What a wonderful hymn, again,
from Isaac Watson. Some things about time in there,
and before the hills and order stood, or earth received her
frame, the existence of God, and from everlasting thou art
God, to endless years the same. Today, our message is entitled,
The Infinite God. And our text comes from Psalm
147, so if you'd like to turn in your Bibles to the Psalms.
Psalm 147, and our text is taken primarily from verse 5 there.
We're going to read that 4 and 5, talking about the infinite
greatness of God. In Psalm 147 verse 4, He telleth
the number of the stars. He calleth them all by their
names. Great is our Lord, and of great power. His understanding
is infinite. And boy, if we just were to contemplate
it for just a minute, The depth of it is truly astounding. When this came to me to put this
together in the way that we have it, it just became astonishing
to me, the very things that are contained. It's like as Brother
Wayne was with us last week in John 17. Boy, you know what? When he preached that word out
of John 17, it truly was good news. He was just so excited
to deliver. It was just wonderful. We really
appreciated his series of messages there from John 17. Here we're
in Psalm 147, verse 5, and the term, the very term infinite
here is something that we have not much grasp of. But in your concordance, if you
were to look that term up as it's used in Psalm 147, his understanding
is infinite. It gives us the thought of something
so great. or so many that it is said to
be without number. can't be numbered. It's so big,
it's so great, so wonderful, it can't be numbered, without
number. And so we've been given by the
Holy Spirit a sense of God, really not bounded by concepts which
define our human experience, because everything that we have
in terms of existence is pretty finite. I mean, that song, that
we sang from Isaac Watts says, time like a river rolls and in
all the souls of men, they come and go, you know, and we're here for a finite set of
time while we're on this earth. And then we pass on to our eternal
existence with God. But while we're here, all of
our thoughts, all of our concepts are determined by a finite understanding
of from here to there. And we're limited in our current
present capacity in this world. But you know, the experience
and the understanding we do enjoy is because of His infinite grace. I always try to mention that
I really appreciate our song leader because he always picks
songs, hymns that are scriptural. If there's something with them
that's maybe one verse or something that's maybe a little iffy or
something, He calls that out and says, you know, this is a
pretty good hymn except this one verse. We could change this
one word and make it scriptural, and then we often do that. But,
you know, we just don't sing those hymns. for the sake of singing them.
We sing them because they represent what we believe and they coincide
with the messages that we bring. And so they're, they, Many times,
as Norm points out, that the poet has a better grasp of what
the Bible, the Word of God gives us than actually some theologians
that we put there in air quotes that don't seem to have much
understanding. You know, Paul, there was a guy
that thought he had a pretty good grasp of things. He had a pretty good grasp of
God, had a pretty good grasp of the way things were, and the
nature of God, and all those things. But then he found out
it was all nothing. It was all dung, he called it.
And he said, but when it pleased God to reveal His Son in me,
Well, you know what that tells you? It tells you that his son
was in him, but he didn't know it. He didn't have no inkling
of it, just as Mike mentioned in the scripture and the lesson
in the Bible class this morning, that we don't have any inkling
of our true condition of sin. And we don't have an inkling
of God in us until he reveals it. And that's what happens in
what we call salvation. Well, oh, when were you saved?
Well, we were saved a long time ago, but God revealed his Son
in us at a particular point in time in our finite existence.
He made that by the Spirit, lest a man be born again, as John
was bringing out in, or Mike was bringing out in John 3. unless
a man be born again, he can't see the Kingdom of God, can't
see Christ, can't really see anything, and he certainly can't
enter, the Scriptures say. So, it takes that revelation
before we realize what God has truly done for us. And so we
count on that fact and we can't make that effectual and we can't
give that understanding to anyone. All we can do is deliver the
gospel and try to do it in a sound fashion and then let the Holy
Spirit do his regenerating work with it. As God, in our scripture
text today in Psalm 147 verse 5, his infinite understanding. Infinite understanding. It's
in the Greek that's a three-word term that describes distinguishing. That means it sets him apart
from everything else. It's distinguishing. We have distinguishing characteristics,
each one of us. We all look a certain way, or
we have characteristics that distinguish us from anything
else. Well, this is one of the distinguishing things about God,
and it describes intelligence. It describes skillfulness. wisdom and understanding. Those are the things that are
conveyed by this term infinite understanding and it conveys
to us his total sovereignty and it couples with it the idea that
it's not countable. It's so magnificent, it's so
great that it's not countable. I mean, you can't measure it.
