| The Eternity of God
Psalm 90 - 18 April 2010
Andrew Lim
There is a condition which is found in the Church at large for some years
and increasingly becoming worse
It is the loss of the concept of the holiness / the majesty of God
in the a large majority of Christians
The Church was once marked by the majority of her members
having a high view / a noble / magisterial / lofty view of God
The Church has now come to substituted the God of the Bible
with a God that is so dishonourable / inferior / and utterly disreputable
so that it not only do grave injustice to the person of God
- indeed it is unworthy of our worship
If a stranger should come up to you and ask you to describe yourself
I wonder just what would you say!
How are you defined? / What’s the beating pulse of your heart?
What does your heart throb for?
Just what is the most crucial thing about you? / What defines you?
A.W. Tozer once said / rather boldly
“What comes into our minds when we think about God
is the most important thing about us”
Tozer is saying your idea of God / your perception of God
What do you think about God? Who do think God is?
What do you think God is like?”
is critically more crucial than anything else
The highest / loftiest / most worthy thought
you could ever entertain in your mind and heart
is your thought of God
Whoever you may become / whatever you may accomplish
it is ultimately Who God has been in your thought / and heart
that will truly determine who you truly are before God
You may be a person of great passive endurance
you may have a fiery determination / spirit of selfless sacrifice
you may have impressive intellectual prowess
you may be endowed with the mind of a first-rate philosopher
and you demolish your opponents with rapier-like logic
- all that will be greatly diminished
if while you’ve walked on earth / your thoughts of God
have been woeful / defective / skewed and cheap
Jeremiah puts it in his own inimitable way
“This is what the LORD says:
‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches
But let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me
that I am the LORD” / Jeremiah 9:23
From any vantage point you may come
nothing else really matters / except knowing God
and there can be no greater desire or ambition in life
than to make knowing God / your life’s greatest passion
Paul says: I consider everything as loss
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord
for whose sake I have lost all things
I consider them rubbish / that I may gain Christ
and be found in him” / Phil 3:8-11
Charles Spurgeon once said:
“Nothing will so enlarge the intellect
nothing so magnify the whole soul of man
as a devout / earnest / continued / investigation
of the great subject of the Deity
The most excellent study for expanding the soul
is the science of Christ and Him crucified
and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity”
Time spent / in a careful contemplation of the person and character of God
is unquestionable the time of your life / best invested
But somehow we’ve killed the passion that should be the strongest
And we’ve come to be ruled by a passion
that will only lead us away from God
Most of us have a dull-appetite for God
if not a virtual total absence of appetite for God
Desiring God / is something quite unnatural
Desiring our own security / happiness and enjoyment
comes to us easily
How very strange / that we’re bored with the very thing
which will bring us greatest joy
and addicted to the very things that will ultimately destroy us
It is partly with this state of affairs in mind
that I have decided to take us back to the starting block
back to the basics / back to understanding the character of God
Who He is / what He is like
It’s a huge undertaking / I know
to try in the next couple of months / to turn things around for us
and to ask God to help us see the shallowness and the emptiness
of the promises this world holds out for you
and make us feel a sense of distaste
for all the glitter and allures of this world
and to learn to look at God with fresh eyes
with the desire and hope that we find Him ravishing
and worthy of our ultimate sacrifice
and to try to feel the supreme sheer joy
of standing before a holy and majestic God / fully accepted
We need desperately to explore the nature and character of God
I am taking you on this journey / with the hope
that when you come to see God
not as our modern Christian culture make Him out to be
but as the Bible portrays Him to be
- that you’ll be driven to fall down on your knees
not only in confession of the cheap view of Him
but there / to worship Him
I want to begin that journey / exploring the very first character of God
- We begin with the eternity of God
A.W. Tozer / in his book The Knowledge of the Holy / writes this:
“The concept of everlastingness / runs like a lofty mountain range
throughout the entire Bible . . .”
Right through the Bible / God is portrayed as inhabiting eternity
This is a pivotal teaching of the Bible
For unless God is truly eternal / all other teachings about Him
will be of not much worth
You know why?
