Psalm 90 | Subversive Spirituality

Listen to this week’s sermon, Summer in the Psalms: Subversive Spirituality preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from Psalm 90.

Transcript

Welcome And Psalm 90 Reading

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Evan Pederson 0:21

Gracious Redeemer, as we hear your word, open our eyes to your glorious kingdom and bring us life through your Holy Spirit by the power that raised Christ from the dead. Amen. Today's scripture reading is Psalm 90. Please remain standing if you are able. From everlasting to everlasting you are God. So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. 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. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. This is God's word. You may be seated.

Summer In The Psalms Vision

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 1:44

Well, as Eric said, we begin a new sermon series today called Summer in the Psalms, and the subtitle is Subversive Spirituality. Why? Well, this is our ninth annual Summer in the Psalms series, and we spend a time, June, maybe June and July, slowing down, taking up the book of Psalms every single year for almost a decade now. Why? Why the Psalms? Well, the Psalms have this ability to offer us what we're calling a subversive spirituality, where they we we end up finding ourselves in the Psalms with an ancient antidote to our modern maladies. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, we have modern maladies like time anxiety or busyness or hurry or distraction or isolation or inner turmoil, all these things that we as moderns carry around with us, maybe even exceptional to all humans in all times and places. Some of those things are more intensified now than ever before in human history. And the word subversive, because you've got to define your terms, as Eric knows, the word subversive is a rebellious term. It means to undermine or overturn an established way of things. And listen, the good news of Jesus Christ comes into a culture and it transforms everything, including especially culture. And one of the ways that it does that is it comes to any culture on planet Earth and it both affirms and challenges. It looks at that culture, and there's things about every culture that needs to be aligned and accorded with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and things that need to be overturned and upended by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so, what I want to talk to you about today, the first of these modern maladies, is our culture's view of time.

Why Modern Life Feels Rushed

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 3:34

Our culture's view of time. When I was a history undergrad at the University of Central Florida, go Knights, I took a class, thank you, I took a class called The History of the Future, which studied how different eras in the past anticipated and predicted what the future was going to be like. And it won't be a surprise to any of you that almost every era has predicted that technology would cure our need for work. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, 1930, John Maynard Keynes estimated that his grandkids would work just 15 hours per week because machines would take care of most of the tasks. Are we still doing this today? AI, optimists, robotics, all the things, right? This isn't unique to our generation. 1930 they were predicting this. Yet surveys reliably show that we are more pressed for time now than ever before. And then doing what academics do, there was another team of Dutch social scientists who came back and said, Yeah, but those surveys are probably understated about the scale of the business epidemic because most people feel too busy to participate in surveys. We're busy. Time is pressed, it's crunched. I collected a bunch of social scientists speaking about this phenomenon, and this is the way they described it. Our cultural moment. They described it like this: it is the collapse of space and time, time-space compression, future shock, hurry sickness, the annihilation of time, the emancipation of time from space, and here's my personal favorite the juggernaut rushing out of control. This is a way that experts are defining and describing our cultural moment. And all of this has created what's been called time pressure. Time pressure is this pressure to fit an ever-increasing quantity of activity into a stubbornly non-increasing quantity of daily time. If anybody else in here feels that, then I've got a sermon for you. I want to turn to the maybe the greatest meditation on time ever written, Psalm 90, and I'm going to look at how Psalm 90 can give us an ancient antidote to this modern malady. And so

