Please take your Bibles and turn with me to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, and we will be considering together the words of verse 15. Isaiah 57, verse 15, the title of our sermon is, God's Timeless Eternity. For thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. We're especially interested in those opening words. For thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. We're all very familiar with the proverbial fish in the fishbowl. We use that to describe someone who doesn't understand or can't see outside of their immediate context. So we look from the outside on the fishbowl and the fish that are swimming within the tank, but the fish know nothing of life outside of the world of water. They live in water and know nothing beside that. And it's a picture that we use to describe the inability to see outside of a certain context. And in many ways, it's suited to the theme that's before us this evening, because we are time-bound creatures. We are temporal. We live as those who swim in the world of time, and we, like the fish, cannot even conceptualize. We find it difficult to think outside of those boundaries. We have difficulty taking into our hearts and minds the idea of eternity, of God being the eternal God. And yet the Lord reveals it to us. And so here, the metaphor breaks down, because God has given to us truth. He's given to us light. And He enables us to at least peer partially into what belongs to His glory as the eternal God. Yes, thinking about God in His timeless eternity boggles our minds. Yes, it does. But it also humbles our hearts, and it causes us to fall down in worship before Him. Here in Isaiah 57, you have the Lord unfolding for Israel. In the opening part, something of the blessedness that belongs to the righteous, and then he goes on to reprove the Jews for their idolatry. And then he turns and begins to give promises of mercy. And it's within that context that we have this fairly well-known passage, one that kind of breaks into the chapter, pouring light in upon us. Against the backdrop of that idolatry and the propensity toward idolatry, the Lord comes and says, this is who I am. Look upon me. Look upon the one who is high and lofty, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy." So we're thinking this evening together about this idea of God inhabiting eternity, God's timeless eternity. And perhaps it's helpful to begin with a comparison. You can think in terms of three categories. We have, for example, children. Animals. Animals have a beginning and an end. That is to say they begin to exist and then they cease to exist. Then we have in the second bucket, angels and men. Angels and men have a beginning but no end, right? They begin to exist, but then that existence is sustained, and it endures everlastingly. But then the third category is God. And God has no beginning, and God has no end. Indeed, God has no middle, no succession of moments, as it were, as we'll begin to see. And this notion of the Lord as the eternal God is one that is woven through the whole length of the Bible. Indeed, it undergirds so much of what we find in the Bible. We sing about it in the Psalms, like we will here in a few moments in Psalm 90, the opening of Psalm 90. You see it all through the prophets, like the prophet Isaiah here. You'll see it in Paul's epistles. For example, in our study of Romans, in the first chapter he references it, and in the last chapter he references it. We see it in many other places throughout the epistles, and then even the last book of the Bible, where you have the opening chapter, a couple of references to God and his eternity. So this evening, children, we're moving on. If you think back to your shorter catechism again, question four, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. So we've thought about what it means for God to be infinite, and we've thought about what it means for God to be unchangeable. Now, this evening, we're focusing on this word, eternal. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. So we're still in the early stages of thinking about the divine glory of God. We're going to note three things this evening. First of all, we begin with the fact that God is eternal. You need to understand what that means. God is eternal. God's eternity is part of His beauty. Indeed, you see the beauty of His eternity in connection with all of the other attributes that are revealed to us. Why do I say that? Because all of God's other perfections, without eternity, would be imperfections. That's what I mean. All of His other perfections would, in fact, be imperfections. if it was separated from His eternity. We can speak, as the Bible does, of His eternal love, His eternal justice, His eternal goodness, His eternal wisdom, and so on. If these things were not eternal, then they would not be fully and comprehensively perfect, would they? Now, we recognize, of course, that we are looking at each of these discrete perfections or attributes as they're revealed to our creaturely minds, but they're undivided within the being of God. So, of course, His power is eternal, and His love is eternal, and so on, because these things can't be separated, as we saw in our study of God's simplicity. When you think of how these things fit together, especially children in your catechism, God is a spirit infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. We learned that God's infinitude, Him being infinite, means that He has no boundaries. There's no limitations that are upon Him. And yet time is a limitation. Time would contradict the notion of being infinite. Time speaks of past and present and future. It speaks of a succession or series of moments. We can measure time, right? That's the reason we can measure it is because it does have limits. We can measure it in seconds and we can measure it in years and we can measure it in millennia