It's a joy to be back at Mid
-South again after a number of years.
Some old friends and a lot of folks
I haven't met before, so I hope to
get to know you all before the end
of the week.
You can make it easy by coming and
tapping on my shoulder and say my name
is, okay?
It's also great to be back with Bob
Clark.
I remember being here years ago with him.
I still remember his messages very vividly, but
that's really a test I think of ministry
when you can remember what the man spoke
on.
Really made an impression.
This week I want to be talking to
you about the attributes of God.
What is God like?
And I'd like to read a couple of
verses at the outset in the book of
Job.
Job chapter 36 and verse 26.
It says, behold, God is great and we
know him not.
Neither can the number of his years be
searched out.
And chapter 37 and verse 5 says, God
thundereth marvelously with his voice.
Great things doeth he which we cannot comprehend.
The greatest thought that can enter the human
mind is the contemplation of God.
I think it's wonderful that God has given
us minds with which we can think about
his greatness, his majesty, his wisdom, his love,
and his power.
That's the highest occupation of a human being,
the contemplation of God.
What do we mean when we speak about
God?
The shorter catechism years ago, I suppose it
still does, has a very good definition of
God.
It says, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal,
unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice,
goodness, and truth.
That's a good definition of God.
God is spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in all
his attributes.
I often think of some of the scientists
and philosophers and the great intellect of this
world, and I think how they live and
they die without ever bringing God into their
consciousness.
And I think, what a terrible prostitution of
the human mind.
It's a terrible thing to waste a mind.
And any mind that has never grappled with
the thought of God is a wasted mind.
And the more we think about the Lord,
the more we become like him.
It's a marvelous transformation that takes place in
the human life.
We're changed by beholding.
It says that in 2 Corinthians 3, verse
18.
But we all, with unveiled faith, beholding as
in a glass, the glory of the Lord,
are changed into the same image from glory
to glory, even as by the spirit of
the Lord.
Changed by beholding, by gazing upon the Lord
himself.
Now, we're going to be looking tonight at
some verses that deal with the greatness of
God.
And these verses are a study in human
language.
And I'm going to point out to you
that as we go along, it's going to
seem as if the words bend under the
weight of the ideas.
And the reason for that is that no
human language can fully describe God.
And again I say, the words seem to
bend under the weight of the ideas.
And there's something else wonderful about this subject
that we're going to take up.
And that is that God is so great
that no human mind can fully comprehend Him.
And not all minds of all people who've
ever lived or ever will live can fully
take Him in.
Because God is infinite, and God is greater
than we are.
If my mind could fully take Him in,
then my mind would be greater than God.
So when I come to the Word of
God and to the study of God, then
I just take it for granted that I'm
just going to be like a little boy
at the edge of the ocean, and I'm
going to dip my bucket into the ocean,
and the bucket will be filled, but the
ocean won't be emptied.
The ocean won't be exalted.
The ocean won't be any poorer than it
was before.
My bucket will be filled, but the ocean
will go on just as it always has.
And that's the way it is with the
study of God.
We can fill our minds with the most
wonderful thoughts about the Lord that we still
haven't scratched the surface.
Let's look at some verses in the Bible
in which the Spirit of God seeks to
present to our minds something of the greatness
of our God.
The first is in Job chapter 26, and
verse 14.
And I'm going to read it to you
from the Old English Revised Version.
Job chapter 26, and verse 14.
Let me just say that in the preceding
verses, Job has been giving one of the
marvelous descriptions of the greatness and power of
God.
It seems he's almost exhausted human vocabulary.
He has ransacked the alphabet to create in
the minds of us, his readers, something of
the infinite greatness of this God.
And notice what he says in the last
verse of chapter 26.
Lo, these are but the outskirts of his
ways.
King James says, Lo, these are parts of
his ways.
The Revised Version says, Lo, these are but
the outskirts of his ways.
In other words, when Job had finished describing
the greatness of God, he said, look, friends,
I've just been in the suburbs.
I never got down into the center.
