Tonight I am to speak on the infinitude,
the divine infinitude.
And it's an indication of something I don't
quite know what, that I am the only
man that I have ever known to preach
on this topic.
I have never read it in any book
except a paragraph or two as they go
along.
I've never heard a sermon on it.
That could mean that it's very silly to
try it, or it could mean that men
need to screw up their telescope and look
a little further into the sky.
At any rate, I am to speak tonight
on the infinitude, the divine limitlessness of God.
And tonight I am going to make the
greatest demand on you that I have made
up to now.
After tonight, I'll continue.
I haven't any Sunday night engagements until the
middle of May, late in May, and out
then in Columbus, Ohio, so that I will
be preaching on the attributes steadily along right
through Easter night and Sunday night.
And I'll get over to the goodness of
God, the wisdom of God, the grace of
God, the mercy of God, the justice of
God, the sovereignty of God, and that'll be
easy, and I'll enjoy myself.
But tonight I pray that God might enable
me to talk about that which can't be
talked about.
The only prayer that I could make that
seems to have any meaning would be the
one the dear colored brother made when he
asked God to unscrew the unscrewable.
And I don't know anything else that I
could pray that God would help us to
get the unscrewable to become screwable.
Well, I want to speak tonight now from
two texts.
That is, I'll read them.
I don't tend to expound them.
I tend to read the texts.
1 Kings 8.27. But will God indeed
dwell on the earth?
A rhetorical question meaning no.
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain thee, how much less this house
that I have built.
The heaven and the heaven of heavens can't
contain God.
Then in the Book of Psalms 147, the
word is used, 147 Psalm verse 5.
Great is our Lord, and of great power.
His understanding is infinite.
Now, it doesn't say here in so many
words, God is infinite.
It says God's understanding is infinite.
But it would be impossible for a being
that was not infinite to have infinite understanding.
A finite being could not have infinite understanding
or greatness or power.
So the Bible teaches that God is infinite.
Now, this, above all other things that may
be said about God, makes the greatest demands
on our intelligence and our imagination and our
powers of reason.
And the reason for this, as I've explained
before, that it requires us to picture a
mode of being that we're not familiar with,
a mode of being wholly beyond ourselves, a
mode of being unlike anything that we have
ever known.
You and I are very familiar with matter
and space and time and motion and energy.
We're familiar with that.
And we're familiar with creatures that are composed
of matter, that live in space, that dwell
for a time, and that have some energy
and that make motions, that are in motion.
We're familiar with that.
But now tonight I am asking you to
receive into your mind ideas of something that
isn't matter and it isn't space and it
doesn't dwell in space.
It overflows a heaven of heavens and contains
space.
And it isn't subject to time and it
isn't a creature.
It's the uncreated one.
And it isn't energy, though he has all
the energy in the world.
And I say this is a bit difficult.
It isn't something you do right after you've
eaten.
And it isn't something you do for an
after-dinner speaker.
It isn't something for an after-dinner speaker
to preach about after everybody wants to hear
jokes and they're feeling expansive.
But it is something that you need to
know.
Now we've got to keep in our mind
one thing, that all that I say is
still not God.
Because theology, this is theology, but theology at
its finest moment can do no more than
to tell us about God.
But to know about God and to know
God are two different things.
That's why there are so many icicles hanging
around on the eaves of so many theological
seminaries, even in July.
Because there is a lot of death there,
the reason being that our brethren who ought
to know better confuse knowing about God with
knowing God.
What I'm preaching to you is something about
God.
But if you ever know God, you're going
to have to enter by the new birth,
by the illumination of the Holy Ghost and
by the revelation of the Spirit.
If the theologians were to tell it, they
would say there has to be revelation and
illumination.
You have to have truth revealed to you,
but until there is illumination of that truth,
why, it doesn't do you any good at
all.
Only the Holy Spirit can make us know
God.
That is why when we speak of the
Holy Spirit, we ought not to speak apologetically,
and nobody ought to be ashamed to preach
about the Holy Spirit or afraid to preach
about him for the reason that only he
can make us know God.
Theology can teach us about God, and that's
what I'm teaching tonight.
I'm giving you the doctrine of the divine
infinitude.
Now, what do I mean by the divine
infinitude?
I mean that God is infinite, and I
mean by that that we know from scripture
that this is one thing which God has
declared about himself to be true about himself.
