God’s Love For His Church: Our Eternal Home (Part 3)

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. 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.

My foregoing remarks may have seemed a bit theologically technical, but it has not been without reason. Any practical benefit which may be derived from the rest of this Psalm can be meaningful only if it is grounded upon the theological framework we have labored to present. The structure of this Psalm tells us this. Verse 1 is a statement of a great privilege of the Church. Verse 2 gives the theological reason for this. Then verses 3-17 lay out all of the inferences and ramifications of this objective doctrinal statement. Scripture never gives pastoral theology in the absence of doctrinal theology.

You will recall that earlier I suggested that this Psalm was written when the people of God murmured in unbelief at the report of 10 of the 12 spies. You will also recall that earlier I spoke of Israel standing on the very brink of receiving the first in a series of promises - or rather fulfillments of promises - that would ultimately culminate in the Seed of Abraham in which all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And at the very moment when they could almost taste it, their faith faltered and in their unbelief they behaved as if God’s faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and indeed, to themselves, was nonexistent and irrelevant. That, it seems to me, is the reason that this Psalm begins by looking back on God’s eternal decree of sovereign electing love for His people. That is why I endeavored to lay the theological framework.

If God’s people have been guilty of anything throughout the ages, it is the ingratitude of forgetfulness. This is the result of forgetting how great our sins and miseries are and how great God’s deliverance of us from our sins and miseries is! Israel failed to trust God’s faithfulness to them when it came time to cross into Canaan because they had forgotten how great their bondage in Egypt was and how great their deliverance was.

I know that we’re Westminster Standards people here, but I can’t resist pointing to the “Guilt, Grace, Gratitude” paradigm of Heidelberg Catechism Question 2, which, in reference to the comfort derived from knowing that I belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, asks, “How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort mayest live and die happily.” The answer is: “Three; the first, how great my sins and miseries are; the second, how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries; the third, how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance.” Whenever we lose sight of the magnitude of our guilt, we necessarily lose sight of the magnitude of God’s grace. If we lose sight of these two things, we will become ungrateful. This ingratitude expresses itself in either moral laxity or self-righteousness. But a constant view of our guilt and God’s grace breeds a constant gratitude. If God is eternal, and if His decreed love for us is eternal, then He loved us in full cognizance of our guilt. This does not lead to presumption, but to humility and grateful obedience.

But, as I said, we are forgetful. God in His goodness has always tried to alert us to this danger. Throughout the entire Old Testament administration of the Covenant of Grace every single sacrifice, every single feast, every single religious rite or ceremony was aimed at reminding God’s people of the unmerited favor they had received and the unmerited favor they were yet to receive via the promises that were to be fulfilled by the coming of the Christ. Every time that we partake of the sacraments, God is signifying and sealing to us His covenant promises. He reminds us that we have done nothing to deserve having our sins washed away by the precious blood of Christ. He reminds us that we have done nothing to deserve being engrafted into Christ. He reminds us that He has been our dwelling place throughout all generations and that before He created the world, He was from everlasting to everlasting the one and only true God.

From everything which we have said we can draw the following inferences:

1.      Remember earlier that I pointed out the fact that this Psalm is a prayer? Here is what we learn from that fact: There is no approaching God in prayer, unless we lay hold on the offer of God’s kindness –unless we look upon God as gracious to us in Christ. That is why here, as elsewhere in Scripture, this prayer begins with a renewed expression of saving faith.

2.      God’s people in every place and age, are one with God’s people in all ages preceding and following, and may lay claim to all the privileges of God’s people before them. In our Psalm we see the Church in Moses’ time joining itself with all God’s people in former times, for the benefit of the God’s people in future times.

3.      God’s love towards us is eternal. As Romans 8:39 says, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.” I wonder if you realize just how wonderful that truth really is. Because Paul says this immediately after he has assembled a list which he labels “everything in creation.” God is the only Being outside of Creation, and we know that He has loved in Christ from eternity past, and so we do not doubt His intentions towards us. Since God’s love for us is eternal, it was there before the world was there. It predates everything and anything in creation. Therefore, no created being, not even Satan himself, can get beyond or between God’s love and us. John Knox wrote, “When we understand that presently we believe in Christ Jesus, because we were ordained before the beginning of all times to believe in him; as in him we were elected to the society of eternal life; then is our faith assuredly grounded, and that because the gifts and vocation of God are without repentance, and he is faithful that hath called us. His infinite goodness, which moved him to love us in another then in ourselves, that is in Christ Jesus, according to his free benevolence, which he had purposed in him, is to us a tower of refuge, which Satan is never able to overthrow, nor the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.”

4.      Someone once asked Augustine what God was doing before He created the world, to which Augustine is said to have replied that God was making hell for smart-alecks who asked such impudent questions. But here we see that before God created the world He had already willed to be the dwelling place of His people throughout all time and beyond.