God’s Eternity Reframes Time

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 5:55

if you have a Bible or a device or the worship guide, go ahead and get Psalm 90 out in front of you and let's look at this text together. I've got one question and three subpoints. The question is, how do we live on time? How do we live on time? And my points are God is eternal, we are mortal, and grace is practical. Let's look at how God is eternal. Look with me at Psalm 90, verse 1. It says this 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. I just got back yesterday from a week in Denver, Colorado for school, and there's something captivating about the mountains, especially when the highest point in Florida is 345 feet. It's called Britain Hill, sorry, Mount Dora. And you go to the mountains and something happens to you when you're there. William Defoe in a documentary on mountains says it like this Mountains live deep in a deep time, in a way that we do not. Behind and beyond the mountains stretch aeons too vast for us to comprehend. They were here long before we ever dreamed, we were even dreamed of. And they watched us arrive and they will watch us leave. Mountains weather our spirits, challenge our arrogance, and restore our wonder. If you've been to the mountains, you know what he's talking about. Yet Moses tells us that there is one who gave birth to these mountains. You see, the metaphors in the Psalms are part of their subversive spirituality. The Psalms want to baptize your imagination, not like a Presbyterian baptism, but like a Baptist baptism, all the way in, all the way out, submerging your imagination in metaphors so that when you see a mountain, you never see it the same way twice. Now you see a mountain, and rather than a great protrusion from the earth up into the heavens, you see something that tells you about the sturdiness and stability and permanence of God. That's what Moses is after. That's why in verse 2 he says this from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Not you were God, but you are God. Augustine of Hippo, commenting on this, says it like this: There is no was or will be in God, but only is. This is why God said, I am who I am. C.S. Lewis has this great illustration where if you were just to take a piece of paper and write a small line on that piece of paper, and then imagine that paper extended into infinity in all directions. That small, maybe half-inch long line is the entirety of time. And the extending of the paper into infinity is the God who is from everlasting to everlasting. He says, we come to parts of the line, we do, one by one, and we have to leave A behind before we can get to B and cannot stretch reach until C until we've left B behind. God from above or outside or all around contains the whole line and sees it all. This is why Moses says in verse 4, For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past. You see, God is eternal, but we are mortal.

Six Images Of Human Frailty

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 9:15

We are mortal. Look with me at verse three. You see, Moses is a master poet, and what he's about to do is he's about to layer images of transience, one on top of another. It's like he's saying, How else can I make you feel your human frailty, your mortality, your finitude? And he gives us six images, one after another. Here we go, look at verse three. The first image is dust. It says, You return man to dust. Whenever I think about this verse, I think about my grandfather died in 2023. And my dad had sent me some Google photos. And I was flipping through these Google photos, and I saved one of my grandmother and my grandfather on their wedding day. And it just so happened that the very next photo in my phone was a screenshot of me FaceTiming my grandfather the day that he died. And I was flipping through my pictures, and I see this picture of them as young and lively, vibrant, a whole lifetime ahead of them, and I, with a swipe, pass over a lifetime to the day of my grandfather's death. And I broke. In that moment I wept. You see, because my grandfather, and many of us know this, if you look on a headstone, a gravestone, you'll see their birthday, dash, death day. The entirety of a human life summarized in a dash. That's the that's the finitude of humanity. And Moses gives us this image of dust. Well, after the funeral, we went to the graveside. I got to uh conduct the funeral and the graveside homily and whatnot, and then we did this thing that you've seen before or done before. We took up uh a handful of dirt from the ground and we stood around the six-foot deep hole and we tossed dust on the casket, and we all said, Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. In that moment, we're quoting Moses from Genesis chapter three. That this is humanity's plight. We are dust with the breath of God in our lungs, made to be living creatures, but we will expire and return to our dust again. Moses wants you to know your life is short, you are mortal. He goes on from dust. The second one he gives us is yesterday. Look at verse 4, it says, For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past. Scientists talk about this idea of lived time, which is basically our subjective experience of time. And what happens is with lived time is that it feels like an accordion. You know this, right? Time can expand and elongate, like if you're waiting in line at the DMV. And it can shrink and compress, like if you're spending quality time with beloved friends you haven't seen in a while. Think about the time compression that God experiences when 1,000 years can be collapsed as if it was just yesterday. God's eternity, our mortality. He goes on in verse 3, uh, I'm sorry, verse 4, he gives us another one. He says, or as a watch in the night. You ever wake up in the middle of the night and you look at the watch and it's like midnight, and then you fall back asleep, and it feels like only a 30 seconds have passed, you wake up again and it's like time for your alarm to go off. You know that experience. That's what Moses is talking about. That sense of a watch in the night. Human history, the entirety of it, is just like a few nighttime hours. Goes on, and the fourth image he gives is like a flood. Verse 5, it says, You sweep them away as with a flood. One of the things my family does at the beach is we make sandcastles. I'm sure you do too. You will this summer. And you make a sandcastle and you spend all this time building it, maybe intricate designs and tunnels and all of these things until the tide comes in and sweeps it away. Your life is tidal, it will be swept away. The way we experience our life is that it's gradual and then all of a sudden you're dead. That's how a tide comes in, that's how a flood sweeps life away. He goes on, he gives us another one. Number five is a dream in verse five. They are like a dream. This is about the how human existence feels so insubstantial. The prophet Joel in Joel 2 says that there will be a day when old men dream dreams again. And I think what he's getting at is that if you show me a uh someone who's older, you'll show me somebody who will probably tell you, life goes by fast. Take in the moments. Right? Why is that? Because they know that the human life is short, that our days are long, but our years are short, and they pass by so quickly. The sixth and final image he shows us right here is grass, verses five and six, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers. There's a beauty to flowers. They grow up, they flourish in the morning, but then they wither. Proverbs 31 says that beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Our cultural obsession with youthful beauty is not merely some cosmetic management, it's a total disoriented, disordered approach to mortality management. You are dying, your beauty is fading. So, why? Why is this the collective human experience? Look

