The Attributes Of God 'E' for Eternality

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Well, how do you measure time? Before I preach,
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I just set my watch back to six o 'clock. Actually, there's lots of different ways to measure time.
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Actually, the study of the devices that measure time is called horology,
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H -O -R -O -L -O -G -Y. Studying accurate timekeeping devices.
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In the old days, they had water clocks called clepsidas first found in Egypt. Matter of fact, a water clock was found in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep I.
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Plato is said to have invented the first water -based alarm clock. Depending on how the flow of water in a vessel containing lead balls and how to get them to float in this column, very interesting.
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Hourglasses used to measure the flow of sand and then the flow of time were used in navigation.
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Magellan used 18 glasses on his ships for navigation.
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Incense sticks sometimes were used to measure time. Candles were sometimes used to measure time.
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And atomic clocks these days measure time the best. Nanoseconds are one billionth of a second.
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Microseconds are 10 to the minus sixth seconds. Milliseconds are one one thousandth of a second.
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Minutes, 60 seconds. Hours, 60 minutes. We know days, weeks. How many days in a fortnight?
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Two weeks, 14 days. Months, quarters, years. Leap years, common years, tropical years,
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Gregorian years. Olympiads, how many years would that be? Four years.
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Lustrums, how many know what a lustrum is? Five years. Decades are 10.
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Scores, 20 years. Generations are approximately 25 years. Centuries, 100.
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And millenniums, 1 ,000 years. And not one of them is accurately involved in the description of God and how long he's been around.
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Tonight we're going to talk about the eternal nature of God. What calendar day is today?
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April 15th. So I, on tax day, April 15th, I know it's been moved two days for us, one day for the normal people, but April 15th reminds me of tax day.
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So I get the privilege tonight of taxing your mind with the greatness of God. If you can figure out tonight the eternal nature of God, then you should ask to be part of the
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Trinity because it is unbelievable. You can't get your arms around it. It is too high. It is too broad.
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It is too deep to think about the eternal nature of God. Sunday nights we do many things, but we've been going through the alphabet for attributes of God.
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A, all -knowing. B, beautiful. C, creator. D, the decree of God. And tonight, E, the eternal nature of God, the eternality of God.
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What I'd like to do is just teach you the doctrine and then we'll go to Psalm 90. Since we're in the Psalms the last couple of days,
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Psalm 93, Psalm 97. Tonight we sang Psalm 99. Then we might as well look at Psalm 90 tonight.
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Let me just give you a few verses before I give you a definition. I won't tell you where they're from. Just listen to these words that describe the eternal nature of God.
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Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
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Your throne is established from of old. You are from everlasting.
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Elihu says of God, the number of his years, the number of God's years is unsearchable.
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Before Abraham was, I am. I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
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But thou, O Lord, dost abide forever and thy name to all generations.
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For thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy.
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And our kids have been taught a little song and it goes like this. What a mighty God we serve. What an awesome
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God we serve, a God who is eternal. Tonight I give you another big
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God psalm from another big God attribute. How do you define eternality?
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Would anybody like to take a stab at it? Raise your hand and I'll call on you and tell me how would you describe the eternal nature of God?
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Yes. Okay, great. I can ascribe to that.
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Anyone else? We won't laugh at you. The eternal nature of God, Julie? Okay, excellent.
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Anyone else? Here's how Louis Burkhoff in a systematic theology defined it.
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His eternity may be defined as that perfection of God, an attribute, whereby he is elevated above all temporal limits and all succession of movements and possesses, this is a good one.
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This is one of those you have to pause and rewind. This is a say -la moment.
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Say -la, stop and just let it sink in. He is elevated above all temporal limits and all succession of movements and possesses the whole of his existence in one indivisible present.
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A .A. Hodge said, he never had any beginning and never will have any end.
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That as to the mode of his existence, his thoughts, emotions, purposes and acts are without succession, one and inseparable, the same forever.
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No beginning, no end. In time, out of time, so much so that the
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French Bible has translated the word Yahweh or Jehovah by this word.
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And I can't speak French, but you'll get the idea. L 'Eternel, the eternal
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God. Now, if I were to take a pen and draw a little dot here and then an arrow going this way all the way, extending,
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I can kind of get that idea of eternal life. I have eternal life that God makes me born again.
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I just live forever that way. But to think of somehow this line with arrows going both ways that God has had no beginning and no end, it is absolutely amazing.
