How Great is Our God
The splendor of the King, clothed in majesty;
Let all the earth rejoice, Let all the earth rejoice.
He wraps Himself in light and darkness tries to hide;
It trembles at His voice, it trembles at His voice.
How great is our God! Sing with me "How great is our God!"
And all will see how great, how great is our God!
I love this song written by Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, and Ed Cash. I'm not sure that with our human brains it is entirely possible to take in and grasp just how very great our God really is. But, I think it is good to try. I think God desires for us to try. It is one of the ways we get to know Him.
Recognizing His greatness is important. I think all people who believe in God have a basic understanding that God is great. I am convinced that God wants us to have a personal understanding of how very great He is.
The way to get that understanding is to get close to Him and spend lots of time in His word. An awareness of His greatness affects our praise and worship of Him. It builds our faith that He truly can do anything. And, when you combine that view of Him with the awareness of how much He loves us...well, that is a pretty good combination to guide us, and to fit us for battle against our enemy, and we do have an enemy. One who does not want us to know how great our God is.
Scriptural testimonies of God's greatness:
It may seem like a strange place to start, but I want to start in the book of Job.
Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil.
2. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him.
3. Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.
Job was a man of God who was a man of great possessions and great faith. According to scripture Satan and God had a discussion about Job. Satan surmised that Job loved God so much because God blessed and protected him. So, to measure Job's devotion to God, Satan was given permission from God to bring some pain and misery into Job's life.
Then, in one day all of Job's wealth was taken and all of his children were killed by a tornado.
Job 1:20 says: Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, And naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD."
Well, that didn't work out too good for Satan so he tried again.
Job 2:7: So, Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
Now, surrounded by a wife who tells him to curse God and die, and friends who are not very comforting, we find in chapter 9 verse 4 his response to his not so helpful friend Bildad. This grieving, pain racked man says this: "God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against Him and prospered? Then, in verses 5-9 he speaks of the many things in nature that God has done proving His greatness. Then, in verse 10, in spite of his grief and pain, Job says, "He (God) does great things past finding out, Yes, wonders without number. Job had an understanding of how great his God was even in very difficult times.
Job passed this test of his faith in God and God restored to him his wealth and his family.
We will all have some "Job times", (maybe by God's design, maybe by our own doing, or maybe by our enemy trying to discourage us) times that are difficult and drain us and discourage us and scare us and leave us empty and grieving. Those are the times that we need to know and cling to the greatness of our God.
King David understood how great his God was. I am so thankful for David and thankful that he was a word person, and that he wrote down all those words that came into his heart. And I am glad that what he wrote was written from a gut level place in his very human heart. David was so real. A sinner who loved his God. A human who knew how great his God was.
In Psalm 18 David writes of how his great God brought His greatness down to a personal level, to David's level. (to our level). God was not a distant unknown power to David. He was David's LORD GOD. A GOD that David had a close relationship with.
PSALM 18:
1. I will love You, O LORD, my strength.
2. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the
horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised; so shall I be saved from my enemies. (We too have an enemy)
4. The pangs of death surrounded me, And the floods of ungodliness made me afraid. ( "floods of ungodliness" that we see rising in our world should cause us to be concerned. Concerned enough to pray to our great God)
5. The sorrows of Sheol surrounded me: The snares of death confronted me.
6. In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears. Skipping to verse 16
16. He sent from above, He took me; He drew me out of many waters.
17. He delivered me from my strong enemy. From those who hated me, For they were too strong for me.
18. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, But the LORD was my support.
19. He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me. (God delights in us)
David was close enough to God to know that God delighted in him. He felt God's love. We can and need to get that close so that we can know that God delights in us. This knowledge is empowering.
35. You have also given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great.
39. For You have armed me with strength for the battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me.
(We also have an enemy who fights hard against us. It helps in this battle to know how great our God is when we need to subdue our enemy)
46. The LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock! Let the God of my salvation be exalted.
Psalm 31:19 Oh how great is Your goodness, which you have laid up for those who fear You, Which You have prepared for those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men!
Psalms 48:1 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in His holy mountain.
Psalms 71:19 Also Your righteousness, O God, is very high, You who have done great things; O God, who is like You?
Psalm 77:13 Your way, O God, is in the sanctuary; Who is so great a God as our God?
Psalm 86:8-10 Among the gods there is none like You, O Lord; Nor are there any works like Your works. All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before you O Lord, and shall glorify Your name. For You are great, and do wondrous things; You alone are God.
Psalm 92:5 O LORD how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep.
Evidence of His greatness (AND GOD SAID!)
A. His great creation
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In 6 days God created it all. He spoke it into existence. The solar system (and beyond) water, plant life (with seeds) fish and birds, bees, and butterflies and all the other animals big and small. It is a great and powerful God who can create life and provide all that each of those kinds of life need by speaking it into existence. Food...water...air to breathe.
"Let there be light!"
"Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters."
"Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear."
"Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years."
"Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens."
"Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth."
He spoke, and it was so! And it was good!
Favorite greatness example #1. At a precise time every year, a few days after a particular full moon, corals of every kind, all together in unison spew out millions of tiny eggs and tiny sperm into the sea. It is supposed that the lunar cycle determines the exact moment at which this miraculous spawning event takes place. The eggs float quickly to the surface. The sperm are free swimmers and quickly find a mate. After the egg is fertilized, a tiny embryo develops within 24 hours. The tiny baby coral is ready to settle after about 5 days. It drops to the bottom and if it settles in a good place will live and grow for many decades. This is such an amazing display of nature's mystery that in some areas tourists go to watch the fascinating event.
Favorite greatness example #2. I live up on a mountain. I don't have to look too far to see things that shout "My God is great, there is none like Him!" One year I found a strange pod cocoon. My curiosity got the best of me and I brought it in and put it in a jar to see what would come out of it. After about a week, I noticed the jar looked strange. I went closer to get a better look. Hundreds of tiny alien looking creatures were all over in that jar. Praying mantis babies! I still look for the pods and enjoy this evidence of a very great and awesome God.
Favorite greatness example #3. I don't like spiders, but a close look at a spider's web shows absolute intelligence. God's intelligence. And in the fall baby spiders go ballooning on strings of spider web to get dispersed to other areas. Every insect, bird, animal and reptile that passes thru my yard is a unique creation of an awesome, powerful and great God. Sometimes I think God allows me these glimpses because "He delights in me." And, it causes me to recognize His greatness.
Favorite greatness example #4.
Sometimes things grow voluntarily in my yard. Some of them I like, some I'm not so fond of. If you ponder where those seeds came from that make a whole new plant, you realize they came from a plant, which came from a plant, which came from a plant...all the way back to creation. No human ever created a seed that would grow a plant that contained within it more seeds when it matured. I think the more we let ourselves be amazed at how great our God is, the more He will amaze us, and the more we will praise Him, and the more our faith will grow.
The Greatest Evidence Of His Greatness
One reason that we need to keep in mind at all times how great our God is, is because our enemy does not want us to see the greatness of our God. Our enemy wants us to leave God out of our situations. He wants us to depend on our own strength instead of God's strength. He wants us to not value God's priorities. He wants us to seek man's wisdom instead of God's wisdom.
Nor does our enemy want us to see His love. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. This is the greatest demonstration of just how great our God is. That He would love us that much.