and so on. And so the fact that he's eternal, the fact that he's infinite, requires this idea of him being eternal as well. The same thing with regards to him being unchangeable or immutable, because Time also involves change. Time involves change, necessarily, by definition, and yet God is immutable. God is without fluctuation, without change, and so He can't be bound by time. He's the unchanging God. He's outside of time, as we'll see. He is eternal. We thought about the fact that he is simple, that is, he's not composed. Things that are composed are things that are in time have to involve composition. And yet God is without parts. He's not composed of anything. He's one. And He is instantaneously whole in His being. And so all of these things are fitting together as part of the glory and the beauty of God. There are no limits. There is no change. There are no parts. And there is no time for God. You think of how this comes out in Exodus. You'll know the passage. We've referenced it a few times already. In Exodus 3, where the Lord reveals himself to Moses as, I am that I am. And that divine glory shines in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is the eternal Son of God. It comes out, for example, in John 8 and verse 58. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am. We're seeing the divine glory. This is the eternal son who is with the eternal father and dwells in perfection in eternity itself. He says, before Abraham was, I am. Only the eternal son could say that. I mean, Adam, if he had lived long enough, children, he might be able to say, in the words of this text, before Abraham was, I was. That would be true. Before Abraham was, I was. But Adam could never say, and no one could ever say, except for the eternal Son. Before Abraham was, I am. This is the eternal Son, the one who is self-existent, the one who is self-sufficient, who has the perfect possession of boundless life, as we saw previously. And so God is eternal. The Bible makes this clear. It reveals to us this fact. And we think of all that pertains to God. We speak, for example, of God's eternal decrees. The decrees of God that are rooted in God himself, in eternity, before time, before the creation of time and space. And when we as creatures seek to reflect upon how God is revealed, truth about his eternal decrees, we think in terms of order. And so we'll speak about the order of decrees. God created things. And then, you know, you have the fall, and you have all of this, right? The decree to save, and so on and so forth. There are these order of decrees. But when we speak that way, we need to recognize, we should recognize if we don't, that that order is not temporal. We're not thinking in terms of time. God decreed this first, and then he decreed this second, and he decreed this third. No. We're thinking in terms, when we say the word order, we're thinking of logical order, not temporal order. You know, the conceptual order of how God has decreed things to come to pass. Now, of course, they unfold in time. And so the creation of the world comes first, before the fall, and so on. They unfold within time. But the reason this is important, and we're trying to tie, even though these are sometimes difficult concepts, we're trying to tie it together, God's eternity with His other perfections. If you think back again about God's simplicity, God's will Right? Which is what we're thinking of in terms of decrees. God's will is identical with his essence. It's not something separated from it. It's not a part of God's essence. Right? His will is identical, like, just as with his attributes, identical with his essence. all that pertains to God, including his eternal decrees. And you'll note in our passage, the Lord comes to us as his people. He speaks of himself as being high, as being lofty, one that is transcendent, above, beyond us, that inhabiteth eternity. And so it's not just using spatial language where the Lord is far above and beyond us, but also temporal language. He inhabits eternity. He's distinguished from us as creatures. He, the creator, is distinguished from us in this sense. He inhabits eternity. That is to say, he dwells in one indivisible point of eternity. One infinite moment, if you will, of being. He is the eternal God. So God is eternal, but we can break this open a little further and get even further clarity. Not only is God eternal, God is timeless. And this begins to push us a little, but it also adds some light. God is timeless. It is God's timeless eternity. So the question is this, is God in time? So think about that for a second. Is God in time? And the answer is clearly, dogmatically, definitively, unequivocally, the answer is no. God is not in time. God created time. So at the beginning of Genesis when we read that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, not only did stuff, spatial stuff like the heavens and the earth come into existence, but time came into existence. Both time and space are created simultaneously, referred to it as the space-time continuum. The created universe, all of its constituent parts, everything that it includes, is within time. So God created time. God is the one who created it. Now, we have a lot of difficulty here, and understandably so. We're speaking about the Lord. We can't think without temporal language. We're like that fish in the fishbowl. We can't think without temporal language. You know, even when we begin to talk about God being timeless, we tend to fall back on temporal language, which is understandable. You'll remember, because I've quoted it before, perhaps you'll remember, you know, Augustine, he says, what is time? And he answers by saying, well, and he's not trying to be tricky or cute, he's being honest, he's saying, what is time? Well, if you don't ask me, I know. But if you ask me to explain it, I don't know. He's on to something. He's