God of Eternity

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You know when you think about it, it's amazing how little we really understand about the world around us. I was reminded of that this week as I got in a little bit to something that's way above my head, and that is a theory of time. You take one of the most common issues of life, and that is time. We talk about it all the time we talk about not having enough or when we're bored having too much. But that is not something that's easily understood in fact, the encyclopedia identifies as it as one of the world's greatest mysteries. No one can exactly say what time is. In fact, some of the world's greatest minds have theorized about what it is from Aristotle to Einstein from Zeno to Newton they've debated, and I'm not going to drag you through that because I'm not sure I understood everything I read, but there is no consensus about what time really is.

My personal favorite was Groucho Marx, who weighed in and he said time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. I don't know what that means, but it was about as profound as the other things I read. While we may not understand what it is, we agree on this, we are all driven and controlled by it. This afternoon I did a little exercise and my wife wondered what I was doing I just walked through my house and counted the number of watches, clocks and other time measuring devices in my house and I counted 43.

We feel the tyranny of time it seems to slip away silently sort of like the hour glasses sand. One author summarized the tyranny of time in these poetic words that were anonymous but found engraved on a sundial. He said, "The shadow of my finger cast, divides the future from the past; before it stands the unborn hour in darkness and beyond thy power, behind its unreturning line, the vanished hour no longer thine. One hour alone is in thy hands, the now on which the shadow stands." That is how we all feel about time. Our lives are absolutely driven by it, and we feel a sense of urgency. I don't know about you, but the older I get the more it seems like time picks up speed. That joke about being on the downhill side seems to have some reality to it. When you think about our lives and time, it's both amazing and comforting to realize that God is not driven by time that God is eternal; absolutely uninfluenced, unmoved, unhurried by time.

That's what we want to discuss tonight the issue of God's eternity. Eternity is also called by some God's infinity, with respect to time infinity simply means unlimited, God's unlimited when it comes to time, He's not limited in any way by the issue of time. That's His eternity. But I like Wayne Grudem's definition it's this, "God has no beginning in or succession of moments in His own being, and He sees all time equally vividly. Yet God sees events in time and acts in time." Now we're going to unpack that definition over the time we have together tonight, so if you don't catch some of it don't worry you hopefully will by the time we're done, but this is the reality of God's eternality or His eternity.

There are a number of references we can look at, let me just give you a couple of general references. You won't need to turn there. I'll throw them up here for you. Genesis 21:33, we're told that Abraham called upon the name of the Lord, and notice it says the Everlasting God. In the Hebrew text, the Everlasting God is like an apposition, a modifier of Yahweh. This is part of who God is. The Lord, Yahweh, is known as the Everlasting God. Job 36:26, says, "Behold, God is exalted and we do not know Him, the number of His years is unsearchable." Can never discover the number of His years. By the way in the context of Job 36, it's the reason they can't be searched out is because they're beyond number, they're infinite.

Let's turn to Psalm 90 verse 2, and we're going to turn to this psalm several times tonight because it's really one of the most profound and poetic descriptions in all the scripture about this attribute of God. It comes from the pen of Moses. We'll come back to verse 1, but notice verse 2. Here is the statement of the reality or the doctrine of God's eternality, "Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the Earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." I love the way Tozer describes this verse. He says, "Think of it this way, it's from vanishing point to vanishing point." He says, "The mind looks backward in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapse from exhaustion." You ever tried to think about eternity? That's exactly what happens. You can go out so far and then the mind collapses from exhaustion. He says, and when that happens, God is at both points unaffected by either from vanishing point in the past to vanishing point in the future, God is there.

In Isaiah chapter 41 verse 4. Isaiah writes of God, "I am the first and the last." In other words, there was nothing before Me, and there'll be nothing after Me, I am the first, I am the last. Revelation 1:8 puts it in a similar form, but in the Greek text "I am the Alpha and the Omega." Those are the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. I am at the beginning, there's nothing before Me. There's nothing that can predate Me and I am at the end and there won't be anything that's after Me. And He goes on to say, who is, talking about his present existence, who was, talking about his past existence, and who is to come the almighty. Now those are general statements about God's eternality.

