Week Seven - Day One: Great

Last week we considered God’s omniscience, His omnipotence, and His goodness. Today we will consider God’s greatness. After that, we will look at His sovereignty. But before we begin that consideration, we need to be cautioned about a couple of important things.

Looking at individual aspects of God’s personality and character is somewhat artificial

First of all, we should be honest and acknowledge that looking at individual aspects of God’s personality and character is somewhat artificial. We would never get to know a good friend that way.

Still, we are encouraged to find that this kind of attribute-study of God has a long and distinguished history. I believe this is mostly because acquainting ourselves with God is pretty hard work most of the time. He is not exactly like any other good friend that we have. So, more typical ways of getting to know someone don’t work exactly the same with God. That’s why we often understand Him by analogy (e.g. “Neither is there any rock like our God”) and by negation (e.g. “It is impossible for God to lie” [1 Samuel 2:2; Hebrews 6:18]).

In addition, as we have already said, I believe we can only know Him as and because He reveals Himself – and only partially and dimly at that. So, if we are going to approach Him directly and positively, we are left analyzing and reflecting on aspects of His personality because looking at the whole of God all together is … difficult, partial and frankly overwhelming to us.

This part of the trail is very, very tricky

The second caution is perhaps even more important. Before we start back on the path of looking at attributes of God, we need to be aware that this part of the trail is very, very tricky. There are times when the greatness and sovereignty of God seem to be at odds with the goodness of God. There are times when God’s great sword remains sheathed or His strong arm remains inert and we are left exposed to wounds and hurts which seem, to us, to be avoidable.

We will have hard and serious issues to look at and because of the nature of our exercises, we cannot look at them from a removed, intellectual distance. We will have to engage our hearts as well as our heads. We will have to dive in the deep end.

Let’s get started.

Look at 1 Chronicles 29:10-13.

1 Chronicles 29:10-13

(10) David praised the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly, saying,
      “Praise be to you, LORD,
      the God of our father Israel,
      from everlasting to everlasting.

(11) Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power
      and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
      for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
      Yours, LORD, is the kingdom;
      you are exalted as head over all.

(12) Wealth and honor come from you;
      you are the ruler of all things.
      In your hands are strength and power
      to exalt and give strength to all.

(13) Now, our God, we give you thanks,
      and praise your glorious name.

Notice all the various metaphors for and ideas related to greatness that David piles on top of one another in this prayer. He has foraged through his language and his ideas pallet to find ways to brag about God’s greatness. David brags about God’s material greatness. “Everything in heaven and earth is yours,” he shouts. “Wealth and honor come from you,” he acknowledges.

He brags about God’s temporal greatness. “From everlasting to everlasting,” he boasts. “Can’t think of how to even talk about being without beginning or end. How about everlasting? Not enough! Everlasting to everlasting! There you go.”

He brags about the greatness of God’s power. He brags about the ultimate greatness of God’s leadership. In fact, it gets ridiculous. David brags about the greatness of God’s greatness. “Majesty” and “splendor” and “greatness” – these are all synonyms of one another. We need Tony the Tiger here: “He’s greeeeeaaat!”

Before You Start Your Day

1. Use 1 Chronicles 29:10-13 as your prayer for the day.
   1. Linger over the phrases of the prayer as you pray it back to God.
   2. What word or phrase strikes you with particular clarity this morning?
   3. Try adding to these images some of your own images to brag about God’s greatness.
2. Be aware of how God might show you His greatness today. Watch for indicators. He may even want to show you something new.