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Before time began, God was eternal. God said to Moses, I am who
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I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you.
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Where did God come from? Wrong question. When did God start? Wrong question.
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Who made God? Wrong question. When there was nothing else,
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God was. Turn to Genesis 21 for a minute before we get to Psalm 90.
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Genesis 21, 33, and I wanna show you that God is even called by name, the everlasting
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God. The divine name, one of his names. He could be the God who provides. He could be a great creator
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God, a sustainer God, a God who keeps his promises. But here specifically in the context of the everlasting nature of the covenant -keeping
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God, by the way, if you want a covenant kept, that's the kind of nature you'd want. Genesis 21, 33, and Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of Yahweh, the everlasting
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God, El Olam, the everlasting God. God has no end.
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He is, and he was, and he is to come. You know this verse from the pastoral epistles, 1
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Timothy 6, 15, and 16. God alone is the only sovereign, King of kings, Lord of lords, who alone possesses what?
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Immortality, which means deathlessness. He is free from dying and dwells in unapproachable life.
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God has no past, God has no future, as it were. True or false congregation? When the
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Bible speaks of God, God is always spoken of in the present.
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True, because he always is. He's always spoken of in present tense terms because he is.
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Dr. Lawson was telling me about his father and his mother. You heard him this morning too talk about it. He was talking about his father in the present tense, why?
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And he was speaking about his mother in the past tense, why? Because his father is alive and his mother's with the
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Lord. Always God has existed, before Abraham was,
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I am. Well, how about time? True or false?
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Let me ask you another question. Time is part of eternity. In eternity past, there was time.
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We know that's false. Before time, after time,
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God was eternal. It's just amazing for me to think about it. How do you preach this? How do you talk about it?
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But does God see events in time? Does God act in time? God's above time, he's over time, he created time.
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Before God, there was no time. In eternity past, there was no time and God creates time, but is he involved in time at all?
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Does he somehow get involved in the lives of people in time? I think these verses would clear that up.
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Galatians 4, when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son born of a woman, born under law to redeem those who were under the law.
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God is acting in time. How about this in Acts 17? The times of ignorance,
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God has overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent because listen, he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.
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God works in time. He's above time, but he works in time. You say to me, but I don't quite understand that.
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Well, welcome to the theology of time. I like attributes of God that blow my mind that all of a sudden just start, the machinery starts to smoke.
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I'm not a very good mechanic, but I'm getting better as the years go on. And there are two things that have motivated me to be a better mechanic.
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Oh, one, here's my one thing that has motivated me to be a better mechanic. And that is
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I'm frugal. And if you pay someone to do it, they charge you a lot of money.
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But I like to fix things myself because it's kind of a fun thing to do if you actually fix it. And it costs a lot less money.
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But sometimes I'm in there fixing the boat or doing things, I'm all happy. It seems to be put back together. I look at my little magnetic bowl tray there that's supposed to keep all the extra things.
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There's not any screws left. And I turn over the boat and it just starts smoking. This is so difficult that our minds just kind of start smoking.
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I hate to refer to some stupid TV show, but I think there's some things where the smoke comes out of the people's ears because their brain is taxed.
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And the best theologians, even Louis Burkhoff said, quote, the relation of eternity to time constitutes one of the most difficult problems in philosophy and theology.
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Perhaps incapable of solution in our present condition. I mean, how do we understand that God fills time, is in every part of time, but His eternity still is not really this being in time?
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How do we get that? We can't get that. We turn to Psalm 102, if you would, please.
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I think one of the ways we could look at eternality is when we contrast it with things that aren't eternal.
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How do you define eternality? Well, if we put God's eternal nature up against things that are not eternal, then we can see how wonderful this doctrine is.
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Psalm 102, the psalmist compares himself with God, and then it compares the earth with God and God's eternal nature.
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Psalm 102, verse 11, my days are like a lengthened shadow. I wither away like grass.
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But thou, Yahweh, name of God, dost abide, how long? Forever, in thy name to all generations.
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Compared to the feeble and frail and quick lives, God's eternal nature is more easily seen.
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And even with the earth. Verse 25 of the same psalm. Of old thou didst form the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
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Even they will perish, but thou dost endure. And all of them will wear out like a garment.
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Like clothing, thou wilt change them, and they will be changed. And do you see the contrast and the comparison?