And that's my definition of an attribute, something
which God has declared to be true about
himself, either in scripture or in nature.
And both in scripture and in nature, God
declares things to be true about himself.
We can know what God is like by
nature and by scripture, dimly and imperfectly in
nature.
There used to be a time, I said
this morning, that we threw out the baby
along with the bath when we threw out
so much of the old traditional ways of
the church.
We evangelicals went overboard and threw everything out.
We've thrown out some very wonderful treasures.
Our Puritanic fathers, the old Presbyterians and Congregationalists
and Baptists in other days, used to preach
about what they called natural theology.
And they didn't hesitate.
They weren't liberals or modernists.
They were the church fathers.
And they taught what they called natural theology.
They said that God revealed himself in nature
and that there was a theology that could
be built up just by looking around about
you.
We all know that's true, but we're afraid
to say that nowadays.
We're scared stiff.
We're afraid somebody will come along and beat
us over the head with a Schofield Bible
and say, now wait a minute here, you're
a liberal.
No, no, my brother, I'm no liberal.
I hope I'm liberal, but I'm not liberal
in the theology.
And I am not a modernist, but I
believe that God has, through his creation, declared
certain things to be true of himself.
I know the Psalms say so, and the
prophets say so, and Paul says so.
And when I go along with an apostle
of the New Testament, a prophet of the
Old Testament, a psalmist of all testaments, I
feel that I'm in pretty good company and
I'm not too badly frightened.
Well, what I mean about the infinitude of
God is that God knows no limits, and
right there is where we stick.
A human mind can go a long way,
but it can't go all the way to
limitlessness.
But God is limitless, God is boundless, and
God has no end.
There is no end to anything in God,
and there is no bound.
There is boundary to the ocean, but there
is no boundary to God.
God knows no limit, I say.
And whatever God is, he is without limit
or bound, and whatever God has, he has
without limit or measure.
Now, I want to talk a little bit
about the difficulty we have in understanding things
because we fall into the trap of using
words carelessly.
And when we think about God as being
infinite, we've got to eliminate all the popular
usage of words.
For instance, unlimited.
We say why the Trans-Canada Airlines can
do so and so, she has unlimited wealth.
We say General Electric is able to do
that, they have unlimited wealth.
Well, that's just a way of saying that
they're pretty well healed.
But actually, unlimited can't be applied to the
wealth of the Trans-Canada Airlines or Eaton's
or General Electric or the Rockefellers.
No.
They have wealth all right, and as far
as I am personally concerned, it's to me
unlimited.
But you could count it after a while
and you'd run out of it pretty soon.
Even a country as big and rich as
the United States is in debt, in debt
$240 billion.
That makes my headache just to think about
it.
So that even a country like that or
a country like Great Britain or Russia, Germany,
they run out of money after a while.
They don't have unlimited wealth, and there never
was any such a thing as unlimited wealth.
When you talk about anything being unlimited, you're
either using words carelessly or else you mean
God.
And then we use the word boundless.
We say about a little boy bouncing around
over the floor, he has unlimited energy.
I remember once reading about a man, he
was an athlete.
He was 25 years old and was a
professional athlete.
He had a little boy, four.
And he decided one morning that he was
going to start at breakfast, right after breakfast,
the time the boy started going, and he
was going to follow him all day long
and do exactly what he did.
If he lay down the floor, he'd lay
down the floor.
If he'd sit down flat, he'd sit down
flat.
If he'd turn a somersault, he'd turn a
somersault.
So all day, not all day, but as
long as he could keep up, this big
strapping athlete followed this little boy.
And along about noon, he was lying with
his tongue hanging out, and the little boy
was still going.
So you can easily see who had the
energy, but neither one of them had boundless
energy.
That little boy's energy had a bound to
it.
And along about supper time that night, little
head began to go down over his plate,
and you'd have to wake him up and
say, eat your dinner, Junior.
You can go to bed right after you
eat.
He didn't have boundless energy, though he had
so much of it that we carelessly say
it was boundless.
Then we say about a musician, he takes
infinite pains, or we say about an author,
he takes infinite pains.
Well, I don't suppose I'll ever cure the
unhappy semantic habit of using words carelessly.
I do it myself, and so who am
I to talk?
But when it comes to the word infinite,
I never use it.
