Psalm 90:11-12
As you look at the world around you, life seems to go on. Yes, there are interruptions here and there (like
a pandemic which causes people to stay home in fear). But overall, people continue on with their lives.
As a Christian, it is hard to see so many people (many of whom are loved ones) continue with their lives
without any regard for their spiritual state. Indeed, we cannot conceive that people would refuse the
offer of the gospel. How could someone not want to trust Christ given Bible’s clear gospel call?
Yet people persist in their refusal to come to the cross. Why is that? Why do people refuse to
acknowledge their need for Christ? The answer is that people are blind to the fact that they need Christ.
They do not see the wrath of God. They are dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). But what if they
see the truths of the Bible with their own eyes? you may wonder. Jesus answered that very question
when he said:
Luke 16:31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded
though one rise from the dead.’ ”1
And as Matthew 28 describes, even when the soldiers witnessed the angel come to roll away the tomb
stone from Jesus’ already empty grave they still accepted bribes of money to propagate a lie instead of
acknowledging the resurrection of the Son of God.
Moses has described with great detail and clarity the immense contrast between the eternal, transcendent
God and finite, frail man. And with the contrast of the glory of God with the sinfulness of man firmly
established in vv. 3–10, Moses now comes to vv. 11–12 with a climactic truth: You would be wise to
remember the immense, righteous wrath of God and to recognize your transient life by learning from
God’s wise instruction.
Moses continues his somber picture of the righteous wrath of God. He exhorts people to remember the
truth of—
1. God’s Righteous Wrath (v. 11)
As we have seen in the previous verses, God is glorious. He is the One who has created (“brought
forth”—a metaphor for giving birth) the earth and all of creation (v. 1). He is the One who is from
everlasting to everlasting (v. 2). God is glorious and holy. Consider several verses:
Psalm 93:5 Your testimonies are very sure; holiness adorns Your house, O Lord, forever.
Psalm 96:9 Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth.
Isaiah 6:3b “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
God is the thrice holy God. Moses no doubt recognized the glory of God and His holiness because of
His experience in observing God’s glory on two separate occasions (cf. Ex. 3:2–6; 33:18–23). When
God’s glory and holiness are on display, it contrasts sharply with the sinfulness of mankind. And the
contrasts helps us understand the just nature of God’s wrath towards sin.
“Who knows the power of Your anger?” — This question is rhetorical. That is to say, the answer that
Moses is looking for is obvious: no one knows the power of God anger.
The word for “knows” means “to know, to understand.” He will use this same word in v. 12 (English “teach”). In essence, Moses is asking “Who knows with complete understanding the power of God’s anger?” Of course Moses and the people of Israel knew aspects of God’s anger because they had seen it expressed on various occasions. One such occasion is found in the book of Numbers:
Numbers 11:1 Now when the people complained, it displeased the Lord; for the Lord heard it, and His
anger was aroused. So the fire of the Lord burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of
the camp.
Not only did they see and experience the anger of the Lord but they were also warned of it:
Deuteronomy 6:13–15 13 You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His
name. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you 15 (for the Lord
your God is a jealous God among you), lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and
destroy you from the face of the earth.
Deuteronomy 7:1–4 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and
has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the
Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than
you, 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly
destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make
marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.
4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will
be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.
No one truly understands the immense power of God’s anger.
“For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.” — This phrase is somewhat challenging to translate and
understand, but I think that what Moses is saying is captured in another translation quite well: “Your
wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.”2 Sinful man is required to fear the name of God. As
one commentator put it, “the greatness of God’s wrath should evoke fear, and that fear should be commensurate with God’s wrath.” Even when presented with t 3 he truths of Scripture, where we can
see the power of God’s anger, people still ignore it. Take, for example, God’s judgment and fury on
Sodom and Gomorrah. God’s anger and fury were unleashed on those two wicked cities with
immense power and destruction (Gen. 19:12–29). The Lord mercifully preserved Lot and his
daughters from the destruction that came but no one else escaped, including Lot’s wife:
Genesis 19:24–29 24 Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord
out of the heavens. 25 So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what
grew on the ground. 26 But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 27 And
Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 28 Then he looked
toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain; and he saw, and behold, the smoke of
the land which went up like the smoke of a furnace. 29 And it came to pass, when God destroyed the
cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when
He overthrew the cities in which Lot had dwelt.
Moses saw the wrath of God on the sons of Korah. In fact, the fact that man is completely unaware
of the wrath of God is own clear display in Numbers 16. There, the sons of Korah rebel and the Lord
determines to destroy them:
Numbers 16:20–21, 31–35 20 And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 21 “Separate yourselves
from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.”… 31 Now it came to pass, as he
finished speaking all these words, that the ground split apart under them, 32 and the earth opened its
mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods.
33 So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they
perished from among the assembly. 34 Then all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they
said, “Lest the earth swallow us up also!” 35 And a fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two
hundred and fifty men who were offering incense.
