The Eternity of God
At the beginning of his book Knowing God, theologian and author J. I. Packer said that for him, seeking to write a book about God is like a circus clown wanting to play Hamlet. He felt totally inadequate for the task.
That is what I feel like today as we come to consider the eternity of God. It is a subject so lofty, so enormous, so far above and beyond our comprehension that I hesitate to even address it. Yet God, in his graciousness has given us His Spirit to help us understand these things. He has reached down from eternity and revealed himself to us because He wants us to know him.
So as we open our Bibles this morning, we do so with reverence and awe—recognizing that we’re dealing with thoughts and ideas that are not of human origin, but come from God Himself as he tells us about Himself. And He tells us about Himself so that we might begin to know Him, and to love Him.
1. God tells us that He is eternal.
The Bible uses many names for God—Elohim; Adonai; Yahweh; El-Shaddai, and many others. These names capture some characteristic of God. They describe his attributes.
One of his names is El Olam. Look at Genesis 21:33. Remember that Abraham and his family were nomadic sheepherders, much like the bedouin shepherds who still live in the Middle East today. They lived in tents, and they roamed the land in search of good pasture for their flocks. They didn’t plant crops; they weren’t tied to a specific plot of land.
They never stayed in one place for very long. They were constantly on the move; change was their way of life. And yet against that backdrop, we read in Genesis 21:33…
Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the Lord, the Eternal God. And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time.
Abraham did two things that bedouin generally don’t do:
1. He planted a tree. Bedouin don’t plant trees because they are never around long enough to see them grow.
2. He stayed in one particular place—the land of the Philistines near Beersheba—for a long time. Uncharacteristic behavior for a nomad!
And significantly, while he was there—static, unmoving, watching the tamarisk tree he planted grow larger year after year—he called upon the name of the Lord, El Olam—the Eternal God.
Maybe Abraham had to slow down before he could begin to appreciate the fact that God is eternal; God is unchanging; God exists outside of time.
The Hebrew word “olam” is a word that means hidden, or concealed. If you stand on a high mountain and look off to the horizon, as far as your eye can see, the scenery disappears into the mist. The great distance conceals the details. It’s “olam”; it’s hidden.
The Israelites took that spatial idea and applied it to time. When you look back into the mists of time, you can’t see much detail—it’s “olam”; it’s hidden. But you can know one thing: God—El Olam—was there. And when you look into the hidden haze of the future, you don’t know what is going to happen. It’s “olam”; it’s secret. But you can know one thing: El Olam will be there, too.
In Psalm 90, Moses writes: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting—literally from olam to olam—you are God.” Because God is El Olam—the Everlasting God.
Isaiah calls him that in Isaiah 40:28…
Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God—El Olam—the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
We understand that God is infinite in relation to space. There is nowhere that God is not there. The Psalmist said “Where can I go from your presence?” You are everywhere. And we call that attribute his omnipresence.
Well, think of God’s eternity as being his infinity in relation, not to the dimension of space, but to the dimension of time. God is infinite in relation to time. That is difficult for us to get a handle on, because we are creatures who live inside of time. We experience the events of our lives in a sequence—one follows the other. That’s what time is. And we cannot break out of that pattern.
But God is not bound by time that way. He lives outside of time. He isn’t caught in its current the way we are.
When you take a history course, sooner or later you will run across a chart called a time-line. It’s a straight line that is marked out in years, or decades, or centuries. It’s a helpful way of picturing the sequence of events that took place across that historical period.
Now when you think about the eternity of God, think about God as being like a stretch of continuous form computer paper that is infinitely long. It has no beginning and no ending. But somewhere on that immense stretch of paper, there is a tiny, thin black line drawn. And that line represents the time line of the history of the universe. It begins and ends in less than a millimeter. The paper is there at the beginning of the time line. It’s there at the end of the time line. And it is there throughout every part of the time line. The time line is limited to the paper, but the paper is not limited to the time line. That gives you an idea of what we’re talking about when we talk about the eternity of God.
God lives outside of time. Time is no limiting factor for Him. Moses said in Psalm 90:4…
For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Peter said something similar in 2 Peter 3:8…
With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
We need to remember that God’s perspective is eternal. He sees us, and the events of our lives, from outside of time.
God is like a person standing on top of the CN Tower monitoring the traffic on the Gardiner Expressway. He can see the beginning of the expressway, off to the east where the Don Valley Parkway comes in. He can see the end of the expressway off to the west in Etobicoke. And he can see every vehicle in that line of traffic on the Gardiner. He knows where everything is. And furthermore, He’s controlling the traffic.
But you and I are down at ground level. Let’s say that we’re standing beside the Gardiner by the CNE, and we’re watching that same line of traffic. We experience that line of traffic as a sequence of events. Here comes a red car, then a blue car, then a motorcycle, then a minivan. We have no idea what’s coming round the bend next, because we can only see what’s right in front of us.
And we think, and we act, and we pray from that very limited, ground-level perspective.