bumping up against something. God transcends time. God himself transcends time. And so people will ask the question, you know, what was God doing before time? And in a sense, that's a confused question. It's not a bad question. People are trying to think and understand God's Word, not to be faulted, but it stems from confusion, right? We're speaking of before. That's temporal language. Before time. You know, the point here is that God is outside of time. He is timeless. So the Lord has no beginning, true. He has no end, true. But he also has no series or succession of moments within his being. And this is why, you know, we have things like Psalm 90, where it's saying, thou art from everlasting to everlasting God. It's what Peter is getting at, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When he says in 2 Peter 3, you know the words, in verse 8, But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. What is he doing? He's saying, Our idea of the succession of moments and and seconds minutes years months and so on These things while they pertain to us do not pertain to God's being you know There's no difference between a thousand years and one day for him you experience time in succession, so children, what happens? You wake up and you begin to rub your eyes and you get up and you take off your pajamas and you put on your clothes and then you go downstairs and you eat breakfast and have family worship, whatever it is, you go to school work and you go through the whole day and there's all sorts of things happening and then you go to bed at night, it's time to go to bed, you lie down and go to bed at night. Everything in our life is, as I said, in the world of time itself, not so for the Lord. Remember, time is measurable. God is not measurable. God must be timeless. He's not measurable. You children have birthdays and you recognize the beginning of a new year on January 1st and so on. It's not true of the Lord. Sometimes people will speak of God being eternally present. And again, we appreciate what people are getting at, you know, they're grasping for something, but really even that is inadequate, right? Present is temporal language. So saying that he's eternal present, it's better to say that he's timeless. that he's outside of time altogether. The Lord, in other words, sees everything altogether. Maybe one helpful thing is this, we tend to think, okay, God's without beginning, he's without end. And what that means is, and what we do in our minds is we kind of, we stretch out time and we think, well, the Lord can see it all at once. Right? He can stretch it out and he can look at this end or that end, you know, all at one time. It's stretched out successively there. When it's really more than that, the Lord sees everything together. There's no discrepancy for him. He sees all of it. He's created it. He's not limited to looking at one instead of another part of history and so on. You know, we think of, when we think of everlasting life, we look into the future, and look into the future, we think, okay, trillions, billions of years, quadrillions of years, and you're not anywhere near the end than you were when you began, and we think about these things until, you know, our thoughts collapse from exhaustion. But that's not good enough, because time is created. The furthest that we can look back is creation, and we're lost after that. And we can comprehend, I think, more easily time with numberless days. But we find it much more difficult to think about a being, God, without the bounds of time at all. That's who the Lord is. God has no past. He has no future. Time does not pass within the divine being. He sees it all simultaneously. This comes out, I think, a few chapters earlier in Isaiah 46. I think verses nine and 10, he's speaking about these, he's speaking about, it's in the context of dealing with Israel and so on, anyway. Verse nine, remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is none else. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. A similar concept in Acts 15, I think it's verse 18. So the Lord has no deadlines. The Lord is never in a hurry. Like I said, we as temporal creatures can only think in a creaturely way. And so the Lord comes and He stoops to us and He speaks in ways that we can understand and comprehend and enables us to peer into the mystery and beauty of who the Lord is. But children, God is not old, nor is God young. He's without maturity. It's not like plants that grow up or people that are born and who die and so on. The reason that this is important is because if God, if God is not timelessly eternal, then he wouldn't be God. And so this isn't a trifle. This isn't something that's just intellectually stimulating. This is something that is necessary, that belongs to the very identity of who God is in his being, and it demands us to be humbled under it. It demands our worship. It demands us to be brought low and to recognize how infinitesimally small we are in all of our own limitations and how grand and glorious God himself is. This is a God who knows nothing new. There's nothing new to him. All that he is, he is eternally. All that he is, he is eternally. And so we see that God is timeless. He inhabits eternity. Thirdly, God being eternal, God being timelessly eternal, also points to the fact that God has eternal glory. God has eternal glory. Now, Think again of ourselves. I mean, we sing in Psalm 90, as we will in a few moments, we sing the opening of Psalm 90, verses one to four, and it's speaking about the eternal nature of God. And immediately after that, it turns to us. And you look, I think, beginning in verse three, actually. It says, Psalm 90, thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, return ye children of men, for a thousand years in thy sider. But yesterday, when it is past, and as a watch in the night, thou carryest them away as with a