flood recorded in Genesis, chapter seven, people
used to live hundreds of years. For example, Methuselah, who lived for 969
years. (Gen 5:25) In Chapter 6: 3, God has reduced the average life span of
human beings to a hundred and twenty years. In our passage, it was reduced
further to seventy or eighty years.
It
doesn’t necessarily mean that people don’t get to live beyond 80 or 120, there
are exceptions, for example, Noah after the flood when he died was 950 years. Jeanne
Calment (1875–1997) of France, who died at the purported age of 122 years, 164
days. Within our congregation some members have parents touching close to a
hundred years. Thought the longevity of man can be debatable, but the reality
is that one day we all have to move on.
Let’s
say the average life span of human beings is up to seventy or eighty how well
are we living our lives? Which means for me, I need to pause, think, refocus,
adjust and live the remainder of my life say another 25 to 30 years on this
earth more purposefully and intentionally. That was what perhaps Moses meant
when he said, in Vs. 12, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we
may grow in wisdom.” The clock is ticking; soon, we will fly away.
The reality of aging, getting sick, retirement, and eventually dying seems somewhat
wildly unreasonable to a lot of people, especially for young people. When I was
twenty years old, I too thought that way, but now I am fifty-four, I
understand, and hopefully, I became wiser.
At
what age we should start thinking about what our God-given purpose in life is?
As a matter of fact, at any age you can ask these questions, what is my purpose
in life? How well am I living out my God-given purpose? Since our life is so short,
the sooner we ask these questions the better, so that we can minimize our
regrets later in life.
In
Ecclesiastes, 12:1, “Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your
Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not
pleasant anymore.” Lamentations 3: 27, “And
it is good for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline. Do
you know your purpose? How well are you living out your God-given purpose? We
only have one life and it will soon be past, therefore let’s learn to live with
purpose. My prayer is that the Lord will teach us to number our days so that we
may grow in wisdom. Amen!
