Other days, the thought of God’s perfection amplifies my own massive shortcomings. Thinking about my limited time and the sheer size of eternity makes me sober-minded about my faith. It drives me to stop wasting time.

It makes me think about Ephesians 4:15-16 where Paul says, “¹⁵ Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,¹⁶ making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” I’ve found that Christians who wrestle with the concept of eternity are heavily impacted by the weight and seriousness of it.

When we see the shortness of this age in comparison to the largeness of the age to come, it forces us to be more intentional about our lives. We are forced into the humbling reality that our days here are numbered and it would greatly benefit every one of us to get ready to meet God in an all-out effort.

Psalm 90 speaks of eternity, which is a “period of time without end.” It is the oldest psalm in the Bible.  It was not written by David, but by Moses, who wrote it after Israel’s faith failed at Kadesh Barnea (Numbers 13-14).  You might remember that Israel was condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years until the older generation died off.  In essence, they were on a forty year camping trip.

If you understand that this psalm was written to the tribes of Israel as they were wandering, homeless in the desert, the language becomes clear.

Try to picture what that must have been like: hot, uncomfortable, sandy, dirty, noisy, and dangerous. After I’ve been camping for about three nights in my air conditioned trailer, I can’t wait to get home, take a shower, and sleep in my own bed! After forty years of camping in tents in the wilderness, Israel must have been ecstatic to find a permanent place to call home.  In that context, Moses writes verse 1:

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”

Moses was trying to help God’s People understand this important truth: from the very beginning of time, the Lord Himself, the self-existent God, stands as the greatest protector and the most valuable inheritance for His people.  A nation living in tents was vulnerable to attack.  God was reminding them that He is their refuge in times of danger.  The Hebrew term translated as “dwelling place” is often translated as “refuge.”

The safety for God’s people does not come in the form of houses, castles, or walls. Our safety is not even in deliverance from physical death.  The eternal promise that God’s people have is that God, Himself, is the everlasting stronghold against spiritual death.  He is greater than palaces or mansions.  He is more powerful than a fortified city.

• The hope we have in Him for the future is greater than any material gift He provides in heaven or earth. He is the greatest treasure.
• The security we have right now and in eternity is in Him. He comforts, shelters, protects, and cherishes his people.

In Colossians 3:2-3, Paul exhorts God’s people to “² Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Our life is in God.  Our home is not here.

Foxes have holes to live in. Bears have caves.  Birds have trees.  But, God’s people dwell with their God.  Our lives are “hidden with Christ in God.” This earth is not our home.  The God who is the Giver of good gifts, like houses, beds, and showers, is far greater than anything else.

#1 Our Greatest Treasure is not What God Provides, it is God Himself.

The people of God have always felt like strangers in this world. They have always felt that they aren’t contained by the structures made here on earth.

• According to Numbers 33, Israel camped in forty-two different places during their time in the wilderness. But no matter where Moses and God’s people lived, their dwelling place was not in tents, but with the Lord. Our home is not here, but with the Lord.
• What was true of ancient Israelites is true of us today. Churches over the years have been burned down and abandoned and crumbled to pieces, but God’s people remain strong. They know that no earthy structure or church building is their dwelling place. Our hope in not in structures, our God is not contained by four walls. He is eternal! Our hope lies in dwelling with God for eternity.

Buildings, dynasties, and world powers shift and decay. God’s people will never be touched by the finger of decay.  Our dwelling place is with God in His eternal kingdom.

The concept of eternity is difficult for us to grasp. Time has a beginning and an end.  Being so well-acquainted with time, we are accustomed to things starting and stopping.  However, eternity is contrary to time.  By definition, eternity is an unchanging duration that has no boundaries.

The promises and principles in the scriptures are established upon the teaching that God is an eternal being. He has no beginning and He has no ending.  Eternity is so pervasive in the Biblical text that we can’t fully understand the scriptures without a concept of an age that never ends.  God’s eternal nature is either assumed, implied, or taken for granted nearly everywhere in scripture.

The idea of endlessness is to the kingdom of God what carbon is to the kingdom of nature. Carbon is present everywhere in nature and supplies life to living matter. Everlastingness is present everywhere in scripture and gives meaning to Christine doctrine.

