Sermon: GREAT IS THE LORD

Psalm 145:1-13
"I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works.
Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts, and I will declare Your greatness.
They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness, and shall sing of Your righteousness.
The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Your works shall praise You, O Lord, and Your saints shall bless You.
They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power, to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations."

God is--the great Unique and Unlike eternally. God is--and whoever exists without the knowledge of God is a wandering star, centerless and orbitless, reserved unto blackness and darkness forever!
No wise person argues the existence of God. The Bible does not do it. The Bible takes God for granted. The Bible introduces us at once to His works.
God is the Creator behind all creation. God is the Designer behind all design. God is the Lawmaker behind all law. God is the supreme fact of philosophy. God is the supreme fact of personal life. God is the supreme fact of life, of death, of time, of eternity. God is the Mighty God personally and actively present in the affairs of the universe. God is the great need of the human heart!
And only "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God..." (Psalm 14:1)
A creation with no God! Who can conceive of such a thing? Given the creature--and the Creator is an axiom.
"Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable." MAJESTY is a word which our Bible uses to express the thought of the greatness of

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God, our Maker and our Lord. "The Lord reigns, He is robed in majesty...Your throne was established long ago" (Psalm 93:1-2).
Peter, recalling his vision of Christ's royal glory at the transfiguration says, "We were eyewitnesses of His majesty" (2 Peter 1:16).
The word MAJESTY, when applied to God is always a declaration of His greatness and an invitation to worship. "Come, let us bow down in worship" (Psalm 95:3,6). The Christian's instincts of trust and worship are stimulated very powerfully by knowledge of the greatness of God.
Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are--weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But this is not the God of the Bible!
Our personal life is a finite thing: it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power. But God is not so limited. He is eternal, infinite, and almighty. He has us in His hands; we never have Him in ours. Like us, He is personal; but unlike us, He is great. In all its constant stress on the reality of God’s personal concern for His people, and on the gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, patience and yearning compassion that He shows toward them, the Bible never lets us lose sight of His majesty and His unlimited dominion over all His creatures.
How may we form a right idea of God’s greatness? The Bible teaches us two steps that we must take. The first is to remove from our thoughts of God what would make Him small.
Considering God’s greatness, think upon some of God’s affirmed attributes.
God is eternal. God is the great I AM. With Moses we say: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God" (Psalm 90:1-2).
In God’s sight, a thousand years are as one day--" as yesterday when it is passed, and as watch in the night" (Psalm 90:4). The weight of such a ponderous thought makes the mind stagger. The imagination fails to cross the chasm of eternal years. All measures of time and space, and the powers of numbers are reduced to meaningless words when applied to the lifetime of God. The eternity of God forces us to clothe Him with an excellency of nature surpassing all other existences.

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God is active from the beginning to the end of time, from every here to every there of space, from every now to every then, in every person and society.
Paul preached that God is "not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move, in Him we exist." (Acts 17:28) That the holy God is present in all things is repeatedly affirmed in Scripture." 'Am I a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?' declares the Lord. 'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord" (Jeremiah 23:24 NIV).
No atomic particle is so small that God is not fully present to it, and no galaxy so vast that God does not circumscribe it. No space is without the divine presence. God is in touch with every part of creation. God cannot be excluded from any location or object in creation.
Only God knows creation omnisciently, without limitation or qualification. God’s understanding is immeasurable and God’s incomparable way of knowing knows the end of things from the beginning. 'I reveal the end from the beginning, from ancient times I reveal what is to be; I say, 'My purpose shall take effect, I will accomplish all that I please" (Isaiah 46:9). "O the depth of wealth, wisdom and knowledge in God! How unsearchable His judgments, how untraceable His ways! Who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been His counselor?" (Romans 11:33-34)
The Bible sets God forth as the author of a universal order of matter, life, and mind--such an order as could come only from a mind of infinite intelligence. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Ah! How can we get our sluggish intellects in touch with the awesome conception that God knows all? God knows past, present, and future. God knows external events and inward motivations.
Jesus' metaphor that the very hairs of our heads are numbered by the Father (Matthew 10:30) suggests that every discrete aspect of personal existence is known to God! "The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, surveying evil and good men alike" (Proverbs 15:3), implying that God sees all simultaneously by looking in every direction at the same time!
God’s knowledge is said to be (a) eternally actual, not merely possible; (b) eternally perfect, as distinguished from a knowledge that begins, increases, decreases, or ends;

