God's Eternality Various Texts

All of us know that life goes by fast. Just this week, Brianna and I were talking about how fast the days and weeks go by. I remember sitting in the backseat of my parents' car when I was 16 years old, and my parents told me, Seth, when you are young, you think you will live forever.

But as you get older, you realize how fast time flies. The human lifespan goes no more than about 100 years. 100 years ago was 1917. On a Sunday that probably looked much like today, a number of people met for worship at Eureka Baptist Church.

All of them are now gone, and each one has been gone for a long time. If Christ does not return in the next 100 years, there will be a whole new host of people meeting maybe in this location in 2117. Can you imagine that?

The Brevity of Human Life and the Need for Eternity

Now, I think Christ will return before then, but we do not know. Time goes by fast. When you are in it, it feels like forever. But when it passes, you look back and say, where did the time go? James 4 .14 says you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

I heard someone say one time, it is like taking a breath on a cold winter day, and you see your breath go, and then eventually you see it disappear. That is your life. We as humans have this experience with time because we are bound by it.

This is the experience of every creature on planet Earth. But there is one who is not bound by time. That, of course, is God. He is so very different from us. There are three realities that we experience every day.

Time, space, and matter. Without these, we cannot exist. But God is not bound by any of them. He is independent. What we are going to see this morning is that God is not dependent on anything or anyone for his existence.

We are dependent on elements of creation to stay alive. And ultimately, we are dependent on God. But God is dependent on no one. He is independent. And so as we continue our sermon series here, through the ultimate pursuit of knowing God, what is he, and who is he, this morning we are going to look at God's eternality.

And the big idea, the main focus of this sermon is the eternal creator is the only one who is independent. The eternal creator is the only one who is independent. And there are three qualities that make him different from us in this way.

God as Self-Existent and the Meaning of "I Am"

The first is that God is self-existent. We learned last week that God is one. In his oneness, he is three equally divine persons. Each person is distinct from the other, and each has his own existence.

And that's what we call the trinity. This morning, in this first point, we are going to look at the fact that the God that we worship is self-existent. This means that his existence is not dependent on another.

He exists in himself. This is hard for us to imagine because everything that we know, everything that we can see with our eyes, is dependent on the existence of something else. Every one of us here came to exist through our parents.

We honor fathers today. And without a father and a mother, we would not be here. We all had a beginning. But God did not. It is common for little children to ask their parents the question, who created God?

Ever had that question from your children? How would you answer that question? Some of you here today have small children. Would you have an answer? More importantly, would you have the correct answer?

The answer is, no one. No one created God. The Bible states clearly that God has always been. He never had a beginning. Some may say, well, that's impossible. Do you know what is impossible? That at one time, there was nothing.

And at some point, something came to be. And all of us ended up here somehow. That is impossible. Some secular scientists actually teach that. But it's impossible. And I say it's impossible because something cannot come from nothing.

It's irrational. Something cannot come from nothing. The only logical explanation for the existence of something is that there has always been something that never had a beginning. So the fact that we are here tells you there's always been something.

I heard one teacher say that the easiest argument for the existence of God is if anything exists, then God exists. Because he's always been there. If there was never nothing, do you know what there would be today?

Nothing. Exactly. But the Bible tells us that the something that has always existed is someone. Namely, God. So you can tell your children that God has always been and never had a beginning. And if you tell them that, you've told them the correct answer.

God is self-existent. How do we know this? In Exodus 3 .14, God actually gives himself a name. So we don't just call him God, we call him Yahweh, or Lord. This is the name he gives himself. Exodus 3 .14, God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And he said, Say to this people, the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. He calls himself, I am. He doesn't call himself, I was. Because that would imply he had a beginning. He says, I am. Literally, this means to be.

To exist. So God is, and there is no one else who is there to keep him existing. His existence is not dependent on anyone else. But only himself. In the Gospel of John, Jesus gives himself the same title as the God of the Old Testament.