Even when they had seen the power of God’s fury on rebels only the day before, the people of Israel
still provoked God to anger with their sinfulness:
Numbers 16:41–46 41 On the next day all the congregation of the children of Israel complained against
Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the Lord.” 42 Now it happened, when the
congregation had gathered against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the tabernacle of meeting;
and suddenly the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared. 43 Then Moses and Aaron came
before the tabernacle of meeting. 44 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 45 “Get away from among this
congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.” And they fell on their faces. 46 So Moses said to
Aaron, “Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the
congregation and make atonement for them; for wrath has gone out from the Lord. The plague has
begun.”
Moses of all people clearly understood what it meant to ask the question “who knows the power of
your anger?” He had on many occasions interceded on behalf of the people of Israel. And lest you
and I should “think of ourselves more highly than we ought” (Rom. 12:3), Peter reminded his
believing readers that to embrace sin (which is an offense against God) is to forget the salvation that
they had received:
2 Peter 1:5–9 5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue
knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to
godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound,
you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks
these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
The New Testament describes every person as under the wrath of God before trusting Christ:
Romans 1:18–19 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of
God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
Ephesians 2:1–3 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 2 in which you once
walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the
lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
just as the others.
Every person deserves the righteous judgment of God because as sinners we are the object of God’s
just wrath. The question of “how can a loving God send people to hell?” is the wrong question to
ask; the question should be “how can a just God let sinful man live?” The answer to that question is
this: because God is rich in mercy (Eph. 2:4ff). Even in His wrath, God remembers mercy
(cf. Hab. 3:2).
Coming back to Psalm 90, Moses is asking “who truly understands God’s wrath and fears Him
appropriately” (v. 11). The answer is nobody can in the fullest sense know the extent of God’s wrath
against sin. A person, however, will recognize the vast difference between holy God and sinful man
and appeal to God for forgiveness.
Application: Have you trusted Christ as your Savior? Have you recognized the immense and just
wrath of God towards your sin and turned to Christ (Rom. 10:9)? When you recognize the glory of
God, your sinfulness is easy to see. Embrace Christ by faith today. 4 As a believer, have you forgotten
the condition you were in before Christ (2 Pet. 1:9)? As Pastor Gordon Dickson says, are you
entertaining yourself with the very sins for which Christ died? If so, you may have forgotten that the
immense and totality of God’s wrath towards your sin was put on Christ at the cross. Demonstrate
your fellowship with Christ by continually confessing your sin (1 John 1:9). In doing so you will
evidence your true saving faith.
Not only should you remind yourself of God’s righteous wrath against sin, but you should also remember
that your life is transient. Every moment must be lived with the recognition that you will soon be gone.
2. Man’s Proper Petition (v. 12)
Moses now comes to the verse that most of us know well. It is the pinnacle of this psalm and
especially of vv. 7–11. Here, Moses appeals to God for instruction.
“So teach us to number our days” — As mentioned earlier, the word in our English translations
rendered “teach” is the same word as “know” in v. 11. The idea of this word is that God would cause
us to know how frail our lives truly are. So to cause someone to know is to teach. When you
“number your days” you are acknowledging your transience (i.e. the brevity of your life). This
concept is not foreign to the Psalter:
Psalm 39:4 4 “Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know
how frail I am. 5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You;
certainly every man at his best state is but [vapor].
James states something similar:
James 4:14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a
vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
The short life that man has is a stark contrast to the everlasting God (v. 2). God is eternal; man is not.
God knows man’s days. He not only numbers the hairs on your head (Matt. 10:30) but He numbers
your days (Ps. 90:10). Thus, people who are wise will “redeem the time” (Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5).
“that we may gain a heart of wisdom” — Moses now gives the purpose behind desiring that the
Lord would cause use to know the number of our days. The word apply (KJV) is better understood
as gain (NKJV). We learn from God to number our days so t 5 hat we gain a heart of wisdom. The
phrase “heart of wisdom” hearkens to the call for wisdom in the book of Proverbs:
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and
instruction.
Proverbs 2:2–6 2 So that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding; 3 Yes,
if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding, 4 If you seek her as silver, And
search for her as for hidden treasures; 5 Then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the
knowledge of God. 6 For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding;
Wisdom comes from God. So in order to gain a heart of wisdom, one must submit to and obey the
Lord. One commentator wrote “Wisdom begins and ends with the Lord, as the wise man seeks the
Lord in all his ways (cf. Prov. 1:7), and true wisdom begins with the petition for revelation and
illumination: ‘teach us.’”6 A wise person who longs to honor the Lord with his or her life will learn
from the Scriptures (and thus from the Lord Himself) to number his/her days and to gain from it a
heart of wisdom.
Conclusion
So what about you? Will you be a wise person who recognizes this sinful frailty and submit to the Lord?
Will you learn to recognize the immense wrath God has towards unrepentant sinners who refuse His
offer of the gospel? Or will you continue to refuse to see the wrath of God against sin and persist in
rebellion? The call could not be more clear. You would be wise to remember the immense, righteous
wrath of God, and to recognize your transient life.