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But thou art the same, and thy years will not come to an end.
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Now let me just push it a little bit farther. Will there be time in heaven? I never asked that question until this week.
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Time in heaven? Well, most scholars think there will be some sort of time in heaven, even though we sing the hymn, when the trumpet of the
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Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. And Wayne Grudem thinks that there will be some sort of time in heaven, because how do you sing a new song of praise in heaven, and then another new song, and another new song if there's no time?
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How do you cast your crowns at the feet of Christ Jesus if you've always had the crowns and always will have them, but instead you don't have them, then you have them, then you cast them, then you don't have them.
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And the night shall be no more. They shall need no light or lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light and they shall reign forever and ever.
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Revelation chapter 22, verse five. Grudem said we will experience eternal life, not in an exact duplication of God's attribute of eternity, but rather in a duration of time that will never end.
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I think he's right. And all of a sudden, once I start thinking about the eternal nature of God, it means something to me.
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Lawson was right. What you believe about your theology determines your methodology and doxology.
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For instance, worry. Do you worry? Are you a worry wart? You know that song,
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I'm a worry warthog? Do you kids know that song? That is a great song. Worry warthog,
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I'm not gonna sing it. We'll talk more about worry in Psalm 90.
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How about this? If you understand the eternal nature of God, can you solve this theological problem?
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Here's the theological problem. Could Christ sin on earth? Theologians call this the peccability he could have sinned or the impeccability he could not have sinned.
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And the rationale goes like this. If he's really going to be our representative and if he really can sympathize with us and empathize with us and he's really fully human, then he should be able to sin, yet he wasn't.
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The other side of the coin is, and this is what we would believe at this church, Jesus could not have sinned because of his nature, not only because of his power, his holiness, but also he's the eternal
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God. I could ask it this way. Could Jesus have sinned in eternity past?
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Answer? So how could he sin in eternity future? And how could he sin in time?
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He couldn't do it. He's immutable. I like it that God's eternal because no matter what people group, what nation, what time of year, what year it is in the clock, 2007, 1007, here is this transchronological
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God and he could be a God and father to his children here and he could be a God and father to the
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Akka Indians who speared Jim Elliot. I mean, let's just think about fashion for a minute and put fashion over against the eternal nature of a
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God who can be a father to all kinds of children. I mean, the first idea
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I got about somehow dressing according to what the culture would say is when
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I walked into junior high one day and everybody looked at my pants, my jeans and my shoes and they all laughed because I had flutters on.
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That was very, very disturbing for a young 12 year old kid. Clothing style and hairstyles,
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God never changes. Bell -bottomed jeans and tie dyes.
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I always loved Pastor Dave. He comes up and he looks at some of my ties and he'll say, that's coming back into style again.
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But you know what? Just between us, he's gotten to be wearing wilder ties since I've met him,
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Steve Kulit. Just take a Lewis and Clark, Genghis Khan.
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I know both of them have very bland ties on tonight by the way. Take Genghis Khan and just kind of transport him to today, how outdated, how outmoded, how weird he wouldn't understand.
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And here we get as a pastor and as a church to study the everlasting, eternal, relevant word.
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God's word is always in because God is always in. He's eternal. I also like this doctrine because it's good to know this doctrine when your kids ask you who made
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God. Because the answer is he's always existed. I like it to give thanks to God for his eternal nature because his promises are forever.
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If his promises are tied to his nature, which they are, then his eternal nature would yield eternal promises.
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Verse Peter one says, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.
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His word is eternal. His name is eternal. He always was, he always is, and he always will be.
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He never began, he will never cease to be. And how do you explain it? I think the best way is if we turn to Psalm 90 and let's take a look with a poetic song how
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God's eternal nature is described. It makes it so easy. It makes it so easy to go to Psalm 90 and then try to describe
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God's eternal nature versus me trying to give you a bunch of quotes from some theologians.
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Psalm 90, Steve was right, this is the oldest Psalm in the Bible. Who wrote this
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Psalm? Well, if our liner notes are right, it says a prayer of Moses, the man of God.
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And this Psalm will help us understand God's eternal nature and how that practically fleshes itself out in someone's life.
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This is a Psalm that if you go to a funeral, you'll probably hear this read. This is a
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Psalm that has inspired men like Isaac Watts, oh God, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come.