Isn't that wonderful?
These are the outskirts of his ways.
And how little a portion is heard of
him, or how small a whisper do we
hear of him, but the thunder of his
power, who can understand?
He's been describing something of the power of
God, and he said, look here, friends, all
I've given you is a whisper.
And if the whisper of his power is
so great, what would the thunder of his
power ever be?
And he leaves you to answer the question.
Marvelous, isn't it?
Marvelous to hear.
Let me read the verse again.
I love it.
Lo, these are but the outskirts of his
ways.
And how small a whisper do we hear
of him, but the thunder of his power,
who can understand?
The answer is no one can fully understand
it, although we'll be thinking about it this
week.
Psalm 56 and verse 8.
It says in verse 8 of Psalm 56,
Thou tellest my wonderings, put thou my tears
into thy bottle, are they not in thy
book?
What does that mean?
Well, the word tell there, thou tellest my
wonderings, it's the word for count.
In other words, you go into a bank
and you go to a teller.
The teller counts the money as you give
it to him or as you take it
from him.
He counts it.
That's what a teller is.
And God is a teller.
And it says thou tellest my wonderings.
Some other versions of the Bible, I think,
says tossing.
Does your Bible say tossing?
No, but I mean the next word, thou
tellest my wonderings.
What it really means is that when we're
on the bed at night and we're tossing
in the bed, you know, and you're like
a door on its hinges.
Now you're on this side and now you're,
you know, you're flailing all over the bed
in the course of the night.
God counts every such movement.
You say, I could care less about them.
All I want is, I know it.
All you want to do is sleep.
But God counts every one of them.
And he does something else that I think
is tremendously comforting.
He counts your tears.
He puts your tears in a bottle and
keeps an accurate count of them.
What a great God he is.
And you know, there's an awful lot of
people in this world.
How does he keep track of the tears
of all his people?
Some of you here tonight.
You couldn't have an audience of this size
without having broken hearts, without having hearts going
through times of testing and trial, without having
grieving hearts.
What a comfort to know that we have
a God who enters into all of our
afflictions, all of our sorrows, and he puts
our tears in a bottle and he keeps
accurate count of every one of them.
We speak of the omniscience of God, his
perfect knowledge of everything.
He counts our tossings and numbers our tears.
Psalm 104, if you will please.
Psalm 104, and verse 32.
You know, if any of you love literature
and good writing, you should love the Bible.
We believe, of course, that it is the
inspired, infallible word of God.
But I'll tell you, it's very hard to
find language that's as great as this.
Psalm 104, verse 32, it says, He looketh
on the earth and it trembles.
He toucheth the hills and they smoke.
Now, what does that say?
Well, I come from earthquake country, you know,
California.
What produces an earthquake?
It says here that all God has to
do is look on the earth and it'll
shake.
It's speaking about an earthquake in the first
part of that verse, and the second part
of the verse speaks about a volcanic eruption.
Mount St. Helens, was it?
What a tremendous display of the power of
God.
He touched the mount.
Tremendous explosion and lava flowing all over the
place.
Tremendous manifestation of the power of God.
It didn't take a clenched fist to do
it.
It didn't take a flexing of his muscles
to do it.
All he had to do was just touch
it and it took place.
Psalm 113, verse 6.
I hope you love the Bible as much
as I do.
It says, verse 6, Who humbleth himself to
behold the things that are in heaven and
in the earth.
It's really great, you know.
How can the Spirit of God describe the
greatness of God?
Well, it says, He has to bow low
to behold the things in the heavens.
Mind you, I can't behold them if I
stand on my tiptoes.
And you can't either.
But God has to stoop to behold the
things that are in the heavens and in
the earth.
And then I'll always love Psalm 147.
Psalm 147, verse 4.
It says, He telleth.
There's our word telleth again.
It means count.
He counts the number of the stars and
calls them all by their names.
Dear friends, do you know how many stars
there are?
Well, the fact of the matter is you
don't.
And neither do I.