Mortality As A Theological Reality

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 14:50

at verse 7. For we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath we are dismayed. Okay, so notice this. We see it now. Mortality is not merely biological, it is theological. This is significant. He goes on in verse 8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. It was Adam and Eve's rebellion in Genesis 3 that brought death into the world. By nature and by choice, all of us have turned away from God. And if you turn away from the source of life, the consequence is death. Verse 9 For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. What is this existential sigh? What's going on here? Well, humans were made to be immortal. Ecclesiastes 3 says, God has put eternity into man's heart. We have a sigh, an ache to transcend our finitude, to live beyond death. It's inherent to who we are. But we have all turned away from God, and therefore we are mortal creatures whose days are numbered. That's why in verse 10 it says the years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Listen, according to a report from the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy in the United States is 79 years old. Most people in wealthy nations are hovering around the 80-year mark. I just wish that the Bible knew something about something. Or wait, actually, all of our advancements in extending lifespan have not surpassed what Moses penned almost 3,500 years ago. Like this year we're celebrating. Next month, the USA turns 250 years old. That's cute. Multiply that by 14, that's when Big Moe has taken up the pen to write Psalm 90. I love the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. It is cute compared to 3,500 years. And these words are still living, they're still speaking. There's an ancient antidote to our modern malady here. Why do I tell you all this? Well, because the scriptures also say that grass withers and flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Moses says, even by reason of strength you might live to be 80 years old. In the face of our human resolve, Moses reminds us that humans dissolve. This is the human condition. Look at verse 10. It says, Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. You see, even if we do extend our life, we have this longer life, we fill it with toil and trouble. We think that we can just get it all done if we get the right life hacks so that we can unlock more productivity, right? Oliver Berkman wrote a great book called 4,000 Weeks. The subtitle is Time Management for Mortals. Now, Oliver Berkman's not a theist as far as I know, but he's profoundly insightful because he misses that God is eternal, but he gets that we are mortal, probably better than many of us in this room. And he says it like this: productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed. And trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Anyone know that experience? Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved, quote, work-life balance. Whatever that might be, and you certainly won't get there by copying the six things successful people do before 7 a.m. The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control, when the flood of emails has been contained, when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer, when you're meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life, when nobody's angry with you for a missed deadline or dropping the ball, and when the fully optimized person you've become can turn at long last to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let's start by admitting defeat. None of that is ever going to happen. Welcome to church. Happy to see you this Sunday. You see, there's something oddly refreshing about this because Moses and Berkman, they call us to consider our mortality. I get that word from verse 11. Look at who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? Everyone must consider their mortality.

The Productivity Trap And Impermanence

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 19:23

Besides Christianity, this is my opinion, aside from Christianity, I think the greatest solution to mortality outside of the Bible is probably found in Buddhism. Buddhism gets this, it gets the mortal piece here. The cornerstone of Buddhist teachings is that the idea that everything is impermanent. This idea of impermanence or mitakpa is central to the experience of the spirituality of Buddhism. And it basically means that nothing lasts, therefore nothing should be held on to. Because the more we try to hold on to things, the things that are fleeting, that are just fading through our fingers, the more we try to hold on to them, the more suffering ensues. Now, Moses agrees with most of this. But there is one that is permanent, unchanging, and beautiful. There is one in whom we can take up residence to endure our impermanence. Some of the Buddha's final words were, all things pass away, strive without ceasing. Jesus' last words were, it is finished. What makes the difference? Well, the third and final point I have for you is that grace is practical.