I remember when Admiral Byrd went down to
the South Pole and went up over the
ice barrier, you remember, and had all those
experiences and adventures.
He came back home, and they were interviewing,
and somebody said, was it a thrill, Admiral?
And he said, Thrill is a word that
I never use.
Everybody is talking about the thrill, but the
man who was undergoing it never used it.
Well, infinite is a word that I never
use.
I used it foolishly the other day in
writing.
I can still edit it out.
But I said all but infinite.
Well, that's kind of silly because when you
use the word infinite, it means boundless, limitless,
shoreless, without end, without measure, without weight.
It means infinity stretched in all directions from
where you are, and there can only be
one, and that is God.
So nobody ever took infinite pains.
They say Flaubert, the great French writer, used
to walk the floor for hours to select
one word.
And Flaubert said, There's no such thing as
a synonym.
Get the right word.
And so he'd search all night for the
French word that fit what he was wanting
to say.
He said, There are no synonyms.
You remember that Gray's Elegy took him seven
years to write the elegy.
Well, that's taking pains, all right, but not
infinite pains because at the end of seven
years there was an end.
But if there had been infinite pains, there
never would have been any end.
So when we say infinite, we mean God.
These are words, these words unlimited and boundless
and infinite, they're words that can't be used
of God only, of created things.
And measureless is another word, or measure.
Measureless is the word we can use only
of God.
A measurement, you see, is a way created
things have of giving an account of themselves.
You reach into your pocket to see how
much change you have, and you count it.
You're measuring the number of what you have
there.
Or you get on the scales and you
weigh yourself, or you stand up and they
tell you how high you are.
That's measure.
You're giving an account to yourself.
I said to a man once how much
you weigh, and he said, I'm afraid to
get on the scale.
And I am not mentioning any names, but
the measure, measure, you see, is a way
we have of accounting for ourselves.
It gives an account of ourselves.
It describes limitations, in other words.
It describes imperfections.
And God doesn't have limitations, and he doesn't
have imperfections, and therefore he doesn't describe God.
Everything that we describe by limitations is contingent
and relative, whereas God is self-existent and
absolute, and therefore he is a boundless ocean,
and none can bound him, and none can
fathom him, and none can describe how far
out he goes in infinite distances in all
that he is.
Now measure applies to created things, you know.
Weight, that's for the gravitational pull of matter.
Ever notice what gravity does to you?
It never bothers a little fellow, that four
-year-old I talked about.
It doesn't seem to bother him at all
unless he falls out of a high chair.
But it pulls the old fellow down after
a while.
He stands upright, you know, straight up because
he defies gravity, but when he begins to
get really old, gravity pulls him slowly down
and down, and pretty soon he's bent over.
Gravity over the pull, the tug of the
center of the earth has done that.
And then we measure distance.
It's the measurement of, between objects in space,
and length is the extension of objects in
space, and then we have other ways of
measuring.
We have liquid measurements, and we have measurements
of energy, and we have sound measurements.
They call those things decibels.
That's how many, how much roar comes in
on you from the outside.
Then we have measures of light.
We say that the bulb gives off so
many watts, and we have numbers for pluralities.
Ones and twos and fives and eights and
sevens and tens, that's for plurality.
And we even measure intelligence, and we measure
our brains, and we measure our ability to
do things.
But when we do that, we're confessing that
we're imperfect, that we're small and limited, and
that we're not infinite.
You don't measure God, you don't weigh God,
for God isn't composed of matter.
You can't figure God in distance, for God
fills all distance.
And you can't measure God in length, for
God has no extension in space.
And you can't measure the energy of God,
nor the sound God makes, nor the light
he gives off, nor anything else.
And there are no pluralities in God.
God is one.
One God, one God, we praise thee.
Now, God is outside of all this.
None of these words in their concept can
touch God nor describe him.
They describe only the imperfect things which God
has made and not God himself.
They are the way we see the work
of God's hands.
You look out on the work of God's
hands and you see it.
You see a mountain or a man and
you have a size there.
Size is a relative thing.
I've often thought about that.
You talk about a big man.
If a man weighs 210 pounds, he's said
to be a big man.
If he weighs like me, 150, when he's
wringing wet, well, he's said to be a
small man.
Now, after all, when you put a 210
-pound man over against a mountain or a
battleship, he's pretty small potatoes, wouldn't you say?
Relative thing, you know.