It's not measurable, not searchable by human means. And what little
we do understand of it is given to us by grace. In Isaiah chapter 40, if you'd
like to turn your Bible there, we're going to read one verse
there in Isaiah chapter 40 verse 28. And you know, when you go,
there's just millions of scriptures that just give us little tidbits
here, a little tidbit there, a little piece of information
here, a little piece of information there. But it's the Holy Spirit
that puts them all together for us. And Connects them in a way
that gives us a little inkling about God, a little understanding
of Him and His relationship with the Church. Isaiah 40, verse 28 says, Has
thou not known? Isn't that kind of what Christ
said to Nicodemus? How could you be a master of
Israel and not know the basic thing that you must be born again?
Has thou not known? Has thou not heard? that the
everlasting God, well, of course, everlasting is just another word
for eternal, no beginning, no ending. We just think in such
linear terms as in this finite existence that we live in, where
we think of eternity as like from here forward. and but it's
it's from here forward but it's from here backward and it's from
here this way and that way and up and down and in uh 360 degrees
up from any point that you start with eternity is that way that's
why jesus says i am that i am before abraham was i am tell
them that I am has sent you. It's a concept of God that's
not easily understood. So, has thou not heard that the
everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth,
fainteth not, neither is weary. There's no searching of his understanding. It can't be counted. It can't
be measured. And he's not like us. He's not
like men. He doesn't worry, he doesn't
faint, he doesn't get tired. In Psalm, the 40th chapter, verse
5, David contemplated this a lot, and you read many of the Psalms
and things that he wrote. He was just sort of blown away
by the whole experience with God. The Spirit used him, and
he said, wasn't my tongue the pen of a ready writer? He said,
okay, use me. Here I am. Tell me what to say,
and I'll write it down, and it'll be recorded. And we have that
by the Spirit here in Psalm 40 and verse 5. He says, many, O
Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou has done. And
here, if you just wanted to highlight something or underline it in
your Bible, he said, Many are thy wonderful works which thou
hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us word. They cannot be reckoned up in
order unto thee, and if I would declare and speak of them, there
more than can be numbered. Now, can you just kind of like
get a hold, if you don't get a hold of anything in the whole
message today, try to get a hold of that, that God has thoughts
about you, and He's had thoughts about you from, He says, from
everlasting. I've loved you with an everlasting
love, Jeremiah 31, 3, I think that is. Therefore, with loving
kindness have I drawn. I've loved you with that everlasting
or eternal love. That means not just from this
point on, but from eternity, whichever way you want to go
from it. He had that love and has been thinking about each
one of his elect. always, infinitely and eternally. They're always in his mind. They've
always been in his mind and his thoughts about you are more than
can be numbered. Isn't that just astounding? Isn't
that just astonishing? Imagine that simple statement,
God's thoughts, His eternal thoughts toward the church are infinite,
more than can be numbered. How incredible is that revelation
by the Spirit? And I wish we could just have
a micro appreciation of that astounding truth that, you know,
The Lord revealed himself to me back in, what, 1987, I think
it was. Not a very long time. But when we think about, he's
been thinking about me with infinite thoughts, even in the time before
1987 when I didn't like him so much. What the scripture says,
that we're at enmity with him, that we reject him, we don't
want anything to do with him, we're at enmity with him. He
still had nice thoughts about me because he saw me and his
son, the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.