But I want us to take that definition that I gave you a moment ago and let's talk about what really are the three components. When we say that God is eternal, what do we mean? There are basically three things we mean and let's look at them together. The first is that God had no beginning. In other words, His existence extends endlessly backward. No beginning again, our mind can't comprehend that to put it negatively, you can't say of God, He has existed x number of years. It can't be said, because He had no beginning. He's eternal. There are a number of scriptures that drive home this point and again I'll just put them up here for you. We're going to look at some specific passages later, that I will have you turn to, but let me just sort of run these past you here. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God," we talked about that before very profound statement before anything else was, there was God. Psalm 93 verse 2, "Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting." Here the reference is obviously talking about God's eternality in the past, He had no beginning. Your throne is of old You are from everlasting from eternity past. Psalm 102 verse 24 and following "I say, "O my God, do not take me away in the midst of my days, Your years are throughout all generations." Here it is, "Of old You founded the earth, and the heavens or the work of Your hands." So when he says, 'Your years are throughout all generations,' and then he goes backward he's talking about God's eternality in the past. God had no beginning.

Daniel 7:9 that famous passage about the Ancient of Days. "I kept looking until thrones were set up and the Ancient of Days took His seat." What a profound name for God, no beginning, the Ancient One of Days. No one predates him. "His vesture was like white snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire." You get a little picture of what you see in Ezekiel 1 here, the sort of Throne of God Almighty. Habakkuk 112 says, "Are you not from everlasting? O Lord my God my holy One" in other words, You've been around forever, You had no beginning. And then one New Testament reference John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," it should say. That first phrase 'in the beginning was the Word' could be translated this way. When all that we know began, God already existed, or the Word already existed. When all that we know began, the Word already existed, no beginning.

A second component or a second factor of Gods eternality, not only did He have no beginning, but He has no end. God will exist endlessly into the future. You can't say God will live x number of years into the future. You can't define it because it has no end. He has no end. Psalm 9 verse 7, "The Lord abides forever, He has established His throne for judgment." The point here in this verse is that we should never fear that the wicked are somehow going to escape what they deserve because they can't outlive God. They will never endure longer than God, so don't worry. God will in justice deal with the wicked because He abides forever into the future is the idea. Judgment is coming in the future because He has no end in the future. Psalm 48 verse 14, "for such is God, our God forever and ever; He will guide us until death." Again, looking into the future about the character of God. Psalm 102, the rest of the verses there say "even they" that is the heavens and the earth "will perish, but You endure; and all of them will wear out like a garment; like clothing You will change them and they will be changed. But You are the same, Your years will never come to an end."

Now so far, no one who is orthodox disagrees with what I've just said. God has no beginning. God has no end. On the next point, the third component, most in the history of the church have agreed with what I'm about to teach you by far the majority, it's the oldest. There have been some who come along recently with another approach. But I think this is the best definition of God's eternality. Not only does He have no beginning, not only does He have no end, but in God in His being there are no succession of moments. What does that mean well? Let's unfold this a little bit. You can't say about God, for God it is now 2004 because that would locate God within time. This sort of clarification of the character of God came out of the Arian controversy back in the fourth century. Arius came along, a heretic condemns a heretic, he came along and he said this, he said there was a time when the Son was not. He attacked the Deity of Jesus Christ. He said there was a time when Jesus Christ didn't exist. So the council came along and they gave some definition to eternity past, and this is what they said, Father and Son existed before time, as they looked at the biblical data, they said Father and Son existed before time. They created time and they are above time or essentially timeless. Timeless.

Let's define this a little more, though what do we mean by no succession in the being of God? There are three sort of clarifying comments that I think will help you see it. First of all, God is just totally outside of time. God's perspective on time is different from our own, and that's because God created time. Turn back to Genesis chapter 1. Let me show you this, Genesis Chapter 1 and notice verse 5. God created light, verse 3; He saw the light was good. He separated the light in the darkness, verse 5, "God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day." Time as we know it was created by God on the first day of creation.

Now notice down in verse 14. There is on the fourth day a further clarification of how this is to work. Verse 14, "Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night," so He created night and day. But now He's going to put lights or light holders if you will in the heavens. And watch what He's going to use them for, "to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;" In other words, God says, I'm going to take the light that I've created, I'm going to put it into light holders, I'm going to put it in the sky, and it's going to mark out certain realities about what we call time. It's going to mark out the issue of day and night; it's going to define what is day and what is night. It's also going to define the seasons as we know the heavenly bodies do, and then it's going to define years. God determined when He decided not to leave this sort of ethereal light everywhere, but to instead put light in light holders. He did it for a specific purpose and that was to set it up where we understand the passing of what? Time. He created time if God experienced time before creation, let me just say this, it was very different from ours today, because none of the things that you and I measure time by existed.

