(Divine Attributes) 06 the Immensity of God

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We honor you. We adore you. We worship you.

We bring our worship. We give you worth this morning. You are the only true and living God and you are our Father.

How can this be, Lord? Yes, Father, let thy will ever still rule thy church terrestrial as thy host celestial. Move us toward that, Lord. Let us be done with lesser things.

O God, now come and help us this morning to understand. Come and help me to present, to understand and present the glories of your person. Wash me, Lord, in the blood this morning.

Lord, rebuke the enemy away from this place that he may not hinder anything of your work. Fill us with the Holy Ghost that we may hear in Jesus' name. The title of the message this morning.

Again, we are handling some of the mysterious attributes of God in this session as we did on Friday. And thus the title this morning, The Immensity of God. We will take two attributes under this title.

The immensity of God. And I begin our thoughts this morning with this question, challenge. How big is your God? We live in perilous times.

The Bible says that and it's true. We live in perilous times. The glory of God, that is the outshining of God's divine nature, has departed from the American church.

And all the trouble that she is in because of it. We have reduced our God down to a powerless kind of father who loves everyone. The glory has departed.

And a God, little G, that we have made of our own imagination has taken His place. We need to respond to the psalmist's invitation. Brethren, all of us, we need to respond to the psalmist's invitation.

Oh, blessed David who said these words, Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together. Those were the words of David. I believe David got a revelation of the glory of the attributes of the Holy God as he sat out there underneath the stars night after night singing and worshiping God, playing his little harp.

Worshiping the Lord. Yea, he could surely write that psalm, Psalm 34. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.

And that word magnified means very simply, make Him big. Or make Him bigger than the way the people see Him today. That's our charge, that's our responsibility.

Every one of us, as God gives us a revelation of who He is, our responsibility is to magnify the Lord wherever we go. So let us make Him big again and give Him His exalted place. Let us, brethren, renew our vision of a high and a holy God.

That's what we're about in these sessions. And then let us, in this all-sufficient God, put our trust in Him. And then let us give this all-sufficient God the opportunity to show Himself strong and watch the people return to the Lord.

You watch. I believe we will be able to magnify the Lord in a way that we've never known before. If we give ourselves continually to the revelation of this subject, God will enable us to magnify Him in ways we have never before.

Oh, the sweet, transforming knowledge of God! How wonderful it is! The Apostle Paul knew this sweetness so beautifully. He called it the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. That's what Paul was talking about.

Paul had a revelation of God. And he called it the excellent knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. But I want you to also notice the words that went ahead of those words.

He said, For what? For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. Brethren, let us follow His example. And push everything else out of the way for a fresh revelation of God every day in our own hearts and our lives.

I count all things but done. Thank you, Paul. Yes.

All things in His day, and yea, all things in this day, but done. All things. Let us do the same, brethren.

Let us do the same. Immensity speaks of things far beyond. Speaks of God's vastness.

Speaks of things immeasurable. That's what the word immensity means. Solomon, in his prayer at the dedication of the temple, overflowed these words of revelation about God's immensity and His infinitude.

In 1 Kings chapter 8 and verse 27, he overflowed these words. But, will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee. How much less this house that I have built.

Do you see what he is saying? The revelation of the greatness, the vastness, the immensity of God was upon him as he realized, I am asking this God to come and fill this temple. Though beautiful it was, though magnificent it was, though glorious and majestic that it was, and big, it was big. He had a revelation of the immensity of God and says, Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee.

Now, I studied that, and he simply means this. Heaven, that right around us here, the atmosphere around us, cannot contain Thee. Everywhere, all over this whole world, it cannot contain Thee.

And the heaven of heavens, up there, now we're up there where the stars are, we're up there in the Milky Way, we've passed from the Milky Way to another galaxy over here, and from that galaxy to another one over here, and all of that, that whole spans of all of that cannot contain Thee. And here I am asking you to come and fill this building called the temple. So, under this title of immensity, I am going to cover two more of God's more difficult attributes.

God's infinitude and God's omnipresence. And when I say difficult, I mean hard to grasp or understand. Let's look at a definition.

Infinitude, the quality or state of being without limits. Limitless, boundless, immeasurable in time, space, and qualities. God is limitless, He is boundless, He is immeasurable in time, in space, and in qualities.

He is infinite in every way. How can we comprehend God's infinitude? We can hardly say the word. It is beyond the range of human understanding.

But God must reveal them to us by His Spirit. The word infinite is one of those words that should not be used except with God, although people use it today. He took infinite pain to do this.