Numbering Days For Real Wisdom

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 20:34

I get this word grace from verse 17, where it says, Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us. That could be favor, grace, beauty, delight, any of those ways you could translate that word. And unlike Buddhism, where life is impermanent and in an impersonal universe, Moses ends this psalm by addressing a very personal God who is eternal. Verses 1 through 11, there were no requests, just squarely facing the reality of our mortality. And in light of all that, verses 12 through 17 is this like rapid-fire cascade of requests from Moses to God. It's almost as if the contemplation of God's eternality and our mortality brings us to a place of dependence. Let's see what he asks for. Look at verse 12. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. There's a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who is executed at the age of 39 years old in a Nazi concentration camp. One of the reasons why is because he wrote a book on the Psalms. If you didn't know, Nazis didn't like Jewish books like the Psalms. And so they killed him for it. And he wrote on this Psalm and he said this applying our hearts to wisdom means knowing the limit of our life. But even more, knowing that beyond that limit is the God who is from everlasting to everlasting, into whose hands we will fall, whether we choose to or not. You see, there's a heart of wisdom here, and it's not just information management, it is it's wisdom, it's it's skill of living life before God, as if God really does exist, as if you really will die someday. That's where this heart of wisdom comes from. Modernity prizes information, but the Bible teaches us to get wisdom. How do we get wisdom? He just says right here, by numbering our days. Because as we number our days, we find an antidote to the serpent's ancient conspiracy. You will not surely die. Instead, we squarely look death in its ugly face. It is an enemy. The last enemy, though, the one that's already been defeated, and we say we look at death and we say, God, give us a heart of wisdom as we stare at our own mortality. Oliver Berkman again says, in practical terms, a limit-embracing attitude to time means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won't have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do. And so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing. Now, I said that grace is practical. Let me be super practical. You will see one of these all of life guides in the foyer after worship. You're welcome to go grab one. The point of this is to take time. Some of you are like, I don't do it, I don't have time for it. Exactly. Here you go, it's a gift. To take the time to slow down and get perspective on where your life is, to number your days, to notice that this very precious thing that you have called time is so limited, and I want to give the best of it to the best things. That's what the all of life God is meant to help you do for all of life. And so the invitation is to take up the practicality of grace by slowing down, taking 30, 60, 90 minutes, slowing down to get perspective before you plan what the next season looks like.

Steadfast Love That Makes Mornings New

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 23:54

Moses goes on in verse 13. Here's another one of his requests. Return, O Lord, how long? Have pity on your servants. If you remember, God says in verse 3, return, O children of man, to dust. And now in verse 13, return, O Lord, and have pity. You see, we are returned to dust until God returns to us in mercy. We know that God is outside of time, and so we look at God and we say, Hey, don't forget, we're not outside of time. How long, O Lord? It's too much, too long. Give us a sense that you're coming, that you care about us. You haven't forgotten us. And in the meantime, verse 14, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Do you remember Moses had six metaphors earlier on about our mortality, about these images of fleeting, the fleeting nature of life. He talked about dust and yesterday and night and flood and sleep and grass. Well, if you're a know the scriptures, you know that if you got six, you should look for a seventh. And here's the seventh. The seventh image reverses the previous six morning. Morning. Newness, freshness, light from dark, day from night. Morning is the time for flourishing and renewal. The answer to fleeting, the fleeting mortality of life is not transhumanism's immortality projects or Brian Johnson's Never Die biohacking protocol or the cottage industry of life optimization hacks. It's none of those things. The answer to fleeting life is the joy that comes from steadfast love. The joy that comes from a love that is surpassing death in its power. Look at 15, it says, make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Grace is practical in simple trust that God has purposeful oversight in all that happens. It's really important. I mean, only if God is sovereign over our afflictions can God be sovereign over our gladness. If you want a God who can, quote, make us glad, we need a God who can afflict us too. If God can prevent or permit our afflictions, then God, if he cannot do that, then how can he possibly give us gladness? How can he be bring redemption? But the hope that we have here is that God is sovereign, he is in control, he is purposeful in his providence, which is why he can establish us beyond

