Well, we continue looking through these attributes of God as we find them revealed in the Scriptures. And as we do so, I just want to read again from the words in Psalm 104 that we sang. Of him my meditation shall sweet thoughts to me afford. And as for me, I will rejoice in God, my only Lord. The aim, of course, as we look at who God is, is that we may have sweet thoughts about him and that we might glory in him. And this evening we look at this attribute of God, that God himself is eternal. As we've been studying these properties of God, we've seen that we are not able to comprehend God. We are not able to know him exhaustively and fully. It's not in our capacities as human beings. We're small, we're weak, we're finite, we're not smart enough. And as we look at these attributes that are high and above us, sometimes all we can do is marvel at our great God and to praise him for who he is. And yet as we've been studying these, we've seen that there is that element of prayer. We're here at prayer meetings studying these. These attributes help us to approach God, knowing who he is, and therefore what we are to ask of him as a result. Last week we saw that God is self-existent. We saw that he exists in and of himself as God. He's not dependent on anyone. He has no beginning, so he is not dependent upon anyone to bring him into being. He has all life in himself. He's not dependent on anyone to give or sustain life. He is self-sufficient. And in that sense, God is completely unlike us. We have a beginning. We're dependent upon our parents to bring us into the world. We're dependent upon food. We're dependent upon sustenance in this world. We're always finding ourselves dependent on other people. God is different from us. And we see that also in this attribute of God's eternity, his eternal nature. He is eternal in and of himself. Now this is a high doctrine. It's a hard doctrine to understand. It's an unsearchable one. For eternity, it sort of fails to stay in our grasp. We can't hold on to it. And yet, everyone sees that God is eternal. Romans 1 verse 20 shows us that it's one of these things that natural man can know about God. As he sees creation and providence and as he has his conscience, he sees that God has eternal power. These invisible attributes are clearly seen, Paul says, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. Why? So that they are without excuse. So everyone out there has some knowledge or can think to some degree about eternity, that God is an eternal God. And yet, which one of us understands eternity? Which one of us can grasp this attribute of God? Hopefully, at the end of this evening, as little as we think about this topic, scratching the surface, hopefully we can go out from this place God is and emboldened to pray to this eternal God. Let's look first of all at a few scriptures that speak about God as eternal. 1 Timothy 1 verse 17 says, Now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. There we have it, that God is eternal, immortal, and invisible. In Isaiah 57 verse 15, Isaiah says, for thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. There we have, we see where God's dwelling place is. He inhabits, he completely fills eternity. In Genesis 21, Abraham, knowing that God was eternal, even in those early days, built for himself an altar at Bathsheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. You see, he had that understanding that God would exist forever. He'd watched people die. He knew that man's life came to an end, and yet God transcends that all. He is everlasting. And then Isaiah 40 verse 28. Have you not known, have you not heard, the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. Again, Isaiah could look around at people fainting, people dying, people passing away and yet the Lord God is everlasting. It's a difficult concept for us to understand that God has no beginning and no end. I don't know about you if you thought about this as a child and people are trying to tell you that God had no beginning. and he shall have no end. And you try to think back, and you say, well, if I go back one year, God was there, God existed. If I go back two years, God was there and he existed. And you keep going back and back and back, and God always has existed. As far back as you go, you could spend the rest of your life going back the years, and God existed. Go infinitely back into the past, God exists. Go infinitely forward into the future, and God exists. He is from everlasting to everlasting. And that's what we're told in Psalm 90 verse two that we've read. Psalmist looks at the mountains. I love looking at mountains. They're strong, they're stable, they look ancient. They've been there. Do you believe scientists? They've been there millions of years. Of course, we know that's not true. Thousands of years, but even still, they've been there a long time, these ancient mountains. And the psalmist says, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. In the book of Daniel, perhaps you remember the vision that he had of God as this ancient of days. Are we to think of God as an old man, as a grandfather figure with grey hair? I don't think that's the point of what Daniel's trying to get across here, this ancient of days. It's not saying that he's old. That's not what he's bringing to our attention. It's the fact that he is from everlasting, that he's eternal, that he's ancient in his days. God had no beginning and therefore we're unable to ascribe to God an age. We were all born at one time and we count the years from our birth and then you write on forms what age you are, your date of birth and so on. We celebrate our birthdays. We know our age from that fixed point of our birth until now. That's our age. Yet God does not have an age, for he hath no beginning, and he shall have no end. Our measure and God's measure is entirely different. And so in Job 36 verse 26, behold God is great, and we do not know him, nor can the number of his years be discovered. I think we have to sometimes just sit and think about these verses. fully and exhaustively. We can't discover how old he is, for he is eternal. He is utterly unlike all of us. I wonder perhaps whether the best way to think of eternity is to think of God's duration eternally or infinitely put backwards into the past and infinitely put