14th October 2024

14th October 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Psalm 90 focus v10&12)


Message (Alan Burke) 


I love living where I do, you get to see so clearly the change in the seasons. The nights are shorter, the heat of the sun is waining and the colours, oh the colours that are on display is so vivid and beautiful. It is at this time of the year we stop to mark God’s provision to us in the harvest and this year we are going look at a passage that I’m pretty sure isn’t one that will be preached on by many this year at the harvest. It’s Psalm 90, now you’ve read through it by this stage and you might be scratching your head wondering what on earth that this has to do with the harvest but bear with me this week and hopefully it will make sense to you. Today we are just looking at one verse, v10 for it reminds us that we are finite. 


Look to what we are told in verse 10, “The length of our days is seventy years— or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” This speaks of the ordinary life span. Of course there are some who live fewer, illness, violence, accident, war. While other lives longer often though the final years can be those of frailty where we need care from others to survive. Some time ago when on a visit with someone I always remember being struck by their chat of just how quick their life had passed by, how they had laboured all their life, when they were a young man they could carry two five gallon petrol cans, then they couldn’t even manage one that was more than a quarter full. They talked about their school days, their work, the amount of people that they had said goodbye to along the way. 


Seventy or eighty seems like a long time away when we were wains but they go too soon. How many of us are able to look back and  wonder where the years have gone. The problem is that as soon as we enter this earth, from the moment of our conception because we are sinners we are on a journey to return to what we have been made off. The day comes to all of us when we reach life’s final hurdle and we will all face death. God’s word and our life experience is clear, life no matter our strength, no matter what age we get to, that life is short and we will die. It leads many to ask the questions, why, why do I have to die, why is life so short? 


At the end of this life we face death. We may try to hide from it, but all of us are living in bodies that are temporal, they will one day die. We cannot escape it the truth is all too clear to us. We are often confronted with the misery of this life. We are all finite creatures, seventy or eighty years with strength, days of trouble and sorrow that will quickly pass and fly away, but while we are finite, God is eternal. What we must do is listen to wisdoms cry. What is wisdoms cry for us, well in v12 it comes; “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. To number our days is to live in the knowledge that we live this life and each day is one day less that we have, we can not escape what lies ahead of us, that we would know just how fleeting this life is. Teach us to number or days, or rather help us to know that our days are numbered. 


None of us know how many days that we will be given by the Lord, none of know when our life will be demanded of us, but the wise know to number them, to live in the knowledge that they will stand before the Lord as our judge. Teach us to number or days Lord that we might have wisdom. Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24) and for all believe in the Lord Jesus Christ they will be saved, if they have heard wisdoms cry, numbered their days and known the wisdom of God Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31). Let us number each day rightly with wisdom, trust in Jesus Christ. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q8. How doth God execute his decrees?
A. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.
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