In John 8 .58, he's talking to the Jewish leaders. And Jesus says, Before Abraham was, I am. And so he gives himself the same title as the God of the Old Testament. And the Jews knew full well, the Jewish leaders who were his opponents, they knew full well what he was saying because they picked up stones to stone him.

Because what he said, according to them, was blasphemous. Because he was claiming to be God. He was claiming to be, I am. He was claiming to be Yahweh. The Lord. This proves that Jesus is the same self-existing God.

We also know that God is self-existent because he was there before anything was created. If he is the only one who was there before creation, we must conclude that he was not dependent on anything else for his being.

Here are a few verses that highlight this. Revelation 4 .11 says,. In John 1 .3, I quoted this last week,. Which means that God is not among the made things. Everything that you see with your eyes, even things we can't see with our eyes, like angels and demons, were created by God.

And he's always been there. But creation and everything that exists apart from him has not always been there. So we must see the Bible affirms that God exists from himself. He was not caused or created, but has always been and always will be.

This is the first quality of God's independence. He is self-existent. The second quality of God's independence is that God is self-sufficient. Have you ever asked yourself why God created everything?

Did God get bored? Was he lonely? Some people have actually said that God created because he was lonely. He needed friends. So he created us. That's not why he created. God never gets lonely. God never gets bored.

For all eternity, the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, loved each other. And they never needed anything else to satisfy them, to fulfill them. They would have been just fine without creating anything.

But they did. The one true God created. So why did he create? What we see in Scripture is that God created everything for his glory, to magnify himself. Isaiah 43 .7 says, Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

His desire is to magnify himself to his creation. Now you might say, well that sounds kind of egotistical, doesn't it? That God would want to glorify himself and magnify himself to say, look how great I am.

Before we go and say that God is an egotistical maniac, we must stop to think about this. We all have been around people like this in our lives. We cannot stand people who are self-promoters and full of themselves.

But God is far different from these people. God does not and cannot sin. And when people promote themselves, they are sinning. God desires glory because he is worthy. For him not to want glory would be for him to go outside of himself.

If he did that, he would be committing idolatry. Because idolatry is when we worship the creature rather than the creator. So God can never bow to anyone else. He can never try to worship or to seek the glory of another because he's God.

God worships himself. He is the greatest. There is no greater. And it is holy for him to do that. It's hard for us to wrap our minds around it, but it's true. God will give his glory to no other because he alone is worthy.

On our end, we benefit greatly from this because we are only going to be happy if we worship God, if we give the glory to him. Because he's the one for whom we were created. People are miserable. If you don't have God in your life, you're miserable.

And that's because you were created for him. Colossians 1 .16 says that. Everything was created through him and for him. And so you find satisfaction when you worship God. So we benefit greatly from this.

So in creation, God gets the glory and we get the fullness of joy from being in a relationship with him. And if you ponder this, this is amazing. This is wonderful news. We should want God to get the glory and we get the joy.

So you were created for his glory. You were not created because God was lonely. Self-sufficiency means that God has no needs. He doesn't need us and he doesn't need anything else. None. In John 5 .26, Jesus said of God the Father that he has life in himself.

And, of course, the other two persons of the Trinity also have life in themselves. God is the one who has life is the one who gives life, both physical and spiritual. All living things on planet earth, whether it's us or plants or anything, God is the one who gives that spark of life.

And science can't explain what causes that spark for there to be life. God is the one who gives that. And not only does he give physical life, he also gives spiritual life. He alone can give it and no one can give him anything in return.

Job 41 .11 says, This is the Lord talking, Who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. Acts 17 .24 and 25 says, The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

So we see that God is the one who gives, not the other way around. This is so because he is self-sufficient. One thing that I always mention in my prayer as I pray for the morning offering is that God owns everything.

God does not have any needs. So if you throw money into the plate, it's not as though God is short on money. He owns everything. But God designed it that that's the way that we would be able to support a church, that people would give generously of their money.

And this is what the psalmist writes in Psalm 50, verses 10 through 12, to show God's ownership. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you. For the world and its fullness are mine. God does not have any needs. He doesn't need us for anything. And that should humble us. And this raises a very important question.