5.      Based upon these truths we see that our trials and sufferings, the painful process of sanctification, and the countless unanswered questions which arise in our minds as we observe the mysterious work of Providence, – all these things have eternal glory as their ultimate outcome. That is why this Psalm can start where it does – with a view of God’s eternal love for His people, and after bewailing the frailty of human life, which is merely the result of our iniquities and secret sins which are always in the light of God’s presence, the Psalm can end in a song of joy and eternal gladness satisfied with God’s unfailing love.

John Knox in his work on Predestination writes, “Except our comfort be grounded upon that foundation which never can be moved, it is not perfect.” In the verses we have looked at we have seen the greatest comfort a sin-weary soul can find:  the love of God for His people, our dwelling place.

God’s Love For His Church: Our Eternal Home (Part 2)

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. 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.

This idea (God dwelling with His people and, conversely, His people dwelling with Him), is found throughout the Scriptures. Moses writes in Leviticus 26:11-12 that God, in keeping His covenant with His people, will dwell among them and be their God and they will be His people. This promise has been rightly called the “Emmanuel Promise,” for in it God promises to be “God with us.” This promise is repeated numerous times in Scripture in many forms, and finds fulfillment in the Incarnation of Christ, the God-Man, and comes to ultimate fruition in the consummation of all things as recorded for us in Revelation 21:3, which cites the Leviticus 26:11-12 promise.

The Old Testament authors repeatedly call God their hiding place, refuge, or strong tower. Psalm 91:1 speaks of the “secret place of the Most High,” and the “shadow of the Almighty.” In language reminiscent of our passage, Ezekiel 11:16 has God promising, during the Exile, to be a sanctuary for His people. The true fulfillment of this promise appears in the true Israel of God, (the Church, as per Galatians 6:16), and in John’s vision of the heavenly city where there is no temple because the presence of the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb is the Temple. And did you know that the Hebrew word used of God as the dwelling place of His people in Psalm 90:1 is used in elsewhere Scripture (2Chr 36:15 & Ps 26:8) in reference to the Temple itself? How’s that for continuity?

Verse 2 serves as the link which connects the rest of the chapter to verse 1. It is because of God’s eternal love for His people that He provides them the protective shelter of His presence. It is because of His eternal love that He has provided a solution for the sinfulness of His people, sinfulness of which we read in verse 8. This explains why the candid and undisguised confession of sinfulness in verse 8 does not lead to hopeless despair, but rather to a confident reliance on God’s unfailing love in Verse 14.

In New Testament terms, Verse 1 speaks of the Mystical Union that obtains between Christ and His church. Verses 3-11 speak of God’s providential dealings with His people. Verses12-17 pray for the wisdom to live in the light of this knowledge. But Verse 2 hinges everything upon God’s eternity. Again we see the truth of Ephesians 1:3-6. All of God’s good will, grace, mercy, favor, and electing love towards His people have been His purpose from eternity.

Christopher Ness speaks of the Eternity of God’s purposes in these words, “As God's essence is eternal, so His decree must be eternal also. Now the decree is God's decreeing, because whatever is in God is God; it is God Himself by one eternal act, decreeing and determining whatsoever should come to pass unto the praise of His own glory.”

There can no more be a new thought, a new intent, or a new purpose in God, than there can be a new God. Whatever God thinks, He has always thought and will always think. Whatever God purposes he has always purposed and always will purpose. He says, “I know (present tense) the thoughts I think (present tense) toward you” (Jeremiah 29:11). Just as he can never learn anything new or know anything new, neither can he intend anything new. His name is, after all, I AM.

Furthermore, if Christ be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as He is called in Revelation 13:8, then God’s gracious purposes for His people must be before time since our predestination unto adoption as children is expressed in Scripture by these words, “as he has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.” Christ is the means. Means are related to ends in such a way that the means cannot be conceived of before the ends they serve. No one conceives of an elaborate plan and then tries to find a goal to use it on! If Christ is the eternal purpose of the Father, then choosing us in Christ must be His eternal purpose also. Commenting on Psalm 90:2, David Dickson wrote, “From God’s good will to us in time, we may arise to God’s good will to us before time; and from grace showed to us in time, we may conclude grace and good will purposed toward us, and ordained for us before time.”

And of course, Scripture is replete with declarations of the eternity of God’s decree. Scripture uses expressions such as, “before the world began;” and “before the foundation of the world;” and "the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Our Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 7 was written in the light of passages such as Ephesians 1. The Catechism asks: “What are the decrees of God?” The answer given is: “The decrees of God are, his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath fore-ordained whatsoever comes to pass.” God’s decrees are eternal precisely because God’s essence is eternal. God dwells in what might be called an ‘infinite present.’ All things and all events in time are eternally present before Him. The fact that God is eternal, as Psalm 90:2 emphasizes, gives us the comfort of knowing God will faithfully be our dwelling place for all generations.

