WWUTT 1124 From Everlasting to Everlasting You Are God?

Psalm 90 and the Eternal God

Psalm 90 verse 2 says from everlasting to everlasting, God has been God. Well, how about you? Well, you were made from the dust and to the dust you will return. So fear the Lord and put your trust in Him when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Moses’ Prayer in Psalm 90 and the Meaning of “Lord”

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the Psalms and beginning today with Book 4. All 150 Psalms have been divided up into five books and Book 4 begins with Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses, the man of God.

Here we go. Starting in verse 1, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting.

You are God. You return man to dust and say, return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood.

They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers. For we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath we are dismayed.

You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble.

They are soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord.

How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to your children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of your hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

What a beautiful psalm. And again, this being written by Moses, we begin with the name of God, Lord, you have been our dwelling place. Now, if you are reading this in the ESV or the NASB, you will notice that Lord is not capitalized whenever we have capital L-O-R-D, then that is Yahweh.

That's the name Yahweh, but given to us in English with Lord, differentiated from any other occurrence of Lord by capitalizing, putting it in all caps. But in this particular case, Lord is lowercase. Well, that's because it is referring to God by a title rather than by his name.

So Moses does not begin with the name Yahweh in this particular psalm, rather acknowledging him as the sovereign overall. That's what it means to call him Lord. You have been our dwelling place in all generations.

So as God reigns as sovereign, this isn't just a limited period of time. It's not just here in this moment, but you have been with us for generations before. And by your love and your promises to us, you will be with us for generations to come.

Verse two, before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Notice that Moses here just keeps getting grander and grander on the scale of God's existence.

We begin with Lord, you have been our dwelling place. There's sort of a a present understanding in that Moses saying, I dwell with you. I am here with God now in this moment. You have been our dwelling place in all generations.

Even before now, time passed and in time to come, you have been our dwelling place. And then Moses even puts the reign of God before even the existence of matter, before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world before things came into existence, before God created anything.

He was still God. And then he says from everlasting to everlasting. This is about the best way that we can explain God's eternal existence. When we think of eternity, we tend to think of an unending stretch of time.

So you know that you're eternal, correct? You know that your soul is eternal. The body will die, but the soul will live on. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will live on forever with God and glory.

But if you do not believe in Jesus, if you have not obeyed Jesus and followed him and endured to the end by the power of the spirit working within you, if you have gone after the things of this world and followed in the way of Satan, then your soul will still be eternal, but it will be cast into hell where it will live in eternal punishment.

As Jesus describes it in Matthew chapter 25. So the soul is most certainly eternal, but there was a starting point to the soul. You began at a particular place and then your soul just continued on from there.

But when we talk about God being eternal, we're not just talking about something linear like God is just continuing to exist through time. There's not a beginning to that stretch of time and there's not an end to it.

He just continues to live on. But God's existence isn't on some sort of linear timeline. His existence supersedes time. It's way beyond time. He created time, so he is not constrained by time. The existence of God is way different than our existence.

It's not just he has no beginning and he has no end. It's not just simply that it's that he is eternal and he is omnipresent and he is all knowing. He is all of these things because he is not constrained within the limits of the existence that we have.

He's beyond time and space. He does not live within the bounds of time. It's difficult for us. Our minds can't go there. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men, but they cannot fathom what he has done from beginning to end.

So we can certainly think of or conceptualize eternity to a certain degree, but our brains just simply can't go there because we know nothing but the finite, this existence that we have. There's a certain period of time where we can't remember anything before that and a day is going to come where the life ends there and we're not going to have any consciousness of anything after that, at least here on Earth.

And so that's all we know. That's our only existence. That's our only cognition or perception of anything, whereas God exists outside of those things. So how do you describe that? If God does not live on some sort of linear timeline from point A to point B, or you just take A and B off of that timeline and stretch the line out from one end to the other without any end to it, I mean, even that wouldn't describe God.

So how do you describe the way God exists? And Paul has chosen, I'm sorry, Paul, that's what I get for preaching through the epistles as long as I have. Moses says here in verse two, he has chosen these words from everlasting to everlasting, from eternity past to eternity future, from outside the bounds of time, before time even came to existence, before we even had any understanding of what time was.

