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God's Infinity Series
Contributed by Ed Vasicek on Sep 20, 2003 (message contributor)
Summary: The infinity and limitlessness of God is beyond our ability to picture in our minds, yet we can embrace these truths of Scripture with our limited understanding and worship God all the more zealously as we become overwhelmed with Who He is.
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God’s infinity
Introduction
1. Many folks do not take God seriously.
2. They joke about Him, misuse His Name as a figure of speech, or reserve Him for situations that parallel fire alarms: "in case of emergency, break glass."
3. The Bible tells us that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." That fear is the fear of reverence and respect, and meshes with the Biblical teaching that, for the believer, God is Abba, Father. We do not dread His rejection, for we are completely accepted once we are in Christ, but we stand in AWE of Him, and we are aware that He lovingly disciplines us.
4. Some Christians are like the man in the following true story:
C.R. Smith was one of the founders of American Airlines, and he once made a stopover in Nashville, Tennessee. When he did, he found two desks in the American Airlines corridor of the airport. On one, a phone was ringing away. Sitting at the other, with his feet propped up, was a man reading the newspaper.
Smith walked up to him and said, ¡§Your phone is ringing.¡¨
¡§That¡¦s reservations. I¡¦m maintenance,¡¨ the man replied.
Furious, Smith walked over to the desk, picked up the phone, and began talking to a man who urgently needed to get to California. Smith rattled off the schedule from memory to the man and hung up. The man from maintenance couldn¡¦t believe it!
¡§Say, that was pretty good!¡¨ he said. ¡§Do you work for American?¡¨
¡§Yes, I do,¡¨ Smith answered. ¡§And you used to.¡¨
5. Last week, we considered the reality that God does as He pleases, that He does not need us but is complete in Himself, and that His All Knowing and All Powerful attributes guarantee Him success in all He purposes to do.
6. Today, we are going to contemplate the INFINITY of God.
Psalm 147:5 reads, " Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit."
7. That term, "has no limit" is a good definition of what we mean by infinite.
8. The human mind cannot really conceive of the infinite; we can think of a long time, a great amount of power, or a mass of knowledge; but nothing we deal with in daily life is limitless. We can believe God is limitless, but we cannot truly grasp all that this entails.
MAIN IDEA: The infinity and limitlessness of God is beyond our ability to picture in our minds, yet we can embrace these truths of Scripture with our limited understanding and worship God all the more zealously as we become overwhelmed with Who He is.
TS----------„³ Although every attribute of God can be extended outward to an infinite degree, God’s infinity can be better understood by looking at it from several angles.
I. Creaturely Limitations: We Should Not Expect to Fully Grasp These Deep Things About God because We Are Not Infinite
1. Psalms 36:5-6 reads, "Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast."
2. Turn with me to Romans 11:33; this verse is so deep that when we read it, we typically gloss over it
3. Psalms 139:4-6, "Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in--behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Isaiah 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
4. If you think you truly grasp the Trinity or the Nature of God, you have an arrogance problem. We can understand some of the facts God has revealed about Himself, but not the extent of those facts.
The infinity and limitlessness of God is beyond our ability to picture in our minds, yet we can embrace these truths of Scripture with our limited understanding and worship God all the more zealously as we become overwhelmed with Who He is.
II. God Is Infinite When It Comes to Time
1. Time is "limited duration, measured by succession, either of time or motion."
2. God has no need of time but He observes time in His dealings with Creation.
3. Time and space are created entities¡Kturn to Romans 8:28
(1) this means that, although God is eternal if we use a time reference, God is outside the realm of time; He not only knows what will happen, but He is present at all times at once
4. If you cannot understand this, remember our first point!