Why should we want God to teach us to number our days (Psalm 90:12)?

Verse 12 gives us the first request which it is easy to see, exerts a controlling influence on all the rest. We are but the feeble dying children of Adam, and much is gained if we only recognize that fact. For so long as we do not number our days aright, and consequently imagine ourselves to be something other than what we are, we apply our hearts to pleasure or money-making or sport or a hundred and one things of small importance. When we number our days aright and realize the plight we are in, we apply our hearts to wisdom, and the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But we have to pray to God to teach us to do this, for we shall not do it of ourselves.

If we take to heart the serious lesson of the power of God's anger, which actually exceeds man's knowledge, this will instill in us a deeply reverent fear of God (v. 11), issuing in the appropriate prayer, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (v. 12). Since our days are short, we need grace from God to number them, that is, to keep them under close observation, so that we do not lose the lessons each day is intended to teach. It is such exercise by which we "gain a heart of wisdom."

Let us not shun, then, the reality of things, he asks: let us profit by it: "so make us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom." Here is the "beginning of wisdom" for here is the "fear of the Lord," which is that. Here the soul finds the need it has of Him, turns to Him, seeks to have Him turn to it: and so the psalmist: "Return; Jehovah" — not simply "Lord" now, but the nearer name of covenant-goodness, — "and let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants." For as soon as man repents, God has declared that He will repent of the evil that He thought to do to them (Jer. 18:8); and the story of Jonah and Nineveh is a precious illustration of His mercies in this way.

But to avert His judgment is comparatively a little thing. The heart truly touched longs after Himself. How can a creature be satisfied apart from his Creator? "Satisfy us with Thy loving-kindness in the morning, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." This joy in God, how rarely is it to be found after this fashion! our days come generally clad in much soberer apparel than is implied in this. And yet this is not less than we may all of us possess, and should possess. Nay, the soul taught of God in His wondrous ways of grace, claims compensation even for the affliction it has known before. "Make us glad according to the days Thou hast afflicted us, and for the years in which we have seen evil." Think of compensation from a judge for just judgment inflicted! But rather it is a Father's heart that is free to show itself in wiping off the tears that for a time were salutary. It was a discipline which he prays now may be effectual, the "work appear," and His "glory" shine out after the storm is passed aye, and even "upon the children" afterwards.

When God turned our first parents out of Eden for their sin, He placed cherubim at the entrance to the garden, with a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life. There was both mercy and judgment in this. It was mercy that he might know his feebleness and frailty, and learn so to number his days as to apply his heart unto wisdom. This is the burden of the "psalm of life," the Both psalm: his days are as a shadow; "We spend our years as a tale that is told." How can such a feeble creature fail to turn with true repentance to the only One in whom help and mercy can be found? Such at least was the evident purpose of God, and such the effect upon those who bow to the sentence of vanity upon the fallen creature: "O satisfy us early with Thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days."

In how many ways is God beseeching man to consider his own condition at least, if nothing else! In how many tongues is this "Adam, where art thou?" repeated to the present day! Every groan of a creation subject to vanity, whereof the whole frame-work is convulsed and out of joint, is such a tongue. And herein is Wisdom crying in the streets, even where there is no speech and no word, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." This, man never does until divinely taught. "Wisdom is justified" only "of her children."

The world understands the necessity of our days. The wife of Potiphar spoke to Joseph day by day, seducing him. The evil that is presented to us day by day in this seductive way calls for the necessity of maintaining the numbering of our own days before God. Joseph anticipated the ministry that followed. Each day he lives, he is living before God. Joseph is numbering his days according to God, anticipating the Commandments of God before they are given, (Thou shalt not commit adultery), and numbering his days accordingly.

I call attention to the way a spiritual man numbers his days. I refer to Caleb, a man who wholly follows the Lord, a man of God who can count his days by the thousand. Another man has to say, "Few and evil have been the number of the days of my life," — he had lived 130 years when he spoke, I refer to Jacob. As he looked back, how many days there were in which he had no contact with God — lost days, not to be numbered. Solemn, in the light of the day of God, to lose days. How many days in 130 years? Yet "Few and evil. …" — he had been out of touch with God, days which are lost. We need to number our days.