Let me show you another passage turn to psalm 90 verse 4. Again, Moses has just told us in verse 2 about the reality of God's eternity. Verse 3 "You turn man back into dust and say, Return, O children of men." In other words, we're the opposite of God in the sense that our temporal lives are brief and pass away in a moment. Verse 4 "For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night." You know some people have read this verse both Jewish and Christian interpreters and have been tempted to say oh look at that a thousand years is this one day so maybe God is working on a sort of a thousand year calendar and we can sort of branch history into thousand year increments, and that must mean that we're getting near to the Sabbath if you will, the seven thousandth year. Can't do that, that may be tempting but notice the end of the verse 'or as a watch in the night.' So the point is if these are figures of speech to teach us something that's true about God. A watch in the night was simply a three or four hour period over which a guard was responsible to stand watch. The night was usually divided into four segments and each of those segments when the guard watched over the city and made sure no one came and attacked it. Those were called watches of the night and so the scripture says a thousand years in the sight of God is like a single day when it passes by or as a three or four hour period in the night. The point that Moses is making is this God does not perceive time like we do. What may seem long to us is very short from God's perspective.

One more verse I want you to see here turn to Second Peter chapter 3. And we'll come back to this passage again later, but let me just show you verse 8. "But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day." Now the context here is Peter is answering the scoffers who doubt that Christ will ever return. I mean after all, it's been so long. It was long, then imagine what the scoffers do with today, and you've heard them as I have. Now at first glance this verse seems identical with Psalm 90 verse 4, and the second half of it is essentially the second half of it, saying the same thing is Psalm 90, but the first half adds a new thought. "One day is as a thousand years." In other words, any one day from God's perspective seems to last a thousand years. What does that mean? It means that every day seems to be the present to His consciousness forever. It's as if that one day never ends, but is always experienced. Wayne Grudem writes this, "In God's perspective, any extremely long period of time is as if it just happened. And any very short period of time, such as one day, seems to God to last forever. It never ceases to be present in His consciousness. Thus, God sees and knows all events past, present and future with equal vividness."

And that brings us to our second point God sees all time equally vividly. Here's a chart that I thought was very helpful that Wayne Grudem had in his Systematic Theology. I've reproduce for you here to sort of show you what this means. You have God, and then you have a timeline of history; you have creation, the life of Christ, 2004 right now, you have the ultimate final judgment and then you have out into infinity and it's as if God has one field of vision, catching all of those events at the same time. Let me give you a couple of analogies. C S Lewis said he likened God's eternity to this, imagine a sheet of paper, like this sheet of paper imagine it extending infinitely in all directions. It's a sheet of paper that never ends. Then if you were to take your pen and you were to make a short line somewhere on that infinite sheet of paper with a beginning and an ending that's time. God sees all of that in one great sweep. In that entire line, God looks at us as we're looking at this line I've projected up here in one field of vision, He sees it all at the same time. Another analogy that I think may help you is imagine, a short film, a short movie. Normally when we watch a film or a movie whether it's home video or something else it passes by frame after frame and you watch it in succession frame after frame, you see it unfold. That's like history. That's how we live our lives isn't it? It happens as it were in frames. That's how we live. The present is like one frame. But if somehow you could take that film and you could pull it out of its container and lay it out where in one field of vision you could see all of those frames in essence, you would see all of the events in that film at one time. That's how God sees history. He sees all of the events of human history at one time in one field of vision.

Charles Hodge wrote, "All external events are ever present to the mind of God. He sees how they succeed each other in time. It's not that he's oblivious to the fact that its frames. But as we see a passing pageant, all of which we may take in at one view. You see God sees the beginning of time and the end of time, and everything in between all at one time." So, when we think about God's not having any succession of moments in his own being, God is totally outside time. God sees all time equally vividly, and thirdly, God relates to us and acts in time. In other words, while God is able to see time from the outside that doesn't mean He's oblivious to what happens in time, God knows what happened on Monday of this week. God knows what happened on Tuesday. God knows that for us yesterday was Saturday, August 14, 2004. He sees events in time and He acts in time, but He is unaffected in His own being by the passage of time.