Relative thing.
A baby's born into the world, and if
he weighs 10 pounds, they say, why isn't
he a big one, though?
10 pounds.
And a mom, he comes in a whale
way, they put that little fellow up and
you can put him between the scale of
Leviathan, not miss him.
You'd hide him in there, you know, old
David's Leviathan, Isaiah's or whatever it was.
Well, it's just a relative thing.
But in God, there's no sizes.
In God, there are no degrees.
In God, there's no measurements and no lengths
and no pluralities and no weights, because God
is just God.
Now, if I might be allowed to do
this, a man risks a lot.
I was always making myself promises and breaking
them and risking things, you know, risk having
nobody come back.
You know, every once in a while, I
have a dream.
And I'm looking for my text, and while
I can't find my text, everybody leaves.
That's a dream that I've had.
I have that on the average about twice
a year.
While I'm looking for my text, everybody gets
up and goes.
And when I finally get my text, there's
nobody down there but one or two people
scattered about in a large auditorium.
And it's all misery to me.
I wake up, you know, shake it off.
I've had an awful time.
And I'm worried sometimes and for fear that
I may do this because I break so
many rules, so many rules you learn in
school.
But I'm going to break one now.
And I'm going to quote a hymn to
you and comment on it.
Not explain it, but comment on it.
There was a man who wrote a hymn
about the infinity of God.
Nobody ever sings it, but he wrote it
anyhow, and he got it out of his
system.
And I read it, and it blessed me.
And it's a prayer to God.
And he says, O majesty unspeakable and dread,
were thou less mighty than thou art, thou
art, O Lord, too great for our belief
and too little for our heart.
In other words, he said that if God
were just a big God, he'd be too
great for us to believe and too little
for us to worship.
And I believe that.
If God were simply a big God, I
hear people say, Brethren, we have a big
God.
I don't like it.
A lot of these salesman expressions, these American
businessman salesman expressions that some of our Christian
businessmen use, I don't like them at all.
I don't like them a bit.
Because I don't think we ought to pull
God down and sell him over the counter
like dry goods.
I think that God is too holy, too
infinite, too high, too wonderful, too glorious for
us even to think of him like that.
But what he says here is that if
God were just a big God, he'd be
so big it'd scare us, but he'd be
too little for us to worship.
I couldn't worship a God who was just
an outside man, could you?
I couldn't even worship a God who was
simply a huge archangel.
That's why I don't go much for these
religious pictures stuck around.
I remember seeing in an art gallery, I
attend an art gallery whenever I'm around where
they are, I walk through real fast and
come away discouraged.
But I remember seeing a painting of Michelangelo's
God creator.
Here he was, a great, monstrous, big, old,
bald-headed man sitting on a cloud or
lying outstretched on a cloud, and he's doing
this with his finger and Adam's coming into
being.
Well, I don't like to think of God.
I couldn't worship that God at all.
I don't know how Michelangelo ever got down
on his knees to a bald-headed old
man.
I couldn't do it.
I'd want him at least to have a
decent head of hair.
Even if I don't.
But this was a bald-headed old man.
And that was Michelangelo's concept of God the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, who
dwelleth in eternity in light no man can
approach unto.
I think it's tragic and terrible.
So if God were just a big God
like that, he'd be too great for our
belief, but he'd be too little for our
worship.
Then he says, Thy greatness would seem monstrous
by the sight of creatures frail and undivine.
Yet they would have a greatness of their
own, free and apart from thine.
If God were simply a huge man, then
I'd say, Well, he's bigger than I am,
but here I am.
Here I am.
An American Indian chief went to Washington one
time to represent his tribe before the president.
They expected him to come cringing in, you
know, before the great white father.
But he walked in, stood straight up, leaned
back, folded his arms over his breast and
said, You are a man, I am another.
I've always been proud of that Indian.
I forget who it was, but I like
that.
I'd like it.
You are a man, I am another.
Don't you look down on me.
Well, the chief was chief over a tribe
of a few hundred, and the president was
president of a few million.
But after all, there wasn't too much difference.
And if God were simply a big God
and great God, why, I'd have a greatness
and he'd have a greatness.
His would be bigger than mine, but I'd
say, Well, I'm not as big as you,
but I'm coming.
But this God, this great God, is infinite,
and so I have no greatness apart from
God.
