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The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty … (Ex 6-7a)

 O Lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O Lord do I fear … in wrath remember mercy. (Hab 3:2)

 Lord, your judgment, your wrath, your mercy and your grace go together. Praise you, for though I do not fully understand, I know enough to worship and to be grateful.

I was teaching American Literature, and my class had just read Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon he preached in 1741. In the sermon, Edwards relates rather vivid pictures of the judgment and wrath of God, and those pictures are what most people remember — a spider hanging by a thread over a fire, a bow and arrow pointed to our heart, a great flood being stopped by the hand of God. I asked my students what they saw in the sermon. Anger, judgment, hell … these were the first answers. I then asked them if they saw any mercy. They had to think, and then one person said, “Yes.”

“Where did you see the mercy?” I asked.

“The spider was not in the fire. The arrow had not been fired. The hand of God was the only thing between the flood and us.” That was the gist of his answer.

“Yes,” I said and then pointed out a statement Edwards makes toward the end of his sermon. He says, “And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners …” He goes on and speaks of the love Christ has for us and how He has washed us from our sins in his own blood.

I then asked my students how Edwards can put the judgment of God and the mercy of God together. “Which is it?” I asked. “Does God judge or show mercy? How can He do both?” The class was silent. I then said, “Could you say that judgment is a prerequisite for mercy?” I saw the wheels turning inside their heads. They had never thought thoughts like this before. Finally two people spoke up simultaneously. One said “yes,” the other “no.” So I told them this parable.

A man robbed a bank. The police arrested him and charged him with robbing the bank, so the man had to go on trial. The jury found him guilty, and he then stood before the judge. A second man in another city did not rob a bank, but he was on the scene of a bank robbery at the time the robber fled, and the police mistakenly arrested him. They charged him with robbing the bank, and he went on trial where the jury found him innocent. He then stood before the judge. In the case of the second man, the judge said, “You are free to go.” In the case of the first man, the normal sentence was up to twenty years, but the judge said, “Well, these circumstances and those … four years.”

So I asked my students, “Which man received mercy?”

“The one who robbed the bank,” they said.

“Why?” I asked. “He got four years, but the other man got nothing.”

“But he was supposed to get more,” they said.

In other words, the presence of judgment gives meaning to mercy. You cannot forgive someone who has done nothing wrong. You can’t lighten a sentence that is already at zero. The mercy of God implies a real and just judgment. Mercy and judgment are woven together. To separate them makes no sense. Edwards understood this, for while judgment and wrath are central to his sermon, so are mercy and grace.

And this is how the Bible talks about God. Jesus spoke about hell more than any other person, yet it is Jesus who willingly gives His life to bring us forgiveness. Judgment and mercy kiss.

We must understand that when we remove the judgment of God, we remove His mercy.  God does not owe us mercy. If he owes us anything, it is judgment, for that is what we have earned. When mercy is an obligation, it ceases to be mercy. God shows us mercy because He wants to. It is a free and gracious expression of His love. We do not have it coming to us, and it is most certainly not a duty.

We must, thus, be careful in our attitude. God’s people cannot imperiously demand mercy, as if God were a store clerk dispensing it and somehow owed them good customer service. Rather we must acknowledge our bankruptcy before God. We must understand that, if the truth be told, hell is what we deserve. The difference in these two approaches to mercy is no light thing. One group knows it has no claim on God’s mercy; the other sees mercy as a right. One group approaches God with a broken heart; the other with a presumptuous heart. One group lets God judge them; the other judges God and thinks He is not such a grand chap unless He conforms to their view of Him. Both groups talk of God’s mercy, but their hearts are as different as heaven and hell. I oversimplify to illustrate, but unless our hearts are like the broken group, we do not know God’s mercy.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. (Ps 123:3)

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  (Ps 51:1)

Lord, hear our prayers.  We come to You broken and hurting.  Heal our wounds.  Apart from Christ, we have sin on our heads.  Forgive our sin.  Thank you for the Cross that heals and brings forgiveness.  And thank you for a mercy that is infinite.

Have you ever seen suffering? Maybe a woman dying from cancer or a man sitting in jail for doing the right thing, or a woman whose husband has left her, or a nation going through famine or war. All these experiences are Earth. Ever since Genesis 3, suffering has been the normal experience of the human race, and sometimes this suffering makes people question God’s goodness. Sometimes people throw the sufferings of Earth into the face of a Christian and say, “Where is your God of love, now?”