God has been God. He always has been. What was God doing for all eternity before he created us? Well, according to what Jesus says in the high priestly prayer in John 17, God was glorifying in himself, God, the father, the son, the Holy Spirit glorifying in each other and not lacking in anything.

They weren't bored. They weren't lonely. And so now we need to create mankind so that we have something to do. God chose to create us in his image because of his love to demonstrate his love. And then when we rebelled against him, he sent his son to die on the cross for our sins to demonstrate his grace and his mercy to us.

But God wasn't lacking in anything before he created us. We don't complete God in any way. God is complete when he's from everlasting to everlasting. He doesn't need anything. When we start talking about the false gods, we start talking about idols.

You might be talking about the Greek gods, the Roman gods. You might be talking about Mormonism that believes there's millions and millions of gods. If you delve into polytheism, what you have there are examples of gods that are not infinite because each God has something that the other God doesn't have.

That's why you need to create another God, because this God was lacking in something. So now we need another God that can fill in the space. And so you've got Zeus, who is the god of rain and thunder and whatnot.

And then you've got Hades, who is the god of the dead, because Zeus is up here. So Hades needs to be down here. And then you've got Poseidon, who's the god of the sea and Aphrodite, who's the goddess of love, all these different things.

You have different gods for different things because one God specializes in one thing that another cannot do. So none of these gods are infinite, though it might be said of them, like the Greeks might believe that this God never had a beginning and never had an end.

They're not truly infinite because they lack something. There's something that they don't have. God is not lacking in anything. Paul even says in Romans chapter 11 that who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

God is not lacking in anything that we need to provide for him. God is self-sustaining. He is self-existing. We do not give anything to God that he did not previously have. God has created us and shown his love to us because he is a good God and wants to give us all good things.

But we must know and we must acknowledge and we must praise and submit and bow down to the understanding that from everlasting to everlasting, he is God. He has always been God. He will never stop being God.

Even Jesus Christ in the book of Hebrews is described as being the same yesterday, today and forever, though he set his place on the throne of heaven aside and took on the form of a man and became obedient even unto death on a cross.

That doesn't mean that Jesus stopped being God. And there are some that teach that Bethel Church, the whole new apostolic reformation, many in the in the Pentecostal and extreme charismatic movement, you will find believing and teaching things like Jesus at some point stopped being God.

The Eastern Orthodox believe this very thing that that Jesus, when he took on the form of a man, was not God in that place. But he was doing something that he was demonstrating to us that we're capable of doing.

This is especially what the new apostolic reformation folks will teach. I hop Bethel Church, Jesus culture, the call, or I think it's called the sins. Now, I mean, these are the guys that Benny Hinn, I'm sorry, these are the guys that Francis Chan is all wrapped up in now.

Benny Hinn, among them, Heidi Baker, Bill Johnson, Todd White, all of these guys, they believe that Jesus stopped being God and he lived perfectly as a man to show to us that we can do the same things that he did.

All of this is nonsense. It's heresy to claim that Jesus stopped being God. Jesus, the son with the father, with the Holy Spirit, is one God, three persons from everlasting to everlasting. Now, this is divinely mysterious to us trying to comprehend even God as a trinity.

He's one God, and yet he's three persons. But he's not three gods. I know even that is difficult for us to wrap our minds around because of the individuality that we inhabit that is different than God's existence.

Our existence is not the same as God's existence. We can't fully wrap our minds around the Trinity because we're not God. But there will be a day that we come into his presence. According to first John three, two, we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.

Joseph Smith, Mormonism, and the Self-Existing God

And then that which we see through a glass darkly, we will soon see face to face, as Paul says in first Corinthians 13. You know, Joseph Smith, who is the founder of Mormonism, he had at one point said that God is from everlasting to everlasting.

In fact, in Doctrine and Covenants 2017, he says, by these things, we know that there is a God in heaven who is infinite and eternal from everlasting to everlasting, the same unchangeable God, the framer of heaven and earth and all things which are in them.

But then in 1844, just a few years later, Joseph Smith changed his mind about that in a speech that he delivered called the King Follett discourse. He decided to contend against the idea that God was God from eternity past.

He says the following in order to understand the subject of the dead for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends. It is necessary that we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so.

For I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and suppose that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see. Joseph Smith was even contradicting himself because he had previously agreed with the statement that was in the Psalms, that God was from everlasting to everlasting.

