“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 seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; 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 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!”
–Psalm 90
Let’s pray. [PRAYER]
It’s About Time
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” These are beautiful words, aren’t they? But what do they mean? Have you ever wondered what it means that God is our dwelling place? Or to put it another way: what does Moses mean that WE dwell in GOD?
Well, dwelling somewhere means being somewhere. It means remaining somewhere, living there. And we know that in Moses’ day, God dwelt in the midst of the people of Israel in the Tabernacle. But I don’t think that this is what Moses is talking about here. And for those of you who believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwells inside you, but again, I don’t think that this is what Moses is talking about. I think he’s talking about something more ancient, more basic, more foundational.
Think about this: Where is God? God is everywhere. Wherever you are, there God is. When you’re in your house, God is there. When you’re at your school, God is there. As Paul said to the Athenians in Acts 17:28, “In him we live and move and have our being.”
So, in this sense, for as long as there have been human beings, we have dwelt in God. Ever since the creation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, we have dwelt in God. We depend on Him “for life and breath and everything,” including the ground under our feet and the air we breathe.
And part of dwelling in God in this way means dwelling in the fixed order of things he has made for us to inhabit. The sun for light by day, the moon and the stars for light by night, the roaring of the seas and the changing of the seasons—God upholds all of these by the power of his might. So when we dwell in this fixed order of creation, we are dwelling in God in the way that this Psalm is talking about.
Have you ever stopped to wonder how many things you’re dependent on for your continued existence as a human being? You need food to eat, air to breathe, water to drink. You need your body’s autonomic functions to keep your heart pumping and your lungs breathing. You need gravity to keep you on the ground and the earth orbiting the sun at just the right distance to sustain life. You need atoms and molecules, electrons and nucleons, mass and energy. You need electromagnetism and the nuclear forces that hold the universe together. You need love and care and nurture and attention from your friends and family.
You not only need all these things, but you are governed and limited by these things. You cannot choose to not need air, or to not have mass any more. You can’t choose to ignore gravity or stop needing warmth to survive. And you certainly can’t decide that you don’t need your parents and teachers and counselors! These things rule you. They are an order over you, a fixed order that you will never be able to surpass. They are part of what makes us a creature rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen.
And in this Psalm, we see another unseen force in which we live and move and have our being, a force that is unstoppable, and irresistible, and governs every aspect of our lives. That’s right—I’m talking about time.
Have you ever asked yourself, “what is time?” It’s harder to define than you think, because the moment you try to define what time is, you end up using time-based concepts to define it. In fact, I was unable to find any definitions of time that weren’t at least a little bit circular in their descriptions. The best one I was able to find for the purposes of this sermon series was from Merriam Webster, which defines time as “a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.” See that? Past, present, future—these are all time-words. And without them, we can’t understand the world any more than we can do math without numbers or logic.
But at its essence, time is about progression from one state into another. It’s not just about being, it’s about becoming. Aristotle said “there is no time apart from change.” Time is the fourth dimension through which all of us are constantly moving. Even if we remain perfectly still in every other direction—up & down, left & right, forward & backward—we’re always moving through time. Time governs us. It rules us. And we can’t escape it any more than the number 3 can cease being a number.
Being in the flow of time means that we are constantly changing. Change is an essential part of what it means to be human. Think about it: We stand up, we sit down. We sleep, we wake up. We get hungry, we get full. We get angry, we get sad. All of us are in a constant state of becoming. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.”
But God…
But God is not this way. Look again at Psalm 90 with me: “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” All generations! Before anything else existed, God existed, and he does not change like shifting shadows. Look again at verse 2:
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
The ancient Hebrews did not have a word for “infinity,” because that concept wouldn’t even be invented for another 2,000 years—at least, not like we understand it today. So Moses used the phrase “from everlasting to everlasting” to express it. This is one of the biggest differences between us and God—He never had a beginning, and He’ll never have an end. He is from forever to forever.
Not only that, but God is not ruled by time as we are:
For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
For us, time cannot be stopped, sped up, or slowed down. It is a lazy river that carries us along, a roller coaster that we can’t exit, a slippery slope down which we slide until we reach the bottom. But not so for God. God is everywhere, all the time. There is no time where God is not, and yet it is God who governs time itself. Because God is above time, outside of time.
The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
We are temporary, but God is eternal. We pass away, but God endures. We wilt and wither; he abides forever.
Praise God, then, that the Bible was delivered to us within the flow of time. It was written by chosen men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, who lived at certain times at certain ages so that we could understand it. Think about it: people often complain that the Bible is hard to understand because it was written two to four thousand years ago. But how much more incomprehensible would it be if it were delivered outside the flow of time? It would be like trying to explain the glow of the milky way galaxy to a deep-sea fish who has never seen the sky. It would be like trying to teach a dog how to do algebraic equations.
But God has pity on His servants. He gives us His favor by stooping to our level so that we can understand Him. By entering into time, He graciously allows us to understand the outer fringes of His power and His love.
Overview of the Week
And that’s exactly what we’ll be trying to do the rest of this week as we explore what the Bible says about time.
On Monday, we will talk about Eternity—that mysterious space outside of time in which God dwells, has dwelt, and always will dwell.
On Tuesday, we will talk about the Past—its relationship to us as well as a brief overview of everything that’s ever happened.
On Wednesday, we will talk about Prophecy and the ways it connects past, present, and future in a way that only God is capable of.
On Thursday, we’ll talk about the Present—what it means to live in the present moment, and its importance.
On Friday, we will talk about the Future—about the promises of blessing in store for believers, as well as what awaits non-believers.
And on Saturday, we’ll recap.
It’s going to be a lot. It’s been a lot for me getting these messages ready for you! But it’s going to be good. Any time spent in God’s word is profitable, and preparing these messages has been a blessing for me. I trust they will be a blessing to you.
Let’s pray.
[PRAYER]
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