And he says, you know what? The Holy Spirit's going to reveal
that to him in 1987. Jeremiah 29, 11. I was driving here this morning,
and I thought of this verse, and I thought, oh, I forgot to
put that in my lesson. So by the time I drive to church,
I'll have forgot what it was, and I can't write and draw at
the same time. So I got my recorder phone out. I said, here's a verse. And then when I got here, I jotted
it down. But Jeremiah 29, 11 says, for
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts
of peace, not of evil, to give you an expected end." That means that, come ye, inherit the kingdom
prepared from you before the foundation of the world. That
means he had an expected end for you from infinity, from eternity. And his thoughts about you have
always been in that, and his thoughts have always been I've created them, they're not
going to be perfect. But because of my nature, they
have to be made perfect. Got it covered. The good news. To give you an expected end.
And that's what, Mike read that scripture from John 17, verse
3 I think it is. I think the first five verses,
I'm not going to go back and read them because I don't want
to go over time here, but in a nutshell, when he's praying,
he's kind of given an account of his, I think it's what Arthur
Pink said, in this prayer, the first few verses, he gives an
account of his stewardship. He's been given something to
take care of. That's what a steward does. When
you have a steward, you say, OK, you're my steward. You have
control over all my livestock, all my vegetable garden, my shipping
business, all my stuff. You take care of it. And then
you bring me a report once a month or once a year of your stewardship
of all my stuff. And there's some, in the New
Testament, there's a few parables regarding stewards and how they
handled the Lord's business. But that's what a steward does,
and he's given an account in this prayer. I finished the work
you gave me to do. The Lord assigned him a task,
a stewardship, and he says, I've finished the work thou gavest
me to do. And he says, I've given eternal
life to as many as thou hast given me. Kind of reverse the
order of them there, but in those first few verses, that's kind
of what he says. He says, I finished the work. I'm going to go to
the cross here in a matter of hours. I'm going to pay the final
atonement, the propitiation for all their sins, not just these
ones with me, but all the sins of all the people. He says, as
many as thou has given me, I'm going to give eternal life to
as many as thou has given me. And he has taken care of that.
And in infinity and eternity, that covenant was made. And their thoughts, those infinite
thoughts toward you, to give you an expected end, that eternal
life, that to present you, not as you were, but in your new
state as spotless, without spot or wrinkle, blameless. because
of the sacrifice of Christ. So how incredible is that? How,
how wonderful to think that his thoughts of us from infinity
and eternity, that individually, you know, he says, your hairs
are old. The very hairs of your head are
numbered. That's how intimately he knows you, and he knows when David wrote in that psalm,
I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. All my parts, you knew
all my parts before they were made. All of those were in the thoughts
of God. And, you know, it refers a little
bit to this. And Wednesday night, we're going
to explore this Romans chapter 9 a little bit on talking about
election here. But in Romans 9, 23, he says
that it talks about God putting up with all the shenanigans of
the people that hated him and rejected him. The ones that he
had never worked a work of grace in and never would, the ones
that he hadn't chosen. He says, that he might make known
the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy. That's all
the ones that he gave Christ in the covenant of grace. As
many as thou has given me, I'll give eternal life to. Those are
called vessels of mercy, which he had a four prepared unto glory. Well, when is that a four? Well,
we can say to infinity and beyond. That's when they were a four
prepared. But in time, he reveals that to each one. You know, David,
I was mentioning it a little bit ago, how David, he thought
about this a lot. And how could you not? I mean,
we're so busy nowadays, and we're just like caught up in so many
things, and we have so many things to occupy our mind, and we don't
settle down very often and just meditate the things about God. But back in the days before cable
TV, when David was sitting in his palace or in his tent, and
he was looking up at the stars and looking at the creation,
thinking about all the things that God had done in his life, He wrote a little bit by the
Spirit about how believers feel about these very truths, and
he described it as too lofty to attain. I try to think about it, but
it just overwhelms me with the magnificence of it. It overwhelms
