Our Everlasting God Series

Introduction:

A. One day a man was speaking with God and he asked him, “God is it true that to you a thousand years is just a minute?” “That’s true,” God replied.

1. The man continued, “And is it true that to you a million dollars is like a penny?” “Yes, That’s true,” God said.

2. Then the man said, “God, could I have a penny?”

3. God replied, “Sure, in just a minute.”

B. Max Lucado opens his chapter on today’s subject with a story about his daughter that took place when she was two years-old.

1. He said that Jenna was just learning to speak well.

2. But one day as they walked hand in hand through their apartment lobby, his daughter noticed a ball, and looked at her dad and said, “Just a moment” and she slid her hand from his and went after the ball.

3. Max thought to himself: “A moment? Who told her about moments? To date her existence had been time-free. Toddlers know no beginning or end or hurry or slow or late or soon. But Jenna’s phrase, ‘Just a moment,’ announced that time had entered her world.”

4. Max continued, “Life, she was discovering, is a cache of moments: measurable and countable increments, like change in a pocket or buttons in a can. Your pocket may be full of decades, my pocket may be down to a few years, but everyone has a certain number of moments. Everyone, that is, except God.”

C. Here is the main idea that I want us to wrestle with and try to grasp from today’s sermon: Life is short; God is forever.”

1. Would you say that with me? “Life is short; God is forever.”

2. Do you understand and believe both of those truths?

3. Perhaps the first of those truths is easier to grasp and believe than the second one.

D. Life is indeed short and it passes by so quickly.

1. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I am 60 years old and have been serving the Lord here at Wetzel Road for 34 years!

2. When we were children, didn’t summers seem like they lasted forever?

3. Then when we became a teenager, it seemed like forever until we could get our driver’s license, or graduate from high school.

4. But now at age 60 those things are over 40 years in the past!

5. How time flies! And it seems to speed up the older you get.

6. That’s why it is so important for us to realize that life is short, but God is forever.

7. And we want to make sure that we live in a way that makes our one and only life count for eternity.

E. As you know, we are in a sermon series called “It’s All About God – Living a God-Centered Life.”

1. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that life is all about us, but the Bible is clear that it’s all about God.

2. Creation is God’s world; history is God’s story; all of us are made in God’s image; and it is all for God’s glory.

3. Last week, we talked about our God who is holy—there is no one like Him - and this holy God calls us to take His holiness seriously and to strive to be holy as God is holy.

F. Today, we are talking about how our God is eternal; He is an everlasting God.

1. Today, I want to declare what the Bible says about God’s eternal nature.

2. God has always been and always will be; He lives beyond time.

3. We are finite; we have a beginning and an end; God has no beginning and no end.

4. Therefore, it is very difficult for us to imagine God’s eternalness; our minds are finite and we keep bumping up against finite limits.

5. As finite people, trying to understand eternity is like trying to cram the ocean into a bucket, and yet we have to try.

6. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

7. God has set eternity in our hearts, yet we cannot fathom it.

8. We have a taste of it—like a bucket of ocean water—and we yearn for it, but it is beyond us to fully grasp it, and yet it is important that we try, so here goes.

I. God is eternal.

A. All through the Bible, God has revealed Himself to us as the eternal God.

1. He is the everlasting One, who was before the beginning of time and will be after the end of time.