Wisdom Truck 28

 

This week, we land in Psalm 90- the Psalm of "Moses, the Man of God".  Ironic for me, because in my morning reading, I have just passed Numbers 33- the point at which, it seems to me, that another- possibly Joshua- took up the writing.  And a lot of cross references take me back to what I had just read in Numbers, and will be reading in Deuteronomy.

I believe this prayer might fit into the Deuteronomy 31-32 space, because the whole first part of the Psalm talks about the power and wrath of God against a sinful people, and reaches a crescendo just before our verse:

Psa 90:9  Yes, throughout all our days we experience your raging fury; the years of our lives pass quickly, like a sigh. 

Psa 90:10  The days of our lives add up to seventy years, or eighty, if one is especially strong. But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression. Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away. 

Psa 90:11  Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger? Your raging fury causes people to fear you. 

And so it is in Deuteronomy 32:

Deu 32:28  They are a nation devoid of wisdom, and there is no understanding among them. 

Deu 32:29  I wish that they were wise and could understand this, and that they could comprehend what will happen to them.” 

But a prayer is more than a listing of my faults that need atonement for- there needs to be a supplication:

Psa 90:12  So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. 

Now there are two ways I want to draw from this, our target verse.  First was started in the silly thought, "Well, Moses, you had 43,800 of those days to number..."  But leaving math behind, I searched for the meaning.  Most agreed with Keil and Delitzsch:

 ...but “to number our days” is in itself equivalent to “hourly to contemplate the fleeting character and brevity of our lifetime;”

Put another way, "Treat every day as if it was your last."

I think that's wrong.

It forgets the last part of the verse- 'that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.'  Indicating there is something yet to search for.  I see it as better put, hourly treat the day as your FIRST, seeking the wisdom to move you on.   Life is gaining wisdom and living it out; at the end, you look back and see how much you've shared, but if you are still breathing, you need to be moving ahead, not behind! WH Murray put it this way:

The way, therefore, to number our days is not to so number them that they seem to include the result of our lives, but to so number them that they seem to include simply the beginning of our lives. They and all they bring are only stepping-stones which lead us up to the threshold of a nobler life, nobler in its opportunities, occasions, and the character of its joy.

The second part, and why I switched to the KJV for the target verse, is the word 'apply'.  It struck me when you check the definition in Strongs Concordance, the first of several applications he lists is 'abide'- a word being hit on again and again in our church's current series on 1 John.  So I switched to occurances, and it only is translated as "abide" one time:

Num 31:23  Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water. 

Back to Numbers!  The story here is that the Israelite Army was suppsed to slay everything that lived of Midian- but instead, they took booty of female prisoners and treasure.  Here, God is speaking about the treasures- they had to be purified.  To be pure, they had to ABIDE- survive through- the fire (if that was their type of treasure- the previous verse lists off "the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead").  And even if the fire was not its fate it still had to go through the "water of seperation"- the SAME water with the hyssop, etc, and the ashes of the red heifer, that we saw last week!

This then, is the Christian life- to seek God's wisdom that we might abide the period of testing, and be purified in the Living Water.  And we do this abiding hourly, as if we're at the beginning of our journey.  Which given those 43,800 days up against eternity, we really are.