Category: Thinking Greatly Of God

Why is it Good to Know God is Infinite?

1/16/2019

Why is it good to understand God theologically? It is a very good thing to understand Who God is. It will protect you from error and from erroneous living. Let me give you an example from my own life this past week.

Earlier this week I was wrestling with a few things in my life. They were not exactly earth-moving issues – but they were at the time a challenge for me – and were dominating a lot of my time. As I wrestled with this I had a thought come into my head. “Why are you so stuck on such a little thing? Do you really think you need to waste God’s time on this? You need to drop this and get busy with far more important things.” At first I wondered if this was God? When I did receive it as if it were from Him – I felt a little ashamed at my wrestlings. Certain God has more important things to work on in life that these reasonably small issues. So in response to this – I took all I had been thinking upon and shoved it down to the “seriously unimportant” shelf in my mind.

Later in the week I was reading of Who God is in the book of Isaiah. He is infinite. There is a theological truth. God is the infinite God. There are no limitations to God – EVER. He is infinite in power, strength, wisdom – and just add whatever else comes to mind. My earlier wrestlings came back to mind – but this time with this verse about God’s infinite nature attached. Then some new questions came to mind. Does God have a finite number of things He can deal with each day? Does He have some schedule where unless I have something important – He doesn’t have time for it? Is it taxing to God to have to deal with – oh, let’s say, the conflict in Syria – and other wars – and then to have to deal with my little pittance of a problem too? Can God ever get tired – or worn down – or exhausted with too much to do?

It didn’t take long for me to realize that God, being both infinite in power – and eternally timeless, is not annoyed with the wrestlings of my heart. When I come to Him – He is concerned with the big things as well as with the little things (at least what I was calling little). Being infinite, He is never taxed or worn down – even if He had a million different problems voiced by a 7 billion people a day! He is infinite – and whatever number I put before Him (thinking it to be a real stunner) – it is infinitely small in comparison to Who He truly is. He does not have some schedule with a limited number of spots available for His time – like I do. He is limitless!

Why was it good to understand God theologically this week? Because in grasping Him as He is – an eternal, infinite God – I came to grips with the fact that there is nothing too small for me to bring to Him. He is great because He can handle the big things! He is also great because He can handle a trillion little things – and never feel like He’s too busy to listen to me when I come to Him.

What was the result of grasping God theologically this week in the midst of wrestling with my issues – even though they seemed a little small and trivial to me in the moment? It was to grasp that God is infinitely more than able to handle every big thing, every little thing – actually . . . everything that I have. Oh, and by the way, He is infinitely more than able to handle that for every single person on this planet . . . and not feel rushed, frustrated, overwhelmed, overtaxed, or over-committed. He does it all – every day of every year – every year of every decade – every decade of every century – every century of every millennium – and He never grows tired or weary! THAT, MY DEAR PRECIOUS SAINTS – IS GOD – THEOLOGICALLY AND PRACTICALLY REALIZED!

HALLELUJAH!

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Joy in Weakness, part 3 - To Whom are you Measuring Yourself?

8/18/2015

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Weakness is not something most people want in their lives. But that is because they think themselves strong - or at least want to think that way. Our problem with understanding the blessing of embracing weakness has to do with perspective. God's Word tells us that when we examine ourselves amongst ourselves and measure ourselves against one another, we deceive ourselves as to the truth about ourselves. In that context and with that perspective weakness is relative to who you are versus whoever it is to whom you compare yourself. Men and women have all kinds of contests by which they measure their own comparative weakness against each other to ascertain who is the strongest. But in the end - it is only comparing weakness against weakness. We may walk away with a victory - even a trophy or medal - but it only tells us that we are stronger than another human being.

Man has fancied himself strong for centuries. Early on man thought earth to be the center of all things - only to learn as man caught up to the knowledge of God - that we are only a tiny little insignificant ball of dirt on the outskirts of our own galaxy. When compared with other stars in our galaxy, we come to learn that even our mighty sun is pretty much a fairly small star that pales into insignificance compared to others around us. If one started from the center of the universe doing a random search for earth - it would take millions of centuries to randomly come to our tiny blue orb on the outer edges of the Milky Way.

Job understood true strength - as he moved from a position of having everything to one of losing everything. He lived in moments of plenty - of great health - and of a life of relative ease and comfort prior to one of the most breathtaking devastations in all of Scripture. He grasped, as few others ever have, just how precarious our supposed strength is. It was in such a moment that he turned to God and grasped "real strength." Read his own words as he contemplated standing before God and being right with Him.

" . . . how can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to dispute with Him, He could not answer Him once in a thousand times. Wise in heart and mighty in strength, Who has defied Him without harm? It is God who removes the mountains, they know not how, When He overturns them in His anger; Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble; Who commands the sun not to shine, and sets a seal upon the stars; Who alone stretches out the heavens and tramples down the waves of the sea; Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south; Who does great things, unfathomable, and wondrous works without number. Were He to pass by me, I would not see Him; Were He to move past me, I would not perceive Him. Were He to snatch away, who could restrain Him? Who could say to Him, ‘What are You doing?' God will not turn back His anger; Beneath Him crouch the helpers of Rahab. How then can I answer Him and choose my words before Him? For though I were right, I could not answer; I would have to implore the mercy of my Judge." Job 9:2-15

According to what Job had learned there are some things that tell us of God's absolute power and strength. These things also helped Job to grasp just how weak he truly was - and how He needed to cry out for God's mercy for true strength to be given to him.