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And here we have Moses, an old man, he's seen God and he understands
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God. And he's going to say, I'm gonna show you the eternal nature of God by setting that nature up and against and over the transitory vapor -like length of a man.
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It's age. Before we go here,
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I have to tell you, you cannot get Psalm 90 unless you get Numbers 13 and 14.
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What happened in Numbers 13 and 14? 40 years of wilderness wandering because of the sin of Kadesh Barnea.
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Why don't we just turn there for a second, keep your finger on Psalm 90. If you go to Numbers chapter 14, we'll just skip chapter 13.
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It opens everything up. I am quite confident when I say this that if you don't understand this connection, the historical setting, the occasion, the situation, you don't understand
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Psalm 90 as well as you could. The spies in chapter 13 go out to view the land.
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How many spies? The spies come back and what do they say? Numbers, too big, too many, can't do it.
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Verse 33 of Numbers 13, there we also saw the Nephilim. You know the
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Nephilim? The sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim and we became like grasshoppers, little baby grasshoppers in our sight and so we were in their sight.
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We looked at each other, we looked like grasshoppers. We looked at them, we looked like grasshoppers.
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The Nephilim, the sons of Anak, these people are big. It's like walking into a room and seeing these folks and we've gotta go get them and they rebelled.
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Chapter 14 says in verse two, they grumbled and just like this morning in Nehemiah when all the people spoke as one man bring the book, here in verse one of chapter 14, all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried and the people wept that night.
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Verse two, would we have died in the land of Egypt or would we have died in this wilderness?
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Why is the Lord bringing us into this land to fall by the sword?
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And when you're sick of the Lord and you can't reach out to grab him, you grab the next best thing,
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God's appointed man. So what do they do? Verse four, let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.
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What did Moses and Aaron do? Well, they're trying to kick us out and they are gonna get down on their faces and pray.
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And now if we read beginning in verse 20, we'll see God's answer to Moses' prayer.
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So the Lord in verse 20 of numbers 14 said, I have pardoned them according to your word, but indeed as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the
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Lord. Surely all the men who have seen my glory and my signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put me to the test these 10 times and have not listened to my voice.
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And here comes the death sentence, shall by no means see the land which
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I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned me see it.
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But my servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed me fully,
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I will bring into the land which he entered and his descendants shall take possession of it.
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Verse 26, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, how long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against me?
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Verse 28, as I live says the Lord, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will surely do to you.
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And here's what we've got to get because it helps us with Psalm 90. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from 20 years old and upward who have grumbled against me.
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12 spies go out to spy the land and there's big trouble, massive rebellion.
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God says, here's my judgment on you, the Exodus generation. And then for 40 years, you have those who are 20 years old and over die.
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Here's some calculation that I found in Fruchtenbaum, very, very telling. Based upon the population of 1 ,200 ,000 adults who would be over 20, let's say 2 million went in.
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Let's get rid of the kids as it were for our calculation. In a 38 year period, here's what would have to happen.
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1 ,200 ,000 people die in 38 years. That is 31 ,580 people die per year.
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87 people die every single day. 87 funerals every day for 38 years.
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There's an old Southern Baptist preacher in the South and he said he had to cover like four or five cities in the 50s and the 60s.
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And he was just the guy who married and buried people. And he said, I just go all around and I do funerals for people.
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87 a day. I'm exhausted when I do just one. All because of the sin at Kadesh Barnea.
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And now Moses is a little older and Moses looks back on this time. He writes it as he's seen the whole generation just get killed by God in the wilderness, including
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Aaron, including Miriam. And he writes now Psalm 90. Isn't that amazing?
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Back to Psalm 90, please. Out of the ashes of Numbers 13 and 14,
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Psalm 90 inspired by the spirit of God, verse one and two.
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Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are
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God. See that word Lord there in verse one? It's Adonai. You are the ruler.
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You are the governor. You are the master. You are the sovereign. You are the boss. You are the orchestrator.
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You are the ruler. And you, the ruler God, have been our dwelling place in all generations.
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We have no dwelling place, but you, God, are the only dwelling place we have. And dwelling place could mean a lot of things.
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It could mean a sense of protection. You think about your home and you would understand dwelling place. When you go to your house, what do you feel?
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Well, you might feel like it's a place of rest. It's an oasis that just gets you away from the world and you can kick your shoes off and put your robe on and your slippers and you just are just safe.