This spiritual man, Caleb, refers to "that day" and "this day." Forty five years — he has counted those days, every one had been marked by following the Lord, days which are replete with precious suggestions; increasing in his heart his knowledge of God. These are days to be counted! Has there been some accession in our hearts today of the knowledge of God? Have we advanced spiritually? Caleb says, "Fifty five years ago God spoke to me by Moses." How blessed that God should speak; think of being able to look back and say, "In that day, God spoke through a man of God to me!." That is what God is doing in ministry. He is speaking through men of God to our own hearts, and each day is to affect the succeeding days. Days in which he nearly loses his life, days of wandering, days of sorrow, days of disappointment, days of frustration, days of limitation, days of chastening but every day lighted up by the power of the word of the man of God; and he comes to "this day" and he proves the blessing of the tribe of Asher, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Caleb's confidence is in God. His days were lived in the fear and joy of God; everyday lived in the power of the prophetic word, and at the end he says, "This day I am as strong as when Moses spoke." Are we weakening spiritually? … or are we numbering our days in the light of the word of God? Caleb says of himself, "strong this day".

At the end it says of Paul that he is in his own hired house, and they come to him. The time is getting short now, two years only left, and Paul feels the urgency of the matter. He expands his days as Jesus did. It is a feature of divine Persons and those who are with Them, that they expand their days, "Rising up early in the morning." Of Paul it is said, "From early morning," lengthening his days. The days are getting short, we are not going to be here much longer. The day of Christ is looming very near. Are we filling out every moment? I am seeking that we should number our days that we may miss no opportunity of speaking to all that may come to us of the preciousness and fragrance of Jesus.

Words two hundred and fifty years old, but fresh and rich and young as ever. Years, centuries, ages make no change in God. “Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations,” said Moses in Psalm 90, for that dwelling place was never closed to the generations of God’s people. He was, ever and always, their home. “So teach us,” said the same psalmist, “to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” No wisdom like that. He is a wise and happy man who makes God his dwelling place.

I want to speak as the Lord may help me of the importance of our days, especially having in view the ending of another year. One is desirous that the Lord may give us a distinct and prophetic touch which will help us in relation to our own days, giving us ability to number them according to the divine mind. The Psalm from which we read is the Psalm of the Man of God, whose words should impress those who hear them. The words of a Man of God are prophetic, and there is no doubt from the record of Caleb's movements that he was greatly impressed by words that Moses spoke. We do not know that he heard the words of Psalm 90.

We do well to be affected by these breathings of the Man of God, "So teach us to number our days …" One would desire that that holy breathing might underlie all that we are in these days. This is a matter in which God gives a lead. We do not progress far in the Scriptures before we see this feature coming to light in the movements of God. "The evening and the morning were the first day." The great matter of Creation, God moving in relation to men, the habitable earth, from the record of Scripture would appear to be encompassed by this great thought. The days are numbered. It is also said of Adam, "The number of his days were …"

There are at least two ways in which to number our days. I observe they can be numbered specifically and continuously. In Matthew, the numbering of specific days links on with the book of Kings, where one reads constantly, "This day …." and what happened on it. They were specific days numbered in the fear of God. Luke would give us the thought of continuous days and would link with Chronicles, giving the thought of cumulative exercises going on before God. So in Matthew we read, "Give us this day our daily bread." Every day needs its own specific sustenance. In Luke it says, "Day by day our daily bread." this would suggest exercises to be carried on to a moral conclusion. In Chronicles, the thought of "day by day" is seen.

Then at the ninetieth and ninety-first psalms you open up the book of Numbers, the fourth, the wilderness book of the whole Psalms. These two psalms are in beautiful contrast. In the ninetieth you have what man is alone: "We spend our years as a tale that is told." Man is born, he lives, his days are few and full of trouble, and he dies; and all he can ask is, "so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." When you come to the ninety-first, you have a beautiful contrast. It is not the first man, but the second; it is the one who "dwells in the secret place of the Most High, who abides under the shadow of the Almighty." Man without Christ is the poor man of the ninetieth psalm, fittingly written by Moses the leader through the wilderness, as an expression of what man would be without the knowledge of anything else but himself, and God's demands upon him. Then in the ninety-first you have One who will tread upon the lion, and the adder, One who will go on conquering, in the very circumstances of trial which have oppressed the one in the ninetieth psalm. This is Christ, dear friends, the true Man, who goes through the wilderness with its joys and sorrows, as having the presence of God all the way.