You know, I'm telling you, it's out of order. It is one of those words that only can be used for God. God only is without limits.

God only is boundless. God only is measureless. Amen? We know that.

If we stop and think about it, we know that that's so. Consider this thought. Whatever God is, and all that God is, is limitless, boundless, and measureless.

Now, we're going to be covering many more attributes as we work through all the rest of this week and all of next week. In every one of them, God is infinite. He is boundless.

He is measureless. He has no limits. There is no limit to the extents of every one of the attributes that we are going to study.

Limits, bounds, and measures. These are creature words. They describe limitations and imperfections, and God has neither one of those.

Hallelujah! Neither one. Oh, praise God. Blessed be the Lord this morning.

These kind of words cannot describe God. He is above all this, outside of all this, and beyond all of this. He's God.

There is no size, or weight, or amounts with God. These are words for creatures, not words for the eternal, self-existent One, our Creator. He is without growth or additions.

Nothing in God is less or more. Nothing. He is simply God without question.

Always. There are no degrees with God. He doesn't have more mercy than He does justice.

He is infinite mercy, and He is infinitely just. How can you figure that? I can't. But I believe it.

I believe it. And I choose to believe it. And I'm going to continue to believe it.

Though I do not understand it all. There are no degrees with God. He is infinite mercy, and He is infinitely just at the same time.

God is absolute. That is, He is completely independent. All power comes from absolute power.

That's God. All authority comes from absolute authority. All wisdom comes from absolute wisdom.

And on and on it goes down through all of God's holy attributes. We use words so lightly these days because we've lost our vision for God. We are using words that don't belong anywhere else.

Absolute is another one of those. That is almost a buzzword today. I don't know if you've noticed that.

But they use that word so freely, you know. In the business world, I talk to salesmen sometimes in my work, in my business. And you talk to the salesman, and they use that word like it's just nothing, you know.

You talk to me, absolutely, he'll say. And what about, oh absolutely. Oh yes, absolutely.

And sure, what will you be able to do for that? Oh, absolutely we'll be able to do that. I'm afraid they're using a word that doesn't belong in their business vocabulary. There is nothing absolutely in business.

Only God is absolute. We must change our thinking. So they say, she's absolutely beautiful.

No, she isn't. Give her a few years. This word belongs to deity.

There is no degrees in God's mercy, and no degrees in His grace. Man's mercy has limits. But God's never fails.

It is infinite mercy. God's infinite mercy is like an ocean. Think of this.

God's infinite mercy, jump in and swim for the next ten million years, and you will not get to the end of the ocean of God's infinite mercy. You never will. God dwells in a mode of being infinitely removed from us.

Unlike anything we know. Someone asked me the other day, if I think that God has other attributes that we know nothing of. Well, I was glad for that question.

I could tell, and I don't remember who it was, but I could tell this brother's thinking. I thought that too. I've been thinking about that and wondering, alright.

What about all of this? What about when we get with God in glory for eternity? Will we see attributes that are in God that we know nothing of now? And my conclusion is, yes we will. I don't know what they are, but God, if all that I can see from all of this study, how big God is and how infinite He is, surely He has infinite attributes that we know nothing of. I thought about the angels.

You know, the angels, they didn't understand mercy. Think about it. Before God made man in the garden, and before man fell, and before God began to set His redemption plan in motion, the angels didn't know what mercy was.

But all of a sudden, out of God's infinite attributes, flowed a new attribute called mercy. And God stoops down to pity and help man. And the angels saw something they never saw before.

Someone was mentioning yesterday about the devil and his angels. Maybe God's justice was not manifested until the devil and his angels rebelled against God in heaven. Because the Bible says that hell was made for the devil and his angels.

And all of a sudden, the angels get a revelation of the justice of Almighty God. Ooh, here's something new coming out of our God. And I believe that will happen in glory.

The infinitude of God. God dwells in a mode of being infinitely removed from us, unlike anything we know. Isaiah chapter 40, verse 17 and 18 says these words, All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him less than nothing.

And vanity, and that word vanity in the Hebrew is like a soap bubble, you know? Little children's toy, you know, that makes bubbles. That's what the word vanity means. And all the nations are just a little bubble compared to God.

To whom then will ye liken God, says God? To whom then will you liken me? I am unlike anything you know. Or what likeness will you compare unto Him? Of course, Isaiah is challenging Israel about their idolatry. How big is your God? Moving now a bit into God's omnipresence.

