Who Is God?( Continues) The Grandeur of Almighty God “Thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity . . .” (Isaiah 57:15). In this ungodly, secular age many people—even professing Christians—seem to have lost sight of the divine majesty of God. Many behave with unrecognized shallowness and irreverence, lacking respect for our Creator. It seems His name is uttered more often in profanity than in respect. But what about those who have glimpsed the majesty of God? How have they reacted? Scripture shows that their response has nearly always been one of profound humility. When the prophets of the Old Testament scriptures and the apostles of the New Testament experienced God, to a man they saw themselves as utterly inadequate in comparison. Close encounters with the divine The patriarch Job, for example, became acutely aware of his own profound lack of understanding when God revealed to him some aspects of the magnificence of His creation (Job 38-41). Job’s humble reaction was immediate: “Then Job answered the Lord and said: ‘I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You . . . I have uttered what I did not understand . . . Listen, please, and let me speak . . . I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes’” (Job 42:1-6). When Moses first met with God at the burning bush, he “hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exodus 3:6). In Joshua’s encounter with the divine, he “fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, ‘What does my Lord say to His servant?’” (Joshua 5:14). In vision Isaiah saw the Lord sitting on His throne amid the angelic host (Isaiah 6:1-4). The prophet immediately reacted by lamenting, “Woe is me . . . because I am a man of unclean lips, . . . for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (verse 5). When Ezekiel saw “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord,” he, like Joshua and many others, fell down on his face (Ezekiel 1:28). Experiencing firsthand the revealed majesty of God’s splendor instantly humbled these prophets and patriarchs of old. Theirs were dramatic, life-changing experiences. The New Testament reveals the great God of the universe in the person of Jesus Christ. On the momentous occasions when Christ’s disciples caught a glimpse of God’s majestic powers as revealed through Jesus’ miracles, their reactions reflected an awesome encounter with an unseen and powerful world far different from ours.On one occasion Peter and the others had caught nothing after an entire night of fishing. Yet when Christ told them to drop their nets in a different spot, they suddenly caught so many fish that their nets began to break and their boats started to sink (Luke 5:4-7). Amen
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 19:33:46 +0000
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