Here are just a few examples:

• God’s love is said to endure forever (Ps. 136). God could not love forever if eternity could end.
• God’s covenant with us is everlasting (Genesis 17:7). God can’t fulfill his everlasting covenant if His time runs out
• The Life we have in Christ is eternal (John 17:3). Life isn’t eternal if it ends in death or non-existence.
• God’s knowledge is infinite or beyond measure (Psalm 147:5) If God’s knowledge is infinite then He knows how to exist forever. [We’ll look at this more next week]
• God never changes (Mal. 3:6). If God stopped existing, that would be a HUGE change in who God is. That’s a problem because the Bible says that God does not change. [ We’ll look more at this is a few weeks]

In fact, I’m not aware of any principle of the Christian faith that would keep its significance if the idea of God’s eternity was extracted from it.

#2 God is Eternal and He is Unaffected by Time

Our text says in verse 2, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

The phrase “from everlasting to everlasting” could be translated to say “from vanishing point to vanishing point.” A vanishing point is a term from the art-world that refers to a distance so far and so small that, from our perspective, parallel lines seem to converge. We can’t see anything beyond that point. The psalm suggests that if mankind were to look so far back in time that nothing else can be seen, God is there.  If mankind were to look as far into the future as our minds could conceive, God is there.  God exists beyond our greatest conception of time.

We learned last week that God existed in perfect fellowship with the Son and the Spirit before anything else came into being. The Genesis account recalls that God existed before time began.  In fact, God created time, then put it into motion.

• God existed before He formed the sun and the stars.
• He was in control before He ordained the Laws of Physics.
• God was perfectly in order before he created math.
• He was ruling as God when the earth was “without form and void.”[2]
• He was God “Before the mountains were brought forth”.
• He existed before there were angels in heaven and before generations of mankind began to walk on the surface of the earth.

Time marks the beginning of existence as we know it, but God existed before time and time does not apply to Him.  God is not merely old, He is “timeless.”  He exists outside of time and unaffected by it.  There are three scriptures that come to mind when I point out God’s totally different relationship with time:

1. In our text, jump down to verse 4. Moses writes, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” Have you ever closed your eyes for a minute and then woken up several hours later? A watch in the night is a three to four hour period during a time in the day when people would normally sleep. It is a short amount of time that goes by in a flash. To God, a momentary watch in the night is like a thousand years in his sight.
2. 2 Peter 3:8b says, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
3. God indicates that time isn’t just passing by quickly for Him, but that he exists at every point in time at the same time. Revelation 22:13 says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

The Christian author, C.S. Lewis explained God’s interaction with time like this:

Think about a sheet of paper that extends infinitely in every direction. Then on that paper, draw a line about an inch long to represent time.  When you started pushing your pencil, it was the beginning of time.  When you lifted off, time ended.  All around that short line, extending infinitely in every other direction, is God.  As the line begins and ends in the context of that infinite expanse so time begins and ends in the context of our never-ending God.

God exists outside of time and can be at any point in time at any time. He is the God over time!  Sometimes the scripture puts God’s relationship with time in terms we can grasp.  For example, the four creatures around God’s throne in Revelation were declaring day and night, ““Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” [3]

We see past, present and future as three separate eras, but don’t take the comments in Revelation 4 to mean that God is extremely “old”. A better way to understand this verse is that God is currently in yesterday, in the present, and in tomorrow.

Admittedly, I am going to try and explain something to you that I can’t ever fully understand. Right now, God is at creation, He is working in our families, and He is ushering in His millennial Kingdom. God is sovereign over time.  Time does not constrain Him.

AW Tozer says that “God dwells in eternity but time dwells in God. He has already lived out all our tomorrows as He has lived out all our yesterdays.” Since God is uncreated and exists apart from time, He is not affected by the succession of consecutive changes that we refer to as time.

The fact that God created time and existed at the beginning of time is not so difficult to comprehend. However, the fact that He exists at the beginning of time and at the end of time simultaneously is not easy to grasp, but we see it in the scriptures.  God spoke through the prophet Isaiah and said, “…I am God, and there is no other;     I am God, and there is none like me, ¹⁰ declaring the end from the beginning     and from ancient times things not yet done…” [4]

God can predict the future because He is in the future. He can declare the end from the beginning because our God, the Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and the End, can be present at both the end and the beginning of time at the same time.

God is all powerful; part of His unlimited power is the ability to manipulate time and space in any way that suits His purposes. He is more awesome than you can possibly imagine!  In stark contrast with God’s timelessness is man’s brevity.

#3 God’s Days are Beyond Measure, but our Days are Numbered

I think a great illustration of this reality is the man called King Tut. Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh who rose to power around 1300 BC, assuming the throne at an early age. He was likely a powerful, wealthy, and influential leader of his time.

