Divine attributes in Christian preaching reveal God's infinite qualities such as goodness, omniscience, and providential care, emphasizing His perfect knowledge and moral perfection (Psalm 147:5, Romans 11:33). Illustrations often use vast natural images like oceans or precise instruments like odometers to portray God's limitless grace and meticulous governance over all creation.
God's goodness and grace vastly exceed human sin, like an ocean compared to a spark.
There is not so much sin in man as there is goodness in God. There is a vaster disproportion between sin and grace than between a spark and an ocean. Who would doubt whether a spark could be quenched in an ocean? Thy thoughts of disobedience towards God have been within the compass of time; but his goodness hath been bubbling up towards thee from all eternity. Culverwell.
God's omniscience exposes all hidden sin and thoughts, leaving no concealment.
However the sinner may imagine himself concealed by the shades of solitude, or the curtains of midnight, from the view of every eye, God is present, sees, hears, and takes an account of, all his thoughts, words, and actions. Then his eye, as a flame of fire, lights up a clear and searching day in his soul and around his steps, and shows in sunbeams the iniquities which he devises, utters, and perpetrates.
— Dr. Dwight
God's supernatural knowledge reveals hidden actions, proving His omniscience.
An English gentleman and his friends travelling through a piece of woods in one of the Western States, took with him an Indian lad as a guide. In the course of the day, they separated; and one of them, finding some curious berries, sent them to his companion by the lad, with a note specifying the number. The one who received the present found some of the berries missing, and, having reprimanded the boy for eating or losing them, sent him back for more. The gentleman forwarded a second parcel, with the number again marked on the note. The boy played the same trick with these, delivering only part of what he had received. This procured a second scolding. Whereupon the Indian fell down upon his knees, and kissed the paper, saying, "I found out, the first time, this paper was a witch or conjurer; but now he has proved his power to be supernatural indeed: because he tells that which he did not see; for when I flung away these last berries, for the sake of experiment, I took care to slip the note under a stone, that it might not know what was passing." American Anecdotes.
Conscience and God's omniscience convict sinners even when they think unseen.
A man went to steal corn from his neighbor's field. He took his little boy with him to keep a lookout, so as to give warning in case any one should come along. Before commencing, he looked all around, first one way and then the other: and, not seeing any person, he was just about to fill his bag, when his son cried out, "Father, there is one way you haven't looked yet!" The father supposed that some one was coming, and asked his son which way he meant. He answered, "You forgot to look up!" The father, conscience-stricken, took his boy by the hand, and hurried home without the corn which he had designed to take.
God cares for and governs even the smallest details of creation perfectly.
He upholds the sparrow's wing, clothes the lily with his own beautifying hand, and numbers the hairs of his children. He holds the balancings of the clouds. He maketh the small drops of rain. He numbers every blade of grass in the fields, and atom of sand on the ocean's shores. He descends to an infinite detail, and builds a little universe in the smallest things. He carries on a process of growth in every tree and flower, and living thing; accomplishes in each an internal organization; and works the functions of an internal laboratory, too delicate for eye or instrument to trace. He articulates the members, and impels the instincts, of every living mote that shines in the sunbeam. . . . God is as careful to finish the mote as the planet, both because it consists only with his perfection to finish every thing, and because the perfection of his greatest structures is the result of perfection in their smallest parts or particles. On this patience of detail rests all the glory and order of the created universe, spiritual and material. God could thunder the year round; he could shake the ribs of the world with perpetual earthquakes; he could blaze on the air, and brush the affrighted mountains each day with his comets; but if he could not feed the grass with his dew, and breathe into the little lungs of his insect family; if he could not expend his care on small things, and descend to an interest in their perfection, — his works would be only crude and disjointed machines, compounded of mistakes, and maleformations, without beauty and order, and fitted to no perfect end.
— Dr. Bushnell
An odometer analogy shows God’s unerring witness to all our actions.
There is a little machine, called an "odometer," made something like a clock, which can be fastened on a carriage, and in some way connected with the motion of the wheels. It is so arranged, that it marks off correctly the number of miles that the carriage runs. A stable-keeper once had one upon a carriage that he kept for letting; and by this means he could tell just how many miles any one went who hired it of him. Two young men once hired it to go to a town some ten miles distant. Instead of simply going and returning, as they promised to do, they rode to another town some five miles farther; making the distance they passed over some thirty miles. When they returned, the owner of the establishment, without being noticed by the young men, glanced upon the face of the measuring instrument, and discovered how many miles they had travelled. "Where have you been?" he then asked them. "Where we were going," was the answer. "Have you not been farther than that?"—"Oh, no!" they answered. "How many miles have you been in all?"—"Twenty." He touched the spring, the cover opened; and there on the face of the instrument the thirty miles were found recorded. The young men were astonished at this unerring testimony of an unseen witness that they had carried with them all the way. The steps of all are measured; and the witnesses are ready against all sin.
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