Of course, one way to address this accusation is to point out that the human race isn’t exactly the pinnacle of virtue. But today, I don’t have time to flesh out that idea. I want to focus on a different response to suffering.

I want to talk about the mercies of God. The Bible could not be clearer. Our God is a merciful God, and His mercy is tied up with His love. Mercy is an expression of love. Peter said “love covers a multitude of sins.” (I Pet 4:8) In the Scriptures mercy entails a tender-hearted compassion and expresses God’s care for His hurting creatures. When the psalmists frequently cry out for God’s mercy, they are not asking primarily for forgiveness of sins but for relief from oppression. Evil men pursue David to take his life, and he cries out for God to have mercy. An invading nation slaughters God’s people, and they cry out to God for mercy. In drought, in famine, in war, in disease, in danger, in childlessness, and much more, God’s people ask their God to show them mercy. They want a God who has compassion, and this compassion is a common thrust of the Biblical words for mercy. God feels for those who hurt; He has an infinite compassion on them. But this is only one aspect of the mercy of God.

The same words for mercy also often refer to forgiveness. God’s shows His mercy by forgiving our sins. God’s mercy, thus, has this double meaning: 1) God has compassion on His creatures, and 2) God will forgive their darkest sins. This is news beyond our grandest desires. The one who truly grasps it must admit that he cannot grasp it. Sing Christian! God sees your sufferings and will address them! And God forgives!

The reason mercy entails both these meanings is that suffering and sin go together. God’s mercy deals with the entire package, not just one element of the problem. Mercy is holistic. When the people lowered the paralyzed man through the roof, they wanted Jesus to show mercy and heal the man. Jesus responded with mercy and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mk 2:5) Sometimes we just want relief from our pain when what we really need is a clean soul. We want the depression to go away, but we forget to ask for the sin to go away. We want the tumor to be healed but don’t think about having our sins wiped away. We want relief from the symptom without dealing with the cause. But God’s mercy deals with the cause. Praise God. He heals tumors … and depression. He deals with our pain, and we can trust Him when we hurt. But He wants to do more. His mercy is bigger than we think. He nails our sin to the Cross. He says to us, “Come to me, my child. Be mine.” He gives us Himself and grants us an eternal inheritance that far outweighs our “light and momentary afflictions.” (II Cor 4:17)

That’s right. Make no mistake. Glory is mercy. We often look only to Earth for our mercy, and God does often grant us physical relief or material blessing here and now. When He does so, it is grace. But it is also true that sometimes we suffer many years till we die. Sometimes people suffer at the hands of injustice. When that happens, we must see that our lives are but a nanosecond in the grasp of eternity, and it is the glory of that eternity that makes up for our nanosecond of suffering. God will show His people mercy one way or the other and sometimes both ways.

But the mercies of God are not just in eternity or in the Cross. We must understand that the oxygen we breathe is mercy. The water we drink is mercy. The food we eat is mercy. The home we live in, the sun we enjoy, the rain that brings the crops, the clothes we wear, the friends we have, the car we drive, the music we like, the very life we live — all of this and more is mercy. We take these things for granted and somehow think that sinful creatures deserve pleasures. We don’t deserve any of these things. But we do enjoy them, and we do so because our God shows mercy.

A full treatment of our sufferings and of God’s mercy deserves more space than this blog can give, and I may have raised as many questions for you as I have answered. That’s OK. But we have got to see the mercy in God. It is part of His character, and it is everywhere we look. Now and for eternity.

God is love. (I Jn 4:8)

His love endures forever…His love endures forever…His love endures forever.   (Ps 136)

Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.   (Mic 7:18)

God on high, can the angels in heaven comprehend your love? Is there any end to it? How can I, full of sin and rebellion against you, quick to ignore your voice and heed my own inclinations ¾ how can I possibly know your love? Yet you love me! Oh glorious fact! And you forgive my ugly sin! Thank you. Oh thank you.

