Word of Encouragement (12/31/2020)
“Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants! 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. 15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. 16 Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children” (Ps. 90:13-16)!
Good morning!
Yesterday, we spoke of the reason for the brevity of man’s life—God’s curse on the human race for the sin of Adam and Eve. More specifically, we spoke of God’s anger against the sins of the Israelites in the wilderness. What do we do when the unleashing of God’s wrath against us is totally justified because of our sins?
In today’s passage, we see what Moses did. He prayed to God, “Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants” (v. 13)! What else could he do? When a child is rightly rebuked by his father, what should he do? Should he walk away in despair, convinced that there was no point in asking for forgiveness because his offense against his father was too great? Would that be what the father wanted when he reprimanded his child? Of course not! What the father wants more than anything is for his wayward son to acknowledge his wrongdoing and ask for his father’s forgiveness and mercy! Where can a child go, away from his father’s bosom? What is better for the child than to be reconciled with his father and bask in his love again?
Moses’ prayer is a heartfelt acknowledgment that Israel’s only hope is in God alone. What Israel needed more than anything was for the LORD to return to them. After all, God is the true dwelling place for His people in all generations (v, 1). In pleading with God to return to them, Moses was not talking about God’s omnipresence; he was speaking of God’s gracious, covenantal presence. How else could he pray, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil” (vv. 14-15)? Moses was painfully aware that he and the people of Israel had no right to ask such things from God. All he could do was to appeal to God’s covenant mercy: “Have pity on your servants” (v. 14).
Did you notice something strange about the petition in v. 14—“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days”? There is no mention of the evening but only the morning. Why? Could it be that Moses envisioned a different kind of world to come into being when the LORD finally and fully returned—a world which has no evening or night when the newly sprung grass must wither away in cold darkness (v. 6) but only morning in all of its freshness and promise when the Lord satisfies His people with His steadfast love; a world where there is a full compensation for the sufferings of God’s people (v. 15), a full revelation of God’s majesty and work (v. 16)? Such a world does not, and cannot, exist in this world of change and decay; it can exist only in a new heaven and a new earth. That new world is what Jesus came to inaugurate by His life, death, and resurrection. That new world is what our hope longs for.
As we transition out of this year into the new year, we should remember that we have been here before. What we need is not just another new year. We need to break out of this repeated cycle of the old year and new year, of hope and disappointment. And we did in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us renew our hope, not in the mere changing of the calendar but in the coming of a new heaven and a new earth and our eternal life in the presence of God.