But greatness which is infinite makes room for
all things in his lap to lie.
Because God is infinite, he makes room for
all things to lie in his lap.
And we should be crushed by magnificence short
of infinity.
We'd be crushed by it if God were
so large and yet wasn't quite infinite.
We'd be crushed by his size, but we
couldn't worship that kind of God.
We share in what is infinite, his hours,
for we in it alike are thine.
For I enjoy a great God by right
of thee is more than doubly mine.
Thus, thus thy grandeur make us grand ourselves.
His goodness hides, bids us fear.
Thy greatness makes us brave as children are
when they love or near.
God is infinite and because God is infinite,
you and I can be bold and brave
in the universe.
Why?
Just the same as a little boy is
brave when his dad's around.
He says we can be brave as children
are when those they love are near.
Never was anybody quite so bold as a
four or five year old boy when his
great big strapping father's around.
No, no, he's really brave.
Great God, our lowliness takes heart to play
beneath the shadow of thy state.
The only comfort of our littleness is that
thou art so great.
How could I stand myself if I didn't
believe in an infinite God?
How could I endure myself if I didn't
know that God was eternal?
How could I endure the passing of my
years if I didn't know that I had
been baptized into the heart of one who
knows no years, who is the ancient of
days, who had no beginning and can have
no end?
How could I endure my weakness if I
didn't know that I had been baptized into
the heart of one who has infinite strength?
So this is our God and this is
the God we adore.
So God is what he is now without
limit.
He knows no extent and he knows no
measure.
And if there were a point where God
wasn't, if you could get on a beam
of light and fly at 186,000 miles
a second, way out yonder for a billion
light years and come to a spot where
God wasn't, you'd say, well, right here is
where God ends.
God has a big spread, but this is
the border.
This is the limit.
This is the end.
You're great Canada here, bigger than the United
States.
This vast Canada.
All right, it's big, all right, and the
whole world knows how big it is and
is rapidly learning how big it is.
But right down here, a little below, what
you may call it, there's a little line
and there's where it ends.
Canada ends where the nose of Uncle Sam
begins, and Uncle Sam's northern boundary ends where
Canada begins.
There's a limit to great countries, a limit
to great wealth, but there's no place where
you can put a boundary and say, now,
God, don't overflow this.
God speaks to the sea and says, this
far and no farther, but who can speak
to God and say, this far and no
farther?
Who dares tell God what he can do
or can't do?
Well, God is without limit, I say, and
if you can think a limit, you're not
thinking about God.
But if you can't keep from thinking of
a limit, if you think and think and
think out and out and up and out
and up and out and try to think
as far out as God and then you
break down, don't let it worry you.
Augustine had his troubles, too, and so did
Paul and David and Isaiah.
No human being can think infinitude, yet I'm
preaching about it.
Nobody can think it.
You've got to believe it.
You've got to believe it in your heart.
Occasionally, somebody will write me and say, why
don't you make it more clear, brother?
Why don't you tell us exactly?
And I write back and say, I can
only do what John the Baptist did.
I can point to the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world
and after that, you're on your own.
I can't take anybody by the hand and
lead them into the kingdom of God.
I can only point them to the Lamb
of God and then he and they are
for it.
And I can't, by any means, describe the
infinitude of God.
I can only point with wonder and amazement
and awe-struck admiration and say, behold God.
And then after that, it's you and God
for it.
One of these days, I'll be gone and
it'll be you and God for it.
One of these days, your friends will be
gone and it's you and God for it.
So it's good that we now know all
that we can know about the infinite God.
Now, what does all this mean to us?
If God is infinite, I think it's true.
All theologians believe it.
The Bible teaches it.
We sing about it and I've tried to
preach about it tonight.
But what does it mean to us now?
Have we had a lesson in theology upon
which we're to be examined one of these
days?
No, not that.
There are some things that if this is
true and it is true, then God's love
is infinite.
The love of God is infinite.
I heard a man preach years ago.
Don't remember his name.
I don't remember his name at all.
But he left a beautiful thought with me.
He preached from that text where Jesus said,
The same is my brother, my sister, and
my mother.
Remember those words?
He that loveth me, the same is my
brother, my sister, and my mother.
And he said, Now that's the way it
works.
Your brother, his love is pretty good, but
it's not too strong and he could desert
you.
But your sister will stick to you after
your brother has dumped you over.