Now we get to talk about the part of God that everyone likes to talk about — the love of God. If you have heard anything about the Christian God, then you know that He is full of love and compassion. And praise Him, for it is true! Last week I said that God’s judgment against sin is on virtually every page of the Bible. This week I say that His boundless love is also on virtually every page of the Bible. Even when God judges, He loves. All the way back in Genesis, God sent a curse for sin but covered Adam and Eve with His sacrifice (Gen 3:8-21). In Noah’s day, God judged the world, but if you were to ask Noah if God loved, he would reply with a thundering “yes,” for he was the recipient of that love. God showed His love to Israel while she was in Egypt. Amazingly, He kept delivering His people during the times of the judges, when they spit in His face again and again. He showed His love to Moses, to Samuel, to Ruth, to Hannah, to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Daniel, to Mary, to Peter, to Paul. And He continues to show His love to you and me today. He does this because it’s who He is. God so loved the world that He gave His only son (Jn 3:16). God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rm 5:8). You cannot escape the love of God. Even when you sin, He loves you. The love of God is what makes life worth living. Remove it from earth and earth would be hell. To know that God is for us and is working for our good is enough to cheer the most despondent heart. You may feel that no one cares, but you are wrong. God loves.

In fact, God is love (I Jn 4:8). Tozer helps us understand this statement by explaining that it does not mean that God is some impersonal force. We do not worship love, and God never intends us to. Rather, the Scripture is speaking as we sometimes do when we say, “Dora is grace in action,” or “Robin is the picture of faith.” God is love perfectly, but love is not our God.

The love of God means that God is passionately looking out for our best interests. It means God has affection for us. We are not just pawns on a chessboard or file number 13479. God has feelings for us. He wants our good; He wants us to know Him; He wants to share with us from His bounty. To God we are children, not clients. God is not a cold force but a warm affectionate person.

He is love, but He is not love in the abstract. He loves you. He loves me. And the amazing thing about such love is that you and I have rebelled against Him. We are not people who are naturally friendly to God. The Bible describes us in our unconverted state as enemies (Rm 5:10). But God still loves us. The depravity of the human race magnifies the love of God. The better we think ourselves, the less we understand God’s love. Ironically, many who talk about God’s love have precious little grasp of it. Some think too highly of themselves; some think of God’s love as a type of human right, and it is precisely when we think we deserve God’s love that we miss it. His love then ceases to amaze. But when we see that we deserve wrath, the Cross astounds us. Praise God! He is willing to forgive. Even me.

God’s love sacrifices. “Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, “that he lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15:13) “Love is not self-seeking.” (I Cor 13:5) Love desires the good of someone else so greatly that it will sacrifice its own desires and comforts to bring about that good. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” (Jn 3:16) The ultimate expression of the love of God is found in Jesus Christ. His sacrificial death and resurrection is the pinnacle of the revelation of God’s love. Those events show God paying a great price for our best interests. People who deny the Atonement and Resurrection strip the power out of God’s love. They change the passionate sacrifice of God’s love into a lukewarm feeling. Divine love becomes human love. They remove God’s laying down His life yet think they somehow have a greater love. We cheapen the love of God when we deny the Cross, but we fully declare it every time we take communion and proclaim His death till He comes.

One of the wondrous things about life is that we, too, can love. Because we are created in God’s image, we have the capacity to love, but since we are finite and fallen creatures, our love is limited and imperfect, even tainted. Nonetheless, God, as the fountainhead of love, is the foundation of all legitimate human loves. An ungodly woman may have a love for her husband and children. Even that kind of love “is of God.” Some of the other desires and motives mixed in with her love may have a different source, but the love itself could not exist without God. Take Him away and all legitimate human loves disappear as well. We cannot love without God.

And so … God has a passionate desire for our well-being. This desire is warm, tender-hearted, and drives Him to make the ultimate sacrifice for us. It allows us to trust Him in all things and to serve Him from the heart as a son or a daughter. It provides great comfort, great joy, even in the midst of suffering, for we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. (Ps 89:14)

The Lord within her is righteous; he does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice. (Zeph 3:5)

See, the day of the Lord is coming — a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger. (Is 13:9)

The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. (Rev 14:19)

O God Most High, righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. How could I ever stand in Your presence on the basis of my own righteousness? I have none. On my own, I stand condemned, and I know it is right. Your wrath and justice are good and right, and I praise You that even in Your mercy, You remain just. Always.