flood. They are as asleep. In the morning they are like grass, which groweth up. In the morning it flourishes, groweth up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth. For we are consumed by that anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Look at the language. We're like a flood. We're like a sleep. We're like grass that grows up and is cut down in the course of one day that withers away. Our existence is so different from who the Lord is. When we come to meditate on our own lives before God, on the edge of eternity, and we think about the perfections of God in his timeless eternity, his eternal power and mercy and wisdom and justice and knowledge and so on, we're immediately held in check, aren't we? The folly, the utter, irrational, wicked folly of ever censoring God. of ever questioning Him, the Ancient of Days, the folly of sin and sinning against Him. The fact that God's eternity is part of His glory, it is an eternal glory, is both the best news ever and the worst news ever at the same time. It's both the best news for us And the worst news for us. Think about the worst news. The worst news relates to the fact that there is eternal damnation. There is eternal damnation. And these are not things that we take delight in speaking about, but they're necessary. As you know, Jesus spoke more about hell than anyone else in the Bible, more about hell than heaven. And it's interesting, isn't it, that the Lord works through the proclamation of that message. We all know of Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. But that is a sermon that is entirely out of step with modern reformed and evangelical Christendom, isn't it? And yet it was that message that the Lord blessed by the Holy Spirit to bring about an overwhelming outpouring of the Spirit and the revival and conversion of countless numbers within New England, including ministers and others. What was set forth in that sermon? Men and women, boys and girls under the stroke of an eternal God. Charnock says that God's eternal nature is more fearful than His power. You know, when you think of eternal damnation, you think of the power of God to damn and to subject people to an endless and everlasting torment. But he says, no, it's his eternal nature that is more fearful than his power. The power is sharp, but eternity is perpetual. And it is the perpetual nature of it that is so dreadful and that is so fearful. But we also have the best news ever, and that is that there is, for the believing people of God, eternal life. For the believing people of God, there is eternal life. Now, this is a great comfort because it means, as Paul says, to be forever with the Lord and to be basking in his mercy and goodness and faithfulness and the eternal nature of those attributes forever and ever. They never wear out. All of His covenant promises confirmed. We look at the church, we look at the Christian, its weakness. We're in this world distressed and distracted, and we want to sometimes prop up ourselves rather than bringing ourselves to lean upon the rock, the eternal God, who is infinitely able to sustain his people. I mean, this thought of God being eternal kills the pride of man, how little we know of God, how little we see. and how little we are and all of the power and hubris and pontifications of this world, they're all a drop in comparison to the infinite ocean of God's being. It kills as well the love of the world, as we'll see more in a moment. So you think of this eternal life all obtained through the eternal son incarnate. So eternal life is secured by the Lord Jesus Christ, and the salvation of God's people is rooted and grounded in Christ's divine glory. It is Christ's eternal divinity as the Son of God that answers the sins against an eternal God. So the sins of God's people that are against an eternal God have to be answered by the sacrifice of one who himself has an eternal divinity. His divine glory is essential for the salvation of God's people. And it's essential as well for all that that salvation entails, including communion with God. You think of salvation includes joy that never ends. We sing about it at the end of Psalm 16. Pleasures forevermore. Pleasures forevermore. That is, pleasures that never ever cease to satisfy. Pleasures that never cease to satisfy. You say, well, That is difficult to grasp. Where is that in the world? Where do we find that in our experience? Where do we find pleasures that never fail or cease to satisfy? We know that all the pleasures in this world are both short-lived, so it can be a meal, it can be time with a person we love, it can be something simple like looking at a sunset, it can be all sorts of things. They're all short-lived, and They all fall short. There's some enjoyment of them, but they never truly gratify. They never penetrate, as it were, the soul. They can never fully satisfy. And so we look, where? Where in the world? You know, money, and fame, and possessions, and relationships, and all of these other things. They all fall short. Where in the world can we find never ceasing, pleasures that never cease to satisfy. And the answer is the only place to find this is outside of the world. The only place that this can be found is outside of the world. The Lord promises in the redeeming mercies of gospel salvation, He promises Happiness. He promises pleasure that cannot fade. Not just that will not fade, or may not fade, or should not fade, but pleasures that cannot fade. It is impossible. Why? Why is it impossible? The answer is because God himself is the joy. You see, this timeless eternity of God has far-reaching implications. He provides joy that is unceasing, and it is unceasing because its object is God himself, and God is eternal. Now, this is not the way that so often we find people thinking. but we need to contradict it biblically. We need to contradict forthrightly the modern