And after your sister can't stand you anymore,
you still have your mother.
He said, My brother, my sister, and my
mother.
And then he said, There is a love
that is closer than the love of a
mother yet, and that's the love of God.
I remember that.
Oh, it must have been thirty years or
more ago, but it was a beautiful sermon.
And I'd just like to pass that thought
on to you tonight.
That a mother's love can be outraged and
die.
Or a mother can die and her love
die with her.
But God can't die and because he can't
die, therefore, his love never died.
But you say, Did not Jesus die?
And do not we sing, When God, the
mighty maker, died for man, the creatures sinned?
Yes, yes.
The second person of the Trinity took upon
him the form of a man and died
for our sins.
But the eternal God remained alive and raised
him from the dead.
Deity never died, but the man called Jesus
who was man and God died for our
sins.
No contradiction there no confusion at all.
God can't die.
God is the immortal who only has immortality
dwelling in the light which no man can
approach unto.
So the love of God is infinite.
Kierkegaard, the great Danish writer, in a little
chapter on the love, on love, let's see,
love covers a multitude of sins.
That was his text.
And he lived a hundred years ago and
I just discovered him a few years back
and everybody's talking about Kierkegaard now.
But Kierkegaard wrote a little sermon on that
text that love covers a multitude of sins.
He said, How did Jesus Christ deal with
our sins?
How did he do it?
He covered them.
And he said, What did he cover them
with?
His life.
He said if he had covered them with
his life, they could have taken his life
away and exposed our sins again.
But he covered them with his death.
And so when he died, he covered them
with his death.
And he played back and forth on that
one theme that by his death on a
tree he covered our sins and hid them
as a fog hides the landscape forever and
ever from the eyes of angels and demons
and God.
So the love of God is infinite.
Now you can be certain of that.
The love of people isn't infinite.
It's an awful thing to fall in love
and fall back out.
I've always thought how shocking it is when
you read in the newspapers of cases, divorce
cases, where a person will say, a woman
will say, I no longer love him.
She once did and no longer.
Love didn't last.
It didn't last.
And we sometimes hear about mothers who forsake
their children so that even the finest love
the world knows.
The love of a father, a mother, a
sister, a wife, has limits, but the love
of God has none because God is infinite
and anything God has is limitless.
So there's one thing you can be sure
about.
There's no limit to the love of God.
Those who believe in the complete salvation of
all the universe, that is they believe that
when Christ died, he died for everybody, including
the devil and demons.
That's a universalism, which I don't go along
with, as you don't.
But as far as the love of God
is concerned, the love of God is big
enough to take in all of heaven and
all of hell, too.
But God in his infinite planning planned that
only those who repent and believe shall be
saved.
But the love of God is vaster than
the measure of man's mind and the heart
of the world.
And the eternal is most wonderfully kind.
So the love of God is infinite.
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love, an everlasting love.
Then God's grace is infinite, the grace of
God.
Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
I was praying the other day and thinking
to myself about it, and I was thinking
about how vast the grace of God is
as compared with our human sin.
There's a peculiar contradiction here, ladies and gentlemen.
If you don't think your sin is big,
then the Lord can't save you.
But if you think your sin is bigger
than God, then he can't save you.
You've got to realize that though your sin
is big, God is infinite, and therefore God
is bigger than all of your sin.
Where sin abounded, the grace of God does
much more abound.
When God says more, referring to himself, we
ought to expect more and more.
extend our imagination into borderline infinity.
And then when God says much more and
puts a qualifying word behind it, what can
you do but kneel and say, My Lord
and my God?
How grace does much more abound, the abounding
grace of God.
John Bunyan wrote a book, Grace Abounding to
the Chief of Sinners.
In the old days when they wrote a
book, they gave them long titles, long titles.
I have a book written by an Irishman
by the name of Thomas Traherne, and I
forgot, I think about 16 words to the
title of that book, but nowadays we have
short titles.
They had long ones then, and he called
his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,
and that was a little of the story
of his life, the abounding grace of God.
Some night I'm going to preach on the
love of God, another night on the grace
of God, so I'm going to do that,
so I'll not exhaust the subject now, only
to point out that sin is man's doing,
and because it is man's doing, it has
a limit to it.
Grace is God's doing, and because it's God's
doing, it has no limit to it.