The dictionary defines justice as “the principle of moral rightness; equity.” It is a moral word and a rather broad moral word. Sometimes we think of justice as merely the proper punishment of evil and reward of good. That concept is indeed justice, but it is only one example. The mechanic who will stick to his quote even though he will now lose money is being just; the woman who will not move in on another woman’s man is being just; the student who will not copy an exam is being just. Justice is doing, thinking and loving what is right. The Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek words bear this same sense. Justice is righteousness. When the Bible says that God is just, it is saying that He is morally right in everything He does. God is good, and God cares intensely about right behavior and attitudes. Right and wrong matter to God. If they do not, then God is not good.

Most people today have little difficulty with what I have said so far. They know (or at least think it ought to be) that God is just and good and, thus, cares about right and wrong. But if God is just, the more common and narrow application of justice is also true of Him. He must have equity. He must be no “respecter of persons.” He must show partiality to no one. He must treat sin as sin deserves to be treated, regardless of where He finds it. Now if we begin to see reality, this application of justice should make us squirm, for we both know things we have done that we would rather God not know about.

This application of justice entails judgment. Moral rightness requires that one make distinctions between right and wrong, and a just judge must punish evil. We would have to shut our eyes through all of Scripture to try to ignore the truth of God’s judgment on sin. It is on almost every page we turn. God does not gloss over sin. He condemns it and punishes it severely. The fact that He does so flows from His justice. If God merely looked past our sins, He would be corrupt. Unfortunately, too many people think that God is corrupt. Such thinking is itself sin and needs to be called so. The idea that God will simply gloss over our sins is morally reprehensible. God’s judgment against our sin is necessary if God is to be God.

This judgment is just, and it is inextricably tied to the character of God.  When God administers justice against sin, that justice is an expression of His wrath. God does not merely punish sin; He is angry at it. God’s character is never neutral toward sin.  He hates it, and He hates it precisely because He is just.  The justice of God and the wrath of God are woven together.

Now the wrath of God is an anger, but it is not the petty anger which you and I often have. The wrath of God is a righteous, passionate hatred of evil, and it flows from His justice. God so vehemently hates evil because He so passionately loves what is right. The more we love, the more we hate the desecration of what we love. Anger at evil is something we understand. People are angry when children walk into schools and shoot children, or when a terrorist blows up a plane and kills hundreds of innocent lives, or when a large corporation uses its power to exploit helpless people, or when a politician intentionally lies to cover up wrongdoing. Anger in these situations is not a bad thing; it shows that there is a place in our hearts for what is right. If a person were calloused when confronted with such problems, we would quickly wonder about his heart. Doesn’t he care? The wrath of God is like this sort of anger. It is the heart of God responding to the desecration of something precious. It is the natural expression of His character toward sin. It is the essential manifestation of infinite moral goodness. It is how pure goodness behaves when confronted with sin. God would not be God if He had no wrath toward sin.

The judgment and wrath of God are not particularly popular ideas today. We would rather talk about God’s love and forgiveness. We are more comfortable with those concepts. Yet the God of the Bible is as much a God of judgment and wrath as He is of love and forgiveness, and we ignore His judgment to our peril. If we are not careful, we will turn God into nothing more than Santa Claus. But remember.  God does not exist to indulge our desires.

Some do not like the idea of God’s wrath because they do not consider their sin to be particularly bad. They can understand wrath against child molesters and rapists, but most people do not do such things. They are just average folks who love their children and work hard to pay the bills. Isn’t God a little bigger than to get in a tiffy all about their piddling faults? Doesn’t He have bigger sins to worry about than their lusting at magazine pictures or impatience with Mrs. Johnson? Surely God is not so petty as all that. Wrath against such trifles is beneath the dignity of God. Or so they imply.

I certainly agree that God ought not get upset over nothing, but the fact of the matter is that the view God has of our sins and the view we have do not agree. When you look at Scripture you find Jesus equating lust with adultery and unjust anger with murder (Mt 5:21-8), not because their external consequences are the same but because the heart that produces the one is the same heart that produces the other. God’s anger at sin is directed at the nature of the heart. This is why Paul can say that greed is idolatry (Eph 5:5; Col 3:5).  When we finagle the discussion in the car to get the family to go to the restaurant we want, we are revealing a selfish heart that God fully sees. God sees past the specific expression straight into the ugly source itself. We may not see our finagling as such a big deal (if we are even aware of it). We are adept at taking corrupt hearts and motives, dressing them up in wedding clothes and then seeing how pretty the tuxedo is. But God sees through all the dressing we put on. He sees straight to the heart. And He sees the heart from the perspective of absolute holiness. He has wrath because if the righteous standards of God were applied to our hearts, we would look to Him as child molesters look to us.