And neither does any other living person know
how many stars there are.
Man is working on a telescope now that
will penetrate seven times deeper into the universe
than he's ever gone before.
Sir James Jeans said that there are probably
as many stars as there are grains of
sand on all the seashores of the world.
Now think about that for a minute.
There are probably as many stars in the
heavens as there are grains of sand on
all the seashores of the world.
It's an interesting thing to me that Sir
James Jeans would say that because he brings
the stars and the sand together.
Did you ever hear that before?
Sure.
When God told Abraham to come out and
promised him that his seed would be as
the stars of the heavens in multitude and
the sands by the seashore innumerable, God put
them together long before Sir James Jeans did.
Remarkable, isn't it?
Could I pause here and ask you, why
did God make so many stars?
I mean, we would have been satisfied with
a quarter of the number, wouldn't we?
Why did he make so many?
I like to think about these things.
You know, when Abraham went out that night
and looked up at the stars, he saw
2,000 stars.
2,000.
That's all.
With just regular vision.
With telescopic vision.
Well, let me put it this way.
We don't have any words to describe that
number.
Our language...
I don't know what the biggest number we
have in language.
I hear people talking about zillions, whatever a
zillion is, or a jillion.
There's no word to describe the number of
the stars.
All you can say is innumerable.
Why did he make so many?
Do you know why he made them?
So you and I would get some idea
of what a great God he is.
That's why.
What a wonderful thing.
Don't ever be too spiritual to go out
at night and look up at the stars
and adore their creator.
I'll tell you, it's really wonderful.
I don't know any study that is most
calculated to show man his insignificance than the
study of the astronomy.
Tremendous, really.
I recommend it to you young people.
Take up astronomy, among others.
Take it up as a hobby.
Get a telescope and see the greatness of
God.
The heavens declare the glory of God and
the firmament showeth his handiwork.
It really does.
And here it says he numbers the stars
and he gives them all a name.
We're not that original in naming children, are
we?
My parents came from the north of Scotland
and my father had a sister and she
had a large family.
Would you believe there are two Marys in
that family?
The big Mary and little Mary.
I mean, she ran out of names quickly.
But God has a name for all the
stars and he never repeats himself.
We don't have names for all of them.
God does.
And we never will.
You know, I'd like you to look back
a verse.
If you think that's wonderful, look back a
verse and it says he healeth the broken
in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
It's a wonderful thing to know that the
God of hosts is the God of Jacob
too.
The God of the heavenly host is the
God of the unworthy Jacob.
And the God of the telescope is the
God of the microscope as well.
And the God who flung all of those
constellations into space is the God who comforts
the brokenhearted and heals their wounds as well,
binds up their wounds.
In verse 3, God is intimately nigh.
Similarly, in verse 4, God is infinitely high.
You know, only the Spirit of God would
ever put two verses together like verses 3
and 4.
Isn't that right?
Only the Spirit of God would ever do
that.
You would never do that.
But he does it.
To tell you that that great God of
the universe loves you, loves me, is vitally
interested in us day by day.
Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1.
I can really get excited about this.
Isaiah chapter 6, verse 1.
It says, In the year that King Uzziah
died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon
a throne high and lifted up.
Notice, And his train filled the temple.
His train filled the temple.
What does that mean?
You know, we read this all the time
and you say, Well, everybody else knows what
it means and I won't ask what it
means because then they'd know I don't know.
But you'll never become a Bible student that
way.
Ask, what does that mean?
His train filled the temple.
Well, first of all, when you think about
the word train here, think about the train
of a wedding dress.
Here's a bride and she's marching down the
middle aisle and the train is fluttering along
the floor behind her, right?
The train.
Here it's speaking about the train of the
Lord's glory.
That's what it's speaking about, the train of
the Lord's glory.
And he's saying, the train of his glory
fills the temple.
Well, if the train of his glory fills
the temple, what must his full glory be?
That's the argument.
It's arguing from the lesser to the greater.
Let me illustrate it.