Should we feel insignificant if he does not need us? And thankfully, the answer is no. We get our significance from God. As humans, we are the pinnacle of God's creation. We are created in his image. He elevated humanity above all created things.

God the Son became a man while maintaining his full deity. And that's an amazing thing to ponder, that God did not become an angel. He became a man because only man is created in his image. So we get our significance from the fact that we are God's image bearers.

We also get our significance because God decides to use us for his purposes in the world. He is not obligated to do so, but he gladly uses us for his glory, to accomplish his plans in the world. God not only saves us, but he also commissions us.

He sends us out to do the work of ministry. And this is what is most incredible. God delights in you. He's not indifferent towards you. He delights in you. This is what it says in Isaiah 62, 3 -5,. And as a bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

And then in Zephaniah 3 -17,. Okay, so we see the affection, the love that God has for his people. He delights in them. So yes, God does not need you. He has no needs. But he decided to create you in his image.

He delights in you as his children. And he uses you to do ministry for him in this world. This is the second quality of God's independence. He is self-sufficient. The third quality of God's independence is that he is timeless.

God Outside of Time and the Certainty of Eternity

God is timeless. I mentioned earlier that God has always existed. He never had a beginning. In this point, we are going to look at God's relationship to time. And this is very fascinating. When we think of God being eternal, it is easy for us to think that God existed with time forever and ever.

Time just keeps going into the past and God is always there. This is not the correct way to think about God and time. To understand God's relationship with time, Genesis 1 .1 gives us much help. We have to ask the question, when did God create the heavens and the earth?

And you know, when does it say God created the heavens and the earth? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So what does that tell us about time? Time had a beginning. This means that before the creation, God existed without time.

When God created everything, he did not insert himself into time, but God, to this day, and always will be, outside of time. So we're bound by time. God is outside of time. Now and, of course, before the creation, before there was time.

So the Bible affirms that God is timeless. Psalm 90 verse 2 says, Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Job 36 .26, Behold, God is great, and we know him not. The number of his years is unsearchable. In several places in Revelation, the first being Revelation 1 .8, God says this of himself. I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come.

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, and Omega is the last. So, in other words, God is saying that he is the beginning and the end. Revelation also says in the second statement, who is and who was and who is to come.

This is saying that God was there in the present, the past, and the future. Another way to say this is that God sees past, present, and future as present. God sees all of history as present. So, imagine God, this is time, imagine God standing over time.

He sees the beginning of creation and eternity, way in the future, all as present. I say that God is always present because of what Exodus 3 .14 says, a verse that we already looked at. God calls himself, I Am, which means that he is saying that he is always present.

Every point in history is equally vivid to God's mind. This shows you how big God is. Every point in human history is equally vivid to God's mind. Psalm 90 verse 4 says, A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.

Earlier this week, there was a storm that came through during the nighttime and it woke me up and I'm sure it probably woke you up, too. And Brianna and Alethea were sleeping and I got up and I wanted to keep watch because if we needed to go downstairs, someone had to be awake to tell the others to go downstairs.

And so I was keeping watch for Brianna and Alethea. And obviously, my concentration was very focused and I was alert in that moment. And the psalmist is saying here that God sees everything as a watch in the night.

Okay, so he's paying close attention to everything that's going on. Just as I was paying close attention to the lightning and the thunder and checking the weather to see, okay, do we need to go downstairs?

God sees everything with such close attention and alertness. And that's all history to him. It's not just one time. It's all of history. Every moment historically is ingrained vividly in God's mind. And the psalmist says that a thousand years of history is like yesterday.

And when he says that, he means it's there. It comes to mind easily to him because he knows it all. The apostle Peter adds to the statement from the psalmist in 2 Peter 3 .8. He says, But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

In the second statement, he repeats what the psalmist says. But in the first statement, he tells us something new. He tells us that one day is like a thousand years. This is to say that as one author has noted, any one day seems to God to be present in his consciousness forever.