The Christian faith says that people flatter themselves, and one of the requirements God puts on a person who would become a disciple of Jesus is that he stop such flattery and admit that he has a damnable heart. Those who see their sinful hearts have no difficulty with the concept of a just wrath against them. They know they deserve it. Those who complain about the wrath of God are blind to their own heart. They have no clue about how serious sin is.  We would do well to spend time contemplating the justice and wrath of God, for if our God will not pour out His justice and wrath on our sin, then we have a god who is less than God.  And we have no need for Christ.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. (Ps 89:14)

O God Most High, You are just and justly angry at the sin you see in my heart. Teach me, as I love You, not to forget Your righteous judgments and, thus, not attempt to exploit Your kindness.

There once was a judge who presided over a county court. One day, the court tried a man for breaking into a mansion and stealing jewels worth a million dollars. Many witnesses testified against the man. Videotape showed him inside the house collecting the jewels and putting them into a bag. Fingerprints, DNA evidence, and a piece of clothing all pointed to the man’s guilt. The evidence was overwhelming, and the jury found the man guilty. However, the judge liked the man and felt that the crime wasn’t so bad after all — that this man was a good man despite his mistake — so when it came time to pronounce sentence, he let the man go.

What do you think of that judge?

I agree. I don’t see how anyone could defend the judge’s actions. The job of a judge is to administer justice. A judge who fails to do so is corrupt.

Now, I mention that story because it is a parable for how most people think of God. We like to think that we are not such bad folks. Yeah, we struggle with greed or lust or selfishness, but doesn’t everybody? I mean, we’re not any worse than the next guy. And, Oh yes, there were those times when we stretched the truth, but we had good reasons. And I almost forgot about the times when we slandered God in our minds and with our words, but He understands. And our worship of self, and our talking about our boss behind his back, and our angry outbursts, and our unwillingness to stand for the truth because our culture would laugh at us, and our desire for the praise of men instead of the praise of God, and our sharp tongue, and our bitterness for what mom did, and our failure to help the needy. We do all these things and more and justify ourselves in them. We rewrite what Scripture means to suit our desires. You know. The Bible doesn’t really condemn that behavior. It condemns only a particular expression of that behavior within a narrow context, and, of course, we do not fit that context or that expression. We are different. All of this is the human race. And when we think of God dealing with the human race, we often picture Him as a kind grandfather in the sky, someone who is there just to take us fishing or buy us donuts on Saturday mornings. God is a nice man who exists for me. And when we do admit that He is a judge, we often believe that He is the sort of judge who is quick to overlook an offense (especially our offenses, for our offenses are minor). Consequently, we too often believe that God will let us off no matter what we do.  After all, He is loving, and isn’t that what love means?

Now this view of God we must absolutely throw in the trash. This view of God rips all of His justice away but still thinks it has God. This view of God is idolatry. It creates a god to suit our desires, as if the purpose of God was nothing more than to stroke our comfort. Let’s get this straight. God. Is. Just.

I don’t think anyone has problems with that statement. What people have problems with is how to interpret it. Of course, God wants us to interpret His justice in accordance with the Scriptures, not in accordance with our personal desires. We don’t get to pick and choose what justice is or does. When we reach the point where we acknowledge that our view of justice must come from Scripture, then we are on the right path. Therefore, the next step in this discussion of God’s justice is to explain what Scripture says about it.  And since I have no more time for this week, we will have to put that off till next week.

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Ps 139: 7-10)

“Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?” declares the Lord. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord. (Jer 23:24)

…though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:27-8)

God is here, God is there

God is always everywhere.

You cannot run

You cannot hide

He will never leave Your side.

Blessed God who is where I am, comfort me with Your presence, challenge me with Your presence, uplift my soul with the reminder that You are always with me and are always right here for me to adore and enjoy.

