Tag: God’s greatness

A Lesson in Praise (Part Two)

Psalm 145:1-3

I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom (NIV).

Proper worship requires a correct perspective (145:3). To use painting as an illustration again, can you paint a portrait or a landscape without some knowledge of what you’re trying to paint? Can you paint in the dark? How well can you paint with while wearing smudged glasses?

For this reason, we must know the reason for praise.

  • We have a perpetual reason for praise in the character of God. Consider this, does a weak, immature view of God cause weak, immature praise? If you love and know the living God, you ought to have much to say about him! Here is the foundation of David’s ongoing, daily commitment to praise. He was a human like we are. He had both good days and bad. He had joys and sorrows. But the source of his praise did not come from the varying circumstances of his life. They came from the being and character of the Lord.
  • Another reason is the awesome greatness of our God. We cannot fully search out the majestic greatness of God. God is too much to explore, since he is infinite. This does not mean that we do not explore. America is filled with scenic wonders. What a beautiful land we have! I do not expect to see this whole country. It’s too big. That does not stop me from viewing its beauty where I can look. Even so, as we explore the glory of God’s greatness, we will see new wonders.

Our praise is to correspond to its object. Give great praise to our great God. Ponder the scene in Revelation 5:9-14. And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped (ESV).

The God we praise is infinitely greater than the praise we are able to offer. We should search out God’s greatness, but after doing our best, we must confess it to be unsearchable.

George Whitefield, an evangelist during the First Great Awakening, used to say, “Anoint my stammering tongue to tell thy love immense, unsearchable.” We ought to have his desire to praise. A true believer does not need a “holy day” for an occasion to praise the Lord. While we should give thanks on Thanksgiving Day, every day is a day of thanksgiving, every day a day of praise. Observe also the repetition of David’s determination to praise God. Do we share his viewpoint?

Grace and peace, David

The Attributes of God (Part Two)

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14 NIV).

God is self-existent. God “has life in himself” (John 5:26). This means that he is absolutely independent of all other being. There is nothing that he depends upon for existence. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25). God often is called “the living God”, which brings out this characteristic (Deuteronomy 5:26; Joshua 3:10; 1 Samuel 17:26; Psalm 42:2; Isaiah 37:4; Jeremiah 10:10; Matthew 16:16; Acts 14:15; 2 Corinthians 3:3; 6:16; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; Hebrews 3:12; 10:31).

“The ground of God’s being is not in others, for there is nothing more ultimate than himself. God is uncaused, the one who always is (Exod. 3:14). To ask who caused God is to ask as self-contradictory question in term’s of Jesus’ view of God. Another term conveying the concept of God’s self-existence is ‘aseity’. It comes from the Latin a, meaning from, and se, meaning oneself. God is underived, necessary, nondependent existence” (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, p.453). “God’s self-existence means that he is not answerable to us or to anybody, and we don’t like that. We want God to give an account of himself, to defend his actions. Although he sometimes explains things to us, he doesn’t have to and often he does not. God doesn’t have to explain himself to anybody” (Boice, The Sovereign God, p. 128).

Since God is self-existent, he is also self-sufficient. God does not need anything in or from creation. Instead, God chose to create and to preserve and to direct what he created for the praise of his glory (Romans 11:36). This means that God does not need worshipers, helpers or defenders. God is self-reliant. In contrast with God, humans are created and dependent. We must rely on God for everything (Acts 17:25,28).

This, like everything other attribute God, should cause us to humble ourselves in his presence, as Job did when he realized God’s majesty (Job 42:1-6). We serve the very independent God. He needs nothing from his creation. “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them” (Romans 11:35 NIV)? Admittedly, this is difficult to comprehend, because even those who boast of their self-reliance and freedom are dependent on others. The supposedly great rulers of the earth must rely on others for protection, food, and assistance. For example, the President does not pilot Air Force One; he does not go anywhere without Secret Service agents around him. A rich woman might have money, but she can’t eat unless someone supplies her food in one way or another. Who makes their own clothes? Even if they do, they’re not making all the components necessary to make clothes. We are pitifully dependent. The next time you lose power, and I’m not wishing this on anyone, you will discover your dependence on electricity. I cannot write these blogs unless I have electricity, the internet, and some form of computer. We are shockingly dependent. We ought to humble ourselves before the living God.

So then, let us praise God for his surpassing greatness. God doesn’t need us, yet he calls us to draw near to him, to experience his love, compassion, joy, and peace, which flow from the overflowing fountain of his self-existence and self-sufficiency. Let us praise the living God!

Grace and peace, David

If You Didn’t Do This on Sunday

Psalm 104:1

Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty (ESV).

It’s Tuesday. It’s a perfect time to ask about your worship experience this previous Sunday in your local church. How was it? I am not asking about the performance of your worship leaders and musicians, your pastor or other speaker, or whether you enjoyed yourself. This is a question about your worship of the true and living God. Did you meet with God in his living temple, the people of God (2 Corinthians 6:16; 1 Peter 2:4-5)? Did you humble yourself before him, as you sang his praises? Did you sing or only listen to others sing? Did you bow in worship as God’s word was read and proclaimed? Or did you merely act like you were listening, while your mind was somewhere else? Did you worship?