forward into the future. Maybe that's the way you think of it yourself, of God's eternity. As far back as you can go and even further he was God and as far forward as you can go and even further he is still God. Well that element of duration, the fact that God had no beginning and shall have no end is only part of the eternal nature of God. There's actually another dimension to it. It's the fact that God transcends time, that God is outside of time, that God is greater than time, and that time itself cannot constrain God. Let me explain what I mean by that. Time constrains each one of us here. We're all governed by our watches, by the clocks, by the calendar. You know that yourself. There was a time when this meeting was to begin and you maybe had to rush to get here on time. And if you were late, the meeting would start without you. You're governed by years, by seasons in the year. There are things that you must do and then you move on from it and you do something else. If you're wanting to meet with someone, you arrange a time and you need to watch the clock to make sure you get there. We're always rushing. from one thing to the next governed by time. The time comes at night that we have to go to bed. We can't sustain ourselves any longer to stay up. We need our rest. Ecclesiastes chapter three tells us to everything there is a season. There is a season for everything in life. We're governed by this principle of time. And even try to think of eternity No matter how hard you try, you will always think in terms of time. Because you can't think otherwise. God has created you with this chain, as it were, of time. And we can't think any differently. We're like a fish. You take a fish out of its water, it no longer survives. It can't survive in air. It breathes in the water through its gills. And so in a similar way, we can't exist in our minds, we can't exist outside of time. We can't even conceive of it. It's so unnatural to us. We're governed by these principles of time. And yet, God is not so governed. God is not restrained by days, weeks, years. God's not governed at all by time. In fact, as we read in Psalm 19, verse four, for a thousand years in your sight, are like yesterday when it's passed. And the similar verse in 2 Peter 3 that we read, but beloved, do not forget one thing, that with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day. What does that mean, these two verses? Well, they simply show us that God does not measure or is not bound by time as we ourselves are. As we have our watches, that count seconds and move on minutes and move on hours. And as we have our calendars that move on days and months and years, God does not need those things. He's able to work as he sees fit, for he is eternal and he transcends all of our time limitations. In fact, was it not God himself that created time in the beginning? Genesis one, verse one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But what did he do there? He started counting time. There was evening and there was morning the first day. There was evening and there was morning the second day. There was evening and morning the third day. And so on and so forth. He establishes for us the weekly pattern. Six days of work, one day of rest and worship, and then we are to count time ourselves going on from there. God created time in the beginning, but before that, was there time? Was there time before the beginning? There was eternity. God is timeless, as it were. He's outside of our bonds. And really, we should be deeply and profoundly humbled by that, that we can't even comprehend this great God. We spoke last week about how God revealed himself to Moses. I am who I am. And we saw that in that phrase, God is saying that I exist in and of myself and I'm not dependent on anyone else. But there's another thing that's included in that phrase. It's the fact not only that God exists in himself, but that God exists eternally in and of himself. That he is who he is. He always is who he is. In fact, if you were to use a French Bible, they would translate that word as l'Eternal, the Eternal One. You know in our Bibles that we have the word Lord, sometimes with capital letters, and that's to express that divine name. Sometimes we say Yahweh, Jehovah. We don't really know how it was meant to be pronounced. Remember, the Jews didn't take that name of God upon their lips. They didn't speak it. And so it's been translated into English as Lord, with capital letters. But in French it would say l'Eterne, the Eternal One. And that's okay to say. In fact, as we sang from Psalm 29, in our Psalter, it used the word Eternal to translate that word Lord. The voice of the Eternal, doth asunder cedars there. If you were to compare it to your Bible, it would say the voice of the Lord. But it's okay to say the eternal because that word Lord carries that concept in it. God exists eternally in and of himself. He's outside of all the constraints of time. If God is eternal, as we've maintained, then also Christ is eternal. And all too often people have failed to see that Christ is eternal. Our neighbours, our soon to be neighbours up the road, Jehovah's Witnesses are building there, they don't believe that Christ himself is eternal. They see him as the first of the created beings, and yes they'll say he's the greatest of the created beings, yet don't they rob him of the glory? Jesus says of himself in Revelation 1, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, who is and was and who is to come. In John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the word. He already was there. He already existed at the beginning of time. When the first thing was created, hence starting time itself, Jesus already was. He is the eternal one. So if God is eternal, Christ also is eternal. No matter what these cults will say, we don't believe it at all. Scripture is clear that the whole Godhead is eternal. But it's not merely God in his essence. It's also God's attributes. Every one of God's attributes is eternal with God. Psalm 100 verse 5 tells us, for the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations. The mercy of God is eternal. The mercy of God endures. It will last forever. It had no beginning, and it shall have no end. His truth, which endures to all generations, it was true, And before the