Our God is Eternal (Part 4)

In other words, the true and the one true and living God must have the mark of eternity, which is so significant with where we’re starting today. And then we go to, we looked at time. We’ve looked at how it relates to God’s omnipotence and omniscience and his self-existence. And we looked at, of course, we philosophized a good bit about time itself, because had a good conversation and discussion with that, about how the Lord views time, and also how it affects the question of salvation and how the Lord sees us and events that happen in our lives and how the Lord views those things and how he speaks to us in regards to time.

And so now what we’re going to do is, remember each attribute, what we’re seeking to do is we look at it from a theological perspective, then we look at it from several other perspectives as well. And so that is, we’ve looked at this attribute of God in relation to our practice or the practical matters. We’re going to look at it now in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we’re going to start in Micah chapter number five. Micah five, actually turn to six, here we go. We’ll start in verse number one and read down through verse number two. The Bible says this, Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops, he hath laid its siege against us. They shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem, Ephetah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

Let’s pray together. Our Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to study more about your wonderful nature. Lord, help us please open our eyes, reveal yourself to us by the scripture. Help us to know you better. Help us to learn more about you, Lord, but ultimately that we might just be absolutely all struck and these truths might affect us and our lives and better equip us to live for you and love you and serve you.

And so guide our study to this morning, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Now, you’ll obviously, you have, you’re familiar with this verse. We just came through the season where we talk a lot about the birth of Christ and this is quoted or preached on or taught or read, Micah 5 2, and this is a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that. And we know that not just because of the mention of Bethlehem, although that’s true, but, and we also know it not just because of its New Testament reference, although that is also true, but we know it from the enemies of the Lord, if you remember.

I think it’s in the book of Matthew when the wise men came to visit the Lord Jesus when he was a little child, the wise men came to Jerusalem, the star, they saw the star in the east and they came to Jerusalem and they said, where is he that is born king of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east and are come to worship him.

That was in Jerusalem. In other words, they didn’t know where specifically to go. They knew Israel, so they went obviously to the capital and started asking further questions to find out where this king of the Jews was born. Okay? And then, and so they went to Herod, and Herod, the Bible says Herod demanded of the scribes to know where Christ should be born. The scribes said, not the apostles, not people who believed in Christ, but the people who, now again, this is a different generation.

At the birth of Christ, that was a different generation of scribes than Jesus would meet with 33 years later. But the point is, those, the answer they gave to Herod, the scribes was what? They quoted Michael 5-2 and they said, this is how we know, which is interesting because the wise men knew where to go look specifically for the Lord Jesus based upon a scripture, the prophetic scripture, that they had received by means of people who didn’t really maybe had believed it or eventually wouldn’t believe it, the scribes later.

So anyway, the point, and man, what a good lesson, the scriptures guided them. You can see that, right? The scriptures guided them when they needed specific directions, the scriptures had guided them. And so they got to Bethlehem, and that’s how they knew by the scripture who the baby was and the star and all of those things put together. Now what’s interesting is in, so the enemies of the Lord or those who did not believe in are the ones who identified Micah 5-2 as a mark of the Messiah.

So it had been long established by that point that Micah 5-2 referred to the Messiah. Okay? So you keep reading. So with that in mind, let’s read it again, verse 2, but thou Bethlehem, Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel. Now, please follow this, because remember, we’re looking at the different ways that eternity of God is seen.

We’re talking about Jesus Christ now. Who is speaking in verse 2? Not a trick question. God is speaking, Jehovah, right, the Lord, he’s the one talking to the prophet. So from that perspective, let’s reread it. Remember the Lord is speaking, and he says this, but thou Bethlehem, Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, so the Lord is now talking to Bethlehem. Okay? Yet out of thee, Bethlehem, shall he, okay, so now this he here is referring to another party.

Do you see that? You’re going to learn something here if you don’t, you probably aren’t, but there’s another party being mentioned here, that the Lord is speaking about this other one, this ruler. Shall he come forth unto me, unto Jehovah, that is to be ruler in Israel. So the Lord is speaking of the coming of the ruler that he has appointed. And then he says, whose goings, referring to the ruler now, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

So this is Jehovah speaking of this ruler, but then speaking of an attribute that in scripture only applies to himself, the eternity. You see this? So Jehovah is actually attributing to Jesus the eternal nature of God. How many times have we seen it in Hebrews 1, when God calls God God? Remember we talked about that before, when the Lord calls God God? Well that’s what’s happening here, is prophetically the Lord is speaking of the Messiah and he’s attributing to him an attribute that only belongs to the one true and living God.