me with so many things that I can't count them all. If you remember,
one of my favorite classes that I taught had to do with the rainbow
of grace, In a rainbow, we see seven primary colors, and that's
God's symbol of grace. From Noah on, he said, I'll put
my bow in the cloud, and it's a symbol of grace. But we can
only see really those seven primary colors. But if we looked at it
with a spectrograph, an electronic device that measures the frequency
of light, we could see that there is an infinite number of frequencies
of light this way and an infinite number of frequencies of light
that way that are beyond our peripheral vision that we can't
see. It doesn't mean they're not there, It just means that
we can't really see them. We only get a glimpse of them. And maybe we can see along the
edges. We can see a little bit of what's beyond this one and
a little bit what's beyond that one. But we can't really see
the whole spectrum. And that represents the grace
of God. We can't see the entire spectrum of his grace. It's so
broad and it's infinite. It can't be numbered. But we do get to see little bits
of it in the middle, and we can correlate that in infinite scope back to Adam. Here's the lineage of Marilyn,
starting at Adam. Maybe we can count on one hand
the number of believers in that lineage, but they all were according
to God's purpose and his plan and his design to get to Maryland
at the appointed time to reveal his son in her, or Nate, or Mike,
or Yvonne, or Beth, or whoever. All those things that happened.
Maybe they went through wars, and times of starvation, and
times of plenty, and who knows all the things that happened
to them to get to the point to where you are right now. And
David says, it's too lofty for me. I can't attain. How precious
are thy thoughts to me, O God. And let's just think about that
first sentence there. How precious are thy thoughts
unto me? He was saying, God, you think
about me. You've been thinking about me
for eternity. And he says, it just touches
my heart. It's precious to me that you
would think about me." And he had a lot of skullduggery left
in him when he wrote that. He had things to do that were
not good later on. But when he was thinking about
this, he said, how precious also are they thoughts unto me. Oh
God, how great is the sum of them. If I should count them,
they're more in number than the sand. And he went to sleep thinking
about that. It's kind of like counting sheep.
I'm going to count the grains of sand in this beach, and each
one of those grains of sand represents a thought that God had about
me from eternity, infinite thoughts. He said, when I woke up in the
morning, I'm still with you. Psalm 139, 17, and 18. Again,
back to Wayne's message from John 17, it gives us one segment
of understanding, and we talked about that a little bit. He said
in verse 5, Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with
the glory which I had with Thee, before the world was. So we're
talking about an infinite relationship that the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit had before the world was created. a glory that
they had, an infinite, eternal relationship. And you know what
that name of Jehovah that we, Norman brings out in the Old
Testament, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital E, that's
kind of glossed over in the New Testament really, but in the
Hebrew it's very specific and it means Yahweh or Jehovah, the
self-existent one. One who existed before there
was anything. And we can't back up that far
in our finite mind. We can't back up and say, well,
I can't even think of that because we just have such a finite existence. And things change while we've
been in this world. Things are a lot different now
than when Yvonne and I got married 49 years ago and Mike and Marilyn
got married 52 years ago. Things are way different now
than they were then. But we have that scope of time
to look at those things and measure that, but we can't think of it,
we can't imagine before then, unless we like read it in a book
or a movie or some media form that we can go back and kind
of recreate some things, but we can't really imagine a time
before the world existed. And certainly, the world is not
anywhere near the same as it was when God created it in the
days of Peleg, was the earth divided before the landmass,
all in one place. And the earth was kind of in
a, before the flood, the earth was kind of in like a greenhouse
thing. It didn't rain, but everything
was well watered, and it's kind of like a terrarium. You put
stuff in a terrarium and close the lid on it, and you never
have to mess with it again. It creates its own environment,
waters, and grows, and everything is good. But once it started
to rain, things changed drastically. When that protective environment
went away, The part of the earth that was away from the sun got
really cold, like right now. Like when we lived up in the
