God has revealed Himself in creation, but He has revealed Himself much more fully in the Scriptures. It is in the light of God’s revelation, especially in the Bible, that we are to obey the call of Deuteronomy 32:3: “Ascribe ye greatness unto our God”. So, as we noted last month, when we speak of God, we are to declare His greatness; and when we think of Him, we are to consider Him as infinitely great, beyond anything that we can imagine. We then went on to consider God’s greatness in relation to three of His attributes: (1) His power, (2) His justice and (3) His mercy. Let us now go on to consider the greatness of God in some of His other attributes.
- God is infinitely great in His knowledge.
The Apostle John wrote, “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (1 Jn 3:20). Matthew Poole interprets heart here as referring to the conscience; so if our conscience wrongly judges our thinking or our behaviour, God will not judge wrongly, because He knows everything and understands it all perfectly. We are to bear this in mind always: God knows us; He sees all we are doing; He hears all that we are saying and understands all that we are thinking. Jeremiah confessed that about himself: “Thou, O Lord, knowest me: Thou hast seen me, and tried mine heart toward Thee” (Jer 12:3).
We should acknowledge this about ourselves in particular. We may use the words of Hagar: “Thou God seest me” (Gen 16:13), but we must acknowledge that He knows not only where we are but also our sins and our spiritual condition in every detail. This is not only relevant at the present moment but particularly when we will all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, when “the books” – which contain God’s perfect record of all that we have done, said and thought during our time in this world – are opened. It means that the judgement to be pronounced on each of us at the last day of this world’s existence will be absolutely in accordance with the facts of the case. All will be done in perfect justice.
As God knows everything about His children and all their circumstances, they can go to Him with confidence, whatever their situation may be. So David went before the Lord in prayer when he had got into a very difficult position in Gath. He knew that God knew the situation perfectly and was able to deliver him. So he recorded with great thankfulness: “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Ps 34:6). David Dickson comments (on Ps 34:17): “The Lord putteth the godly to trouble, and by trouble putteth them to their prayers, and delays till the need be great; and then they cry to the Lord, and He giveth evidence of His hearing, and sendeth deliverance”. This reflects the Lord’s complete knowledge of what is best for His people; He knows when it is best to send trouble; He knows how long it is best to let the trouble continue; and He knows how it is best to send the deliverance. It was so for David; it is so for God’s children today.
- God is infinitely great in His wisdom.
Wisdom is the capacity we may have to use our knowledge to the best effect. So God’s wisdom, or understanding, is His capacity to use His infinite knowledge in what is the best possible way. The Psalmist sang, “Great is our Lord . . . His understanding is infinite” (Ps 147:5). And W S Plumer remarks on this verse: “What a joy to the tempted, the imperilled, the perplexed, that to the Almighty no subject is complex, no proposition is doubtful”.1
God has shown His wisdom in the way He created, in particular, the universe, the earth and the human body, though so many people today refuse to acknowledge this. They prefer to accept that everything has come into existence by a long series of random, undirected events. Such people may show great wisdom when studying the details of nature, but show no wisdom in recognising that the Creator of all things is the eternal God – to whom they are responsible, yet that is a truth that they want to avoid.
But God shows His wisdom especially in devising a way of salvation for fallen sinners, where justice perfectly harmonises with mercy. Sinners are saved in a way whereby the perfect righteousness of God was completely preserved. This was by giving His own Son to take the place of sinners, to bear away their guilt through His sufferings and death, and in keeping the law as their Substitute. Praise will go out to God throughout eternity for, in particular, His wisdom in devising this plan of salvation and in applying the benefits of Christ’s finished work until every last elect sinner is brought into the kingdom of God.
- God is infinitely great in His truth.
When God was revealing Himself to Moses, He declared He was “abundant in . . . truth” (Ex 34:6) – infinitely so. Perfect in truth as He is, everything He says is according to truth; nothing is false; nothing deviates from the truth in the slightest degree. That is why we can rely totally on the Bible, of which He is the primary Author. Whether what He reveals is about creation, sin or salvation, heaven or hell, or any other matter, we can be sure that it is perfectly true.
In particular, God’s promises are always true; He is always faithful to what He has promised. So if God promised Joshua: “The Lord, He it is that doth go before thee; He will be with thee, He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee” (Deut 31:8), we must expect that He will be faithful to this undertaking. He is the God that “cannot lie” (Tts 1:2). And God was with Joshua; He led him on safely until the land of Canaan was largely conquered and Israel could settle down there. What is more, these promises to Joshua are directed to all the children of God, according to their circumstances; He will not fail them. He will, in His faithfulness lead them on safely until He brings them to the rest that remains for the people of God in heaven.
Some application.
We have demonstrated from Scripture a little of the greatness of God. Clearly we are then to ascribe greatness to Him. He is to be worshipped; as Psalm 95 tells us, “the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. . . . O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker” (vv 3,6). And David Dickson points out that “religious kneeling is a part of divine worship, whereby we testify our absolute submission unto, and highest giving of honour to, God in [our] soul and body; and this honour is incommunicable to any creature”.
In Deuteronomy 32, already quoted, Moses directs the Israelites to command their children to observe the law. Every generation is obliged to pass on to their children the law of the God of infinite greatness and to pass on a sense of that infinite greatness. For several generations now, there has been little sense of that infinite greatness and of His creatorship, as what gives authority to His law. Not least, in contemporary society, little effort is being made to pass on that sense. This is what leaves present-day society in such a moral quagmire and, not till that sense of God’s greatness is restored, will society have some appearance of sanity.
Mankind does not like the idea of God’s greatness. He wishes to feel in control of his own destiny and to feel independent of any superior power. But God has said, “I have sworn by Myself, the word is gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto Me every knee shall bow” (Is 45:23). All must submit to the greatness of God. How good it would be for sinners, each of us in particular, to submit now to the authority of the great God while He still offers mercy for the sake of Christ, who says, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved” (Is 45:22)! How very much better for sinners to believe in Him rather than to go on in rebellion until it is too late, and then pass on into the blackness of darkness for ever! Then they must bow their knee to Him, as captives who cannot resist His righteous judgements.
1Plumer, Psalms, Banner of Truth 1975 reprint, p 1200.