But from the very beginning of his religion, he was imagining a God that did not exist. He was making up his own God. He was making up his own Jesus. So it would only eventually come to pass that he would change the rules of the game himself and totally change everything that he had taught about even his own doctrine.

When I wrote the book Forty Mormon Beliefs and What the Bible Says, one of the things I do in that book is demonstrate how Joseph Smith even contradicted himself. So you could use Mormonism by itself, not even have to pick up a Bible, and you could refute Mormonism just based on its own proclamations because it contradicts itself on so many points.

It will say one thing in the Book of Mormon. It will later contradict itself on in in one of its later writings. That's the way Joseph Smith was. Now, now our authority for all things and we should test all things according to what scripture says.

So that's why the book is Forty Mormon Beliefs and What the Bible Says. But that's just to make the point that you could just limit yourself to Joseph Smith and debate his own teachings with his own teachings because he contradicted himself so many times.

We have it stated plainly for us in scripture that God is from everlasting to everlasting. And in fact, if you're if you're witnessing or evangelizing to a Mormon, you could bring that up that Joseph Smith or that in Doctrine and Covenants 2017, it says that God is from everlasting to everlasting, the same unchangeable God.

But then in the King Follett discourse, which was one of the last sermons Joseph Smith gave before he died, he said, I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see that God has not been God from all eternity.

But we have it given to us in scripture. He is God. He has always been God. He will always be God. He will never stop being God. You return man to dust. Who are we in relation to this eternal God? We are dust and say return, oh, children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is passed or as a watch in the night.

This is Paul or I did it again. This is Moses just continuing to elaborate on the fact that God exists outside of time and space. It's not the same kind of existence that we know. This isn't a verse that's arguing for day age creationism or anything like that.

It is just Moses continuing to elaborate on the fact that that God is eternal and he is unchangeable. And what transpires for us as a period of time is completely different to God. He doesn't perceive it the same way.

He's outside of the bounds of time and space. Verse five, you sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning, it flourishes and is renewed in the evening.

It fades and withers. This is still in the description of the limitedness and fragility of man, for we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath. We are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

That should make us tremble to consider that there is nothing that we can hide from God. So even our secret sins would be exposed before them. David prayed, search me and know me and expose those things so that I may repent of them before you and I may be made new.

Let there be no hidden faults within me. Verse nine, for all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. Now, all of us are going to die, and that is part of the curse.

That is part of the wrath of God. We won't have to suffer under God's final judgment wrath, because if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we stand before him as justified. But the fact that you die is still a result of the wrath of God that has been poured out on creation for our sin and rebellion against him.

So for all our days, we pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away.

You have this moment now to turn from your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 11, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long have pity on your servants? And I do believe this is similar to something that John says in Revelation 22, come quickly Lord Jesus. Even Moses in the Old Testament was praying return, O Lord, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us.

Yes, establish the work of our hands. As Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes, the toil and labor that we do is meaningless. It's a chasing after the wind. It ultimately comes to nothing. So how can we know that the work that we do has meaning and purpose?

If it is done in the Lord Christ, if it is done to the praise of his glorious grace, then even the the job that you have to do today that you make a paycheck for has eternal meaning and significance when you take all of these moments, all of these days, and you give glory to God in the midst of them.

God, thank you for this. Thank you for this opportunity. How quickly and easy we are to complain about circumstances on the day that I am recording this for you. I complained today. I did my own share of complaining today.

And that convicts my heart because I am saying to God that this moment that you have given me here, not good enough, not not satisfying to me. You've done wrong. You've made a mistake here. God has put us in the moments and the circumstances we are in so that we might give glory to him through them.

And we would trust and rely fully upon the Lord, not finding any kind of sufficiency or earthly satisfaction in these tiny little earthly moments that we have, but that we surrender these things to an eternal kingdom, looking forward to that day that we will be with our God forever in glory.

So look to the Lord and the favor of him be upon you, that you know that you are forgiven your sins and can find joy and everlasting contentment, even in these moments in which you live so that God may establish the work of your hands, establish so that there's meaning and purpose in every day, in every moment that you live, for it is to be done to the glory of God.

Amen. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good, Gospel-teaching, Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study, When We Understand the Text.