Arctic Circle area, and when I went up to Barrow, the farthest
place you can go in North America, in the United States, in the
wintertime, the sun goes down in November, and it don't come
up again until spring. It's dark, and it's cold, and
it's 40, 50 below zero. So can you imagine all that vapor
going away and all these animals and things that were walking
around in a kind of a, the ecology and everything up in Alaska was
much different than it was now. And there were animals that lived
there much different than the ones that live there now. And
all of a sudden, it's 40 below zero. And when the flood happened,
they find these big deposits of bones and stuff for the runoff
from the flood. And there would be a snag from
where the water turned a corner or something. And all this debris,
just as it does now, floats down the river. It all hangs up on
these different places. And now they find these big deposits
of bones up there in Siberia and Alaska, where All these animals
kind of piled up and they found mammoths and stuff frozen whole. Then they're thawing them out
inch by inch. in ice caves trying to look at
them and decide, what do we do with this thing when we get it
all thawed out? We have to put it back in the freezer so it
doesn't rot. All kinds of things that they find from things that
were different that we have no inkling of, but this infinite creation of God
in his mind, and he assigned that task to Jesus. Before the
world was tells us that God purposed something before creation when
there was only this Trinity of Almighty God called Jehovah. And he tells us that the Father
in that timeless existence assigned that work to the Son. He said,
I've glorified Thee on the earth. We created the earth. I've gone
down there and I've glorified you on the earth. I finished
the work which thou gavest me to do, the work of giving eternal
life to as many as the Father had given him, and the work of
creation. An earth created according to
the will and purpose of God for his purpose and his pleasure.
The very scriptures reveal this truth, but it can only be believed
by grace. says for by him in Colossians
1 16 for by him were all things created that are in heaven and
that are in earth visible invisible whether they be thrones or dominions
principalities or powers all things were created by Him and
for Him. So this Son tasked with this
work of creation, as well as giving eternal life to as many
as the Father had given Him, in joint purpose and union with
God the Father, according to the infinite thoughts of God
regarding the elect. You know, the first word God
records for us in the Bible is, in the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth. And in the New Testament, we
find in John 1, very first thing John wrote, in the beginning
was a Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God. And all things were
made by Him. And without Him was not anything
made that was made. So those kind of parallel verses
in the Old and New Testament give us an inkling of this infiniteness
of God. And then the creation, according
to His purpose, for the elect, whose thoughts
toward us are infinite thoughts, whose thoughts toward us are
eternal thoughts." All these scriptures directly link to the
church, which God purposed to reconcile and bring to Himself
via His Son by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. That's
what Mike was talking about in regards to Jesus and Nicodemus. He says, how can you not know,
being the master of Israel, You must be born again, and that
the Holy Spirit is the one that is tasked with accomplishing
that revelation. Isaiah 43, 1 says, But now thus
saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee,
O Israel. Terms for the church, metaphors
for the church. Fear not, for I have redeemed
thee. I've called thee by thy name,
thou art mine." A possession of God. And then that what John
recorded for us in John chapter 17, thine they were, thou gavest
them me. All people, and especially the
church, were in the infinite mind of God created by and for
him. David, again, addresses this
a little bit in Psalm 102, verse 18. He said, this shall be written
for the generation to come. And that would be us. And that
would have been the generation before us and all the way back
to David. And it'll be for the generation
that comes after us if the Lord tarries. This shall be written
for the generation to come. And the people which shall be
created shall praise the Lord. Every knee shall bow. No random
existences. Everything based in the infinite
scope and wisdom of God. You know, we talked about that
verse in Romans 9, 23. The vessels of mercy aforeprepared
unto glory and the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. There's those two things in the
infinite scope and wisdom of God according to His infinite
will. Proverbs, now David wrote a lot
of things, but then his son came along and wrote a lot more stuff.
