Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible Part in the Book of Genesis. Tonight is Part #7 of Genesis, chapter 17 and we will read Genesis 17:7-8:

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

I will stop reading there. We see that God is speaking of things that are everlasting in both verses, as He refers to the everlasting covenant and to the land of Canaan, which will be given as an everlasting possession. To correctly understand what God is telling us here, we must look up this word “everlasting” in the Bible and we will see it identifies with eternal things that will continue for evermore.

For instance, this word is used in Psalm 90:1-2:

A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

This is speaking of God, who is eternal in His Being. He is from everlasting past. We know this is the teaching of the Bible and it is not something we can understand. We can understand the concept of eternity, of course, and we understand that it means that God has no beginning and He has always been. We understand that this is what the Bible teaches and our minds can grasp these definitions, but we cannot understand how that is possible and how God could have existed for as long and as deep and as far as we could venture in our “mind’s eye” into eternity past.

You would go back beyond the measly history of the earth, which is only a little over 13,000 years old and you would travel back to before this world existed and then you would be in “eternity past” and then you would just keep on going, and going and going and going. How can we understand this? Can we understand it if we apply numbers to it and we start counting? We would just be counting forever and forever, as we would try to get some idea of how far back “eternity past” is and there is no way we can truly grasp the idea. We cannot comprehend the eternal nature of God because we are not eternal. If we have become saved, we have been given the gift of eternal life and we will live forever into the future, but we all had a beginning. We have all been created and there was a moment in time in which we were conceived and came in to existence. That is why we cannot comprehend a God who has never been conceived and brought into existence. He has always been.

Some people might think, “Well, Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit in the Virgin’s womb.” However, that was not the beginning of Jesus. He had already existed as Eternal God from all eternity past. That was simply a point of transition as He emptied Himself of His eternal glory and came down from the glorious kingdom of God to enter the human race, but it was not His beginning. That is where many Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims that deny the deity of Jesus Christ make their big error. They look at it as if Christ had a beginning and that is when He became the Son of God. And that is another error, because Jesus did not become the Son of God when He was formed in the Virgin’s womb, but He was declared to be the Son of God through His death and resurrection at the point of the foundation of the world, which would have taken place in that “eternity past.”

It is so very complex and these are enormous truths that we find in the Bible concerning this divine, holy and glorious Being who is God. He is so incredibly far beyond us and His thoughts are higher than us as the heavens are higher than the earth. And I do not just mean the heavens that are the sky above this earth or even the heavens of space above, but the far reaches of the universe. We know you can travel a very long distance and never come to the end of it, but if you could ever reach that point and you looked back toward earth, you would not be able to see it. That is an analogy or comparison between an infinite God and a finite human being – there is no comparison because He is an all-powerful, all-knowing God who has always been. There is a mystery and a truth the Bible tells us that we simply cannot understand. We cannot even begin to understand how God could have always been.

By the way, this would apply to those people that think, “Since I am one person and you are one person and every human is only one individual, therefore, God is one Person.” They argue this because they apply the limitations of the creature to the God who created us. They reason that God must be one and not three. You see, that is the foolishness of that kind of reasoning by the little, tiny and finite man that is less than an insect in comparison to the great God of the Bible as man tries to apply his creature limitations to the Infinite Creator: “You must be one person because I am one person.” We could use that same reasoning and we could say, “God, you must be finite and you must have had a beginning because I am finite and I had a beginning.” Do you see how foolish that is? God is superior. He is higher and far, far greater than the things He created, including the highest form of creation, mankind made in His own image. God is infinite, eternal and He is from everlasting to everlasting. He dwells in or inhabits the entire spectrum of eternity. Remember the verse the Lord gives us in Isaiah 57. You know, sometimes the Bible will give a verse that gives us a glimpse at things we would have no other way of coming to know. It is very gracious of Him to do so and He does this in Isaiah 57:15:

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Of course, this is speaking of God and the Lord Jesus Christ (who is also God) and His salvation program of reviving the hearts of certain individuals, the elect. In the first Part of the verse, He tells us a fact. It is not God trying to puff Himself up, because He is not proud like men as they try to exaggerate to build themselves up by painting a picture to impress others. God does not do that, but He is simply stating a fact when He says that He is “the high and lofty One.” The Bible says, “Hear, O Israel: JEHOVAH our God is one LORD.” Yes, He is One, but He reveals Himself as three Persons.