How big then is your God? Consider the scope of God's infinitude in reference to space. Space, that's like the distance from this wall to the distance to this wall. You know, that's space in the middle.

But consider the scope of God's infinitude in reference to space. On the one side, God dwells in the realm of immensity. On the other side, God dwells in the realm of infinitesimal smallness.

A man named Pascal said it this way, God dwells in worlds beyond more worlds. Solar systems beyond solar systems. God dwells there.

Yet at the same time, He dwells in little worlds within more little worlds, all the way down to the molecules and the atoms. And God dwells in all of it. And to Him, space doesn't mean anything.

See, we look at that and we think, way out there. Solar systems beyond solar systems beyond solar systems. That's so much distance and all the way down to these little molecules.

But for God, space means nothing at all. Because He's omnipresent. Let us reason together of the vastness of Almighty God, Jehovah, the Eternal Self-existent One.

They have now discovered stars so big that you can put millions of our sun inside of one star. Our sun happens to be a million miles in diameter, approximately. Our sun is a million miles in diameter.

You can put 330 of our earth into our sun, and we have a pretty little sun. Because they have now discovered stars so big that you can put millions of our sun inside of one of those stars. Then consider that these stars have to have a comparable amount of space in between each one of them.

I mean, how much space should there be in between a star that is millions of times bigger than our sun, which is a million miles in diameter? How much space must you put in there in order for these things to keep on spinning up there and keeping their place, and be in the same place on the same day every year as ours moves around and theirs moves around? How can it kick in its place except that there is a vast amount of space between that huge star and all the other ones around it? And God dwells in all of this, all at the same time. You say, Brother Denny, I don't understand that. Neither do I. But I believe it.

Let's look at the definition of omnipresent. Omnipresent. Present in every place at the same time.

Unbounded or universal presence. God is an unbounded or universal presence. Present in every place at the same time.

The word present means here or close, close to or next to. Present. We are present here.

I am present with you. You are present with me this morning. We are present.

We are here. We are close to. We are next to.

And the word omni, it means all or everywhere. God is present everywhere. God is close to everyone at the same time.

They measure the distance in space by light years. A light year is the distance that light can travel in one year. And the speed of light is 186,000 miles an hour or miles per second.

The speed of light, 186,000 miles one second. That's how fast light travels. And a light year is the distance that light can travel in one year, traveling 186,000 miles every second.

So in one minute, light travels 11 million miles. In one hour, 669 million miles in one hour. In one day, 16 billion miles light travels in one day.

And in one year, one light year, light travels 6 trillion miles. That's one light year. And some of these worlds beyond more worlds are millions of light years away.

Now that all of your brains have frozen, will you figure it out? 6 trillion miles, that's one light year, times 10 million light years away. You figure it out, one of you mathematicians. By the way, don't waste your time.

You don't have a piece of paper big enough. 6 trillion miles, one light year, times 10 million light years away. This is immensity.

And since God is infinite, without limits, He dwells in it all. And that is omnipresence. How big is your God? I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty small standing up here.

I'm feeling very, very small. And that's good. We are very small compared to all this, yet not small like the atoms or the molecules.

God is the ruler and sustainer of it all. From solar systems, beyond more solar systems, to little worlds within little worlds, God is caring for it all, all at the same time. We must join David in his wonder when he said in Psalm 8, verse 3 and 4, When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained every one of them, calling them by name.

What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? How could God, how could this infinite God condescend to manifest His presence on me? Yes, David. What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. That's before the fall, by the way.

You see the size comparison there? It rots humility and smallness in every one of our hearts, and that is good. Because, you see, there is a natural tendency in man to think that he is a God. Oh, he would never say that, because he knows better than to say those words.

But there is a natural tendency in man to think that he is pretty much something. Pretty smart, pretty good, pretty strong, lots of abilities, indispensable. And it's very good for us to just gaze at the immensity of God, and recognize that He fills all of that, all at the same time.

And here I am, way down here on this little walnut called the earth, down here running around like a little ant. It is good for us. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 40.

Isaiah 40 has to have some of the loftiest thoughts about God in the entire Bible. Isaiah chapter 40, reading in verse 21 and 22 first of all, God says, Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundation of the earth? It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, the horizon. Looking at the earth, and you see the horizon.

And by the way, this is from God's perspective. Looking at the earth. It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.

Sorry, not ants, grasshoppers. The inhabitants as grasshoppers. He, this God, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain.

I want you to picture that now. You remember how big the heavens are. We just looked at how big they are.

