Psalm 119:89-90 Long Story

 

Your word, LORD, is eternal;
it stands firm in the heavens.
Your faithfulness continues through all generations;
you established the earth, and it endures.

Psalm 119:89-90

The Word of God is eternal because God is eternal. But the earthly lifespan of God's people is not.

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

Genesis 6:3

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Psalm 90:10

Generation after generation has encountered God's Word. It has remained steadfast throughout those generations, because God remains faithful.

But the way God's Word comes alive through His people changes as the generations change.

In modern times, the culture changes quickly. With each new generation comes a new way of thinking about and living in the new realities of life on earth.

In 1992, Neil Howe and William Strauss published Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069. In it they described a cyclical series of four generations (approximately 17-20 years) that have repeated throughout American history. Their work popularized the terms Generation X and the Millennial Generation.

Not everyone agrees with everything about their description of the generations, but it's undeniably true that current American culture changes rapidly from one generation to the next.

Throughout most of the world's history culture changed much more slowly. Rather than radical changes with each generation, they saw such changes take centuries.

Nevertheless, changes in culture have always changed the way people read and apply God's Word.

When the Israelites were a nomadic tribe, God commanded them to worship at the tabernacle. When they settled into the promised land, God had them build a temple, and God commanded his people to worship there. Years later, after God's people had settled into worshiping the temple itself, Jesus taught that "a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." (John 4:23)

Did God's Word change? No. The point had always been to worship the One True God. Today we worship in different places and in vastly different ways than the first century church did. But we're still faithfully worshiping the God who is still faithful to His people.

His Word is the same throughout every era.

The scriptures are the inspired record of how the LOGOS, the WORD, expressed Himself in various times through the millennia and in many places throughout the world.

Our goal should not be to imitate the specific ways the people of God expressed their faithfulness during biblical times. Whether during the times of the tabernacle, the temple, the synagogues, the church in the catacombs, the church of Christendom, the church on countless missionary fields, or the church in your home town, the goal has always been to stay faithful to the Word in a way that draws people to Him.