Let me show you a couple of passages that drive this point home. The first is Galatians 4. Galatians 4 Verse 4, "But when the fullness of time came" in other words, when God saw that the time in human history was just right. "He sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law." God understood the flow of human history and there's a lot at some point we'll talk about how God had set up human history for it to be just the right time for Christ to show up on the scene because of the common market language like Greek and a precise language like Greek and a number of other factors geopolitically and at some point, we'll talk about those. But God observed that, He knew it was the right time and He acted based on His observation of time. Same thing is true in Acts Chapter 17, Paul makes this point in the Sermon on Mars Hill, Acts 17 verse 30, Paul says, "Therefore," at the end of his message he's kind of getting to the point he says, "Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance." There's a specific time in the past. God saw and acted toward people a certain way, but "God is now" in the present, "declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent because He has fixed a day in the future in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed having furnished proofs to all men by raising him from the dead." God is unaffected by time, but God sees events in time and acts in time, responds to what happens in time. So that when we talk about God's eternality or God's eternity, that's what we're describing, God has no beginning. He extends infinitely into the past, God has no end, He will always live, He will always exist, and God is outside of time, unaffected by time, but He sees it vividly. In one sweep of His vision, He sees all of human history and He relates to us and acts toward us in time.

But that brings us to the issue of why, why does it matter? What are the ramifications of God's eternity? And I have been personally greatly encouraged by this. I trust you will be as we sort of go through a few things that the scripture teaches us are results of the reality that God is eternal. First of all it guarantees God's absolute sovereignty, because God is God, and because He always was, and because He always will be, there will never be a time when God won't be in charge. That is a great comfort. The world in which we live seems so often out of control, but because God stretches from vanishing point to vanishing point and because He is God, He will always rule. He will always be on the throne. Jeremiah 10:10 calls God the everlasting King. He will always be the King. Daniel 4:34, Nebuchadnezzar says "God's dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation." God's eternality guarantees that He'll always be in charge. Luke 1:33, in the wonderful promise the angel gave about the birth of Christ; "He will reign over the House of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end." Because God is eternal, He'll always be on the throne. First Timothy 1:17, "Now to the King eternal." An eternal King, the King literally, it says as I've put up here, into the ages, the King into the ages speaking of eternity future. First Timothy 6:16 describes God as the "One who alone possesses immortality" and look at the ramification of that at the end of the verse "to Him be honor" and what? "eternal dominion." Because He is immortal because He's eternal, He'll always reign.

There's a second ramification and that is a knowledge of God's eternity should strengthen our confidence in God's promises to bless us. Sometimes we lose confidence because time passes and it feels like God isn't acting as soon as He should toward us to bless us. Doesn't it? Have you ever experienced that? You ever feel like time passes and things that you expected to happen don't happen and where does the time go? My favorite illustration of this principle is Abraham and Sarah. You know we know almost nothing about what happened to Abraham in the first 75 years of his life. We know almost nothing about what happened to Abraham in the last 75 years of his life. Almost everything recorded in the scripture about Abraham is from the age of 75 to 100. The 25 years from 75 to 100. That's really what we know about Abraham. And it was at 75 that God showed up and promised Abraham that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars of the heaven. You know 25 years, which is how long he waited, 25 years is a long time to wait for children if you're young and just got married.

Think about that add 25 years to the year, you got married and if you're married and think about how long that would be to wait. Some of you have hope of getting married sort of pick a year that you hope that'll happen add 25 years. That's a long time to wait for children. But imagine if you're 75, you've given up hope already and God shows up and amazingly, God says, you're going to have a child, and ultimately your descendants will be more than the stars of the sky, the stars you can see with the naked eye. You'd be pretty excited. So you know the first month roles passed and. Sarah's not pregnant, second month, third month, first year, second year, third year, fifth year, you're now 80. You know you're starting to look at the biological clock again, and you're thinking this isn't looking real promising. 25 years later, God responds and gives Abraham and Sarah the child they were waiting for.