There is no place you could go where God is not. Because He is infinite, He must be everywhere and in all things. He is on a busy Manhattan sidewalk and a lonely Himalayan peak. He is at the bottom of the ocean and on the craters of the moon. If we could travel to the farthest star in the farthest galaxy, we would find Him neither closer nor further from us than He is right now. Because He is infinite, He cannot be confined to a particular place and is, thus, never closer to one place than another. He encompasses all places equally, and He is accessible in all places equally.

Wherever you are God is. You cannot flee; you cannot hide. He sees what you do because He is present wherever you do it. He knows your thoughts and motives because He is present inside where those thoughts and motives are formed. In Him we have our being. When we live life, we can frequently forget that God is right with us. We may stretch the truth in talking to a customer because it never dawns on us that God is present hearing every word we say. He is the unseen party at every conversation. When man and woman meet privately, their meeting is not so private as they think. I wonder how many “secret” affairs would occur if the parties involved realized that their actions were not so secret. Make no mistakes about it: God sees everything. We might refrain from sin more often if we simply realized that fact. How we view God affects how we live life.

But God’s omnipresence has another glorious benefit. God is with us! He is Emmanuel! We can talk to Him and communicate our most intimate thoughts and feelings to Him because He is where we are. We can enjoy Him and have continual communion with Him because He is with us. We do not need to go to a special city or building or nook to enjoy God. He is with us in the office, in the kitchen, in traffic, at the lake, at a conference or a concert or a war. His presence is in the darkest prison and at the most jubilant wedding celebration. We can enjoy Him now. Wherever we are. This fact gives us instant access to the Creator of the Universe at any time. You need not wait for next Sunday church to worship God and be with Him. Of course, if where we are is in the midst of sin, or if our heart is not in the proper frequency, we may find access more difficult. But He is accessible to the heart that is ready.

Our need for God is constant. Our felt need for God waxes and wanes. There are times in life when we feel our need more acutely, when it seems as if the waters are flowing over our head. There are times in life when we need someone, when we weep and grieve, when we are angry and frustrated, when we are despondent and helpless. God is there during those times. It is for those times that we find Jesus’ reminder most comforting: “I am with you always even to the end of the age.” During those times we can derive great comfort from the fact that God is with us.

Other times, however, it feels as if He is gone. You pray but hear nothing, read Scripture but feel nothing. God seems silent, far off. Job had this experience, as did some of the psalmists. I do not wish to speak for God and say why He seems so far away. But I do wish to say that even in those times, by faith, we can remember that, despite what we feel, God has not abandoned us. He is with us even when it does not feel so. Our feelings do not change reality. You cannot escape God, even if you would like to. You are always in His presence.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen 1:26)

In the beginning was the Word. (Jn 1:1)

 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. (Jn 5:26)

Praise You, Father, for You have granted me life. I do not deserve it. I did not create it. You have made me and sustained me. You have saved me from death many times, and I am grateful to You and to You alone for the precious gift of life.

Something has always existed. To say otherwise forces the absurd notion that something popped out of nothing. Scripture says God is that something. God is self-existent. You and I are not. God exists on His own, quite apart from the universe and from you and me. God does not need us; He does not need the universe. He is and He always has been. The concept of a being who had no beginning is incomprehensible to us. Everything we see began somewhere; thus, in God, we come up against a Being to which nothing compares. In this area He is not like a watch or a house or a father or the hills or the stars. He is not like an idea or electricity or an emotion or anything else we know. All those things have beginnings and require a source or a medium. God simply is. He is the “I AM.” He is the source. Take Him away and you take away all possibilities of existence. In the beginning the Word was. He already existed when the universe began, and it owes its existence to Him. God has life in Himself (Jn 5:26); no one can give it to Him, no one can take it from Him. He is the Uncreated Creator of all. He has had no beginning, and everything that has had a beginning owes its beginning to Him. Our heart beats because God allows it to, and when our heart ceases to beat, we have no right to demand otherwise. Those decisions are not ours to make. Life is not ours to hand out. Have mercy, O God.