beginning, it's true. After the end, there's no beginning or end to it. Psalm 119, verse 142, your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. Isaiah 26, four, trust in the Lord forever, for Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength. And perhaps one you know well, Jeremiah 31, three. The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." Now, shouldn't those verses humble us also, knowing that God, in all of his attributes, is eternal? Take that one about love. God's love for us is an eternal, everlasting love. It had no beginning, and it shall have no end, in eternity. he set his love upon us, that we might be holy and blameless in his sight. Nothing shall be able to separate us from that love of God in Christ, neither death nor life, nothing at all, for he has loved us with an everlasting love. If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that love was yesterday, and that love is today, then that love also will be forever. Shouldn't we marvel at this eternal God who loves us. He didn't just love us. He didn't just greatly love us, but he eternally loved us. Contrast all of what I've said with man. Man is finite. Man has to end. Our psalm that we've read says that we have 70 years, perhaps 80 years at best. At the end, it feels like it's just a sigh. How often do you feel like time has just escaped you? It's just come through your hands all too quickly. How often do you go to a funeral of someone and they die and you think, it wasn't their time, it was too quick. And yet, they have died. Death comes to us all. We're finite, we're limited. Ecclesiastes 3, again, says that for everything, there's a season, there's a time to be born. and a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what we've planted, a time to kill, a time to heal, and so on and so forth. We're governed in these cycles. Take that one about planting. There is the time to plant the seed, and there's a time to harvest it. And you can't swap those things around. The time comes to plant. If you miss it, you've missed out. It won't grow otherwise. It has to go in early. And then the time comes to harvest. It won't survive in the winter. You can't harvest it in the winter. You have to harvest it in the autumn. There's a time and a season for everything. And Ecclesiastes 3 goes on to say that God has made everything beautiful in its time. There's a glory in the way God has created these things to be. And these things are important to us. And yet, Ecclesiastes 3 goes on to say there's something far more important. because God has put eternity on our hearts. God has put there for us a fact that we can't escape. There's something more important than planting and harvesting. There's something more important than killing in war and healing in medicine. It's eternity in our hearts. Because we die. And after death, there's eternal life, or there's eternal destruction. You see, our souls are immortal. Our souls will continue beyond the grave. They will exist after our bodies decay. And they exist either in eternal life, or in eternal destruction. And perhaps, you might say, well, if the scriptures speak to us of eternal life, and eternal destruction. Does that mean that after we die, we become like God, who is eternal from everlasting to everlasting? When I receive from him eternal life, will I be like him? Well, that's not quite what it means. Stephen Charnock says that angels and souls were nothing before they were something. Yet, they will never be nothing again. There was a time when you did not exist. There was a time when your soul did not exist. And yet, when you die, your soul will not die. It will continue to exist. It's immortal. It goes either to eternal life or to eternal destruction. We don't go back to nothingness. And yet, that doesn't make us eternal like God. For we still have a beginning. God has no beginning and he shall have no end. And so even though we may receive eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn't make us identical with God. It doesn't mean that we take on that attribute of his eternality. No, instead, we enjoy fullness of days at the right hand of God. We enjoy everlasting life going on day after day, week after week, year after year, generation after generation in heaven. Or, on the other hand, if you don't have faith in Christ, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, in a lost eternity in hell. You see, the eternal nature of God demands that we ourselves are preparing ourselves for eternity. that we think about where our souls will spend their time. Ecclesiastes 12 verse five, remember your creator before the silver cord is loosed or the golden bowl broken. All those are symbols of death. Remember your creator before your time is done. If you've got this silver cord that is your life, for some people it's short, for some people it's long, but it will be cut. We all must die. And the eternal nature of God tells you you need to think about what is after death. Where will you exist? Thomas Watson says that eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset. It's a beautiful day. You think about a hot summer day. It doesn't end. It doesn't end, it goes on. But eternity to the godless is a night that has no sunrise. You see, it's the opposite. It goes on and it goes on and it goes on the same way, but there's no hope and there's no light at the end of it. And our Psalm here, verses 10 to 12, tell us something similar. They tell us that in verse 10, the years of our life are 70, perhaps 80, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger? For as the fear of you, so is your wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. It's very clear. We all only have one life to live. And that life is short, comparatively speaking. We don't know how short it will be, but we know that it's short. And we're to number our days. We're to count the number of them, yes. We celebrate our birthdays and so on, yes. But that's not what it's saying here. Number your days. Think soberly about the years of your life. Think about what you're doing with your time. How are you redeeming it? How are you using it? Are you using it for sin? Or are you using it for righteousness? Are you living it in the light of eternity? For there is indeed that everlasting reward in heaven. And there is indeed