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You're protected. You think when you lock those doors, I knew when I was a kid, I thought if I lock these doors, there's nobody that can come in my house.
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I mean, I'm safe. I'm ready. It means habitation.
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In Latin, it's translated refugium, a refuge.
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Luther translated a zuflucht. Just sounded neat.
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How's it pronounced? Zuflucht. Abendro, guten
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Abend. You, the most high
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God, have been our dwelling place. You have been our protection. And to all generations, you've been this shield about us.
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From the burning bush, to the Red Sea, to Egypt, to Pharaoh after us.
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God, you are a rock, he says in Deuteronomy 32. And that's the idea here. And not just to my generation, he says, but to Jacob's generation,
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Isaac's generation. Before that, Abraham's generation, Noah's generation, the patriarch's generation.
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God, you have been our dwelling place to all generations. And it's not,
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God, you've placed me in a dwelling place. You are, in fact, my dwelling place. Not just occasionally, not just once in a while, but the eternal
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God has been the dwelling place of his people. I love Deuteronomy 33.
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It says, written by Moses as well, the eternal God is thy dwelling place.
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And underneath are the everlasting arms. Out in the middle of the wilderness.
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I don't know if you ever watched Survivor or any kind of trivial shows like that. I never would or anything.
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But 30 days or 40 days out in some stupid island, all contrived and here 40 years out in the middle of the wilderness,
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God has to be the refuge and protector. As Charles Spurgeon said, interestingly, foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests.
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But the saints dwell in their God and have always done so in all ages.
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Now, as we're looking at this, you just can't say this is Moses' God. If you believe that God is eternal, the same
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God who protected Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the people, he is our
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God. And Moses is writing this and even
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Moses didn't make it into the promised land. And then wonderfully, poetically, verse two, before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are
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God. Before the mountains were even born, these descriptive terms. Before the earth was created, this is the kind of God you were.
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How great you are. Mountains, permanence, unmovable.
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The greatness of God's fatherly care, protection. Or even thou has formed the earth and the world pre -Genesis 1 .1.
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God, you were before the mountains were made and even farther back, God, you were God before Genesis 1 .1.
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You are God. Thou are God, the only true God. One commentator said, this is the highest description of the eternal nature of God to which human language can reach.
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God is our dwelling place. All generations. It reminds me of Paul writing to the church at Colossae.
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Your life is hid with Christ in God. God is eternal.
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He's not just a refuge for those people, but for us too. And now against the eternal nature of God, Moses says, now let me show you the vanity of man's life, as it were.
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Compared to God, let's look at man in verses three through six. These are my favorite verses, by the way, to combat secular humanism.
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This should be the slogan of every college, I think, because here's man at his best compared to God. Verse three, you turn back into the dust and say, return, you turn man back in the dust.
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Return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.
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You have swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep. In the morning, they're like grass, which sprouts anew.
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In the morning, it flourishes and sprouts anew. Toward evening, it fades and withers away. Eternal nature of God, verses one and two, and just the breath of man, gone.
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I'm not really a big T -shirt guy, but I would love to get this T -shirt, and I've almost clicked Add to Cart online to get it.
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God is dead. Nietzsche. Nietzsche is dead.
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God. I would love to have that shirt. I'm not asking you to buy me one. Extra large, all cotton.
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What a great comparison. Verse three, you turn back into dust and say, return,
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O children of men. Now these words, we just have to pick it apart. The Hebrew language is so amazing.
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The word for man there, you turn man back, is enosh, frail, weak, brittle.
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And it says, you turn him back into dust, into dakah, into a piece of clay.
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It comes from the word to crush. And if you crush clay long enough and hard enough, it pulverizes the clay and turns to dust.
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God says, you know, I'm the one who does this.
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And he has Moses say it. God, you turn man back into dust, from dust to dust.
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That is amazing, pulverized. Spurgeon said, God resolves and man dissolves, dissolved.
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The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament says that you turn man back into humiliation.
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It's a bad translation, but it's got the idea right. Pulverized like dust.
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God is death, unless men and women are pulverized into dust.
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And to dust, you shall return. And you see the passage, return ye children of men.
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No escape clause. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Churchill, Aristotle, Einstein, Aquinas, presidents, queens, kings, sports stars,
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Andy Warhol was right, 15 minutes of fame. And then it's the mortal, mortar and the pestle.