Now God is using the illustration as if I were to go over to this window and spread a curtain out over it. You see those pictures? That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. Put the tent over me.

Yes, worlds beyond worlds. Millions of light years. And to God it is as a curtain or a tent to dwell in.

How big is Jehovah? The eternal, self-existent one. This is infinitude, brethren. Limitless.

And this is omnipresence. God is present everywhere. Isaiah 40 again, verse 25 and 26.

To whom then will ye liken me? Or shall I be equal, saith the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high. Get a good gaze at heaven. And behold, who hath created these things? That bringeth out their hosts by number.

Who brings out their hosts by number? He calleth them all by names. By the greatness of His might, He calls them all by names. Millions and billions and billions of stars as far away as you can go in every direction.

And God brings them all out and calls them by name. For that He is strong in power, not one faileth. And He keeps them all shining.

Glory. Look at the picture. The great God of the universe, moving through His universe with its millions of light years, possessing it and dwelling in it, sustaining it all at the same time.

Let's look at some other verses that clearly teach that God is omnipresent. Everywhere present at the same time. Jeremiah 23 and verse 24.

We find these words. God is challenging His people who think, God doesn't see me. What an absurdity.

God doesn't see me. Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him, saith the Lord, Jehovah, the self-existent One? And then God replies with these words, Do not I fill heaven and earth? Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord, Jehovah? The eternal self-existent One? He did not say, I am in heaven and earth. He said, I fill heaven and earth.

I, God, my person, my essence, fills heaven and earth. If He fills all, that means there is no place where He is not. Amen? I mean, you know, we could take these two cups of water up here and pour water into the one until it is full.

Now it is full. Don't bump me. This one is really full, brother Jonah.

Behold, I fill heaven and earth, God said. Now, if God fills heaven and earth, that means there is no place where God is not. Agreed? This glass is filled with water and there is no place in this glass where water is not.

Until I drink a little bit of it. Psalm 139, verse 7 to 10. The psalmist says these words, Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there.

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. Jonah learned a hard lesson about these verses.

He knew these verses, by the way. The prophet Jonah did. He lived much, much after Psalm 139 was written.

Jonah learned these verses the hard way. Remember, he didn't want to do what God said. And the Bible says that he fled from the presence of the Lord.

Did he flee from the presence of the Lord? No, he did not. He thought he was. But he didn't flee from the presence of the Lord.

He may have fled from the place where God manifested His presence to him, but he didn't flee from the presence of the Lord. He found out that God is an ever-present God, even down in the bottom of the sea in the belly of a whale. Because there, in the belly of that whale, God spoke to Jonah.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? And whither shall I flee from thy presence? Nowhere. Nowhere. Everywhere that you will go, God is there.

Everywhere. Turn the light out. Doesn't matter.

Day and night are the same to Him. You know, man, foolish man, when he wants to live in his sin, he turns the light out. Imagine.

Such utter foolishness. He turns out all the lights to do what he does in his wickedness, to do it in the dark, thinking that he will not be seen. And God is there with a million power, candle power light shining on everything that He is doing.

The Apostle Paul, when he was ministering to the Athenians, there in Acts chapter 17, he related to them this way. He said to them that they should seek the Lord, that it was God's will that all people should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. That's what Paul was telling the Athenians.

He is not far from every one of us. And then he went on to say these words, for in Him we live. In Him we live.

Now, wait a minute, Paul. Let's get your theology straight. These are lost idolaters, Athenians.

Yes. In Him, everyone on this earth lives. In Him, we live and move and have our being.

All six billion of us, all at the same time. In Him, we live and move and have our being. All six billion of us.

How big is your God? This statement of omnipresence that Paul made is reality for all of mankind everywhere, all at the same time. As God was present in creation, so also He must be present in the preservation of what He created. Amen? Psalm 36, verse 6 says, Thou preservest man and beast.

All six billion of them and how many beasts, I can't even begin to tell you. Thou preservest them all, everywhere, every day, all the time. For He upholds all things by the word of His power.

Jesus spoke about the sparrows falling to the ground. Remember? Not one sparrow falls to the ground without our God knowing it. And if that doesn't stagger you, then He turned around and told them as humans, every hair on your head is numbered.

How do you keep track of all the hair on six billion heads? If you are not omnipresent in everywhere, in every place, all the time, you can't. You must be present always to accomplish such a task as this. And now we are crossing over a little bit into omniscience.

So, we will stop and not go any further there. But, I think that it is dawning on you by now that these attributes, they are very much tied together. We are presenting them one by one, but they are not separate entities.