Both Romans and Hebrews, I love this, both of those books, Sheila and I were noticing this recently; both of those books describe Abraham when Isaac was born. They describe him as 'as good as dead.' I mean he had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. It was just a matter of time. From a human standpoint, it looked like it would never happen. But God's eternity means He's never in a hurry, God marches to the beat of His own drum. We find ourselves in the midst of a period of trials and difficulty, and we forget that God's sense of time is wholly different from our own. We go through trouble for six months or year a couple of years, and it's like God, where are You? Trust God to do what He's promised. Just don't expect Him to do it on your timetable. God's eternity means He's never in a hurry. He has a plan. He has a time frame and He will do it in His time.

There's another ramification, and that is the knowledge of God's eternity should strengthen our confidence in God's promises to judge. This is the dark side of that. I'm reminded of the Old Testament example of Ahab and Jezebel; you remember the story of Naboth's vineyard. The prophet shows up and says, alright, you took Naboth's life. You arranged to have him killed. Here, where you have committed that atrocity, Jezebel, the dogs will eat your body and drink your blood. That'd be tough to hear. That would be hard to know that that's in your future. I'm sure every time Jezebel heard a dog bark for the next few months, she was terrified and afraid. But time passed the first month went by nothing had happened, second month, six months, a year nothing had happened. There was probably a time when she began to think that the old prophet was out to lunch and it wasn't going to happen. Twenty years after God said it would happen, it's recorded in the Kings that had happened just the way God said it would. Twenty years is a long time to wait for God's judgment to fall, but as RG Lee who preached a famous sermon on that whole story, called Payday Someday said, "The judgments of God often travel very slowly, but they have leaden heels and they always crush completely." God's eternity means that God will keep His promises both to bless and to judge. It'll be on His time.

Peter makes this point turn back now to Second Peter Chapter 3, Peter makes this point about the coming day of the Lord. Verse 3, he says, "Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water." Now we won't go into the all of Peter's argument here, but essentially he's saying, you have fallen into the trap. These mockers have fallen into the trap of uniformitarianism that is; everything's always the way it's always been. Nothing's ever different, life marches on. It's always the same, and he says, oh, no you forgot something very important, it hasn't always happened that way. Remember the flood. God once flooded the entire world and destroyed every living thing, except for eight people and the animals that were in the ark.

Verse 7. "By His word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire," That's a frightening picture. I recently saw a photograph from California. Some friends of ours were near in fact, as it turns out it was it was John's son in law and his daughter, who had to be evacuated because there was this hundred foot high wall of flame coming down the mountains, and I have a picture on my computer of that fire racing down the canyon and it dwarfs the houses. Peter says someday the present heavens and earth are going to be destroyed. Verse 8, "But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day." God looks at time a lot differently than we do verse 9, so don't misunderstand. "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some counts slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." But it will come. Do you ever wonder if justice is going to be done? If God is going to step into history and do what He said He would do? Are you ever attempted to doubt that? Well God's eternity should remind you that that will happen, but it'll happen when He determines because He's never in a hurry. He always works on His perfect plan.

Number four, it provides an anchor for our storm tossed lives. The knowledge of God's eternity provides an anchor for us when we live driven by time. Psalm 90, as we've already looked at a couple of times is a celebration of God's eternality of His eternity. And notice back now in Psalm 90 verse 1, the verse we skipped before, notice what Moses says, he says, "Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations." And then verse 2 he reminds us of the fact of God's eternity. Our dwelling place. What is he saying? God is the one secure home for our drifting time driven souls. He's the same in every generation. A W Tozer wrote, "He can be and continue forever to be the one safe home for His time driven children."

You remember the illustration of that infinite sheet of paper and that little line that represents human history? Well you and I are the tiniest little blips on that line in terms of our temporal lives here in the earth. But our security comes from knowing that in eternity past before I was ever a gleam in my father's eye - God chose me, He knew me. He decided to create me, He chose me. And He drew me in time to Himself, and He has planned in the coming ages according to Ephesians 2:7, to lavish me with His grace. That's His plan. So my life in terms of life here in this world is like a little infinitesimal blip on that timeline that short line in the scope of eternity. But the wonder of it is I can find refuge and calm and hope in the knowledge that God knew me in eternity past. He saved me in time, and He plans in eternity future to lavish His grace upon me for all the coming ages. What an anchor for the soul! Number five, by the way before I leave number four think about this. When you're feeling rushed for time, when you're feeling like you will never live long enough to do all that you want to do when you feel like you're slipping off of the edge of eternity, remember that God provides an anchor. His eternity provides an anchor for our souls in the midst of that kind of situation.

