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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.
God's Timeless Eternity
Series The Doctrine of God
| Sermon ID | 22421204159773 |
| Duration | 41:30 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Isaiah 57:15 |
| Language | English |
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