#DailyDevotion Is Adonai Your Home, Your Dwelling Place?
Psalm 90 O Lord, You are our home through all the ages. 2Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world – O God, You exist from everlasting to everlasting.
The inscription on this Psalm says it is from Moses. You will not find it written in the Torah anywhere but you will certainly find the thoughts from this Psalm therein. Who knows where they kept it until it found its way into the Psalter.
The first line is an interesting one. He calls out to Adonai. That is the Hebrew word here that is only used of God. It means Lord and it is in the plural form. Moses uses this term for God often in the Torah (first five books of the bible). He tells Adonai that He is our home through all generations. That’s kind of an interesting thing to say of the Lord that He is our dwelling or habitation. Our home is where we feel secure and safe. It’s where we rest and have our meals. It’s where we keep everything we own safe. Jesus tells us to store our treasures in heaven (which is done by giving them away to the poor). St. Augustine says in his Confessions, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
Moses then confesses God’s otherness, His non-createdness. God is not creation. No one and nothing made God. He is outside of creation and time. He created all things, visible and invisible by His almighty Word. He is not like the gods of the nations which are born or created by others. He is not creation. He is not contained by wood, stone, metals etc. to be made into an idol. He is the uncaused cause of everything.
3You turn man back to dust, saying, “Return, children of men.” 4A thousand years pass in Your sight like yesterday, like a watch in the night. 5As by a flood You sweep them away–they are sleeping. In the morning they grow up new like grass. 6In the morning they blossom and are fresh; in the evening they will wither and dry up.
He references Genesis 3 where the LORD (Yahweh) tells Adam and Eve after their rebellion they were made of dust and to dust they shall return since they rejected the life God gave to them. We like to think we live forever. We particularly think that in our youth and possibly into our middle age. Then we begin to ache when we move and get up and we realize our mortality. The future always looks like forever. The past makes us question, how did it pass so quickly. This is even more so for God as a thousand years to Him seems like a watch in the night. He is eternal. We are here today and gone tomorrow. Generation after generation is swept away by time. We die and no one knows our spot anymore.
Yet, we should always remember the first verse here. The Eternal One is our habitation when we trust in Jesus. We do not simply disappear and cease to exist. When we dwell in God now, we dwell in God when we fall asleep and we dwell in God when we awaken in the resurrection to dwell with and in God forever. If we only look to our life in this world it is all vanity as the Preacher says. When our hearts dwell with Adonai, the LORD, our LORD Jesus Christ, then we have a proper mindset to engage this temporary life and to treat it as such. God is our inheritance. He endures forever.
Heavenly Father, help by Your Word and Spirit to rightly view ourselves in light of Your Word so we may treasure You as our highest possession to which we would gladly give up all earthly possessions and pleasure to possess and take refuge in. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.