Psalms 90:16

Psalms 90:16

This Psalm has a threefold interest: of subject, of authorship, and of association. It touches the most solemn, most momentous, most affecting point in the life of man. Its author is "Moses the man of God." It has been heard by us when standing in the presence of death.

I. The words of the text are in substance the prayer of Moses in Exodus, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory." They find their echo in Philip's prayer on the night of the Passion, "Lord, show us the Father." They are the cry of a soul feeling its want of Him in whom, known or unknown, averse or loving, it must live, and move, and have its being.

II. "Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants." "The Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Ill were it for the universe if the working hand were to rest one moment. God works everywhere and in all things, but man sees it not; it needs a separate work of God, as the text implies, to show His work. And therefore Moses prays this prayer for his people.

III. "And their children Thy glory." The glory spoken of is the self-manifestation of God. The far-reaching eye, the self-forgetting love, of the man who saw, but must not enter, the land of rest and of inheritance, looked onward into Israel's future, and while he prayed for the generation that was, thought also of the children that were yet unborn. "Show their children Thy glory," is a petition after the very heart of God, who takes it into the deepest and safest treasure-house of His own promises, and brings it forth thence in boundless blessing, when the lips which framed it have been silent for ages in death.

C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 46.

Reference: Psalms 90:16. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms,p. 208.