But God knows the end from the beginning, because he is El Olam, the Everlasting God. He has an eternal perspective on our lives. And we need to remember that when we relate to him, when we talk to him.
Now the Bible not only teaches us that God is eternal—it teaches us that…
2. God created each one of us to be eternal.
We are not infinite in relation to time as God is; we are finite creatures, and we always will be. The Bible does not teach, as the Book of Mormon teaches, that we will one day become gods.
But we were created to live forever. We are unique creatures in that each one of us had a beginning, but none of us will have an ending. We will continue to exist forever. We will not always be prisoners of time.
Genesis 1:27 teaches us that we are made in the image of God. We bear unmistakable imprints of God’s nature and God’s character in the very depth of our being. We are moral beings because God is moral. We appreciate beauty because God appreciates beauty. We are creative because God is creative. We love because God is love. We yearn for eternity because God is eternal.
But the Bible tells us that we have turned our backs on God. That was was a decision made by the first man and woman, and it is a decision that has been made by every man and woman ever since. We try to live our lives on our own terms, without God. That is what the Bible calls sin.
And one of the devastating consequences of that decision is that we become hostages of time. Time becomes our enemy. And the passing of time has a ravaging impact upon us. It erodes our vitality; it saps our strength. And ultimately, we succumb to it. We die. We were created to inhabit eternity, but now we’re trapped in the jaws of time.
We are like fish in an aquarium yearning for the ocean. We’re like birds in a cage pining for the sky. We are constantly running up against the boundaries of time, of aging, of the terrifying march of the years. But we yearn for eternity. We read in Ecclesiastes 3:11…
God has also set eternity in the hearts of men…
God has placed within us the desire to reach out beyond our own mortality and transcend time. This is what makes people want to build buildings and empires and leave legacies that will live on beyond them. This heart-yearning for eternity is what makes the thought of shriveling away and dying so alien and foreign and terrifying to us. We have eternity in our hearts, but we’re trapped in time.
Now just because we have turned our backs on God does not mean that He has turned His back on us. We ignore Him, but He doesn’t ignore us. And that brings us to our third point.
3. God entered time to give us eternal life.
The central message of the Bible is that El-Olam left his home in glory and climbed into the cage with us. He left the ocean and entered the aquarium.
When the Bible teaches us about the coming of Jesus Christ, it talks in these terms. The prophecies predicting his coming remind us of where he is coming from…
Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old—from “olam”—from everlasting.”
Isaiah 9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees in John 8, he said “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” They just scoffed at him and said “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham!”
Jesus replied ““I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” These are the words of someone who came from outside of time; from eternity. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God Himself, come here to earth in human flesh.
And He came to do something about our sin. He came because we had turned away from God and have chosen to live our lives in separation from Him. And the awful result of that is that we face the prospect of living forever in a condition of separation from God.
Remember, God created us to be eternal. All of us will live forever, regardless of whether we turn to God or not. (The Bible does not teach that when a person turns away from God and dies in that condition, that person just ceases to exist. That view is called annihilationism, and the Bible does not teach annihilationism.)
The Bible teaches that a sinner will continue to exist forever. But it will be an awful existence—it will be literally a living death for all eternity because that person has turned his back on the God with whom he has been created to have fellowship. And so, by his own choice, he cuts himself off from the very relationship that he needs most.
C.S. Lewis described it this way: “Sin is man’s way of saying to God ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ Hell is when God finally says to man ‘You may have your wish.’”
This is what the Bible means when it says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. My sin leads to eternal death—separation from God for all eternity.
But Jesus came to destroy death and bring life and immortality to light (2 Tim. 1:10) When he died on the cross, he who knew no sin, took upon himself the consequences of my sin. And in doing so, he experienced in his own person that separation from God that I ought to experience because of what I have done.
And now the way is open for me to know and have fellowship with El Olam—the Eternal One.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
We usually understand eternal life to mean that we will live forever. But we have seen that the Bible teaches that everyone is going to exist forever.
We need to realize that the eternal life that Jesus gives us is more than just quantity of life; it’s quality of life. Jesus himself defined eternal life for us in John 17:3. He said “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Eternal life is to know the God who is eternal. It is to have a relationship with him; to be his friend, his companion. We have been created for this purpose. And when we receive what Jesus Christ did for us, we finally begin to realize our purpose in living.
Perhaps, if God has been speaking to you this morning, you have to admit to yourself that you really have no idea what your life is all about. You have absolutely no clue as to why you are here or what it is that you are supposed to be doing.
Let me tell you this as clearly as I can. Whether you are a teenager, or a little child, or a grandparent, your ultimate purpose—the reason you are here on this earth—is to know God—the Eternal One. To acknowledge Him, to bow before Him; to place Him at the center of your life.
And if you make knowing God your #1 priority, everything else will fall into place. All of the other decisions of life will become much simpler because you will know what it is you are living for.
Prayer and Invitation