Number five, He provides a place of refuge in times of trouble. Notice Deuteronomy 33 verse 27, in the blessing of Moses he ends talking about the character of God, and he says in verse 27, "The eternal God is a dwelling place," In the context, I think it's best to translate this word refuge. Let me show you why notice verse 26, he's talking about God riding through the heavens to the help of His people. And so verse 27 is probably better translated, "The Eternal God is a refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and He drove out the enemy from before you and said, "Destroy!" So Israel dwells in security." Listen. Moses is reminding the people that God because He is eternal, is a constant never failing refuge for us in times of trouble. It's like the proverb says the name of God is a strong tower, the righteous runs into it and is safe. When you come in trouble, when you find yourself in trouble when you find yourself at the bottom, the reality that God is eternal and that His life never began, never ends and engulfs your life reminds you that He can help you in the midst of trouble. The eternal God is a refuge, and when you find yourself without strength underneath are the everlasting arms. I love that.

Finally or actually two more number six, God's Eternity drives us to Christ. You know life as I mentioned just seems to go so fast. Why is that? Why does it seem that way to us? Because Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "God has placed eternity in our hearts." God has given us a sense of eternity, and so it just doesn't seem right that our lives here go so fast. To be made for eternity and forced to dwell in time is a tragedy of huge proportions. Tozer writes, "All within us cries for life and permanence, and everything around us reminds us of mortality and change." Do you ever feel that way? Our only hope then is in the gospel turn to Second Timothy chapter 1. God's Eternity in our transience brings us here, Second Timothy 1:10, we'll start verse 8, "Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of the Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity." So we're talking about God's purpose and His grace they have now "been revealed by the appearing of Our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." God is eternal. He has put within our hearts, a sense of eternity, and yet our lives here are so brief the only way that sense of eternity is recovered is in the gospel when Christ enables us to have and share eternal life with God himself. Eternal life in God's presence.

And then finally, and this is my favorite, turn to Psalm 103. For many of you as it is for me a favorite psalm, because it just lays out the truth about God. Notice verse 15, David writes, "As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer." You understand a little bit of this here in Texas, but in California where I was for sixteen years, this image is a graphic one because the spring rains come and with the spring rains come the bursting forth of the flowers. They're on the hillsides you see green break out everywhere. But then the heat comes. June arrives, and when June arrives, the sun comes out. It's brutally hot, and the humidity drops to twenty five or twenty percent and the wind picks up off the desert that dry hot wind. There's no water for the flowers that grew up with the grass to have energy to survive, and in a single day you can see it change from a green hue to a brown one. David says that's just like us. That's how our lives seem to be. Verse 17, but here's the solution. "But the lovingkindness of the Lord," there's that Hebrew word again hesed - God's loving loyalty, His unfailing love, His promise and love to us in the midst of a covenant or a legally binding promise. "The lovingkindness of the Lord is from vanishing point to vanishing points on those who fear Him." God's eternity guarantees that God's grace toward us is as eternal as He is. God's lovingkindness reaches into the past till you can't think any more about the past and God's lovingkindness toward you is unfailing love, His grace toward you reaches into the eternity future until you can't think about it anymore and beyond. "To those who keep His covenant and remember his precepts to do them." What an amazing reality what a great God we serve, and His eternity guarantees all of these things for us. Let's pray together.

Father, we bless You as the eternal God. Lord we can't fully understand that. Our minds have struggled tonight to keep up with the truth You've revealed about Yourself, and yet even while we can't fully comprehend it we can understand enough by Your grace and by the work of Your Spirit to be overwhelmed with Your character, with Your nature that You are eternal, that You had no beginning, You will have no end and that You are not bound by time, but You stand outside of it ordering it according to Your purpose. And Father we rejoice over all of the wonderful implications of that truth that we've look at together tonight. But most of all Lord, we thank You that Your grace reaches around our brief lives and embraces us forever. Lord thank You from the bottom of our hearts, we love You. We want to spend our lives here and our eternity, praising You and giving You glory for all that You are. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.