This places us in a particular position before God. We are but creatures and must remember that fact. The rocking chair does not get arrogant before the woodworker; the pot does not talk back to the potter. Rebellion against God is a lapse of memory. We somehow forget that He is the artist and we are the painting. But the analogy breaks down, for the artist had a beginning. When we subconsciously act as if we are the center of the universe, we creatures put ourselves in the position of the Self-existent one. The notion that the world revolves around us lies behind all sin. We subliminally claim for ourselves a throne we have no right to claim. Life comes from God. He gave it to you. He can take it any time He wishes, and when He does so, He will be just. It is His life, not yours. He simply lets you use it. So use it for Him.

No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord (Pr 21:30)

…to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! (Rm 16: 27)

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men …” (I Cor 1:25)

Lord, help me to trust You — to see that Your plans and Your will are wiser than mine. Sometimes I forget that. Forgive me. And open my eyes to see that Your ways are wise because You are wise.

Have you ever met a brilliant fool? A genius professor who couldn’t keep his marriage vows. A businessman who was a money-making machine but also enslaved to the money he made. A judge with a keen legal mind but no real understanding of righteousness. Sometimes we equate knowledge with wisdom. We are prone to admire the wrong things. Knowledge is the acquaintance of facts. Wisdom is the right application of those facts. Both are good things, but there do abound many knowledgeable fools. People can know facts about God without obeying God, but they cannot be wise without obeying God, for wisdom affects life. Wisdom is how we talk, how we think, how we act. It is not just what we know.

Last week we saw that God has all knowledge. This week we take another step. We see that God has all wisdom.  He knows all there is to know, but He also knows how to use His knowledge and always uses it the right way and for the best end. God cannot be anything but wise, for it is His nature that puts the wisdom in wisdom. Wisdom is what wisdom is because God is who God is. When God does something, it is wise, not because God follows wisdom but because wisdom follows God.  Wisdom is nothing more than the character of God in action.  When God acts He knows what He is doing and He is doing what is right. We may sometimes question the wisdom of God. We lose our job or our health or our daughter and cry out, “God, what are you doing? Don’t you know how I hurt?” We do not understand the path His wisdom makes us trod. We do not see now what God is doing through the circumstances and why He allows such pain. But He is wise.

Everyone must grapple with this issue at some point. You and I are very good at ordering our lives, at deciding what we should do and where we should go; but if we are to grow with God, there will come times when we will have to set aside our own wisdom and plan in order to do something we do not understand or care to do. We will have to trust God that His path is wiser than ours. We do not see how, we do not know why, but we will have to trust Him.

God said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” (Gen 12:1). I do not believe that Abram, Sarai, Lot or any of Abram’s other relatives fully understood what God was doing. Wisdom, as they likely saw it, would dictate that Abram settle down amongst his kin in his homeland and tend flocks and live a nice, secure life. But Abram had a message from God, and Abram had to decide which was wiser — to move though he did not understand why, or to stay with everything he knew. History vindicates the wisdom of God.

Moses said to God, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Ex 4:13). Moses’ plan for his life was different from God’s, and I can’t help but think that in this scene, Moses had his own questions about the wisdom of God’s plan. Moses did not care to do what God had commanded but had to decide which was wiser — to follow his own desire or God’s. History vindicates God’s wisdom in choosing that man for that task.

God still works this way with His people. He has infinite knowledge and wisdom, and He will test the followers of Jesus to see if we thoroughly believe that God is all knowing and all wise. He does not want us merely to be able to write such a thing on a piece of paper. He wants us to order our lives around it. God knows what He is doing, and He is doing the right thing. We either believe that or we don’t. If we believe it, we actually live as if God’s wisdom is true. Our faith changes how we handle money, criticism, suffering, sex, peer pressure, and the rest of life. And the people of this world may think we are crazy. They will think we are fools.  But that is OK.  After all, “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom.” (I Cor 1:25).

…God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (I Jn 3:20)

Who has understood the mind of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding? (Is 40:13-14)

Lord, what do I know that You haven’t known from eternity? What You know surpasses me infinitely, for You know Yourself and You are infinite. Bless You. And You are intimately acquainted with the deepest thoughts of my heart. Yet You love me. Praise You.

