Our Big God

“What [ailed] thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, [that] thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, [that] ye skipped like rams; [and] ye little hills, like lambs? Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;” (Ps 114:5-7 AV)

We cannot comprehend the vastness and power that is God.  The psalmist is speaking to the Jordan river as one would address a petulant child.  He is speaking of Israel’s crossing of the Jordan River Bed into the land of Canaan.  By using the word ‘ailed’, the writer is speaking of a river that responded in turmoil to the hand of God.  The parting was not a peaceful one.  As the waters clave, they did so violently.  The earth is spoken of as trembling.  The mountains skipped like rams.  When the LORD opened the river for Israel, it was not a subtle act.  The hand of God was so mightily on the natural world that His presence was not in doubt.  It is assumed that since the Jordan was stopped from one direction, God simply damned up the Jordan and the north end.  Yet the writer uses the word ‘fleddest’ which suggests a far more dramatic method than a simple damn.

We fail to appreciate completely the greatness of God.  He is immeasurable.  He is infinite in His attributes.  He does not posses all power in the sense that once He has it all, there is no more to be had.  Rather, when we state that God is all-powerful, we speak to an infinite power.  It is a power that has no measure because it does not cease.  The same is true of all His attributes.  Events will continue well into eternity.  That means God must know an infinite measure of facts.  God is infinite in scope.  There is no place where God is not.  He is in and at all places at the same time.  He filles eternity.  God is our Creator.  He made us.  He deserves our worship and fear.  The picture that came to mind is God in the heavens looking down at the speck of sand that is Earth.  He is above all our thoughts.  We cannot understand Him.  This inability to comprehend Him should result in deep and profound respect.  The Bible uses the word ‘awe’.

Mankind has accomplished much.  We can board a plane and ascend to 35,000 feet.  We can gaze down at the cities, villages, or topography while feeling very large.  We look down at them, and we see specs where enormous building should be.  We look down and cannot see people.  They are too small for our eyes to pick them up.  We take off.  We land.  We have the sense of being larger than life.  After all, we ascended to a place where we are larger than what we control.  Flying so high in the sky helps us to understand the command to have dominion over the earth.  After all, we are above it and anything we do up there has more impact than if we roamed among our fellow beings.  Mankind has devised means to eradicate ourselves from the planted.  We have visited the moon, and interplanetary travel is not beyond reason.  We think much of ourselves.  Yet our God, by a mere thought, can shake the world.  Peter tells us that the LORD will destroy the entire material universe and recreate it.  We serve a God beyond our mind’s comprehension.