“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). What an incomprehensible thought, i.e. “from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God!” God has always been and always will be. We struggle to get our head around that concept, but we just cannot fully grasp it. We cannot comprehend something with no beginning. We ourselves had a beginning; the earth had a beginning; but God had no beginning. He always existed – and will continue to do so.
Moses, who wrote Psalm 90, was introduced to this truth when God met him in the wilderness while he was tending his sheep in the desert. After God commissioned him to deliver the children of Israel out of Egypt, Moses asked God “when I say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, what is his name? What shall I say unto them? God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (Exodus 3:13-14). In essence, God told Moses that the self-existent One sent him to them.
Unlike us, God depends on nothing for his existence. We depend on air, food, light, water, etc. God needs none of these. He exists independent from everything else. No surprise there – the Creator exists prior to and independent from His creation. His self-existence is an attribute of his deity. That is why in that same Psalm above, Moses concludes “thou art God.”
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, claimed for himself this same self-existence. When the Pharisees challenged his testimony concerning himself, they declared they were of Abraham’s seed, but knew not his origin. After a lengthy discourse with them, he confronted them with this conclusion, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). The Jews, knowing the significance of his declaration, took up stones to stone him.
God’s unique self-existence makes him worthy of our praise. There is none like unto him. He stands apart from all time and circumstance and, consequently, there are no boundaries or limitations upon him. And so he declares to Jeremiah, “I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). His name, Jehovah, translated here as “LORD” means the self-existent One. We can be confident that our God can do anything to meet the need of his children. What a comfort and hope that though I am bound by my circumstances and the limitations of my own flesh, there is nothing too hard for God, my Savior. Is he not worthy of our praise?
From the Chaplain 