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(c) complete instead of partial; and (d)both direct and immediate, instead of indirectly reflected or mediated.
God knows, easily and without effort, an infinite number of alternative universes that could have been but as yet are not. This affirmation is encompassed in the affirmation of omniscience. God knows not only what is, but what possibly might be, yet is not, and what can be but will never be, and what might eventually be chosen but as yet remains undecided and subject to creaturely freedom.
Ah! Let us lift our hearts in praise and in worship with David..."I will extol You, my God, O King; and I will bless Your name forever and ever...Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable."
God is omnipotent! Omnipotence may be defined as the perfect ability of God to do all things that are consistent with the divine character. God is not limited in any of His attributes by anything external to Himself.
The Scriptures abound in expressions of the almighty power of God. God "does whatever pleases Him" (Psalm 115:3). "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth" (Revelation 19:6). There is only one way of speaking properly of any restriction upon God’s power that does not detract from God’s almighty power: God "cannot deny Himself." (2 Timothy 2:13). God would not do that which is inconsistent with God’s intelligence or repugnant to God’s goodness, or not in accord with other qualities of God’s character. God cannot lie, for this would be inconsistent with God’s goodness. God cannot deceive Himself, for this would be counter to God’s integrity, congruity, omniscience, and constancy.
The essential idea of omnipotence is that God has adequate ability to do whatever being God requires. God has sufficient power to do the divine will. It belongs to the nature of God’s power to work in perfect correspondence with God’s character and in orderly conjunction with other attributes. God’s way of being with the world is omnipresence. God’s way of knowing the world is omniscience. God’s way of influencing the world is omnipotence.
And think of it...The unlimited presence, knowledge, and influence of God has often been summarized in a single idea: TRANSCENDENCE. The very One who is beyond the finite and human is intimately manifested and warmly knowable within the human sphere. Human existence remains fragile, perishable, ever dying away--"like the grass," says

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Isaiah (40:6). The divine life is that completely different reality that defies all comparison. "To whom then will you liken Me, whom set up as My equal? asks the Holy One" (Isaiah 40:25). God is limited neither by space (He is everywhere in His fullness continually) nor by time (there is no "present moment" into which He is locked as we are).
Theologians refer to God’s freedom from limits and bounds as His infinity, His immensity, and His transcendence.
"Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him? With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of justice? Who taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket and are counted as the small dust on the scales; look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing. All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless. To whom then will you liken God? or what likeness will you compare to Him?
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth useless.
To whom then will you liken Me or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, and who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; Not one is missing.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable." (Isaiah 40)
We have considered the majesty of God in His person, now let us think of the magnificence of God in His creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork." (Psalm 19:1)
Look up at night. See the stars laying like diamonds on the black velvet of the darkness.