Because if it could be shown / that the time will come
when even God too / will come to an end
what good would it do to us believing in such a God
But the Holy Scriptures affirm / that our God is an eternal God
In the Psalm we read / notice Moses is gradually moving back in time
Before the mountains were brought forth / God was there
Then / even before the earth was formed / God was there
Then / he takes a long / strident leap into timelessness / and says:
“from everlasting to everlasting / You are God” / Ps 90:2
Deut. 33:27 / “The eternal God is your refuge
and underneath are the everlasting arms”
In Genesis 21:33 / Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba
and there / he called upon the name of the LORD / the Eternal God
Isaiah reminds us: “Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God / the Creator of the ends of the earth
He will not grow tired or weary
and his understanding no one can fathom / 40:28
Habakkuk simply says: “O LORD / are you not from everlasting? 1:12
And the psalmist says:
“In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth
and the heavens are the work of your hands
- they will perish / but you remain
- they will all wear out like a garment
like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded
But you remain the same
and your years will never end”/ Ps 102:25-27
This idea of the eternity of God is difficult for humans to grasp
partly because as we have a finite frame of reference
How do we measure the immeasurable?
We may start with the thought that no one created God
God is self-existing / He has no beginning / He will have no end
Nothing caused God to come into existence
Our God never began to exist / God always has been
There was never a time when God was not
and then / in time / He began to exist
For if He did / then there must have been a time
in which God was not
and to say that would be to diminish His greatness
Eternity is an intrinsic / essential nature of God
And it is God alone / Who is eternal
We are not eternal / and will never be eternal
Like angels / we have had a beginning
To be sure God can bestow an eternal nature to angels and humans
He can invest a new property in us / so we will cannot perish
And that / He has done / by raising Jesus from the dead
So that if we believe in Him we everlasting life
But even in heaven / we will not have eternity as our nature
for we’ve all had a finite beginning
Eternity is not part a part of our essential nature
Theologians call it our “accidental” nature
Let’s explore this exciting concept of time and eternity a little
When we think of God as having no beginning and no ending
we immediately think of eternity as time extending endlessly
in both directions / backwards and forwards
We think endless time that has passed / and endless time to come
But eternity is radically different from time
both quantitatively and qualitatively
both in terms of its “amount and its “essence”
Eternity is a grander concept than time
Time is finite / Eternity is infinite
Time has succession and duration
It began at a point when God ordained it to begin
and will end at a point when God ordained it to end
Time is a creature / made by God / “in the beginning”
And God placed the sun and moon / to regulated time and seasons
Time began with this created universe
One great puzzle of modern physics
is the seemingly arbitrary “directionality” of time
- it seems to only go one way
- but we can find no physical reasons
it shouldn’t equally well go the other
It is believe that the directionality of time occurred
at the beginning moment of creation
when matter /space and time came into existence
This would indicate that prior to the beginning moment
there was no time
But this idea is very disturbing to atheistic physicists
because it smacks like creation out of nothing
which is what the Bible teaches
With us humans / the future is always becoming the present
and the present quickly turns into the past
by this time tomorrow / Sunday would have been yesterday
In fact every second we spend here is quickly turned to the past
in rapid succession / you could measure it in nanoseconds
We grow old by the second / often unknowingly
God is not controlled by time
He does not think in terms of time / nor does have to deal with time
Time has no bound on God / He is above time / He is beyond time
God is above dictates of time / He’s above the tyranny of time
above the ravages of time
Tozer says: “God dwells in eternity / but time dwells in God”
Just as He has lived all our yesterdays
He has already lived out / all our tomorrows
God isn’t subject to time like you and I are
And because of that / He has no past / no future
This does not mean that for God / time has no objective reality
Of course He recognizes that time exists / He knows we live in it
I will give you an over-simplified analogy
There are two ways you could watch a parade
you could stand at a door by the street and watch it pass
you will see first the those in the lead
then others and finally the last person
But you could watch it from the top of a high tower
you will see the whole parade with one glance
But / you will also see a progression of the parade
there is still progression and succession
only from another perspective
Often people have asked: “Does God “foresee” / that little Johnny
will be fatally run over by a truck this afternoon at 5.37 pm
at the intersection of Tremaine and Botanical?”
If He did / why won’t He rearrange / the sequences of events
in little Johnny’s life
so he won’t have to be at that spot / on that precise moment?
The keyword in that troubling question is the word “foresee”
The inquirer asks: “Does God foresee?”
