Psalm 90:12 “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
I started teaching the adult Sunday School class at our church 2 weeks ago. The hardest part was to decide what to teach. Our Pastor has preached through the entire Bible over the past 2 years. So what is left for me to teach? Since he has done it as book studies, that option did not seem the best for me. Prayer is a topic that I keep coming back to in my life. Probably because of my constant need to come to Him. I have been more impressed with my need to just commune with God. When I stop to think of my prayer life, at times it seems very petty and selfish. I know God wants us to bring our requests to Him, but what about our desire for Him. What part does communion play in our prayers? So I wonder and think about prayer. But I didn’t want to just study the topic of prayer. So instead, we are studying various prayers recorded in Scripture. We spent the last 2 weeks on Moses prayer in Psalm 90. (Yes, I think Moses wrote it) The first 11 verses are the thoughts of Moses on the frailty and brevity of human life, as compared to God’s immutability and eternality. Then he comes to verse 12. “So”, in light of the musings of the first 11 verses, Moses asks to be taught (translated “make me to know” in Ps. 39:4) regarding our days and the number of them. Compare this verse to these: Ps. 39:4; Deut. 32:29; Eccl. 9:10 (read the whole verse); John 9:4; and Eph. 5:16-17. One last thought, notice how he talks of numbering our “days” not our years.

Immanuel

What a name! What a description! Of course, the fact of Christ’s humanity is a difficult concept. I’m glad we can accept by faith the things hard to understand. I hear of people wrestling or struggling with truths of God’s Word. I think what we struggle with is accepting something that doesn’t match with our perceptions. It’s hard to admit our perceptions may be wrong. But then that is all we have, what we perceive and what we believe. So it comes down to trust. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding”. Proverbs 3:5

Now back to “Immanuel”. It seems to me that “God with us” is what Job had in mind in speaking of God in Job 9:32-35.

“For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman between us, that might lay his hand upon us both. Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me: Then would I speak, and not fear him; but it is not so with me.”

Doesn’t Christ fit the idea of the daysman in verse 33? He is the one who can (and does) lay his hands on both of us. Job longed for this One. We have Him, and according to Matthew 28:20, Romans 8:35-39, and Hebrews 13:5 we always will.

Immanuel!