tides and the pull, the gravitational pull that is found so often in the church. And we need to say listen and listen carefully. Believers do not come to God so that he can direct you to something better than himself. Believers do not come to God in order that He might direct you to something better than Himself. And yet, that's the way the church thinks. All of the toys and trinkets and other things, the temporal things of this world, these are the things that preoccupy the affections, the thoughts, the ambitions, the pursuits, and so on and so forth. And they're deemed sanctified. They're deemed sterilized because they're gifts from God and so on and so forth. How we have turned things on its head as if the gifts supplant the giver, and as if the gifts could in any way compare to the giver. No, the Lord does not direct us to something better than himself. The fact is that people are far too spiritually nearsighted. People are spiritually nearsighted. The pleasures of this world will have the Lord plus these things. And what really means is all of these distractions and diversions are the main thing. And then we have the Lord as well to secure, you know, the deliverance from hell and so on and so forth. And it is a contrast in comparison between the pleasures, the temporal, fleeting, transient pleasures of this world, and eternal pleasure that is to be found in the Lord Himself, both here and sinlessly hereafter. I think we have it wrong. The fact is that for some of you, your desires are not too strong. That's not the problem. Well, we have desires that are too strong for gratifying sexual appetites or gratifying, you know, these other pursuits and ambitions and so on. No, the problem is not that your, your desires are too strong. The problem is that your desires are hopelessly too weak. hopelessly too weak, because you have set your hearts on all of the wrong things. We need desires for the Lord Himself. The Lord gives us this best of all of the best news, and that is that the believer who comes by faith to the Lord Jesus Christ is brought into saving communion with an eternal God, and that means spending eternity enjoying God. Now for those who have to say to themselves in truth, I have no enjoyment of God here. What makes you think that you will have enjoyment of him hereafter? No, salvation brings spending eternity enjoying God. How is it possible to spend eternity enjoying God without it ever getting old, without it ever getting familiar, without it ever becoming dry, without it ever coming short in some way? The answer is because God is infinite and eternal. That's why. He is infinite and eternal. The believer's happiness in eternity can't perish. It can't even be diminished because God can't perish and God can't be diminished. And so for the believer in eternity, enjoying communion and the beauty and glory of God is always fresh. It is always vibrant. It is always glorious. As I've said so often, seeking to persuade you, it is always growing in its intensity of satisfaction and joy. That mysterious tension of full satisfaction and yet desiring more and receiving more. and finding even greater satisfaction and intensity of joy, and more, and more, and more for all of eternity. This is communion with God. We don't think of God as a God of minutes or millions, not just as a God that is above time, but a God who is infinite and eternal. And when that begins to break into our world, when these biblical theological concepts, the revelation that God has given to us, begins to grab a hold of us, savingly, believingly, then the stuff of this world begins to fade. All of the concerns that we have that seem so overwhelming begin to shrink. The burdens that we are called upon to shoulder for the Lord, all of the sudden become lighter. This is the impact. We are called to serve Him. To serve ourself is utterly useless, but we are called upon to serve Him, to enjoy Him, to glorify Him. His is one of eternal glory. and the people of God who are brought savingly to rest in Christ, the eternal son incarnate, who has atoned for their sins. They are brought into everlasting life. That is something experienced right here and right now. And it is something that endures without end in glory. They are being brought to have a share and being able to enjoy the glory that is God. This is the eternal God. The Lord comes to his people in the midst of all of their temptations, Israel's temptations, to run after this idol and run after that idol. And the Lord comes and breaks into their little world, and he says, thus saith the high and lofty one that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy, setting forth the eternal glory of himself, as a means of pulling the eyes of his believing people by faith and fixing them on him. And so we're able to sing in Psalm 27, one thing I of the Lord desired and will seek to obtain that all days of my life I may within God's house remain that I the beauty of the Lord behold me and admire and that I in his holy place may reverently inquire. This is the desire of the Lord's people. Here is the one who inhabiteth eternity. Let's stand together for prayer. O gracious and eternal God in heaven, thou art the one who is from everlasting to everlasting God. The one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. O Lord, grant that we would be given a glimpse to peer into this divine glory, to be humbled by it. Oh, that we might be like those in this text who are of a humble and contrite spirit. Give to us, O God, an appetite that would be stirred, that our hearts would be set not upon the things of this world, but upon Thee, the One who is outside of this world, both outside of the spatial limitations of this universe and outside of the temporal limitations of this universe. O Lord, grant to us that we would worship and adore Thy glory, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.