Supposing there was a wedding in Westminster Abbey
or in the greatest cathedral you've ever seen.
And supposing the bride's train filled Westminster Abbey.
Man, if her train filled the abbey, what
must that wedding dress be like?
Huh?
Well, that's exactly what it's saying here.
The train of the Lord's glory fills the
temple.
And Isaiah leaves it to you and to
me to ask, well, if his train fills
the temple, what must the full manifestation of
his glory be?
And then over in Isaiah 40, that marvelous
passage, Isaiah 40, and I'm going to read
verses 12 through 17.
I'll just comment as we go along.
Isaiah 40, verse 12.
Of course, this is one of the great
passages in the Old Testament on the greatness
of God.
His greatness.
It says, Who has measured the waters in
the hollow of his hands?
What does that mean?
Well, it means the hand of God is
so great that it can contain the Atlantic,
the Pacific, the Mediterranean, the Antarctic, the Indian
Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, all the waters, lakes,
ponds of the world.
They can all fit in the palm of
his hand.
The hand of God.
Marvelous, isn't it, to think that that hand
was pierced with nails on the cross of
Calvary.
But that's what it means.
Who has measured the waters in the palm
of his hand and meted out heaven with
the span?
What does that mean?
Well, the span is the distance.
Here's my outstretched hand.
The span is the difference from my little
finger, the tip of my little finger, to
the tip of my thumb.
That's the span.
And that verse says that God measures the
heavens with his span.
I hold my hand up and it doesn't
cover much of the heavens, does it?
The span of the hand of God stretches
across the heavens and comprehended the dust of
the earth in a measure.
He took all the earth on this planet.
He could just put it on one of
his scales.
Oh, what must the scales of God be
like?
And weighed the mountains in scales and the
hills in a balance.
Seems so awesome to us.
Especially on planet earth.
We think we are the people and wisdom
will die with us.
And you know, this world that we live
on is just a speck of dust in
the universe.
It really isn't a speck of dust in
the universe.
Believe me, it's not even a speck of
dust.
And if the world that we live on,
the planet we live on isn't a speck
of dust, what are you and I?
We're less than zero.
Ah, but he loves us.
That's the thing.
Less than zero, but loved by almighty God.
Who has directed the spirit of the Lord
of being his counselor?
When he made all of this, who did
he call in for advice?
Nobody.
Nobody can advise the Lord.
He's above advice from anybody else.
With whom took he counsel and instructed him
and taught him in the path of judgment
and taught him knowledge and showed him the
way of understanding?
The answer is no one.
God is self-existent and God is self
-sufficient.
He doesn't need anything or anyone outside himself.
And he's very capable of doing it all
without our help.
He did it all without our help.
We weren't even on the scene when he
did it all.
Behold the nations are as a drop of
the bucket.
You've just washed your car.
You've dumped out the bucket and there's just
a drop or two left in it and
you don't worry about it at all, do
you?
Well, that's what the nations mean to him.
The nations are as a drop of the
bucket and are counted as a small dust
of the balance.
Now, we're in a drugstore.
The scene changes quickly and the druggist has
those scales and he's been weighing some powder
and then dumps it out and there's a
little dust left on the scale.
That's what the nations are.
You know, when the Russian bear rattles his
saber, the world trembles.
God doesn't tremble.
It's like the dust of the balance to
him.
Mind you, he never says that about the
church.
Church is his body, the body and bride
of Christ.
The nations are just dust and a drop
in the bucket to him.
Counted as the small dust of the balance.
Behold, he takes up the isles as a
very little thing.
Australia.
Very little thing.
And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn or
the beasts are not sufficient to burn.
How can you bring a sacrifice that's acceptable
to a God like that?
And he's saying, look, if you took all
the trees of Lebanon and made one huge
bonfire and then took all the animals of
Lebanon and placed them on top of that
bonfire, it wouldn't be a fitting sacrifice.
It wouldn't be a fitting offering for such
a God as this.
Do you see how the Spirit of God
is trying to take our minds and try
to influence them to realize something of the
greatness of this God whom we have come
to know?