First - no man can dispute with God and prove Him wrong. If we tried, we would be unable to answer God even 1 in a 1000 times. God is the wise one - God is the mighty one - and for us to defy Him and debate with Him is only to harm ourselves. We do not have any wisdom that we can claim on our own. If we have any wisdom - it is because we have learned it from God by His mercy.

Second, no one can "impress" God with what they can do. All we have to do is look at Job's description of God's resume and we are rendered speechless. He removes mountains and shakes the earth so that the very pillars of the earth tremble. He can command our sun not to shine. He is the One who stretches out the heavens - so that our expanding universe seems to grow ever larger in terms that dwarf our understanding. In the end Job puts it like this, "Who does great things, unfathomable, and wondrous works without number." For us to boast of our meager achievements (even if they dwarf those of the rest of humanity) is laughable in the sight of the strength and power and wisdom of Almighty God.

Third, we cannot even perceive God unless He graciously allows it by revealing Himself to us. God is Spirit and is beyond us and our understanding. We would not even have a clue as to His existence or presence except that He chooses to manifest Himself in ways that our little pea-sized brains can understand. Our own strength and ability fall infinitely short of "getting" God.

Fourth, we can do nothing to deliver ourselves from His hand or ultimate purposes. Listen to these terrifying words Job says about God's power over us, "Were He to snatch away, who could restrain Him? Who could say to Him, ‘What are You doing?" God's power is absolute. If God so chooses to snatch us away we can do nothing to stop it. Even a protest on our part would mean nothing. Though men question His works and purposes - there really is no one who can call God to account to where God has to given some sort of answer. Within this statement is the doctrine of God's ultimate goodness and perfection. He cannot do wrong - and whatever it is that He wills - it is always what is right. Thus in the moment we decide to question Him and call Him to account - we are already wrong.

Finally, we can do nothing to alter God's righteous judgment. Here is a terrifying reality. God will judge and destroy the wicked. There is absolutely nothing they can do to render God's judgment null and void. I see fools wearing shirts and making statements that, "Only God can judge me." This is not meant to be a statement honoring God - for those who parade such things do so while living lifestyles that mock His Word and the righteousness He reveals in it. But what they do not know is that God has already judged sin. Thanks be to His graciousness that ultimately He has done this at the cross - and granted forgiveness to those who respond to the gospel with repentance and faith. In the end Job says that his only play - is to implore the mercy of his Judge.

So - how strong are we feeling now? How apt are we to tout our own abilities in light of God's revelation of Himself to Job - who went from everything to nothing within moments? The truth is we ARE weak - maybe not in comparison with others around us - but when we stand in the light of God's revelation of Who He is. Wisdom, dearest saints of God, is turning to God regularly for mercy. Wisdom, precious ones, is to regularly remember and embrace humility in His glorious, infinite presence. Wisdom is to bow before Him - lay ourselves at His feet - and rejoice in His most amazing condescension to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. For it is only in such moments that we truly "get it" and are granted grace to move from weakness to strength by His mercies alone.

Be strong in Him and in the power of His Spirit!

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Have You Responded in Awe and Wonder Lately?

7/31/2014

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Awe and wonder . . . two words that perfectly fit any view of God. But in a world that thinks too highly of itself, populated with fallen people who seriously think too highly of themselves, awe and wonder do not describe the average response to God, Who has revealed Himself to us in Scripture - and His creation. And if I were to be completely honest (which hurts as I admit to my own sin of pride and over-aggrandizement of myself personally - and humanity corporately) I do not respond to Him nearly enough with the kind of awe and wonder that He deserves. At times I sing songs about His greatness with little more than yawning excitement - and even more sinfully - with a sense of wanting to get on with it so I can move on to other things more exciting to me. In an age where we make much of man - and even more of ourselves - the whole concept of being lost in wonder and awe of God is dangerously waning. And please understand I speak not of the world at large - but of those of us in the church.

There are two words that should show up often in our vocabulary when seeking to give any kind of description of God. The first of these words is the word "awe." We speak of things that, when we see them or experience them leave us awe-struck. That means the shear magnitude and majsety of them render us speechless because we are not sure there are words adequate to describe what we are seeing or experiencing. God, being both infinite and eternal, should be One who leaves us utterly speechless because His majestry and limitless magnitude are beyond human words or concepts. That is where we reach back to get our second word, "wonder." When I looked up wonder at Dictionary.com, the following definition began to take shape in my mind. Wonder means to be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe. This sense of wonder often illicits surprise, astonishment, and in some cases worship or adoration of what has caused our wonder. The God Who has revealed Himself in the Old and New Testaments - and Who is also revealed in what He has created, is a God Who can fill our hearts and our minds with both awe and wonder.