That’s why it’s so important that we get that at the front end, because now what is the clear implication that Jesus is God? See again, I’ve said this before but I’ll just reiterate it, one of the key errors in all cults is the identity of Jesus. They always get it wrong. They always get it wrong. It’s one of the hallmarks of a cult, no matter what the cult is.

They always get it wrong. And oftentimes our response is to get proof text and that’s fine and that’s good, but you don’t have to have just proof text. The deity of Christ is something that is in the Bible from start to finish. It is in every place where it’s mentioned. That didn’t make any sense, did it? It is in every place where the Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned in Old and New Testament.

You will find his deity mentioned in some way, fashion, or form. You don’t need just proof text. He’s everywhere. See, the cults have learned the proof texts. They have answers that sound reasonable and rational for the proof texts. But that shouldn’t discourage us because it’s literally everywhere. Everywhere. And the more you, here’s the thing, so the more you learn the Bible, the more you will be absolutely and totally convinced that Jesus is none other than the true and the living God come in the flesh.

Here’s why this is so fantastic. When I’m reading through, studying these lessons, I don’t want it to be dry and boring. I want to plug it into something practical in your life, some way to use it, some way to live it. This in particular, this verse in particular was something I was able to use in my personal life when I was talking to those two Jews from Israel that I mentioned a couple weeks ago because the central question, the hang up that they had was, I asked them this, because their hang up was Christians worship a man.

That was what they’ve been told. Jesus was a man. He was a Jew. They know that. And Christians worship a man. They have a problem with that because that’s not allowed in Judaism. It’s not allowed according to the Old Testament. And I agreed with him. I said, I absolutely agree with you. The Ten Commandments forbid worshiping a man. And I agreed with him. So then at that point, the problem was, well then how do you say that you keep the first commandment if you worship Jesus?

You know what that is? That’s a valid question. That’s a legitimate question. And when he said it, Ben, I don’t know if you remember, when he said that and started inquiring that way, like inside I was like, I was getting giddy. I was excited because I was like, we have an answer for this, right? But you don’t have to go any further than Micah 5 because Micah 5 describes that very thing.

Born in Bethlehem, yet from everlasting. It’s this Tencent word, hypostatic union. Jesus is 100% man and also simultaneously 100% God. And so we were able, I don’t remember if we, I think we mentioned Micah. I think we might have mentioned it. But anyway, to those Jews, we were able to say, Micah says it. Look at what it says. This is the one you say refers to the Messiah.

Look at what it says about him. So I asked him, well, what do you think the nature of the Messiah is? What is he when he comes? We don’t know. Well, of course you don’t know because you’ve been taught not to know so long as it’s not Jesus, right? So it’s this mystery. But it’s not a mystery here. It’s not a mystery here. Now if you were a Jew, you know, 600 years before Christ and you read Micah 5, it might be confusing.

I admit. I admit. That’s why when the events were fulfilled in time, there were all of these other accompanying miracles, appearance of angels, and of course the resurrection of Christ, which was ultimate, which all confirms that this was talking about Jesus. So it all blends together. And that’s actually what we talked with Ben. What is the, if there’s one point I wanted to drive home to them, it was this.

Did Jesus rise from the dead? If that’s true, everything else that he says is fact, including Micah 5 too, is referring to him. So anyway, the reason I wanted to bring that up is that was such a wonderful instance where we could take something that might seem a bit dry in Sunday school and use it because this is exactly how it’s intended to be understood and used.

And so we go to John 1. Let’s go to John 1, John chapter 1. John chapter 1. Now again, as we’ve been talking about the eternity of God, we’ve done our, tried to do a little bit of homework, right, and get some background of how, what kind of language the Lord uses when he’s describing his eternity. You know, he talks about everlasting to everlasting. He talks about how everlasting pointed backward, everlasting pointed forward, right, some of the language.

One of the pieces of language the Lord uses to describe his eternity is beginning, before the foundation of the world, in the beginning. That’s one that’s used throughout scripture. Well when you get to John 1, notice what it says. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. The language in the beginning repeated over and over in those two verses is referring to that eternal state prior to the creation of the world.

That’s how it’s used in scripture. The cults come along and they say, well that’s not talking about eternity, that’s talking about before God created the world, think about what you’re saying now, before God created the world, he created Jesus. That’s what they believe. That’s what like, Joe’s Witnesses believe. Jesus is the first creation of God. I wish Miss Lynn was here because I had a conversation with her about this.

Not the firstborn of the creation, that’s what Colossians says, but the first created. For those of you that want to study that out, study out firstborn of the creation versus first created. Not the same, not the same. But see the cults misunderstand Colossians where it says that, firstborn of every creature. And so they look at this and they say, well see, just prior to the Lord creating the world, the universe, he created Jesus.