They are all part of God's simple whole. Just like the sun's unceasing radiance influences everything around it, so also God overspreads the whole body of heaven and earth with His ever-present care all the time. And at this point, I want to make a few comments about the different ways that God manifests His presence in His created universe.

And if you have questions for me on this one, I am still trying to figure it all out. Number one, God is present everywhere. He fills all of His creation as we have already seen.

Number two, God manifests His presence by His Spirit. Remember Jesus said, I will send you the Comforter. God manifests His presence by His Spirit in different places.

In personal times and also times of revival in a church service. I mean, you look at the history. Look at your own history.

If you are worth your soul at all in your love for God, you know what it is to be in your closet by yourself and have God's presence manifest Himself in your closet. Sometimes, I have been in church services where God manifested His presence by His Spirit. And, you know, in our hearts we said, God is here.

Was He not there before? He was. But He has chosen to manifest His presence in this place. You hear about the accounts of revival like in the Hebrides where the testimony of the people was that God was everywhere.

And what they meant by that was God manifested His presence across the whole island and everywhere they went, they sensed the manifested presence of God. God can do that. God can be everywhere in all of His universe.

But manifest Himself by His presence in this place or that place and He can do it in 5,000 places around this world at exactly the same time. And if you think about it, you know it's that way. Number three, God manifests Himself in a visible way at times.

Like when He descended on that mountain there at Mount Sinai that we read about earlier. God manifests Himself visibly. A theophany, a manifestation of God.

God does that at times. And while God is manifesting Himself visibly, He is at the same time filling all of the universe with His presence, with Himself at the same time. God can do that.

This is a vast subject. But for time, I must conclude with some applications. If God is omnipresent, everywhere present, how then shall we live? Number one, we should cry to God for a clear revelation in our hearts that God is here.

God is here. You wake up in the morning. Oh, for a heart that says, God is here.

You find yourself in a certain situation. Oh, for a revelation to know God is here. God is here.

We pretend to believe that God is here. We would all acknowledge that. We're good theologians.

We can quote the doctrine. So, we pretend to believe that God is here. But actions speak louder than words.

We must fill our thoughts with this truth until we are filled with the conscious awareness that God is here with me all the time. Nothing, nothing will change your life more than that right there. You know it.

Nothing will change your life more than a conscious awareness that God is here with me all the time. Number two, since God is everywhere present, His eyes see all that I do. The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.

Proverbs 15. The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good. Six million souls on this earth.

The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good. Number three, what a motivation to do right. The pleasing eye of God is upon me all the time.

I will do right. I want to please my Father. Remember? Hear the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I do always the things that please my Father. The pleasing eye of my Father is upon me, said Jesus, all the time. Since God is here, and He is my Father, whom or what shall I fear? The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? Since God is present everywhere, and God is my Father, should I be afraid of anything? Number five, how can I sin before His pure eyes? How can I sin before His pure eyes? Let that sink down deep. God said to David through Nathan the prophet, Ye did evil before my eyes. Oh my, what a piercing conviction that must have been to David.

And David, when he came to grips with what he had done, in his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 said, Against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. Oh, what a shield to temptation. Amen, brethren? God is watching me.

God is with me. God is present here now. Number six, shall we fear man more than God? We hold back from sin in man's presence, but do it boldly in God's sight.

Think about it, brethren. Someone else is around, and we know we can't do that. It will get out.

What will they think of me? And all of that. And everybody else is gone. No man is watching.

And there we go. Turn out the light and go into something evil. Shall we fear man more than God? And lastly, number seven, let us seek for more of his manifested presence in our life.

Because God's manifested presence is a continual awareness that God is with me all the time. All the animals and the devils live in God's general presence and care. But is that all we want? Is that all we want? Just enjoy the same thing that the animals and the devils enjoy? We should seek to be set apart by God's manifested presence.

Amen? And in closing, this is not a poem, I'm not sure what it is. It's called God is Everything. God is above all things, beneath all things, outside of all things, inside of all things.

God is above but not pushed up. He is beneath but not pushed down. He is outside but not excluded.

He is inside but not confined. God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside all things embracing, inside all things filling. God is omnipresent.

Let's pray. O Lord, O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth, Lord. Wonderful God You are.

How can it be that we could sit and learn these things? O Father, we do acknowledge that we are accountable sitting in this place, learning all these things, we are accountable. God, I pray, do not stop, Lord. Open the eyes of our heart, Lord.

O Father, would You change us that we will never ever be the same after these days, God. All of us. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.