Lebanon is not sufficient to burn or the
beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.
All the nations before him are as nothing.
I love it.
And are counted to him less than nothing.
How can you be less than nothing?
It's minus zero.
That's what it is.
I never heard of it before.
And vanity, that means emptiness.
To whom then will you liken God or
what likeness will you compare with him?
Marvelous, isn't it?
Marvelous picture of the greatness of God.
Nahum.
Turn over to the minor prophet Nahum.
Jonah, Micah, Nahum.
Nahum chapter 1 and verse 3.
Nahum.
Do you find it?
Jonah, Micah, Nahum.
Habakkuk.
Verse 3.
The Lord is slow to anger and great
in power and will not at all acquit
the wicked.
Notice.
The Lord has his way in the whirlwind
and in the storm and the clouds are
the dust of his feet.
Oh, it's great.
The Lord has his way in the whirlwind
and in the storm.
You know, when that whirlwind, that tornado and
the storm come, we're kind of helpless.
We just go down the cellar and wait
until it's all over.
But God doesn't do that.
William Cooper in that marvelous poem says he
plants his footsteps on the sea and rides
above the storms.
Boy, that's great, isn't it?
He rides above the storms.
He controls the storms.
They are his servants.
And that's beautiful, you know.
The clouds are the dust of his feet.
Did you ever fly in a plane and
just as he's going up through the clouds,
I mean, they're mountainous, those clouds.
They're what?
They're mountainous.
They're just dust to God.
Spirit of God, using these tremendous pictures of
greatness to show us what a wonderful God
we have.
He plants his footsteps in the sea.
Habakkuk, the very next book, Habakkuk chapter 3,
verse 4.
And here again, Habakkuk is giving a marvelous
picture of the glory of God.
I mean, human language is marvelous here in
describing His majesty and His radiance.
And it says in Habakkuk 3, 4, and
His brightness was as the light He had
raised coming forth from His hand and there
was the hiding of His power.
The hiding of His power.
It doesn't say the manifestation of His power.
I mean, Habakkuk has just finished describing a
marvelous demonstration of the hiding of His power,
of the display of His power.
He just calls it the hiding of His
power.
I think that's really great.
Then, of course, in Matthew 10, we don't
have time.
He marks the sparrow's fall.
Boy, when you think of that insignificant English
sparrow, and it says not one of them
falls to the ground without your heavenly Father.
Ironside said God attends the funeral of every
sparrow.
And I want to tell you, if He
attends the funeral of every sparrow, you mean
a lot more to Him than many sparrows.
The great God of the universe interested in
you and in me.
Luke chapter 12, verse 70 numbers the hairs
of our heads.
500 million people in India alone.
More than that now.
Imagine.
Imagine a God who's intimately concerned with every
individual in the world tonight.
He made us with no two faces alike.
No two voices alike.
No two gates alike.
We all walk differently.
Our fingerprints are different.
Think of how God is hearing prayer in
so many languages tonight.
Huh?
So many languages.
I don't know how many are.
Do you?
In dialects?
And people praying to Him.
He filters it all out.
He knows just what they're saying.
Colossians 1, 17 tells us He not only
created all things, but He upholds them.
How?
By the word of His power.
Not by His strong outstretched arm.
By the word of His power.
He created all by a word.
And He upholds it all by a word.
He's the God who stills the storm.
He's the God who takes that gulf stream
down in Mexico and He starts it across
the Atlantic Ocean.
A stream of warm water going through the
frigid Atlantic and it comes over by the
west coast of Ireland and England and it's
still there.
A stream.
Try to do that in your bathtub.
You try to get a gulf stream.
If you can't do it, it's all going
to merge and it's all going to be
water of the same temperature that God can
do it.
What a great God He is.
Listen.
And when I think that God, His Son
not sparing, sent Him to die, I scarce
can take it in.
That on the cross my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my
sin.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to
Thee, how great Thou art.
How great Thou art.