To foresee something / you’ll have to be living in a dimension
in which there was a present / and a future
But God is not subjected by time in this way like we are
And we often try to subject God to categories of thought
that do not apply to Him whatsoever
God does not live through events sequentially / like we do
We have a past / a present / and hopefully / a future
But / unlike us / God is not subject
to the sequential duration and passage of time
There is no “yesterday” with God
- “yesterday” is not past for God like it is for us
There is no “tomorrow” for God
- “tomorrow” is not future for God / like it was is for us
Both yesterday and tomorrow are one eternal moment for Him
So God is not affected in any way whatsoever
by the succession of each passing second
There is no chronological succession of moments with God
With Him / the past / the present / and the future
are merge into / one / eternal / fixed / moment
He sees everything / in one broad comprehensive sweep
of what is called “the one eternal moment”
In one full sweep / God sees the end from the beginning
For Him / the end / is one with the beginning
This is why / when asked what His name was / God says: “I AM Who I am”
and there is no one like me / declaring the end and the beginning” Ex 3:15
“I AM” is the name of God
and it is the name of God that Jesus calls Himself in Jn.8:58
“I tell you before Abraham was / I am”
“I Am” / Ego Emi / Grammarians will tell you / that this
is in the present indicative active form of the verb / “to be”
It means
that what is true of this being before / is true of him today
that from one end of eternity to the other end of it
He does not change with time
God never says / “I was”
for that would imply change / whether for better or worse
Nor does He say “I shall be”
for that again / would imply some kind of change
But instead / God says: “I AM”
Now / just how may we as Christians respond
to this teaching of God’s eternity?
If God is eternal / so what?
“So what if God is eternal”
“What does that attribute of God do to me?
“How should I then live my life in the light of God’s eternity?”
There are two
Firstly / because God alone is eternal
He alone / can satisfy our heart’s quiet cry for eternity
What do I mean by this? / I’ve said this a thousand times in my life
We all have cravings / desires in our hearts
that sometimes ache so painfully we feel we’re about to implode
We can have our desires for food / sleep / sex / satisfied
We can have our hunger for affirmation and recognition satisfied
and yet there is a deep undertow to everything we experience
You could stand and watch
the most beautiful sight any human eyes could ever look at
yet it leaves you restless / and causes you to be nostalgic
You experience the deepest intimacy with someone you love
and soon as you breathe out a breath of gratification
you pull in another breath of unfulfilled longing and homesickness
There is a homesickness in the human heart
a languishing / a nostalgia / a yearning that won’t go away
you sense that everything around you is so ordinary
- your job - it’s tedious and tiresome
- the town you live in / so lackluster
- your daily life so stale / plain
You have a dream / a hope of something far more enticing and relishing
but your daily life seem so earthbound
There’s a nagging void inside all of us
we know it’s there / even if we can’t pin it down
Of course some people are more in touch with it than others
but we all experience that in some measure
Our heart is a yawning gorge
We are Grand Canyons without a bottom
Do you know the reason why we’re like that?
Rolheiser says the reason
is not because we’re over-sexed / / too ungrateful / hopelessly neurotic
or too greedy to be satisfied with life
He says / the reason is that congenitally
we’re overcharged / we’re over-built for this earth
What’s that? / It is this – we were built for eternity
We’re built for eternity
but for now trapped in earthly garment of skin and flesh and bones
What a pain / to have the long span of eternity
planted in out poor little finite hearts
You can call it a curse if you want / you can call it an affliction
some people call it a “vale of tears”
Whatever you might call it
it is God placed that deep desires in our hearts
so that in searching / we might find Him
The Word of God says / quite simply
“God has planted eternity in our hearts” Eccl 3:11
This is one reason why our present culture is awash with lust and sex
is because we are disconnected with the
arresting / astounding / extravagant / breathtaking / bewildering
astonishing / divine / piercing / shocking
spine-chilling / soul-stirring / splendour of eternity
And we no longer even know that that is what we really really want
And so it is unavoidable
that the human heart / smitten with a longing for eternity
but dislocated from it / and grounded in sad and sorry world
has got to get the best kick out of it
- and the best kick is sex
Sex / as an instant quick-fix / for the pain of the human heart
is not a new discovery
Sex has always been the quickest fix for thirsty disconnected heart
But in earlier generations / it wasn’t as readily available
and certainly not as
shamelessly mutually openly desirable as our generation
and so we see this generation
drenched and dribbling with lust and sex
Because God alone is eternal
He alone / can satisfy our heart’s cry for eternity
And it is only in embracing God / delighting in Him
finding our joy in Him
that we will experience real peace and contentment
Nothing else tastes! / Certainly nothing else satisfies
A second response is this:
If God is eternal / and we’re not
then we don’t have all of eternity to “establish the work of our hands”
We have only the few perishable and fleeting years
here on this planet earth / to accomplish anything at all for God
And we should be counting our days / numbering them
Time is not long / for each one of us
God compares us / to the most humbling thing on this earth / grass
How utterly humbling
we’re not compared to an oak / or at least an elm / or cedar
- but to grass!
