Our Eternal Home: The Unshakeable God Text: Psalm 90:1-2
Introduction: The Only Starting Point
We live in an age of frantic rootlessness. Modern man is a spiritual vagrant, a cosmic orphan, convinced he has no home and no father. He has told himself a story in which he is nothing more than a temporary collection of atoms, a happy accident in a meaningless universe, and he is therefore desperately trying to build a home for himself out of materials that are destined to burn. He builds his little huts of hedonism, his cardboard shelters of political utopianism, and his lean-tos of self-actualization, and then is perpetually surprised when the first hard wind of reality blows them all down.
The problem is not that he cannot find a home; the problem is that he has rejected the only one that has ever been offered. He is a prodigal who has not only run away from his Father's house but is now trying to convince himself that there was never a house or a Father to begin with. This is the foundational lie of our secular, godless age. And it is a miserable lie.
Into this desperate and unhinged confusion, this prayer of Moses the man of God speaks with a thunderous and steadying authority. This psalm is the oldest in the Psalter, a poem from the wilderness wanderings. It is a meditation forged in a place of transience, sand, and death. For forty years, the Israelites were quite literally homeless, wanderers in the desert. An entire generation lived and died without a fixed address. And it is precisely in that context that Moses grounds the people of God not in a place, but in a Person. Before they ever had a promised land, they had a promised Lord. Before they had a temple made with hands, they had a God who was their dwelling place.
This psalm is a reality check. It is a dose of divine sanity. It forces us to confront the immense, qualitative chasm between the Creator and the creature, between the eternal God and ephemeral man. If we do not get this distinction right, we get nothing right. Everything downstream from this foundational truth will be polluted. Our politics, our families, our worship, our very thoughts will be warped if we do not begin where Moses begins: with the God who is our home, the God who simply is.
The Text
Lord, You have been our dwelling place from generation to generation.
Before the mountains were born Or You brought forth the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
(Psalm 90:1-2 LSB)
God Our Home (v. 1)
Moses begins with this foundational declaration of covenantal reality:
"Lord, You have been our dwelling place from generation to generation." (Psalm 90:1)
Notice the tense. "You have been." This is not a future hope, but a past and present reality. For the people of God, our stability is not found in a location on a map, but in our relation to the Lord. A dwelling place is a place of safety, of provision, of identity, of rest. It is where you belong. Moses is saying that for the covenant people, from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, and now to this grumbling generation in the wilderness, their true home has always been God Himself. He is our native soil. He is our native country.
This demolishes the materialist assumption that our primary reality is physical. The unbeliever thinks his home is his house, his country, his portfolio. But these things are all subject to decay, to moths, to rust, to market crashes, and to invading armies. The Christian's home is not. "For in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). We are located in God before we are located in Idaho, or anywhere else. He is not just in our environment; He is our environment. He is the one in whom we are situated.
And this has been true "from generation to generation." This is a covenantal statement. God's faithfulness is not a fleeting thing. He was a home for Abraham's generation, and for Isaac's, and for Jacob's. This provides a profound sense of historical continuity. We are not the first to walk this path. We are part of a great, multi-generational household, and the house itself is the Lord. This is why the church is called the "household of God" (Eph. 2:19). We are not isolated individuals trying to make our way to God; we are a people, a family, who have been brought into His very life as our shelter.
This means that our ultimate security is not in our circumstances, but in our God. The Israelites in the wilderness were in a precarious situation. They were vulnerable, exposed, and surrounded by enemies. But Moses reminds them that their true fortress, their true dwelling, was the Lord Himself. The same is true for us. Whether we are in a time of prosperity or a time of persecution, our dwelling place remains unchanged. He is our constant. To dwell in Him is to be safe, regardless of what the evening news says.
The Uncreated God (v. 2)
After establishing who God is to us (our dwelling), Moses then declares who God is in Himself.
"Before the mountains were born Or You brought forth the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." (Psalm 90:2 LSB)
This verse establishes the absolute self-existence and eternality of God. Moses uses the imagery of birth for the mountains and the earth. Creation had a beginning. It was "born." It came into being. The mountains, which seem to us to be the very symbol of permanence and antiquity, are presented here as infants compared to God. Before the first mountain was ever pushed up from the earth's crust, God was.
He "brought forth" the earth and the world. This is the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. God is the uncreated Creator. He is not part of the system. He is not the biggest thing in the universe; He is the one who created the universe and everything in it. There is an infinite, qualitative distinction between God and everything else. Everything else is contingent; it depends on something outside of itself for its existence. God alone is necessary. He depends on nothing. He is the great "I AM."
And this is where we come to the staggering phrase: "from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." This is not just a very long time. It is not an infinite extension of the timeline in both directions. It is to say that God is outside of time altogether. Time is a creature. God created the "was" and the "will be." He Himself inhabits an eternal now. Before there was a "before," God is. After the last "after," God is. He does not have a past or a future in the way that we do. He is. His name is I AM, not I WAS or I WILL BE.
This is the bedrock of all reality. If God were not eternal, He would not be God. If He had a beginning, then whatever began Him would be God. If He could have an end, He would not be the ultimate reality. Because He is from everlasting to everlasting, He is the absolute, unchanging standard for all truth, all goodness, and all beauty. He is not subject to change, to moods, or to whims. "For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed" (Mal. 3:6). Our security as His people is grounded in His immutability.
Our Fleeting Lives in an Eternal Home
The rest of this psalm, which we will consider in the weeks to come, goes on to contrast this eternal God with our frail, fleeting, and sinful existence. Our lives are like grass that withers, a tale that is told, a dream upon waking. And this is not meant to drive us to despair, but to drive us to our only hope: our eternal Home.
The fact that God is our dwelling place and that He is from everlasting to everlasting is the only thing that gives our short, transient lives any meaning. If we are just flashes in the pan in a meaningless cosmos, then our lives are ultimately absurd. But if our lives are lived within the eternal God, then even our briefest moments have eternal weight and significance. We are living in His house, under His roof, and by His rules. Our seventy or eighty years are not a standalone story; they are a single sentence in the great epic that He is writing.
The gospel is the ultimate expression of this truth. How can finite, sinful man dwell with an infinite, holy God? The answer is that God Himself bridged the gap. The eternal Son, who is Himself "from everlasting," took on our created, temporal flesh. Jesus Christ, the eternal God, became a man in time and space. He did this so that He could bring us, His people, into His eternal dwelling place. He is the door to the house. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
Conclusion: Live Where You Are
So what is the application for us? It is profoundly simple. Live where you are. You are in Christ, who is in God. Therefore, live like you are at home. Stop living like a spiritual vagrant, anxiously trying to build your own security. Your security is already established in the eternal God. Stop being tossed to and fro by the temporary chaos of this world. Your dwelling place is unshakable.
When you are tempted to fear because of political instability, remember that your dwelling place is the Lord, before whom the nations are a drop in the bucket. When you are tempted to despair because of personal frailty or sickness, remember that you are housed in the one who is from everlasting to everlasting. When you are tempted to think your small acts of faithfulness are meaningless, remember that they are being done within the halls of an eternal kingdom, and He will establish the work of your hands.
The world thinks we are the homeless ones because we look for a city whose builder and maker is God. But the truth is the precise opposite. They are the ones without a roof over their heads, exposed to the coming storm of judgment. We are the ones who are already home. We are secure. We dwell in the high tower of God's own being. So let us live like it. Let us live with the quiet confidence, the joyful stability, and the settled peace of those who know their address is "The Lord God, From Everlasting to Everlasting."