One of the purposes of gathering with our brothers and sisters in Christ is to worship. Perhaps last Sunday you all met to serve or to go fishing for people (Mark 1:17). Those are also purposes of a church, and we need to invest time together in them. However, usually when we gather, we ought to worship, and this can be done wherever we meet. But the questions remains. Did you worship last Sunday in your gathering?

A thoughtful look at our text above displays what ought to be happening.

  • We are to bless the Lord. Worship is about him and for him (cf. Romans 11:36). It’s not about you or me. It’s about the Lord. We gather to lift him up in our thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions. It is a time of personal interaction, the people of God meeting with him to express his overwhelming significance and goodness.
  • It involves the core of our beings. Bless the Lord, O my soul! We should worship God from the inner person of our hearts. A proper heart engagement will show up in the face and the words. I have seen people very excited and involved at family gatherings, parties, and sporting events. They participate from their souls. It clearly is of importance to them. Why does the typical worshiper look detached or bored or even comatose? We must bring our souls to worship. Listen carefully. In worship, we are in the presence of the Almighty God through Christ by the Spirit. If that doesn’t stir you, nothing will.
  • Worship is a personal action. O Lord my God. Sharon and I have a little granddaughter, only seven weeks old. When we hold her and talk with her and kiss her, it is not the same as gazing at a reference book. We do not seek mere information, but personal contact with her. We love to see her smile. We should want to make the Lord smile by pleasing him.
  • Worship exalts the Lord. You are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty. We say this, because we have a sense of his reality. We gain this as by faith we listen to God’s revelation of himself in his word, and the Spirit opens his greatness to our hearts. For example, if the word is telling about Hagar’s reception of mercy when she was sent away by Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 21), you respond with joy in your heart that the Lord cares and watches over the weak, even when others don’t care. If it speaks of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, you rejoice like his disciples did on that day. You praise the Lord.

If you didn’t worship on Sunday, you can on Tuesday… and every other day of the week. But please, stir up your soul to worship when you gather with the Lord’s people this coming Sunday. Do not sit there like a cold lump of clay. Your Lord deserves much better from you. He wants your heart. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37 ESV).

Grace and peace, David

Thinking about the Faithful God

Hebrews 10:23IMG_0722

Theology is the study of God; it is the proper study of God’s people. He is the starting point of our world and life view. Since we are in a personal relationship with the Maker and Preserver of all things, we seek to understand what he has told has about himself. As we grasp his majesty, we are capable of making better sense of ourselves and the world he has placed us in. So we can say that the study of God is one of the most practical activities that we can engage in. The writer of Hebrews has told us in this great paragraph to hold fast our profession. The second part of verse twenty-three tells us of the motivating force to obey the command in the first part of this verse. Why should we obey? “For he who promised is faithful”.

Remember some basic ideas about our faithful God. When we talk about the living God with people in our generation, we need to define what we mean by the word “God”. Don’t assume that your neighbor has the same ideas that you have. They will define “God” according to whatever their religious philosophy is—Hindu, Buddhist, Islam, pagan, new age, religious existentialist, etc. Let’s think about two truths concerning the true and living God that relate to our subject.

God is personal. We need to listen carefully to what God has said about his nature and what people say about their “god”. God is not an impersonal force to be manipulated by people. God is a tri-personal being. Yes, he is infinitely greater than we are, but he is personal as we are. We must accept God as he reveals himself. We cannot recast God to conform to our opinions. God tells us that he is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; one God in three persons. Certainly this is very difficult to understand, because we know of no other being like him. But our lack of comprehension does not give us the right to reinterpret reality according to our whims. There are many parts of higher mathematics that the average person does not comprehend. That lack of comprehension doesn’t alter the reality of mathematics.

God is a communicator. God speaks to us in language we can understand. He could have spoken in a way that no human could understand, but that would not have agreed with his purpose to make himself and the way of salvation known to us. To speak to us clearly, God chose three human languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) and the thought forms, idioms, and qualities of each of those languages. In doing this, the living God was able to make known the truth about himself and how to know him.

God gives us statements that we can rely on. For example, he has told us that he is eternal, all-powerful, and compassionate. This provides us with confidence in him when we grieve over departed loved ones, feel the weakness of our human flesh, and feel miserable. The Lord God makes promises to us out of his desire to draw us to himself that we might experience the wonder and joy of who he is. For example, Jesus said, “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 HCSB). We might feel helpless and hopeless, but Jesus’ words encourage us that he will rescue us from the guilt and punishment due us for our sins.

So then, God’s revelation about his nature, fuels our confidence in the faithful God. If we follow God’s example in talking with our neighbors in this way, then we can share with them the promises that God makes to people who will turn to him and trust in him through Christ.

Grace and peace, David