There is no way to adequately define or describe Who God is. One way that we can touch the fringe of His boundless, infinite magnitude is by looking at nature - most specifically - the heavens. Since the discovery of the telescope, we've enjoyed a view of the heavens that expands as quickly as we can upgrade the ability of our telescopes to see further and further into space. The information below was originally printed in John MacArthur's commentary on the book of Matthew.

"The more man delves into the universe, the more amazing and awesome the wonder of creation becomes. Telescopes can take us some four billion light years—about twenty-five sextillion miles—into space, and yet we have not come near the edge of the universe. We have discovered certain gravitational principles that keep the stars and planets in their orbits, yet we are far from fully explaining those principles, much less duplicating them. The earth spins on its axis at a thousand miles an hour at the equator, travels in a five-hundred-eighty-million-mile orbit around the sun at about a thousand miles a minute, and, with the rest of its solar system, careens through space at an even faster speed in an orbit that would take billions of years to complete. The energy of the sun has been estimated to be equivalent to five-hundred-million-million-billion horsepower. There are at least one-hundred-thousand-million other suns in our galaxy, most of them larger than ours." (John MacArthur, Commentary on Mark)

What is even more amazing to me after reading that again, is that MacArthur's statement is just a small paragraph, because there is enough to know about our universe to fill an entire library of books. That is after we've spent 100's of years looking into space. The truth is our knowledge of the universe is ridiculously limited at the present time. If we had instruments and ships that could take us far out into the universe (even into our own galaxy to be honest) our knowledge would grow exponentially!

To give you a perspective on how much we should be in awe and wonder of the God who created our universe, allow me to focus on one star within it. Granted, at the moment (due to our lack of a telescope powerful enough to see it) it is the largest star we know. Nevertheless, let's talk about the star Sirius, or Canus Majoris. This largest of all stars known was most recently measured at around 1500 solar radii. If you were like me, you had no idea what a solar radii was. It is the measurement of how big our sun is. That measurement is approximately 432,450 miles (to go from the outer edge of the sun to its center). If you want to know how far it is around our sun - that would be approximately 2.72 million miles (quite a walk - and take sunblock over 50 because you might get a sunburn!) Just our sun is so huge that it blows the mind to comprehend its size. But we speak of Sirius (Canus Majoris) which is now approximately 1500 times the size of our sun. Now I know that you are tired from that recent walk around the sun (and a little burnt probably) but you need to suck it up - because now we're going to walk around Sirius - which would be 4.1 billion miles give or take a mile or two.

Forgive me for using this comparison - but it will give you a little better grasp of how large this star is. Imagine our earth is a basketball. Compared to our sun earth is a little smaller than a popcorn seed. In order to get something as large as Canis Major you would have to have a ball that is over half the size of the Empire State Building. Let me put that into perspective for you. That height is larger than the full height of the Superdome. So we are talking about a ball bigger than the Superdome itself (try jumping high enough to dumk that sucker into a basketball rim that can fit it!). Another way of describing the size of Sirius is that if we put it into our solar system (starting at the center of our sun) its outer edge would reach beyond the orbit of Saturn (although some think it extends beyond that to about the orbit of Jupiter). That is HUGE! But . . . this is only 1 star, albeit the largest one on record to date. There are trillions times trillions more stars in our universe - all of which have been placed in orbital movements that conicide with each other with greater precision than that of a well choreographed ballet. It truly is incredulous to an infinite degree how men can think this is all a random cosmic accident!

I've taken all this time - and verbiage - to hopefully get you to stand in awe and wonder of a single star - in a galaxy filled with billions and billions of starts - which is in the midst of millions of other galaxies - all moving in such synchronization that we set our clocks by its movement. God created all this by His infinite power and wisdom. He did it so that they would proclaim the glory of His great name! Thus this mere creation of the genius and limitless strength of our God is itself infinitely inferior to Him - the One who spoke it into existence. It required no over-exertion on His part and its creation was no drain on either His intelligence or His might. He is beyond its existence and could as easily consume it entirely with one additional word spoken to utter remove it to little more than an afterthought flying quickly through our minds. So please . . . the next time you consider the God of your salvation - the God of creation - the God of eternal, timeless existence and infinite, measureless magnitude . . . do so with awe and wonder . . . oh, and a little reverence might be in order too (just as an infinitely understated suggestion). And one other thing . . . this coming Sunday when you meet with the saints to sing of the God of your salvation - remember Sirius, Canus Majoris - or by its common name, "The Big Dog!" When you do - and you also meditate on the fact that God created this giant ex-nihilo (meaning out of nothing) as He spoke the world into existence (By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Hebrews 11:3, NASB), we will be moved by His Spirit and the truth to sing and worship Him with both awe and wonder! Or, in a euphamism more familiar to our current age, "Let the 'big dawg' speak, and when you feel him - get crunk as you worship God off the hinges." (Yes, I know that just exposed me as a really old white guy trying to look cool - sorry, couldn't help it with the star being named, "the big dog.")

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Why is it Good to Know God is Infinite?

Joy in Weakness, part 3 - To Whom are you Measuring Yourself?

Have You Responded in Awe and Wonder Lately?

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