Work That Lasts Beyond You

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 26:30

death. Look at verse 16. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor or grace or pleasantness or beauty or delight, let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. Why end here, Moses? Because the only legacy that endures past your death, the only two things, your children and your work. You see them both in the text here? Or as Genesis 1, 2, and 3 would say, your work and your in the womb. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion, work and keep. These twin realities that God intends to transcend our mortality. That's what he points us to here. So Dallas Willard tells us that your work is the total amount of lasting good that you will produce in your lifetime. It's not just what you are compensated for, it's your contribution. It's the good, the total amount of good that you bring into the world. That's your work. And the reality here is that life without work is meaningless. But work must never become the meaning of one's life. And this is a chastening reality. That's why there's a connection between God's work and our work. Look at verse 16. Let your work be shown. Verse 17, let our work be established. You see, God's work establishes our work. That word established shows up twice here. It means to make firm, secure, lasting, enduring. Everything we do eventually crumbles. Everything. We cannot accomplish all that we would want to accomplish in a lifetime. Our years run out. But because modernity lives in the ways that we do with a closed universe and no sense of time beyond death, we feel this inexhaustible supply of things that seem worth doing, and we feel a corresponding overwhelm because we can't possibly do it all. There's a German sociologist named Hermet Rosa, and she says this pre-modern people didn't have that problem. Why not? They weren't troubled by such thoughts because they believed in an afterlife. You see, there was no particular pressure to, quote, get the most out of their limited time, because as far as they were concerned, it wasn't limited. In any case, earthly life was but a relatively insignificant prelude to the most important part. When people stop believing in an afterlife, everything depends on making the most of this life. Do you feel that? It's because you succumbed to the secular culture's modern malady. The opposite of that is verse 17. Let the favor, the grace, the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands.

Refuge In Christ Against The Storm

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 29:28

You see, Psalm 90 begins with who God is and ends with what God gives. God is permanent and eternal, and God and God alone can give life that is permanent and eternal. How do we receive that eternal life? Well, let's go back up to verse one. Let's end where we began. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Charles Spurgeon says this foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the saints dwell in their God. There's a beauty to that. I want you to imagine for a moment that you're climbing a mountain. You're on the rock face, and as you're there, there's a storm that just gets whipping and it's threatening to blow you off the ledge. And you're hugging the side of the rock face, just shimmying to try to figure out how you're gonna stabilize yourself. And then in that moment, as you are about to give up because your fingers can't cling to the rock anymore, you find a little cleft in the rock. Just a little crack, and it opens up into a small cave, and you you crawl in, and inside you turn, you put your back against the rock wall, and you look out at the fierce storm, and in that moment you realize that you're safe and secure, and that there's a quiet. That's what it means to take refuge in God. Mortality is whipping by, it threatens to kill you. Death is real, it's coming for every one of us, and yet there's an eternal dwelling place for us in God. There's a hymn that says, Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. That's the invitation. You see, the Buddha again, he said, This, I was only able to point the way for you. But Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Buddha said, Be a refuge to yourself, take yourself to no external refuge. Jesus said, In me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Listen, brothers or sisters, if you belong to Jesus, you are a dual citizen. What that means is that you have a home here in Orlando and a home in Jesus Christ. Both are true, both are tangibly real. The one here is impermanent, passing away and mortal. The one there in Jesus is permanent, growing brighter and brighter towards an eternal dawn. You see, in this transience of our world, we find residence in our God. Jesus Christ Himself is the place of human security. How? Well, in 2 Timothy 1, it says, our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death, abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. If you remember our words of assurance, 1 Corinthians 15 is the greatest chapter in the Bible on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and it ends in an interesting way. It says, in light of Jesus risen from the dead, therefore, brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because in the Lord, residence in him, in the Lord your labor is not in vain. What else can establish the work of your hands? What else can give your life meaning in the face of mortality? The fact that you can take up residence in the eternal dwelling place that is Jesus Christ. That's the invitation of this text. If this is true, then we can work and rest, we can pray and wait because Jesus is alive forevermore. There's a pastor named Percy Ainsworth. He pastored in the 1800s. So think about how much more relevant this is for us today. He said, This busy world will surge about you with the with the tread of restless feet and the throb of restless hearts. And little that you will do will seem to make a pause in the rush of things. But you may in Jesus Christ find rest for your soul. There is a hasteless life for those who believe in Christ.

Final Prayer And Sending

Rev. Benjamin Kandt 33:32

Let's pray. Jesus, we want to take up refuge in you. Would you, Holy Spirit, awaken us to the reality of our own mortality? We don't want to live on the narcotic of you will not surely die. We want to live in the truth that we are dust, and dust we will we shall return. And we want to live in the greater truth that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and has put, has abolished death and brought immortality to life. Thank you, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.