Sermon Central
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Eternity Series
Contributed by Dan Cormie on Sep 10, 2011 (message contributor)
Summary: Our God is eternal; He is the creator of time but is not contained within it. He is without beginning or ending!
Dakota Community Church
September 11, 2011
Eternity
This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the LORD.
This morning we are wrapping up our series: “God’s Incommunicable Attributes” with a look at the eternality of God.
In Psalm 90 Moses writes what may be the clearest understanding of the difference between our earthly temporal existence and God’s eternality.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn men back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.” For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning— though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
Norman Geisler addresses a question skeptics often ask about God’s eternality...
IF GOD IS ETERNAL, WHEN DID HE CREATE THE WORLD?
This asks a confused question. Being in time, we can imagine a moment before the beginning of time, yet there really was no such moment. God did not create the world in time; He is responsible for the creation of time. There was no time “before” time. There was only eternity. The word “when” assumes that there was a time before time. This is like asking, “Where was the man when he jumped off the bridge?” On the bridge? That was before he jumped. In the air? That was after. In this question, “when” assumes a definite point for a process action. Jumping is the process of going from the bridge to the air. In the question about Creation, it tries to put God into time rather than starting it. We can speak of a creation of time, but not in time.
(Geisler, N. L., & Brooks, R. M. When Skeptics Ask Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books)
Everything God is He is to the perfect and ultimate degree.
1. God is without beginning or end
God is the cause of all things yet He Himself is uncaused; the eternal “I AM”.
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
We teach our children very early in life about the realities of cause and effect.
The watch testifies to the existence of the watchmaker, the painting of the painter, and the poem of the poet.
Even the watchmaker, the painter, and the poet are the result of the creative initiatives of someone else, the union of parents.
During the formative years some children are particularly inquisitive. They will drive you further and further backward with the endless “Why?” Or in this case; “And Who made that/him?”
After you have exhausted your personal incite regarding history and ancestry you will begin to answer universally, “God made it”.
“Who made our apple tree?” – God made it
“Who made dinosaurs?” – God made them
“Who made my little sister?” – God made her
The final question becomes, “And Who made God?”
The answer is hard to grasp, we have no reference point for something that is “UNMADE”.
Yet that is the truth concerning God; He is responsible for and the source of every created thing yet is uncreated.
This is hard for children to grasp but no easier for adults not only conceptually but also because of the implications.
If there stands above all creation a creator who rightly claims it all as His own; then we have an accountability issue.
Human pride drives us to go to any length of foolishness to avoid surrendering our pride and admitting we are not in control, not the top of the food chain, and not where the buck stops.
Good News from the one who alone is without cause:
For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
