A Heart of Wisdom: Seeing God as Holy Judge

This is part 4 (and point 3--confusing already) on my series of posts on Psalm 90--learning to "number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom." I'm exploring 4 qualities of the "heart of wisdom." The first was that a heart of wisdom stands in awe of the eternal God; the second, that it recognizes man's insignificance. For today, a third quality is this:

A heart of wisdom acknowledges God as Holy Judge.

It's not enough to know that you'll die. It's not enough to know that your life will pass quickly. To gain a heart of wisdom requires that we rightly see ourselves in relationship to God. He is over us. He is our judge. He is the one who decides when we die.

Look at verse 3. It says of God, "YOU return man to dust and say, 'Return, O children of man!'"

Genesis tells us that God created Adam from the dust of the earth. And when Adam and Eve sinned against God and ate the forbidden fruit the punishment, all they and the rest of mankind received was death. Death returns man to dust. This wasn't God's original design. We were made to live forever in fellowship with God, but our sin ruined this plan. Our sin brought death into the world.

Verse 7 says, "For we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed." Death is God's judgment on human sin. It is God's sentence on sinful mankind. It is God's way of humbling us, of judging us for our attempts to usurp his authority. Death is divine limitation on human pride.

In verse 8, "You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence."

Acknowledging God as our Holy Judge is essential to being able to rightly interpret and understand life. Death points us to the reality of God's holiness. He is a righteous judge who is angered by our sin. Death points us to our guilt before God. A heart of wisdom understands that's man's greatest need is to find peace with God.