Okay, so it's just showing how vivid he sees all of history. He does this as an observer outside of time. As God stands above time, he then acts at specific points in history. Galatians 4, 4 and 5, he says, the apostle Paul wrote, When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Okay, so when the fullness of time had come, God acts at that point in history and he sends his son. And this brings up an important point to stress. As I already mentioned, God knows the future. He knows the future in full detail.

And what's amazing is that when we read the Bible, we see things that haven't happened yet. You're able to see prophecies that have not come to pass. And God knows it in vivid detail. And he's the only one who knows the future in vivid detail.

Isaiah 46, 9 and 10 says, the Lord says, I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning. And from ancient times, things not yet done. Okay, so long before he proclaims these things and then way into the future, they come to pass.

God's timelessness is hard for us to wrap our minds around. But the Bible is clear that this is so. And this is foreign to us because we are bound by time. And we cannot imagine existence apart from it.

Because even when you're having a conversation with someone, there's a sequence of events. Our whole life is a sequence of events, one after the other. It's not that way with God. He's outside of that.

And it's incredible if we ponder that for a moment. God is entirely unlike anything we know. And as God's creation, we will always be in time. A common question that people ask is, will there be time in heaven?

And the answer is yes. There will be time in heaven. As finite creatures, we always have to have time. Revelation 22 says that the tree of life will be yielding its fruit each month. Okay, so if there are months, then there is time.

So we know that we will always be in time. Time is very important because every one of us will spend eternity somewhere. The moment that you come into existence, you will never go out of existence. You have a soul that's eternal.

And so even though you die, you still keep existing somewhere. And of course, the Bible is clear that the two places that you will exist are heaven or hell. Those who believe in Jesus will have eternal life and experience fullness of joy in the presence of God for an endless duration.

Those who never receive Christ as their Lord, Savior, and treasure will be in hell for an endless duration. And so as we think about eternity, we need to think about this. This needs to be on our mind.

We need Jesus to have life with God forever. Do you have eternal life? And for those of you who do, do you call people to eternal life by calling them to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins?

And do you tell them that Jesus died for their sins and that he conquered death through his victorious resurrection? As we think of eternity, this should motivate us to live for Jesus and to tell people about him.

So this is the third quality of God's independence. He is timeless. The eternal creator is the only one who is independent. And there are three qualities that we just looked at of God that we have seen in Scripture.

God is self-existent. God is self-sufficient. God is timeless. Now, over the next 10 or 11 weeks, the goal of every sermon in this summer sermon series that I've titled The Ultimate Pursuit of Knowing God is that we would see how big and how glorious God is.

We have to have the right understanding of who God is because it's our tendency to make him smaller than he is. And when you read Scripture, you realize, wow, look how amazing God is. Look how great God is.

We need to ponder this. The one who exists on his own, who has no needs, is able to supply all of our needs, physical needs and spiritual needs. And as one outside of time, his attention is never divided.

Every week, God has full attention on what happens here at Eureka Baptist Church. We might say, well, there's bigger churches out there. Doesn't God care more about them? No, he doesn't. His attention is every bit as much on this congregation and what is happening here than somewhere else.

And God is able to do that because he's outside of time. And we must understand that God is never too busy. As you pray to him, keep this in mind. He wants to talk to you. He wants to be in a relationship with you.

He wants you to go deeper with him. We know that God has the time, but will you take the time to pursue that relationship with him, to go deeper with him? So let us be in awe of God's eternality and let us pray for him.

Or, sorry, let us pray, praise him for his greatness. Obviously, we're not going to pray for God, but let us praise him for his greatness. Let's pray. Father, as we ponder who you are and how great you are, I pray that we would have, that we would be mindful of this, that we would not lose sight, that we would not make you smaller than you are.

Father, we face many challenges in our lives. I think a potential criticism of this sermon series is that it's not relevant enough. And my answer to that, Lord, is that it could not be more relevant because as we know you, we become more like you.

And as we know more about you, we realize that you're able to face all of the challenges that we face in our lives. You're able to handle all of our needs. And so, Lord, it's so relevant into our everyday life to understand who you are, that we would love you rightly, that we would worship you rightly.

And so, Lord, I ask that you would help us to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.