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Whatever your rank is, you're all dying. Exercise, vitamins.
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How many Master's Seminary graduates, Steve, have died in the last six months? Just last week, one who was younger than I am, a senior pastor in Carson, California, car accident, dead in two days.
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49 -year -old Master's Seminary graduate, just a short time ago, was a chaplain in California.
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He went to the home of a fallen soldier who died in Iraq and said to his wife, you have lost your husband, he's died in Iraq.
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The next day, he's jogging to work, and the 49 -year -old chaplain from Master's Seminary falls down dead.
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Everybody dies. And Moses is showing the eternal nature of God and then fragile man.
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It's so easy to die. Augustine said, if we were glass bases, we might fear less danger.
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And if you notice very carefully in verses three, four, five, and six, this brevity of man and women in terms of their lives is not just contrasted to the eternal nature of God, but it is caused by God.
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It's caused by God. He's the one doing it. Man's life is fragile.
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Yes, and God is causing this. And look at verse four, we see
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Moses again, exalting the greatness of God and His eternal timelessness.
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For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, are as a watch in the night.
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A thousand years. Think how much has happened in the last thousand years. Just pick a culture and see what has happened in a thousand years.
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And Moses says, it's like yesterday. And then it's almost like, you know what? That's too, that illustration won't do, and he goes farther.
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Or as a watch in the night. The Greeks had four watches in a night. The Hebrews had three watches in a night.
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And so a watch in Hebrew idea would be four hours. A thousand years is like four hours to God, but it even gets further.
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What happens when you're sleeping at night? When you're sleeping at night during one of these watches, well, you'd probably be killed, but if you did sleep, you can't understand time.
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When you're fast asleep, you don't know what's happening to time. It just zooms by. A thousand years.
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What verse does this remind you of, by the way? 2
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Peter 3, verse eight. If you wanna turn there, that's fine. Otherwise, I'll just turn there. Just the eternal nature of God.
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2 Peter 3, verse eight. By the way, if you're wondering, if I have tabs on my
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Bible, I have tabs on my Bible. I thought your pastors weren't supposed to have them. They're just supposed to have no tabs at all.
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And then there's some pastors that I know of who are world -class pastors and they have tabs. And so that allows me to have tabs because that's just, let's get there.
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You can have tabs too. 2 Peter 3. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the
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Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.
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That is absolutely amazing that time binds us and limits us, but with God, it doesn't mean anything at all.
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A thousand years, one day.
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And a thousand years, it goes further in 2 Peter 3, verse eight. And a thousand years is like one day.
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So let's see. The first part of that is one day is like a thousand years. He can know all that.
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And the other is, and a thousand years is like one day. Well, let's go back to Psalm 90, verses five and six.
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I could say a lot about 2 Peter. I've said it before and just wanted to show you that it's referenced there. Psalm chapter 90, verse five.
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Moses uses a little illustration here to show how brief time is on earth. Figure of grass.
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Verse five of Psalm 90. You have swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep in the morning. They're like grass, which sprouts anew.
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Again, all said in contradistinction to the eternal nature of God, who never begins, who never ends.
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They're carried away like a flood. This is kind of like a lava flow or some kind of tsunami where you've got just a little stream going down and all of a sudden something happens.
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The dam behind our upstream breaks and then this deluge comes coming down and just wipes everything out.
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We had a cabin when I was growing up on the Missouri River and it was 165 miles due north of Omaha on the
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Missouri River. And there was a dam there. It was called Gavin's Point Dam. And I was always afraid when we went up to the dam, when they closed everything off and we could hook our boat to the side of the dam and just fish.
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And here's this wall of water up there. And it was said that if this dam would ever break, that the water would be so much that would come out of Lewis and Clark Lake, that the water would come streaming down the
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Missouri River. And when the Missouri River turns like this and Omaha's here in Nebraska and Council Bluffs is here in Iowa, that the water would keep going straight and it would flood
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Council Bluffs completely 165 miles away. And here, this flood is from God.
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Swept away like a flood. They fall asleep. Literally asleep they are.
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They're like grass. One minute it's green and going, the next minute the heat of the day, it's gone. Vanity.
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In the morning it flourishes and sprouts and new toward evening it's fades and withers away.
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How great a change and how short of time, one man said. I like this little ditty to illustrate the point.