The great Reformer, Wolfgang Musculus, notes that God has not seen fit to tell us that He has chosen us and to leave us without the knowledge of when He did so. Commenting on Paul’s statement that God chose us before the foundation of the world, Musculus writes, “And yet there was no man before that the world was made. He chose us therefore before we were: so that there can be no occasion for the elect to boast thereof…This consideration commends unto us the wonderful purpose of God, wherein He determined with Himself upon our salvation before He made the world…It is an incredible matter how great an assurance of salvation there rests in the hearts of the faithful…that God had a care of them before the world was made, and that they were chosen by Him unto salvation, before that they were.”

God’s Love For His Church: Our Eternal Home (Part 1)

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. 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.

While we are only looking at the first 2 verses, it will be helpful to know something about the structure of this Psalm in its entirety. This Psalm divides into three parts. The first part contains the Church’s comfort amid the distresses and sorrows of this world. The second part (3-11) contains an acknowledgement of the shortness and miseries of life – the results of sin – sin which is set plainly before the Lord who is full of mercy. The last part (12-17) contains a series of petitions, some of which are for wisdom to rightly use the shortness and sorrows of life, the rest are for deliverance from them.

This Psalm, which is a prayer, (Remember that. We’ll come back to this point later.), was written by Moses. Scholars have generally deduced that this was written at the time when the 12 spies returned from their mission and the people murmured against God. The overall flow of the Psalm seems to verify this view. Until this point in Israel’s history the people of God had no place of their own. This is not to say that it was insufficient that God should be their dwelling place, but He had promised to Abraham the land of Canaan as part of His covenant, which would eventually, through the many twists and turns of history, come to fruition in the birth of Christ, the Seed in which all nations of the earth would be blessed. 

Israel stands on the very brink of receiving this covenant promise, which was the first step in establishing the nation which would be ruled by the tribe of Judah, through the family of Jesse, through the dynasty of David, which would give birth to the Christ. And on the very brink of receiving this long-awaited promise, the Church’s faith falters, they murmur against God, and incur the justifiable anger of God expressed in the 2nd portion of the Psalm, seen notably in verses 7 through 11.

In a fashion typical of all the Bible’s exhortations to trust in God, Moses sets before us in this verse God’s faithful dealing in the past, and in this particular case, with the Patriarchs. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” Scripture frequently encourages us to trust God by setting before us His ‘track-record,’ as it were, of faithfulness in the past. 

Immediately in this passage, we see a presupposition of the Doctrine of Election, or more properly, the grace of adoption, by which God had embraced the offspring of Abraham as His children. How do we make this assessment? Note that little pronoun, “our.” This speaks of God’s particular, electing love for His people. Moses did not say, “Lord, you have been the dwelling place of the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians,” or “of all mankind,” for that matter, but “You have been our dwelling place.” By speaking of ‘generations,’ Moses is looking back to their forefathers in the faith. The Old Testament is saturated with this idea: that of God’s covenant faithfulness across generations – and the relevance of that historical fact to whatever the present situation happened to be. For instance, in the wake (pun intended) of escaping the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, Moses sings in Exodus 15:2, “The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”

Samuel Horsley comments on our passage by expressing the experience of God’s people in these words, “Strangers and pilgrims as we have hitherto been, in every succeeding generation, from the days of Abraham; first sojourners in Canaan; then bondsman Egypt; now wanderers in this dreary waste; we nevertheless find the comforts of a home and settlement in thy miraculous protection.”

The point being driven at here is that the same grace of God experienced by the Patriarchs could be counted on by their offspring. Moses is looking back to God’s covenant promise to be a God to His people and their children, and to dwell with them, in a way which far surpassed whatever glory they had seen in the tabernacle over the previous 40 years. Moses’ statement is intended to recount, not how God had been faithful toward the Israelites since the Exodus, but what their fathers had experienced Him to be since the beginning of time. 

The concept presented to us in verses 1 and 2, goes back even farther than Abraham. It goes back to before Creation. This is accomplished by setting forth God’s grace towards His people, namely, in being their dwelling, not merely from the date of the Exodus, or from the birth of Abraham, but from all generations. The Hebrew literally says, “to generations and generations.” You may well be aware that repetition is a Hebrew method of emphasis. And the relationship between God’s favor towards His people and God’s eternity is emphasized in these verses by a parallel repetition. God is said to be our dwelling place for “generations and generations,” because He is God from “everlasting and everlasting.” Men live for generations; God’s favor, because He is eternal, is from everlasting to everlasting. 

So as I say, we are being taken back before creation itself. Ephesians 1:3-6 expresses this exact same idea in much more explicit language. It reads, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” The “One” He loves is, of course, referring to Christ. 

Here we are told that the sovereign, electing grace of God whereby He gathers His people unto Himself and adopts them as His own dear children, is something God did in Christ before the foundation of the world. 

Before there was a world in which God’s plan would unfold, before there was a garden in which our first parents were placed, before Abraham was called to sojourn in Canaan, and before his Seed would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, in the decree and purpose of God, He was already the dwelling place of His people. Augustine put it eloquently when he said, “Behold then the eternity that is our refuge that we may fly thither from the mutability of time, there to remain evermore.”