In spite of his influence, his rule only lasted about a decade (approx. 1332-1323BC). After ten years of wealth and power, this young, powerful man returned to dust. Little more than mummified dust is all that remains of his body today.

The Bible says that God formed us from dust and to dust we will return. Look at Psalm 90:3, “You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” Here the absolute power of God is contrasted to the utter frailty of man.  Genesis says that God created our bodies out of dust and our text today says that our bodies return back to dust at His command. Spurgeon said that “God resolves and man dissolves.”

Observe how God’s actions are characterized. There is intentionality behind the words.  It does not say that man returns to dust by nature, luck, or fate.  It says that man lives and dies at the resolution of God’s will.  He is the great author, sustainer, and taker of life.  He is powerful and we are reminded that our days are numbered.

Look down at verse 12. Moses writes, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” God’s eternity is so long and our years are so few. How could a man ever prepare for eternity with so few days to do it? The days are short and eternity is endless.

Moses is reminding us that we can’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow might be too late.  Our brevity compels us to get right with God today.  Moses was an old man when he wrote this psalm.  He was crying out to the Lord to help him make the most of his time.  He didn’t want the knowledge of eternity to be wasted on him.  Instead, he wanted to be ready to meet his King and Master at any moment.

The biggest issue you and I have to face is not what happens to our bodies, but what happens to our souls. King Tut spent his short life worshipping a false, man-made God. He spent his allotted days pursuing the wrong things. It is doubtful that he spends his eternity dwelling with God.

The sobering reality is that our lives go by in an instant, in a “blink of an eye.” We could waste our precious years pursuing all the wrong things.  We could enter eternity far away from God’s pleasure and joyful presence.  If we don’t use our days carefully and wisely, we could find ourselves under God’s eternal wrath.

Psalm 102:25-27 says,

“²⁵ Of old you [God] laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. ²⁶ They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, ²⁷     but you are the same, and your years have no end.

This suggests that God is not obligated to sustain the era we are in.

#4 When This Age is Over, our God Will Still Remain

I don’t like to quote secular scientists too often because, over time, they tend to change their minds. (Flat earth, the sun was inhabited by aliens, leeches had medicinal properties, etc.)  When they change their minds, it makes me look stupid if I was relying on their misinformation.  With that being said… According to the latest calculations, our Sun will eventually run out of fuel, it is about half way through its life.

The sun burns slightly brighter every year, so if it continues the way it’s going, in about 1 billion years, it will be too hot for life on earth to continue. If the increasing temperature of the sun doesn’t kill our planet, scientists say that in a few billion years or so it will become a red dwarf and completely engulf the earth, destroying all life here on this planet. If our dwelling place with God wasn’t eternal, that would be a hopeless future for us!

If the sun blows up, the earth burns up, and the solar system flies away somewhere into the Milky Way, God still remains and God’s people will still be dwelling with Him. Psalm 90:2b says, “…from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

Life Application

Where will you be in a hundred years? In a thousand years? In one billion years when our solar system burns up? Will you be dwelling with God or not? Like King Tut, are you spending your numbered days in all the wrong pursuits?

Moses wanted to express to us that God’s people have the promise of an eternal dwelling place with God Himself. It is a promise better than a new earth or heaven or paradise itself.  We have the ability to know and dwell with the Giver of gifts and the Maker of heaven and earth. We can know God and dwell with Him forever!

Let me leave you with a last thought: there is great hope in the promise of eternal life with God.  At the same time, there are some terrors that come to mind once we are made aware of the truth behind these verses. What if we don’t know God? What if our future dwelling place is not enjoying God’s pleasure, but instead, sitting under God’s wrath?

The prospect of our short days is terrifying if the future is not secure. God’s word says that you can begin eternal life right now.  It is as simple as reaching out and taking the free gift that God has extended to you.  Romans 10:9 says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If it is your heart’s desire, you can simply say to the Lord something like this:

I want to know You and I want to dwell with You forever.  I’m tired of living for myself, I want to live for You.  I want my numbered days to count in eternity.  I want to live a life that pleases You so that when we meet, You will say, “well done.”

I also know that I can’t do that on my own. I want Your help.  I want to begin a new life with You as the focus and my greatest treasure.

[1] Ps 16:11

[2] Genesis 1:2

[3] Rev 4:8

[4] Is 46:9b-10a