How Great Is Our God (Part 3) Series

HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD (PART 3)

Scott R. Bayles, preacher

Blooming Grove Christian Church: 4/29/2012

In Chris Tomlin’s contemporary hymn, How Great is Our God, the second verse begins, “Age to age he stands and time is in his hands…”

Don’t you wish that were true for all of us? We just don’t seem to age as well as God does, do we? In fact, I heard a story about a little girl who climbed up on the lap of great-grandmother, looked at her white hair and wrinkles, and then asked, “Did God make you?”

“Yes,” she said.

Then she asked, “Did God make me, too?”

Grandma said, “Yes.”

“Well,” said the little girl, “Don’t you think He’s doing a better job these days?”

Our God may be from everlasting to everlasting, but you and I are getting older every day. And as we age, we may experience various symptoms: our eyes may strain a little harder, our hearing may grow a little weaker, and our memory may even get a little fuzzy. One senior saint scripted this prayer:

God, grant me the senility

To forget the people I never liked anyway,

The good fortune to run into the ones I do,

And the eyesight to tell the difference.

While our spirits can be renewed day-by-day, our bodies just aren’t made to last forever. God, on the other hand, is eternal and immortal. From age to age he stands and time is in his hands. It seems strange then that we’d find this statement in the Bible: “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25 NIV).

For the record—God doesn’t actually have any weaknesses! This verse is anthropomorphism. The idea is that even if God did have some weaknesses, his weakness would still be greater that our strengths. God, on his worst day, would still be greater than you and me on our best day.

But, that being said, as ancient as God is, we can certainly imagine some symptoms of old age setting in, can’t we? What if God did have some weaknesses? And what if those weakness, actually made him that much greater? Well, I’ve searched the Scriptures and I’ve found three “weaknesses” that I think make God even greater!

First, God has a “weak” memory.

• WEAK MEMORY

I heard about an elderly man who moved into a retirement community and it wasn’t long until he had made a number of friends among the other residents. There was one lady he was especially attracted to and she was attracted to him, too. They spent a lot of time together. Finally one evening he proposed, asking her to marry him.

The next morning he woke up remembering his proposal, but he couldn’t remember her answer. So he went to her and said, “I’m really embarrassed to admit this, but I know I proposed to you last night but I can’t remember if you said ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”

“Oh, thank goodness!” she replied. “I remembered saying ‘Yes’ to someone but I couldn’t remember who asked me.”

Well, if you’ve ever walked into another room and forgot why you were there, don’t worry—the Bible says that even God has a few laps in memory. God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25 NIV).

God has a “weak” memory—he just cannot remember forgiven sins.

This was the prayer of the ancients: “Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions...” (Psalm 64:9 NKJV). All through both the psalms and the prophets, God promised “forgetfulness.” Jeremiah received this joyful message: “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins” (Jeremiah 31:34 NLT). God reiterated the promise in the New Covenant: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12 NIV).

God’s forgiveness is so complete, it’s forgetfulness.

With this truth in mind, Corrie ten Boom once said, “When I bring my sins to the Lord Jesus, He casts them into the depths of the sea--forgiven and forgotten. He also puts up a sign, No Fishing Allowed!” We sometimes try to dig up the past—go fishing for those old sins, but our God assures us that forgiven sins are “erased” (Acts 3:19) and “washed away” (Acts 22:16).

Sometimes forgiveness can be hard to accept. I’ve done some pretty awful things. I’ve been selfish more often than not. At times, I’ve been downright ugly. We sometimes struggle to forgive ourselves—but not God. God will forgive anybody for any sin!

God’s heart was big enough to forgive those who murdered His own Son. He mustered enough compassion to forgive Paul, a murderer of Christians. He somehow managed to forgive the Corinthians who were guilty of all sorts of vile sins. When we confess our sins and mistakes to God, he offers this same “forgetfulness” to us!