And then he said, Jesus, now you create the world. It’s logically stupid, but the problem is, before creation, before Genesis 1, 1, there is no before. You see, there’s no before, it doesn’t exist because time hasn’t started. So the only way to put it into human words is to say what? In the beginning. What does that, that denotes the very beginning. That’s a statement of eternity. And so in John 1, 1, the word with the capital W is referring to Jesus Christ who was there in the beginning, which means he’s eternal.

Now let’s go to Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13. I don’t think we’re going to get to the next attribute. That’s okay though. Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13 verse 8 says this, Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever. The key I want you to see is the last two words, forever. It says Jesus Christ forever. So we know yesterday, today and forever is kind of a turn of phrase.

It’s a reference to eternity in both directions, although it doesn’t use the same terminology like in Micah. But the idea is, as he was in the past, so now and so forever. So you have eternity in both directions. But now that truth, which we’ve seen in the Old Testament, is applied to Jesus. Again, Micah, John, Hebrews, Revelation. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You see what I’m saying?

The question of the deity of Jesus Christ is everywhere. It’s in all these points. And we’re only talking about one attribute of God, of the many that is applied to Jesus. Just one. And we’ve looked at at least four. We’re about to get into the fifth verse that prove and demonstrate that Jesus has the attribute of eternity. And that’s just one attribute that is applied to him.

Lastly, go to John 17 for the last one. John 17. John 17, 5, the Lord praying here says this, And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own, with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. Now, you could look at the glory. God does not share His glory. That’s in the Old Testament. That’s clearly revealed. God stands alone.

He’s unique. His glory He does not share with any other. He stands alone and will not share it. Yet He shares it. See it? He shares it. But then furthermore, Jesus says He had this glory before the world was. Not only does Jesus share the glory of the Father, which is not permitted, but He has shared it since before the world was. Again, a statement of eternity.

All of these demonstrate that our Lord Jesus Christ, the one we worship, is not merely a man. He is a man. Even in heaven, you see the appearance of Jesus as a man, the Son of man. He’s called in revelation, in heaven. But He is also God in the flesh. And so we don’t just worship a man. We worship the one true and living God who is manifest in the flesh.

Does anybody have a comment, an exclamation point you want to add to that? In Mark chapter 1, I’ve been watching videos on King James Bible in the defense of Greek text versus the Alexandrian. And in Mark chapter 1 verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in the Alexandrian text on many of them, the Son of God is missing. And from that, there are people who have said, you see, this is when Jesus became the Son of God in verse 11.

And there came a voice from heaven saying, thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am all pleased. And they’re saying that in this verse, they’re saying that even though Jesus was in the world, He was not considered the Son until God said that. And they are using that doctrine to defend that He became the Son. And I didn’t want to bore this out, but the person who said it, the person who became the mind, this is one of the topics of uncovering that this is agnostic that Jesus became the Son.

And the Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that He was always the Son, and He was always the Mother. It has to be so based upon our next attribute, which we’ll have to get into next week, which is immutability. If He ever was the Son of God, He must always have been the Son. It is required that He always has been the Son of God, else He changed in His nature.

And that’s not permitted. That God doesn’t change. So that’s, yeah. And with that, in the Trinity, if Jesus wasn’t always the Son of God, then was the Spirit always the Spirit? And how did they choose who was going to be who if this was not always true? Yeah. We’re sinking here. We’re sinking. Anybody else have a comment? Yeah.

Yeah. Anybody else? All right. Well, let’s wrap this up now and go to Revelation chapter 17. So we’ve looked at the eternity of God, our God is eternal, as it relates to theology. We’ve looked at it as it relates to practice. We’ve looked at it as it relates to Jesus Christ. And lastly, we want to look at the eternity of God as it relates to the gospel.

All right? And I know we’ve covered this a little bit already, but we will just wrap this up. Revelation 17 verse 8. Listen, when I read verses like this, I’m not reading them because I have a neat and tidy explanation and can explain it in full. I’m reading it because it is important that we do not avoid verses that have difficult things in them, difficult things that is for us to understand.

We should grapple with these things so that we can meditate on them. And this is a perfect example. Revelation 17 verse 8. Now, this is all in the tribulation, the Antichrist and all that, but there’s a little tidbit here. The beast that thou sawest was and is not and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was and is not and yet is.”

Well, that don’t mess up your theology. Here’s what the Lord is saying. The Lord is looking almost at the end of history, right, because that’s what Revelation is, and he’s referring to the book of life having been written. We know that it’s related to Revelation because whosoever was not found written in the land’s book of life was cat. So we know it’s a list of names of those who gain entrance into glory, right?