Grass / something that flourishes in the morning
but when the winter of old age comes / we will wither
if we have not been mown down by disease or disaster
Is it any wonder why time has traditionally been depicted
by that dreadful figure / of a man cloaked in black
and carrying an hourglass and a scythe
As the sickle mows down the grass
so the scythe comes to remove us from the earth
Not only are we like the grass
Whatever you have accomplished / your greatest moment
your greatest glory / your most distinguished honour / in this life
is as the flower of the grass
By the way / did you know that on that day
when you make your exit out of this world
your stubby wooden pencil / will go on lying quietly there
on your table top / that little thingi / will outlast you
Scripture is right / we are / but grass
God’s eternity is so long / Our years on earth are so few
So short a time / to gain so long an eternity
There are abrasive forces at work / to wear you out
As the years take their toll / your body’s natural defence
which was once almost invincible / will not always be so
As you age the free radicals in your body
will start a chain reaction / like dominoes
they will worm their way /into the membranes of your DNA
and there they will begin their devious work
of grinding down and slowing your cells natural ability
to rejuvenate
And you will became vulnerable to sinister growths
as the cells cease to multiply as healthily
and if nothing kills you / age finally will
Someone wrote
The king must lay aside his crown / step down from his throne
and lie down beside the beggar / in the clods of the valley.
The minister must pronounce his final benediction / close his bible
and surrender his flock to the Great Shepherd of the sheep
The judge must change his judicial robe / for garments of the grave
The lawyer must write his last brief and finish his final legation.
The author his last column / the poet his final verse
the athlete play his last game / the musician his final note
The actor must play his last scene and leave the stage forever
The laborer must leave his plow in the field
his axe in the woodland
and give his brawny stalwart frame to the grave
The soldier must march for the last time
and pay the supreme price for liberty and the grim ordeal of war
The mother must leave her chair tenantless
and her helpless baby alone
and the innocent playful child must drop his toys
and with his tiny arms grapple with death”
Comes to ever man / every woman
The point is this:
If we come acutely aware / that each single day that we live
is pushing us closer to eternity
then knowing that eternity shall be our reward
shall we not be more concerned
with how we live out our time here?
It is a simple fact / that we all perch precariously on the ledge of time
over the edge of eternity
One of these days / you and I will be no more
you make your exit out of time and time will fade into eternity
It will then be a trifle too late
to accomplish one little beautiful act for God
My point is this / if eternity is so long and time so short
then the time to live for God is NOW / while we have “time”
Moses must have thought of something like this
when looking at his greying hair and sagging chin
he turns to God and prays:
“Lord teach us to number our days
so that we may apply our hearts with wisdom”
- so that we may present to You / a heart of wisdom / Ps 90:12
How shall we then live in the light of God’s eternity
and in the light of the eternity you and I will inherit?
We need to live above the petty shallow level of life
Martin Luther King Jr once said in response to a question
“Man is more than a dog / to be satisfied
by the bones of sensory pleasure and showy materialism:
He is a being of spirit / born for the stars and created for eternity
He who lives his life on the shallow level of the social set
deprives himself of life / in its fullness
and makes impossible the fulfilment
of his creative development”
Church / in the light of eternity / let us resolve to live for God
God does not necessarily promise us a long life
David Brainerd died at 29 / Robert Murray M’Cheyne 29
Henry Martyn 32 / Tom Dooley 34 / Bonhoeffer 39 / Eric Liddle 43
Oswald Chambers 43 / Peter Marshall 47
Each of these ones died young
And yet on the day when their time merges into eternity
they have accomplished so much for God
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