We live in an information age. We have more information at our fingertips than people had in all the libraries of a hundred years ago.  We worship information. We think that people who know are the people we should admire and follow. Why then do we not worship God? He has a billion billion times more knowledge than all our universities and computers combined. But we ignore Him. Sometimes we are too smart for God. We are proud of our knowledge, but next to God our knowledge is like the knowledge of a newborn. And the odd thing is that in real life newborns never think their parents ignorant, but we sometimes live as if we know more than God. We are just babies.

God knows all, and what He knows now is no different from what He knew when He formed the world. God does not, God cannot learn. He is perfect and unchangeable, and to speak of a god who has grown to be God (as Mormons teach) is to speak of no God at all. If God has grown in knowledge He is not God. Nothing is a mystery to God, nothing confounds Him, nothing surprises Him, nothing is new to Him. He knew from before the founding of the earth the inner most secrets of your heart right now — secrets which you do not fully understand. He knew then the decisions you shall make next year if, in fact, you get to live till next year. And if you do not live till then, He knew that, too. Everyone faces Him in the judgment, and when we face Him, we cannot hide.  He knows.

We do not know.  The more the sciences tell us about the universe, the more we see we do not know. We discover five facts but learn in the process that we have five hundred new questions that we have no answers for. Such is the immensity of truth. A body of knowledge as immeasurable as truth requires a capacity for knowledge that we cannot comprehend. Yet God, being infinite, can know infinitely. The things that puzzle scientists today do not puzzle God, and He knows now the answers to the questions that will puzzle science five hundred years in the future.

But He knows more than academic facts. He knows the secrets behind the important questions. Why are we here? What are we like? Where are we going? Why is there evil? The great questions of human existence neither surprise God nor stump Him. He has all knowledge about these issues and a perspective that we do not. God unchanging has always and will always know all things. You can hide secrets from your family, but you can hide nothing from God (Ps 139). He sees your secret lusts. He knows your fears of failure. He understands the real motives why you pursue the Phd you pursue. He sees your sin through and through. He knows you better than you know yourself. Might as well come straight with Him.

To the follower of Jesus, God’s knowledge is a great comfort. God loves us as we are.  When Satan accuses, what can he say? “I’m going to tell God about this lust of yours!” God already knows and forgives in Jesus. The one person in the universe that we most need to be right with is willing to be right with us even though He knows every little detail of how we turn against Him. The knowledge of God highlights the greatness of His love and mercy.

To know God is to see that God knows. When we see this, we worship.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen 1:3)

Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Gen 18:14)

Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea — the Lord on high is mighty. (Ps 93:4)

Lord God Almighty, let us not merely comprehend that You can do many things. Let us see Your power at work around us. Grant us confidence as we live life that You can do anything. Give us faith to act on Your mighty power, and let us remember that the immensity of Your power makes us weaker than babes in Your sight.

It is a marvelous thing to sit and look on something as powerful as Niagara Falls, to be confronted with something before which we are helpless. We are reminded quickly of our own weakness. It is not that we humans are completely powerless creatures, for we have the power to harness the power the Falls produces. It is that, strong as we think we might be, the Falls confronts us with the fact that there are simply some things we cannot do. Nature can humble us. When a hurricane strikes the coast, people flee. Some things we cannot control.

But God has made Niagara Falls, and God has made the ocean, and the imparted power which they have is nothing to God. Nature has limited power. Humanity has limited power. God has all power. He is the Almighty. He can snap His fingers and scatter stars across the sky. He can cure a child from an incurable disease. He can speak a word and bring a billion-man army to its knees. He can raise a Savior from the grave. Such is the power of God.

Is there something you think He cannot do? Then your God is not the God of the Bible, for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is God Almighty. Job was right to say, “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted” (Jb 42:2). To deny the miraculous is to deny the Almighty. He created this world.  He can do with it as He pleases.  He also gave you your life.  He can do with it as He pleases.

When we live as if the only forces on Earth are physical, political, economic, or cultural, we deny the Almighty.  When we mentally strip the power of God from history, we also strip Him from our lives as well.  We forget that He controls our destiny, that He works in history, that He hears prayer and can actually do something about it.

To think that our circumstances are beyond the hand of God is foolheartedness. He can handle the universe, and He can handle what you are going through.  In this sense the power of God is a great comfort.

It is also humbling.  Presidents and wealthy men think themselves powerful.  They do not understand power.  If they did, they would humble themselves before it.  And so would we.

If we saw it.