We know that. And here the Lord says their names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. What I’m saying is, here’s the takeaway from it, because I don’t have a perfect explanation, and again, I just warn you, the moment, the very moment you try to take these things and force them into some sort of system, it breaks. All right? I prefer to just leave it outside the box, okay?

And, but I think what we could say from this is the way the Lord looks at our salvation is a little bit different than the way we look at our salvation. We look at our, I look at my salvation as I got saved August 4, 1999, and I’ve been saved for, you know, whatever, 25, 26 years. I don’t think the Lord, being God who dwells in eternity, looks at it exactly the same as in that sequential way.

And that’s, I think that’s what this indicates. It’s the Lord’s view of the matter is a lot different. And the thing is, that’s a blessing to us. Go to Romans 8, if you would.

You know, there’s a song that says this, the song, Oh, what a Savior. They searched through heaven to find a Savior. The Lord’s never had to serve for anything, all right? I mean, before the world was, it was established. However, if my language is limited, right? Before the world was, Christ was the Savior, right? Before the world was, He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

I can’t explain that, but it’s true. And that is integral to our salvation. Is it not, right? I mean, our salvation depends upon Jesus slain for us, right? That’s the whole thing. That is our salvation. And so the fact that that’s done before the foundation of the world further demonstrates that God’s looking at this thing way different than we are. But there are times, however, that the Lord, even though that’s true, there are times when the Lord speaks of our salvation as we understand it in succession, right?

In time. And then there are times, and I’m thankful for that because that helps us get it, if He only ever referred to our salvation as He views it from eternity, I don’t know that any of us would be able to fully comprehend it. But He doesn’t. He speaks to us in human terms so that we understand, yeah, the Lord works in your heart. He draws you and you repent, you believe the gospel, and you’re saved at that moment, and all that.

But from His perspective, it’s totally, it’s not different, but His perspective is unique. So there are times, however, when He takes the two, the human perspective that He speaks, in which He speaks to us, and His divine perspective in eternity, and kind of plugs them together. And Romans 8 is a good example of that. Romans 8, verse number, look at verse 28.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. So from the beginning, we’re seeing a hint here. This is not man’s perspective. This is God’s perspective. This is God’s perspective. God knows all things and how they’re going to work out. Right? And so that’s how He can say it. Verse 29.

And whom He justified, then He also glorified. Now from our perspective, predestinate, called, justified, glorified, all happen at different moments of time. Right? You can say predestinate, and don’t get scared of that word, predestinate to be conformed to the image of Christ. Right? So, but we understand that’s something determined beforehand. Right? Then you have called. I’m actually going to talk about that this morning. And then you have justified.

That’s the moment you believe the gospel. You’re justified at that moment. So prior to that, you weren’t righteous. You’re justified. Now you are righteous by virtue of Christ’s righteousness. And then glorified hasn’t happened yet. The Bible says glorified hasn’t happened yet. Right? So we look at that like that. But notice in this verse, everything is in the perfect tense. It’s done. Did predestinate, called, ed, called, justified, ed, justified, glorified, ed.

It’s all spoken as if it’s done. We just blow our mind. So this is obviously a statement from God’s perspective kind of plugged in to our perspective. And basically what it’s saying here is, and the blessing of this truth is, that there is never any doubt as to your destination in mind. Because it’s done. It’s done. You’re going to be with God. You are. You are going to be like Christ.

He has determined that is going to happen. And although you’re not glorified, you are going to be. And there’s nothing in the world that’s going to change that in time. Because God’s declared it to be so. Right? That’s what he says. That’s why he can speak in past tense of what we would call the future. This also, this truth also precludes any idea of the loss of one’s salvation.

How can you lose your salvation if God knows you’re glorified already? Right? You can’t, right? Obviously you can’t. And that’s just one of the many arguments you can make. If God says something that to us is future, but speaks of it as if it is already accomplished, some of the prophetic scriptures do that as well. Then you know it is certain. It will happen. It will happen.

Because to God it has already happened. So now close on a little bit of a darker note. By contrast, think of how dreadful it is to have an eternal God looking at our sin for someone who doesn’t know Christ. Who forever will never unsee it. But it will always, at every moment, if you can use that term, be fresh and new. This is also the basis, you know I covered this, the doctrine of eternal torment, conscious eternal torment recently.

The basis of that is the eternity of God. The reason why that is just is because of God’s eternal nature. Because God, every moment that passes, God sees sin as if it is happening now. And for all of eternity, that’s how he views actions. Even though that sin was committed by a man in time, yet it is ever before God. Unforgiven sin. That’s frightful. Honestly, that is frightful.

To think of that, how the lost will perish and be the objects of God’s wrath forever. But that’s based in his eternity. It’s just sobering. Let’s pray together.