Psalms of Lament: Psalm 90

Wednesday of Judica + March 20, 2024

Most people are practical atheists. They go through life as if there is “no death, and for that matter, no God” [Luther]. That’s true of us as well. God is a matter for the intellect, and perhaps a worldview. But we live as though we won’t really die, and as if there is, for all practical terms, no judgment.

The “celebrations of life” people hold now pretend that what has happened isn’t real. The funeral homes with flowers everywhere—flowers that themselves will be dead in mere days—cover with their sickening sweetness the stench of death in a corpse we’ve filled with formaldehyde to pretend none of this is really happening.

But a death is nothing to celebrate. It is a disaster. It is a reminder down through the ages that God judges sin. Luther put it this way: Death was “threatened by God and is caused by an incensed and estranged God.” Man “dies because he provoked God’s wrath. Death is … the inevitable and deserved consequence of [our] sin and disobedience.”

So as we conclude our series on the Psalms of Lament, we must climb this last hill: Death. The lone Psalm we have from Moses puts us face to face with our own stinking mortality.

This is an unusual place for us; we do not understand our true condition. One of the results of original sin is darkened knowledge. People feel miserable, but they do not know why. Nor do they know to turn to God.

So with this Psalm, God confronts us with His wrath. He does this not for the sake of anger itself, but because He desires to save us. It is a harsh but necessary medicine.

We learn the cause of our death: “We are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed.”

It’s not a psychological trick. God is truly outraged, offended by what we do and who we are. He dismays us by His anger to awaken us to our true condition.

He threatens us even with what we do not know, our “secret sins.” This could be the sins we commit in secret - but this can also include the sins we are unaware of (but probably those around us can see more clearly).

Another secret to us—made all the more terrible by it being in front of us all the time—is that life is brief. Every day, someone dies who seemed to have many decades in front of him. God’s judgment is sudden, and severe. Yet we go through life quite self-assured, as though we can repent tomorrow, or next year.

By afflicting us, God calls us to repentance now. Tonight’s psalm expresses this turning with the word sigh. “For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” This sighing is the beginning of prayer, when we don’t even know what to say, but the exhale of breath—itself a harbinger of death—expresses our distress. The Psalms of Lament have taught us to bring our sighs, our troubles, our sadnesses, and even our anger to God. We complain to Him, and He is pleased by it. For the sighing leads us to an awareness of salvation. We learn there is nowhere within us to turn, not even our own breath – we must turn to the one who first breathed into us the breath of life, and who on Easter Evening breathed anew the Spirit into His disciples.

Underlying our very existence is the mercy of God. Moses indicates this in how he opens his psalm:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations. …

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the LORD’s dwelling place is where He graciously dwells. Luther uses dwelling place and grace interchangeably [Ngien 159]. God is God eternally, and He from eternity envisioned us; the Creator is our God. Faith is not accepting there is a Creator; faith is clutching to His promises to rescue us.

He shows us children of Adam what we are, and calls us to turn to Him and be changed to something new.

There is a part of the text of the Psalms that is not included in the hymnbook. Many of the Psalms have little introductions; they might say who wrote it, what the context was, and even some musical directions. Tonight’s psalm (90) just says, “A Prayer of Moses, the Man of God.” This meditation on death is entitled a prayer. That itself communicates something enormous. In the midst of death is an appeal to the One in Whom is LIFE. Luther put it this way:

In this way Moses calls attention to the resurrection of the dead and the hope of life over death. True, he does not employ very clear words; nevertheless they are very meaningful. It was necessarily reserved for Christ, and properly so, publicly to proclaim in the New Testament era the remission of sins and the resurrection of the dead. [Ngien 160]

Moses kills through his ministry by exposing sin and its punishments, nevertheless, by calling this psalm a prayer, he indicates in veiled but unmistakable language the remedy against death. [Ngien 162]

So all our troubles in this life – the troubles which are leading us inevitably toward death – they all confront us with this truth: God is a God of wrath. That confrontation turns us to the greater truth: God is merciful, and He desires to bestow again on Adam life.

All this is in the appeal to God at the end of the psalm. “Have pity!” Moses cries. “Let your work be shown to your servants.” What have our works gotten us? Nothing but death. What is this “your work,” this work of God? It is Christ Himself. On His works we rely. Luther paraphrases Moses here like this: “We are the most abject slaves of demons. Therefore give us Thy work as compensation in lieu of the work of Satan” [Ngien 179].

The Lord Jesus sighed our own sighs as Life Himself expired on the cross. And in that last sigh, the Lord Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. To lament is to turn to Him, whose lament was heard by the Father, and who was raised to life again.

In this Jesus we lament. He hears our sighs. He has pity on us. Despite this life of evil, He will make us glad.

Return, Lord Jesus! How long? Have pity on Your unworthy servants!