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These are but dewdrops on the lawn of the Father's house. See the sun--ninety-three million miles away. It is but a porch lamp on the house not made with hands.
President John Quincy Adams said that a study of the starry sky seems to lead man "blindfolded up to the council chambers of Omnipotence and there, stripping the bandage from their eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of God." The Milky Way is so big that it would take light one hundred million years to travel from one end of it to the other.
O the measureless and magnificent immensity of the skies! If our sun were hollow, it would be large enough to hold 1,4OO,OOO worlds the size on which we live! The sun is a ball of fire. Its flames flash out three hundred thousand miles. It is estimated that the sun is so hot that if the earth were thrown into the sun it would burn up completely in one minute. Yet, our sun is one of the smallest balls of fire in the universe.
Think of it! If the earth were as large as the sun and everything on it were as large in proportion, an object weighing one hundred pounds would weigh 2,76O pounds. A man six feet tall would be one-eighth of a mile high; his arms from shoulder to finger tips would be 16O feet long and his legs would be over 25O feet long! His eyes would be nine feet in diameter and his nose would be fourteen feet long. The ears would look like a wagon sheet half mast and the hair would look like a haystack.
"Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?" Thus asked Job. No man can because this blazing sun, twenty-two times larger than our sun, moves through space like a rocket--gliding forward at over five thousand miles a minute--guided by its Creator!
In astonishment and awe we say, with David: "Who is like unto the Lord our God, Who dwelleth on high, Who humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!" (Psalm 113:5-6)
Not only does God display His magnificence in the vastness of our universe, but think of the works of God in the miniature!
Look at the little bee and observe its activity. A red clover blossom contains less than one-eight of a grain of sugar. Seven thousand grains are required to make a pound of honey.
A bee, flitting here and there for sweetness, must visit 56,OOO clover heads for a pound of honey; and there are about sixty flower heads to each clover head. When a bee per-

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forms that operation sixty by 56,000 times or 3,360,000 times, it secures sweetness enough for only one pound of honey.
The bee has three pairs of legs. The nose of the bee has two or three thousand tiny sense plates. The bee's wings beat 190 times a second, or 11,400 times a minute!
Consider another creation by Almighty God...the humming bird. It is the only bird that hibernates at night. So beautiful are the colors of these little birds that Audubon has called them "glittering fragments of the rainbow." These humming birds are the only land birds that can reverse their wing action, moving backwards and forwards.
Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised!
Think reverently now of God’s astonishing acts manifest in mystery.
Man can send an electric current through a copper wire at sixty degrees below zero, and at the other end of the wire, heat a platinum wire to one thousand degrees. Where was that heat? From whence did it come?
God--working in mystery!
Black carbon and colorless oxygen are both tasteless. Hydrogen is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas, fourteen and one-half times lighter than an equal volume of air and 11,600 times lighter than water. We combine the hydrogen with black carbon and oxygen and get sweet white sugar. God working in mystery!
Look to the skies again! Water weighs eight hundred times more than air, yet, to have rain, it must be lifted against the force of gravity, held in suspension above the earth, moved to definite locations, and brought down as rain! It has been estimated that approximately sixteen million tons of water fall every second. Obviously this must have been raised from oceans and lakes and rivers to make its fall possible. God acting in mystery!
Great is our God!
We have considered the majesty and greatness of our God, but the most amazing characteristic of our God is His love!
"Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one dare to die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:5-8)

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"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)
What the sun is to our solar system, John 3:16 is in its relation to the Christian message. All the distinctive truths of redemption--the riches of the Divine grace, the forgiveness of sins, propitiation, reconciliation, justification, eternal salvation, and glorification--revolve around this supreme statement of God’s redeeming love.
As Paul is praying for the Christians in Ephesus, he is overwhelmed by the love of God displayed in Christ. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height--to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)
When we put John 3:16 alongside of Ephesians 3:18, observe these glorious truths: "God so loved the world"--there is the breadth. "That He gave his only begotten Son"--there is the length to which His love would go. "That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish"--there is the ghastly depth from which His love comes to save us. "But have everlasting life"--there is the wondrous height to which His love can lift us! It matters not from whichever standpoint we view the love of God displayed in Christ, its perfection flashes forth--whether we think of its expression toward the Father or toward us poor human sinners, whether we think of its immensity or its intensity, its eternity or its sublimity, its deathless strength or its exquisite tenderness, its fullness and passion or its purity and gentleness, its majesty or its humility, its profundity or its implicitly, its expression or its motive--in its breadth and length and depth and height it is perfection all-glorious!
The love of God finds its crowning expression in the Cross! "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself."
The God who created this universe and continues to evidence His majesty and greatness in His acts among mankind, has made Himself very personal...Our Heavenly Father. Through faith in Christ as our personal Lord and Saviour, this glorious eternal God, by His Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. I will extol You, my God, O King. Everyday I will bless you!