Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the 90th Psalm:
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!Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Do you remember learning how to count? Maybe some of you do. For others, it might have passed into memory at this point. It might’ve been your parents showing you how to count how many fingers you had. Maybe you counted the candles on your birthday cake. Maybe it was how many bites of vegetables you had to take before you could get up from the table. Maybe it was the counting blocks you see on the screen right now. Any way you learned it, counting is important.
It tells us things about our world. It tells us how many students we have here, how many teachers. It tells us how many Sundays we have left until Advent begins. It tells us how hot or cold it will be. It tells us so many things. Counting is important to us. And it’s important to God.
God likes counting, too. In fact, God has Moses write down something about that in our text for today, in Psalm 90. Moses had to count a lot of numbers. He counted the number of years Israel spent in slavery in Egypt: 400. He counted the number of years they were in the desert: 40. He counted the number of men who could serve in the army: 603, 550. He counted how many people died in the rebellion against God and Moses: 14,700. Moses counted a lot.
And he writes in our psalm today that we should learn to count our days so that we might gain wisdom. What does that mean? It means that if we realize that we don’t have a lot of time on this earth, we would make the most of it with God. If we realized how many days we’ve wasted arguing and fighting with parents and siblings, classmates and teachers, we’d spend our days seeking God’s favor and blessing. But we don’t often count our days and we forget about God and His blessings. That’s not wisdom; that’s foolishness.
However, by wisdom, we can realize we’ve wasted too much time giving into our sin. Sin is a big problem for us. Can you imagine if God counted up all your sins in front of you, how much time that would take and if He wrote them all down how many books He’d have to fill? It would be incredible and God would never be able to stop.
But, when it comes to counting, God doesn’t count our sins against us. In fact, He takes them all from you and lays them on His Son, Jesus, who takes them to the cross, crucifies them with Him, and forgives you. God doesn’t count your sins against you; He forgives you out of love. He knows you could never hold up under the weight of all that sin, so He placed it on Jesus and counts you righteous. He counts how much righteousness you have and says, “Yep, you have all righteousness because of My beloved Son, Jesus.”
Now, we don’t have to count our sins. We count our blessings. We can count every day as a blessing from God. We can enjoy our days, knowing that we’re forgiven, and seeking to do God’s work in the world for our friends and our families. We work hard at it, knowing that, even though we sin, even while we’re trying to do good and be good, we are forgiven. That’s wisdom. That’s how we can be really wise. In wisdom, we don’t have to count our sins, because God won’t count them either. We number our days, no longer with our sin, but we number our days with the joy of the Lord, who has given to us such great mercy through His Son, Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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