One of my favorite books is called, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” It’s a comic science fiction book about a person from earth who goes hitchhiking around the galaxy with an electronic guidebook to help him out. At one point, the guidebook tells him about a man who got rich by writing a series of books with the titles, “Where God Went Wrong”, “More of God’s Greatest Mistakes”, and “Who Is This God Person, Anyway?”
The idea that we have the right to tell God where God got things wrong is obviously pretty arrogant of us, as if we could be smarter than God, although I suspect we’re all tempted to do that from time to time. The last question, though, is one we’re going to talk about in the sermon series we’re starting today. Just who is this God person, anyway?
The answer may not be as clear as we think. We all have an idea of who God is, but I don’t know that any of us really have a complete understanding of who God is. In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to fully understand who God is.
The disciples had Jesus Christ—God the Son—right there with them, and they still did not understand who God is. When I did a Google search for “attributes of God”, I found lists with as many as twenty-five of them. And you know what? One of the attributes they all had was that God is infinite! How in the world can we come to a complete understanding of an infinite God?
Well, we probably cannot do that. Still, we need to try to get some understanding of God if we’re going to properly worship God. It would make no sense to say we worshipped a God we did not understand at all. That was one of the things that surprised the Apostle Paul on his trip to Greece. He walked around the city and saw a statue that said, “To an unknown God.” He went to the people and said, “Does that really make sense to you, that you should worship a God you don’t know. I know God, and God wants you to know God, too. Let me tell you about God, so you can know the God you’re worshipping.”
So, in this sermon series, we’re going to try to get a better understanding of who God is and how who God is affects our lives. We’re going to start with what might be the most fundamental aspect of who God is. God is eternal.
That can be a really hard concept for us to grasp. We tend to think of something that’s eternal as something lasts for a really long time. That’s not really what it means. In fact, even saying that eternal means forever is not quite accurate.
Here’s what the dictionary says “eternal” means. “Eternal” means something that has no beginning and no end. It means something that exists outside of any relationship to time. That’s who God is. God has no beginning and no end. God exists outside of any relationship to time. God just is.
Can we really even grasp that concept? I’m not sure I can. For you and me, time is a constant. In fact, it’s one of the few constants about the world. For us, time is a factor in everything we do. It moves in one direction: forward. It moves at the same rate of speed. We can divide it into years and months, weeks and days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
We count on that constant, consistent movement. Our bodies get used to the rhythm of it. That’s why it goofs us up so much when we go on or off daylight saving time. It’s why we have trouble when we go to a different time zone. We’re so used to that constant, consistent movement that we’re out of sorts when we suddenly jump forward or backward even by just one hour.
We divide time in other ways, too. We divide into yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In other words, we divide it into the past, the present and the future. We do that without even really thinking about it. It’s just the way life is for us.
Try to imagine what it would be like if there was no past and now future. Instead, there was just now. There was no such thing as was or will be. There was just is.
That’s how it works for God. God stands outside of time. We know this because God created time, just like God created everything else. Listen again to the words of Genesis:
“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
There was no such thing as a day until God created it. There was no such thing as
time itself until God created it. Time does not “pass” for God, the way it passes for us. God understands how time works for us, because God created it, but God stands outside of time. God existed before time was created, if the phrase “before time” even makes sense.
That’s what God being eternal really means. It’s not that God exists forever. It’s that even the concept of “forever” makes no sense when we talk about God. God does not experience time the way we do. God just is. God is always in the now.
So, if I’ve not lost you yet, you’re probably wondering, “So what? Even if this is all true, what does it mean for us?”
Well, Jesus promised us that, by God’s grace and through our faith, we’ll have eternal life, too. That means that in heaven, we’ll be eternal, too, just like God is.
Think about your life. Think about the impact time has on your life. We have deadlines and schedules. We try to get things done on time. We try to get to certain places on time. We have to hurry up and get things done, so we can get on to the next thing and get it done, too. Sometimes we don’t have enough to do, and it seems like we have too much time.
In heaven, we won’t have to worry about any of that. We won’t have a deadline or a schedule, because time won’t exist there. We won’t have to hurry, and we won’t be bored. We won’t have to worry about what we have to do next. We’ll focus on whatever it is we’re doing and really enjoy it. We’ll be living in the now, without worrying about the past or the future.
The knowledge that God is eternal does not just matter to us in heaven, though. It matters to us in our lives on earth, too.
See, the past and the future both influence our lives in all kinds of ways. If the past was really good, we can get so nostalgic for it that we look at every change as a change for the worse. Our love of the past keeps us from enjoying the now. If the past was really bad, we can become overly fearful that things will go bad again. Our fears in the past keep us from enjoying the now. There’s nothing wrong with remembering the past, of course, but it can be wrong when we let our memories of the past keep us from enjoying the now.
The future can work that way, too. Sometimes we want so much for things to be good in the future that we spend all of our time planning for it. Our hope for the future keeps us from enjoying the now. Sometimes we’re so fearful that things will be bad in the future that we spend all of our time trying to prevent it. Our fears of the future keep us from enjoying the now. There’s nothing wrong with making provisions for the future, but again, but it can be wrong when we let our plans for the future keep us from enjoying the now.
Remember, Jesus told us not to worry about the future, because it won’t do us any good. He told us that tomorrow will worry about itself. He told us we should keep focused on the now.
The knowledge that God is eternal helps us focus on the now. Because God is eternal and stands outside of time, we don’t have to let the past control us. Whatever happened in the past, whether it was good or bad, God has already taken care of it. Because God is eternal and stands outside of time, we don’t have to worry about the future, either. Whatever the future holds, God is already there in that future, and God has already taken care of that, too.
Who is this “God” person? God is the one who’s in control of time. What that means for us is that we don’t have to worry about time. We can live in the now. We can let go of the past, and we don’t have to be overly concerned about the future.
God lives in the now. God invites us to live in the now, too. When we do, we find that God takes care of us, in the past, the future, and the now.
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