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It's called cut down. Stout and strong today, tomorrow turned to clay.
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This day in his bloom, the next in the tomb. A very short life,
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Moses is trying to say. And you say, why? Why is life so short? Yes, God is eternal and we have short lives.
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Yes, God is infinite and we're finite. And now we find out why our lives are so short and you just might be shocked,
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Psalm 97 to 12. The answer is, is because God's wrath must punish human sin.
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You wanna know why man's life is so short? It's because of sin. Here we see the contrast between God and sin.
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For we have been consumed, verse seven, by your anger and by your wrath we have been dismayed.
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You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
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This is the explanation on why death comes and comes so quickly. One man said, this mortality is not accidental, but sin has provoked the
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Lord to his anger and therefore, thus we die. We saw all these tombstones yesterday, some were sandstone and we just kept thinking,
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I think Steve said it first. Remember Satan in the garden? You're not going to die if you eat that.
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The day you eat of this fruit, you shall what? Surely die. And then what happens in Genesis chapter five?
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What is the refrain? What is the stanza? What is the punctuation point where you can just see
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God's finger going like this? And he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died.
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Sin kills. The wages of sin is death. God knows all our sins.
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I was shocked when I first became a Christian and someone said, you know what, when you sin, it's like you say to yourself,
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I'm going to transport myself up into heaven in the throne room of God and I'm going to stand up on the arm rest of the throne of God as it were, and I'm going to look
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God right in the face and say, God, I know you're holy, I know sin kills,
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I know Jesus died for these sins and you poured out your wrath onto him because of my sins, but I've got another one for you.
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So take a good look, get the video camera out because I'm going to sin in your face.
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That'll make you not want to sin. And if you look at verse eight, you've placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins are all out of the closet in the light of your presence.
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Literally, not our secret sins, but our secret. Our little secret is no secret.
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With a halogen bulb intensity, God knows them and it only takes the light of his countenance to see them.
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Edwin Payson said, my hearers, if you're willing to see your sins in their true colors, if you would rightly estimate their number, magnitude and criminality, bring them into the hallowed place where nothing is seen but the brightness of unsullied purity and the splendors of uncreated glory where the sun itself would appear only as a dark spot.
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And there in the midst of this circle of seraphic intelligences, with the infinite
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God pouring all light of his countenance around you, review your lives, contemplate your offenses and see how they appear.
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Recollect that the God in whose presence you are is the being who forbids sin, the being of whose eternal law sin is a transgression and against whom every sin is committed.
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And God doesn't just overlook sin, he punishes it. Thankfully, we live forever, but our bodies feel the effects.
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Not only is life short because of sin, but there's a lot of pain and sadness that comes with sin too. Verse nine and 10.
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For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh.
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Whereas the days of our life, they contain 70 years are due to strength 80 years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow for soon it is gone and we fly away.
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Moses lived to be longer than 70 or 80, but those people in the wilderness who are over 20 years old, they didn't.
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That's about how long we live now. We spend our years like a sigh.
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Some wrong translations, but still with the right meaning. We spend our years as a tale. As quick as you tell a story, that's how long our lives are.
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Another translation says, our years are like those of a spider. Wrong translation, but the same thing.
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Here's a spider web and then gone. 70 years and then 80.
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Well, how should we respond? How do we respond to a God that's angry with sin? Get mad, kick against the goads.
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Verse 11 and 12 give us that response. Here's true truth right here.
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Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? So as Steve so eloquently said on Friday night, teach us to what?
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Number our days. It's Gracie's birthday in two days. We do annual birthdays.
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It's great. But here he says, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.
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God, help us to understand your eternal nature. Help us to understand how we don't have to even live past today.
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We don't even deserve it. Help us to understand that God, you're holy and angry and we sin and we die.
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Help us God so we live for today. Help us to turn from sin. Help us to fear you.
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And can you imagine Moses has seen 87 a day drop. God, help us to be wise as we see people die.
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This is exactly why Solomon said, do you learn more when you go to a wedding or to a funeral? There is something about going to a funeral where it is just,
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I say to myself all the time when I have to do them, God, I don't ever wanna be the same.
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I don't wanna be the same. Bury my mom and I'm thinking, God, why do
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I waste my life with the trivial things? What am I doing? I remember burying the two Farrar twins, both little babies fitting in one little casket right here in the front of the church.
