Jump Start # 672

Ps 90:2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

Psalms 90 is one of the oldest Psalms. It was written by Moses and gives us the great expression, “teach us to number our days.” The Psalms are very poetic. They give life and expression to things that we often don’t think about. In other places, the Psalms talk about the trees singing and the sun giving praise to God. Our verse today, talks about mountains being born. We typically would say, “before the mountains were made.” Giving birth to mountains brings God into the picture. Secular thinking would say that nature shaped the mountains without any planning, thought or influence. The Psalmist knew. God gave birth to the mountains.

Our verse is identifying the eternity of God. That’s just hard for us to get. Our children will ask about that in Bible classes and we have good answers for them, but it’s just hard to understand, even for us. We are surrounded with beginnings and endings. We have birthdays, anniversaries of special events and deaths. It’s all around us. Before too long, our flowers that we planted this spring, will die. Our pets die. We die. But God doesn’t. He has always been.

It’s hard for me to imagine that my great great grandfather talked to the same God that I talk to. His world was so different than mine. He wouldn’t understand how I can type these words and in a few minutes send them out worldwide. His worries were different than mine. Yet he had the same word of God that I do and he loved the same God that I do and God wanted him to do the same as He wants me to do. That’s hard to grasp for me. Then we stretch that thought even more and realize that Timothy and Titus talked to the same God I talk to. They loved the same God that I love. God wanted the same from them as He does from me. Stretch that thought even more, and Adam walked in the Garden and talked with the same God that I talk to. Incredible.

Not only is God everlasting, He remains the same. He doesn’t change. Some have thought that the God of the O.T. is harsh and demanding and the God of the N.T. is kinder and softer. The way some present it, it is as if God mellowed as He got older. Wrong. First, God doesn’t age. Secondly, God is the same. You find love and compassion in the O.T. as well as the N.T. and you find God striking disobedience in the N.T. as you do the O.T.

The wonderful thing about God never changing is that God is always the same. He isn’t moody like we can be. Catch some people on a bad day and look out! God’s not like that. God doesn’t peak and then see the best years have gone by. Not God. We do that, but He doesn’t. He is just as powerful today as when He opened the earth, made the sun stand still or parted the Sea. Because God never changes, He never changes His mind. That gives us hope and confidence. Things around here change. Our tax laws change. Our weather changes. People change. God doesn’t. He doesn’t say something and then later changes His mind. That would be tough to deal with. He is not like that.

Because God is everlasting, He has a history with mankind. That history is the Bible. We look and see that God is good. We understand that He wants the best for us and from us. We see how He loves us so.

There is a part of us that is everlasting as well  -our souls. They have not been around as forever as God has, but our souls will outlast our bodies. Our souls will live on after we have completed the journey here. Paul talked about that in Corinthians when he said the outer man decays and inner man is being renewed. Our bodies and souls are going different directions. Our souls are getting stronger and better and our bodies are getting weaker and weaker. Someday they will part. The body will be finished. The soul will continue.

This is why we ought to put more emphasis upon the spiritual than the physical. How we look spiritually is far more important than how we look physically. What we do for the body is not nearly as important as what we do for our souls.

There is a hymn that says, “I’ll live on and on…” That’s good to know. That’s hope.

Our everlasting God—amazing! Our everlasting God– worthy of praise!

Roger