And when you have for your medicine that
which has no limit, trying to cure a
disease which has a limit, you can be
sure the patient is going to get well.
And when the infinite, limitless grace of God
attacks the finite, limited sin of a man,
that sin has no chance.
If we'll only repent and turn from it,
God will pulverize it and whirl it into
immensity where it can never be known again
while the eternity rolls on eternity.
That's what I think happened to my sin.
That's what I think happened to the sin
of everybody that believed.
I've heard of men like Billy Bray arguing
with the devil and sassing him back.
I never sassed the devil.
I have a very high respect for the
devil.
I don't like him, and I know he's
the personification and distilled quintessence of all that
is sinful.
But I also know that even the archangel
Michael, when contending with the devil about the
body of Moses, did not rebuke him, but
he said, The Lord rebuked thee.
So I'm not going to fuss with the
devil.
I'll let God handle him.
He's the only one that can.
But I like just in the sneaking way
to have the devil know about this.
I like to have the devil know that
Jesus Christ, our Lord, is infinite and his
blood is infinite.
The purchase of his blood is infinite.
And if all the sands on the seashore
and the stars in the sky were human
beings, each one, and if every corpuscle in
the bloodstream of every human being in the
world was a human being, and they had
all sinned as bad as Judas, still the
grace of God being infinite and limitless, could
cure it, because God has no limit, and
sin has limit.
You read about the galaxies, beyond galaxies, beyond
galaxies, billions of stars in the galaxies, and
if they were all human beings and all
had sinned, they would still have a limit.
And if your sin is big as a
mountain, you look back on your past, you
remember the things you did, you know the
big sins have never been the ones that
bother me, but the sneaking little mousy sins,
the sins you're ashamed of, the sins you
don't want even to think about, they're the
ones that bother my conscience and bother me.
But even though you've sinned all those little
rascally sins, they have a limit to them.
God could set eight or ten angels counting,
and in ten years he could count them
with an adding machine.
He could find my sins and add them
up and say, well, here's the total, and
it would stream clear across the room.
And then some angel would say, well, I
guess he's doomed.
And God would say, no, look at my
grace.
It extends not across the room, but from
eternity past to eternity to come.
Infinite grace of our loving God, we sing.
And it's correct and proper that we should.
Well, then there's atonement, atonement.
When he died for us, when Jesus died,
it was enough.
I'm glad to have enough of something, aren't
you?
Enough at once, enough of something sometimes.
And there's enough.
When Jesus died on that tree, it only
took him six hours to die, but because
it was infinity dying, it was because the
man who died was charged with the deity
who couldn't die.
But because God counted infinity there, atonement is
enough.
I remember a great hymn by a man
by the name of St. Paul.
And he says, Lord, I believe we're sinners
more than sands upon the ocean shore.
Thou hast for all atonement a ransom paid
for all the full atonement made.
Now, that was a good Arminian that wrote
that, you know.
And I was looking through a good Presbyterian
hymn books not long ago, and you know
they skip that verse, they skip that one
because they don't quite believe that he died
for everybody.
I believe he died for everybody.
And I believe that Jesus Christ, when he
died on the cross, not only died for
the elect, I believe he died for every
human being that was ever born into the
world, or ever will be born into the
world.
I believe he died for every baby that
died at birth, and for every man who
lived to be a hundred and fifty.
I believe he died for all.
Lord, I believe that we're sinners more than
sands upon the ocean shore, who has for
all a ransom paid for all the full
atonement made.
So we can go all around the world
telling people that Jesus Christ died for them.
Some of my good friends say that, well,
he died for the elect, and when you
go preaching the gospel, God finds his elect.
Well, if there were a hundred people there
and I was preaching the gospel to them,
they would and only ninety of them were
elect, or ten of them, say, were elect,
and the other ninety weren't.
I'd be lying to ninety of them.
When I say, Jesus died for you, put
a period after it, I'd be lying to
ninety of them.
He only died for the ten who were
the elect.
If I said, Whosoever will, let him come,
I'd be lying to the ninety, because they
were not the ones that should come.
Well, I love all of God's children.
I love the ones that have good sense,
and the ones who don't, and the ones
who have good theology, and the ones who
don't.
I love them all.
I throw my arms about them all, and
I suppose that it's good to believe good,
strong theology, but I can't go along with
those who believe that Christ died only for
certain ones.
I think Christ died for all of us.