He is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” and the word “inhabiteth” means to “dwell in” or “exist in,” just as we inhabit our houses or dwellings. We are so tiny and we live in a single house within a single town that is within a country that is within a world full of others that also live in their homes. Individually, we cannot even “fill up” our own home. If we are on the first floor, we cannot be on the second floor or in the basement. We inhabit a home, but we cannot fill that home all at once, but God inhabits all eternity. When it says that He is “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” He is speaking of all that was before the creation of the world and then you would have to keep traveling and traveling and, yet, you would never reach a beginning because eternity past has no beginning point.

We just have to shake our heads in wonder. God is a great Creator that created all that is around us on this earth and in this universe and He did it in six days. He called it His “work” and we know that God hates idleness. He gave the law that men are to work and God is under His own law, so He must work. He is not an idle or lazy God. He does not just “put up his feet” and lounge. He has been working from all eternity past. What is the work of God? In six days He created this world, so He creates when He works. At the conclusion of this world, we know He will create another world for His people. This is in keeping, very likely, with what He has been doing in all eternity past – working and creating. He would have created another world of this type or that type and another creation over here and over there. It paints a picture of a mind so brilliant that the word “brilliant” is not even sufficient to describe this Being called God that is from eternity past and who has kingdoms that we cannot begin to imagine, as far as our understanding can go. This same God will continue to do these things at the conclusion of this world because the Bible tells us of His plan to create again. In all probability, He will go about His business of creation in to eternity future. What kind of Kingdom of Heaven is out there awaiting us? Again, we just do not know. We know it says in Psalm 145:11-13:

They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power; To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.

God’s kingdom is glorious! We can only “taste” of it. We have a small sampling of it through the glory of salvation and through the Word of God and the information we can glean with our little, tiny minds. And, yet, God’s kingdom far extends into the past and into the future.

You know, we may pray, “Our Father, which art in heaven…thy kingdom come.” Of course, we should not make an image of God, but when we pray this way we have this concept of God sitting on a throne in a rather limited kingdom, surrounded by some angels and the saints that have gone to heaven, but His is an everlasting kingdom; it is a kingdom that is beyond our understanding and we can only shake our heads in amazement. By God’s grace, when He brings this world to its conclusion and He equips us with our new eternal bodies and we are able to enter the kingdom of heaven, then we will begin to learn. Then we will begin to see. It could be that God may have duties for us like ruling over those many creations He has created, but we will begin to learn and understand more and more about this glorious God. We will learn more of His Person, His attributes and the eternal work that He has done. We will continue to learn about Him for evermore.

God used this word “everlasting” in Psalm 145 regarding an everlasting kingdom, but He also used this word in Psalm 119:140-141:

Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it. I am small and despised: yet do not I forget thy precepts.

In the presence of God or the Word of God, we recognize more accurately our real “condition” and what we are, as God is the Potter and we are simply the clay. There is a big difference between the Potter and the clay and we see the real relationship.

Then it goes on to say in Psalm 119:142:

Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and thy law is the truth. Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights. The righteousness of thy testimonies is everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live.

The righteousness of God’s testimonies is everlasting. The testimonies are the law of God or Word of God. We are not surprised that they are “everlasting” because the Word Himself is everlasting. Remember what we read in 1Peter 1:23-25:

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

God’s Word has an everlasting quality and character because it is His Word and God is from everlasting to everlasting, so His Word has always been with Him. The Word is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. The Bible stands out and, of course, the child of God knows this, but the Bible is unlike anything else in this world. It is of the Highest Being and the highest authority because it comes from God. In other words, the Word of God is everlasting. You know, the Bible is an ancient book. Even secular authorities would acknowledge that the Bible is an ancient book. The New Testament goes back almost 2,000 years and the Old Testament is much older. We know that there were scrolls found of the book of Isaiah that dated back to about 700 years B. C. and the Bible speaks of things that are still in evidence in this world. We know we can go back to the time of Moses when God began to use holy men of old to write these things down and Moses’ time goes back to 1447 B.C. for the date of the deliverance and 1407 B.C. was the year that he died and, therefore, it was 3,400+ years ago that the Bible began to be written. It is more ancient than practically any other writing; there may be an older writing out there that has been found, but the Bible is one of the oldest writings in the world.

And, yet, that does not even begin to scratch the surface of how old this Word of God is because the Bible goes way back through the entire history of this world and into eternity past – back and back and back. The Word has been in Him and with Him in all eternity. Remember what it tells us in John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

We can go back and back and we will find the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, as God dwelling from everlasting to everlasting.