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And I was driving home just bawling thinking, God, many things I was thinking, but one was
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I never wanna be the same. Life is short. Who knows the power of thine anger?
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Only the people in hell and only Jesus. I don't have time to explain it to you, but many commentators said, for those people who don't like Edwards when he seems to exaggerate, quote unquote, the fear and anger and wrath of God, the real fear, wrath and anger of God is no exaggeration.
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You cannot exaggerate that. Holy God pouring out wrath on sin.
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Spurgeon said, holy scripture, when it depicts God's wrath against sin, never uses hyperbole.
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It would be impossible to exaggerate it.
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Spurgeon said, modern thinkers rail at Milton and Dante, Bunyan and Baxter for their terrible imagery.
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But the truth is that no vision of a poet or denunciation of a holy seer can ever reach to the dread height of this great argument, much less go beyond it.
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What's your response? So God help us to number our what? Days, teach us to number our days.
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Give us a heart of wisdom. We're frail, life is uncertain.
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I did some calculation. If I live to be 70, I'm 46 years old now. What's 70 minus 46 times 365?
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I'll give you a rough estimate, 8 ,700 days left. And tomorrow morning, I'll have 8 ,699.
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Or I could be dead tomorrow. 8 ,000 days left, that's it. When I was a kid,
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I thought I'd live forever. I had it all planned out. If the elevator goes, before it hits the ground, I jump.
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You know, if I get bit by a rattlesnake, I know how to cut those circles and suck the venom out and all this other stuff.
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You know, I was just there. And Moses learned a lot in Egypt.
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And I'm sure arithmetic was one of them. And the old writer
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Thomas, amazing last name, T -Y -M -M -E, Thomas Time said, of all arithmetic rules, this is the hardest to number our days.
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You wanna die well, learn from this psalm.
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You think I'm weird, I know, but I'll make you think I'm weirder. I've already admitted it many times. We take our family out to the gravestones in New England and we run around.
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Don't have anything to do today? Well, let's go to the graveside. Let's go to the cemetery and off you go.
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And then we'll see things like little baby Susanna, six years old.
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And then I'll grab little Gracie and I'll say, Gracie, how old are you? Six years old. In the old days, they used to have cemeteries not on Forest Lawn, Weeping Willow Lane, Sweet Lullaby, Lucy Lane, none of that.
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They had them right at the church. So when you walk through those doors of the church, there was your kids, and if you were a husband, there were a couple of your wives because they died in childbirth.
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There was your mom, your dad, your friends, the old pastor, and you walked in and you thought, I am not playing games here.
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People die every day and I might be the next. And oh God, you are from everlasting to everlasting.
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You're my only refuge, my only dwelling place. You're the only hope I have. That's exactly what
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Moses does here. We've got to wrap this up. God has Moses pray for mercy.
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Look at verses 13 through 16. Here's Moses's petition. He was praying for the people in Numbers 14 and now he prays for himself.
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Do return, oh Lord, how long will it be? God, give us your favor back. Show us your mercy.
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What a great prayer to emulate. And be sorry for your servants. God, you know what you did to those people in the
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Exodus generation? Don't do that to me. Oh, satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
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Restore our joy. It's like David in Psalm 51. Restore to me the what? The joy of my salvation.
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Oh God, satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, with your faithfulness, covenant -keeping love, and make it soon,
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God. Make it in the morning. And I love it when it says that we may sing for joy. It means to sing in ringing tones.
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External joy, glad all our days. Internal joys. Make us so happy, God. Even though we know we're gonna die and even though we deserve to die sooner, you're the eternal
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God and God, help us to have joy. Help us to have joy that comes out when we sing and we have joy in our heart too.
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Make us glad according to the days you've afflicted us and the years that we have seen evil. As there's bad, evil, wickedness, our own sin, in exact proportion to that, give us your kindness and your love and your mercy and your grace.
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Verse 16, let your work appear to your servants and your majesty to their children. God, we might deserve to die in the desert, but be kind to my children.
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Let them see your beauty. Let them see your wonder. Make it evident in their lives. And then the conclusion, verse 17.
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Let the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us. Let the favor, it's pleasantness.
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It's Naomi, beauty. And confirm for us the work of our hands and there for emphasis,
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God, we wanna accomplish the work you've given us to do. Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
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God has always been, God always will be. And the faithful God to take care of his children to the previous generation is our