In Proverbs 16, 4, the Lord hath made all things for himself,
yea, even the wicked for the day of evil. You know the people
that kind of, God just loves everybody. Well, He created the
wicked for the day of evil. Certainly didn't love them. Certainly
didn't love Judas, but he created him for a specific purpose to
accomplish his will. So Isaiah 49, or 46 verse 9,
remember the former things of old. For I am God and there's none
else. I am God and there's none like me. Remember that infinite
understanding meant it was distinguishing. It was things that described
God's character and nature. distinguished from everything
else. There's none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and
from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying,
my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. Boy, what
powerful words. And those are spoken about the
church. They're spoken, and He's going
to cause everyone, all that the Father giveth me shall come to
me. I will give eternal life to as
many as the Father hath given me. I'll do all my pleasure. Revelation 4, verse 11 says,
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for
Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are
and were created for no other reason. The remarkable thing
for the church is that in this infinite purpose of God, He chose,
He elected a people which He in sovereign almighty power and
right chose to set his infinite love upon. Remember the potter
and not the potter power to create out of the same lump vessels
of honor and vessels of dishonor. He makes one vessel a cup that
will contain the water of life. And maybe in this cup, it's going
to have rat poison. It pretty much contains death,
you know. But it's his right to create
each one for the purpose that he willed. And so, he chose to
set his infinite love on And even in spite of the sin, which
we by nature are subject to, in an infinite wisdom provided
a way to reconcile us with his infinite holy nature. And that through the sacrificial
substitutionary death of his son, the lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. Well, we think of, well, maybe
the space was out there. And the world just hadn't been
created yet. But I think it means in the infinite
scope, in the eternal mind of God, before there was anything,
God created this and purposed in
his mind all these things that we've been talking about. I finished
the work thou gavest me to do. I built the earth. I built the
heavens. I did everything, and then I
came and provided myself a sacrifice. I finished the work. Having predestinated,
as it says in Ephesians 1, verse 5, we've been coming here 20
some years, probably read this verse three, four times. Having predestinated us unto
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according to
the good pleasure of his will, and for thy pleasure they were
created. Having made known unto us, revealed
to us, the mystery of his will, that also according to his good
pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation
of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on
earth, even in Him. So this kind of takes us from
infinity and beyond down to the fullness of times in this world
and gives us a glimpse of that. We've obtained an inheritance
being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works
all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should
be to the Praise of His glory who first trusted in Christ. We're about out of time, but
if you'd like a little further reading on this, you can go to
Colossians 1, verse 15 through 22 that talks about the image
of the invisible God, firstborn of every creature by whom all
things were created that are in heaven and earth. And He is
before all things and how it pleased the Father that we should
be reconciled through the blood of the cross and given peace
with Him. And all according to His infinite
understanding and wisdom, all directed at the church. Isn't
that just astounding? Isn't that just phenomenal? that
infinite, I know my thoughts are you, that they are infinite
thoughts. They're good thoughts. Isn't that nice? I was thinking
good thoughts about you today. Thoughts to give you an expected
end. You know, I was, one of the final
couple of minutes we have here, I always try to, if I can, mention
our song leader who takes the time to pick out hymns that are
just so scriptural and wonderful and put the spotlight on God
and praise to Him. And last week we sang a couple of
hymns, but one of them that kind of caught my eye or ear and was
singing and it was written by Sevilla Martin in 1930. She's
a Canadian lady. And it's a hymn that we love
that tells a story of being accepted in the beloved. And there's a couple of lines
in there that I just thought I might call attention to. Saved
from all sin by his infinite grace. Saved from all sin by
infinite grace. A grace that's so great that
can't be numbered. Where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound. Infinite wrath rolling over his
head. That's what he substituted himself
and took in our place. infinite grace, for he died in
my stead." Isn't that phenomenal? Sometimes the poets have a pretty
good grasp of things. How often do we sing those words
and we don't really plumb the depths of the meanings that are
in them, we just kind of sing along. But if we really look
at some of the words in them, And they're all based on a particular
verse. So, with that I'll close. So, we'll
have a closing hymn. Be infinitely free in Christ.