When he was out there on the cross,
I was in his heart.
Hitler was in his heart, and Khrushchev was
in his heart, and Bluebeard was in his
heart, and I was in his heart.
When he died out there on the cross,
Eichmann was in his heart.
You say, how could it be?
These horrible men, these were horrible men.
Judas was a horrible man.
But Jesus Christ, having infinite efficacy in the
atonement, atoned for Judas.
If somebody had only told Judas, and Judas
had only repented, there might have been a
Saint Judas tonight!
Don't you imagine, because Abraham Lincoln and McKenzie
King were good men and Hitler was a
bad man, that Christ died for those two
and didn't die for Hitler.
He died for all men, good and bad,
vicious, wicked, bestial, around the world.
He died for the homosexual, died for the
dope fiend, died for all.
Ah, the patience of Jesus, the infinite patience
of Jesus, the patience of God, and the
power to save.
He has infinite power to save.
He breaks the power of cancelled sin.
Paul Rader used to say, You name it
and God will bust it.
You name it and God will break it.
You're right.
So God being infinite is not a theological
bit of lumber to put up in somebody's
attic and label and say, This is the
infinitude of God.
If something gets down where you are, and
somebody comes at you with a sword, and
you look to the infinite protection of God,
and you wonder if maybe this is your
last hour, and you look to the infinite
forgiveness of God, and you expect to face
that awful judgment hour, and you look to
the infinite protection of the atoning Lamb who
died from the foundation of the world.
So it's better that we know what infinitude
means.
So I recommend that you believe this and
believe that God is limitless and Jesus Christ
is limitless and the Holy Ghost has no
limit.
There is no end, no bound, no shore.
But all that you need, you'll find in
God.
All that you need.
You can find it now, tonight, this night,
the 5th of March.
Find it here in this building, now.
I knew a man once years ago by
the name of Everett Rowe.
He was a southerner, and he never quite
made the English language hang together.
But he was a dear saint of God,
a dear saint of God.
He was converted somewhere down in the southern
part of Ohio, and he had a little
church.
And it was so real to him and
so marvelous, he knew when and he knew
where.
And he became a great soul and great
soul winner and prayer warrior.
And every year, he'd go back to the
little place where he was converted.
And he'd go in reverently and walk down
the aisle and he'd measure off from the
end of the altar, the old-fashioned wooden
altar, and he'd walk over and he'd measure
off from where he'd been.
He'd kneel down there and he'd have an
hour of thanksgiving, thanking God Almighty that he
ever found this sinner Everett Rowe.
So one summer he went back, and in
the meantime unknown to him, they'd sold the
church and they'd turned it into a garage.
And they had a concrete floor and there
was oil and dirt and grease over the
floor, you know, and hunks of this and
that lying around.
So he said, it was the same building,
only the only that it had been gutted
out and concreted, and now they're using it
for a garage.
He said, he stepped it off down the
aisle and then over from the side of
the building in, and he said, now I
think this greasy spot right here is where
I ...
So he went over to the boss and
he said, excuse me, but this used to
be a church.
Yeah, he said.
Well, he said, I was converted in this
church.
Sure enough, yeah, I was converted in this
church.
And he said, every year I come to
this church and kneel down at the spot
where I met God.
He said, would you mind if I knelt
down over there in the grease and thank
God almighty again after the passing of the
years for saving my poor wretched soul?
The fellow said, no, it's all right with
me.
So he went over and knelt down in
the grease and the fellows around him, you
know, pounding and working and drilling and they
looked at him and thought it was another
nut drive.
But everybody knew what he was doing and
there in the grease he knelt down and
thanked God that he ever converted, ever arrived.
You know, I believe there are some of
you here tonight, if you'd only dare to
believe in the infinite love and grace of
God and the infinite, limitless, measureless power of
the atonement, you could make this the night
that you come out of darkness into light.
And as long as you live, you're going
to have a warm spot in your heart
for Avenue Road Church.
You may not want to do what he
did.
But your mind would go back in memory
to the 5th of March for the years
that God may have given you on earth
and said it was back there in Toronto
that wherever you might wander over this wide,
wide world, at least once a year your
thoughts would roll back like a sparrow coming
back to Capistrina for a swallow and you
would say, I remember when God met my
soul.
The infinite grace of God rolled over me
with cleansing power.
And I would say, I