that unquenchable fire where the worm does not die and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. These things are the realities ahead of us. And the eternity of God demands that you prepare yourself for it. that you think about it, that you number your days, and that you go to Christ, that he would carry you into eternal life. Of course, this whole topic of the eternity of God is difficult, and it should humble us, and it should give us that awe. There are some other uses for this idea of the eternity of God. I think one of them, no one likes a child that speaks to someone older and tries to argue with them. They should know their place. They should listen to the wiser one. The one with grey hairs is the one that you should listen to. They've lived longer. They've experienced more. And so how foolish it is for us mere infants in comparison to the ancient of days. How foolish it is for us to complain against God. to moan against his judgments, to think that we know better than he does. The eternity of God says that we should humble ourselves and recognize our place. Again, as we sang in Psalm 104, if we truly understand this eternity of God, then we'll sing to the Lord as long as we live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. That should be a delight for us. We know the existence of God is from everlasting to everlasting, and so the part of time that we have, as short as it is, we spend it praising his eternal name. But it is that topic of prayer that I want us to keep before us, and I want us to keep coming back to each time we study an attribute of God. As we look at this eternal nature of God, we should be emboldened to pray to him. In fact, our psalm shows us this. If you follow the logic in verses one and two of the psalm, it's because the Lord has been our dwelling place in all generations. Because he is from Eberlambsting to Eberlambsting, verse two, therefore the psalmist turns in verse 13 After thinking about the eternal nature of God and how man has about 70 or 80 years, he turns to God and says, return, O Lord, I long and have compassion on your servants. We talk about revival. We talk about how we want it. We read about it happening in the past. We long for it now in the present. It's the eternal nature of God that should embolden us in our prayers for revival. That as he's been our dwelling place from everlasting to everlasting, how long, Lord, how long must this continue? Return, satisfy us early with your mercy. See, thinking about the eternal nature of God makes Moses here plead earnestly, fervently with God, crying out for him to act and to act now. In Habakkuk 1, the everlasting nature of God let Habakkuk conclude, we shall not die. You remember how he says that God is from everlasting? He's the eternal one. And therefore, we in the church shall not die. And you see, Habakkuk was emboldened in his prayer to God. He couldn't understand what God was doing. He couldn't understand the troubles. He couldn't understand why wickedness was abounding. But he knew that God was eternal. And so he said, we shall not die. And it emboldened him to keep praying to God, even though he couldn't understand all that was happening. He kept pleading that God would answer his prayers. In 2 Peter, as we read, it was because of the eternal nature of God that a thousand years are as a day, and a day as a thousand years, that Peter says that the Lord is not slack to keep his promise, that he's long-suffering to bring us to repentance. You see, the eternal nature of God led Peter, no doubt, to pray earnestly, for the lost, because as God is long suffering with them, he hoped they would come to repentance. And then also we find ourselves in trouble. We find ourselves needing strength. We find ourselves needing deliverance. And Deuteronomy 33 verse 27 gives us a prayer for that time. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath you are the everlasting arms. He will thrust out the enemy before you and will say, destroy. Then Israel shall dwell in safety. See, the eternal nature of God helps us in our prayers. It gives us the boldness to ask for salvation and for deliverance from our troubles. It emboldens us to pray for the lost. It helps us remember that even though we live in difficult days, God is not changed. It helps us also to cry out to God for revival. May the Lord help us. Even though we can't comprehend fully this nature of his eternity, may he help us to use it for his glory. Amen. Let's stand and pray. Lord God, we confess that your ways are unsearchable, that we can't understand. We feel all so often like we're the foolish man who does not know and cannot understand. But we thank you, gracious God, that you have revealed to us your nature in your word, that you've revealed all that we need to know. We thank you that you're eternal. Lord God, help us to think afresh on that, Help us, Lord God, to see this part of your glory, and help us to leave with shining faces, even as Moses did when he met with God. Help us to be more bold in our praying to you, remembering, Lord God, that we're finite, that we have a short time on this earth, and yet you are eternal, immortal, and invisible. the only wise God. Help us, we pray, and forgive us for our all too many sins. We pray in Christ's name, amen. We sing in closing from this psalm, from Psalm 19. And we're singing verses one to seven, Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in generations all. Before thou ever hadst brought forth the mountains great or small, ere ever thou hadst formed the earth and all the world abroad, even thou from everlasting art to everlasting God. We'll sing verses 1 to 7, and we stand to sing praise to God. For there has been a wedding made since generations old, before the heaven has recorded the wedding dance with our song. Ever the hearts of the earth, and all the world above, Everlasting art, Everlasting art. Let us hope in this passion, love that is mortal's air, of the truth that loves his heavenly sons, of faith Return! Because of the sinners of him no glory for thy sight. That is their game, when it is past, where none of us shall As with an o'erflowing weather, heav'nly as the night, Namo'valokiteshvaraya. At Morgan's lowly chiseled rooms, God our God did appear, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.