The Immensity of God

Tonight we're studying the immensity of God, lesson number nine. Last week we studied the eternality of God and we talked about how God is not bound by time because time is a record of change and our God changes not. He is the creator of all things including time, and He created us as creatures that live a life that's a linear existence with a beginning and with an end, but He has no beginning and He has no end. He lives in one eternal now. He sees the past, or what we call the past, as clearly as He sees the future, and He allows us to have time as a gift because it allows us to make sense of the world so we're not overwhelmed. He entered time when Christ came and lived a fleshly existence in this world to be able to give us eternal life.

Tonight we're going to be speaking about a corollary to that, and that's the immensity of God.

God alone is immeasurable. All of us can be measured, can't we? When you go to the doctor's office, they normally see how high you stand, how much you weigh, all that stuff, but God alone is immeasurable. God surpasses heaven and earth. God is transcendent.

When we say that God is transcendent, what we mean is that God is not bound by material things. We are material creatures, right? We have our limits, but God has no limits. He's not limited by the material universe. In fact, He's the one who created the material universe and He upholds it. But God is transcendent. He is above that. He's above the heavens and He's above the earth. Look in 1 Kings chapter 8, verse 27.

This is King Solomon at the dedication of the temple, the temple that his father David gathered from the people of Israel to build, that it was weighted upon Solomon to actually build it. And here at the dedication, look what he says. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heavens of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built?" Solomon recognizes that the heavens, which are the expanse, the stars, the vastness of our universe, even beyond what we can see with our eyes, that cannot contain God. Much less this little temple that Solomon had built to honor God in. So he recognized that God is transcendent. He's above the heavens and He's above the earth.

Look at Isaiah chapter 40. The prophet says, "Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in."

It's the picture of God standing above the earth and He looks down upon us, the inhabitants of the earth, and we're like little bitty grasshoppers scurrying around to God. That's how great and vast He is. It says, "Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain." The word "curtain" there in Hebrew is referring to something many of the ancient Jewish buildings had — a courtyard in the middle of them with an awning, a thin curtain that provides shade and also keeps some of the rain and the moisture off. He's saying that the heavens are like a little curtain that He spreads out. It's nothing compared to Him.

He spreads them out like a tent to dwell in, just as they would dwell underneath that tent. The inhabitants of this earth dwell underneath the stars. That is the Lord that we serve. He is high above all things, above the heavens, above the earth, and He is transcendent.

The application is this: we are to rejoice, for you have a perfect mediator. When you think about God being transcendent and you think how high He is above the earth and how high He is above the heavens, you may wonder, well, how could I ever relate to God? How could He ever relate to me? What hope would I have of knowing Him if He is beyond the heavens? But we have a perfect mediator in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 7:26 talks about the superiority of Christ as our high priest. It says, "For such a high priest was fitting for us who was holy, harmless" — which means blameless — "undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens." Earlier in the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 2, it talks about Christ, that He was made a little lower than the angels, talking about His humiliation, His coming down here to earth to live a flesh and blood existence. But we know that after the resurrection, He ascended to heaven, and He's now seated at the right hand of God Almighty. He's attained the throne of the universe, and therefore He is the God who has become higher than the heavens. That is our mediator who brings us to God. He's the go-between between us and God, so we can have a relationship with this transcendent God, so that we can know the One who's higher than the heavens and greater than all the earth.

Acts chapter 7 is the great sermon of Stephen. Stephen is evangelizing, and he's about to be stoned, actually. He's speaking to a Jewish audience, so he's recounting to them the history of the Jewish nation. He says in verses 44 through 50, "Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as He appointed, instructing Moses to make it according to the pattern that he had seen." This was before a physical temple was built. This was a tabernacle, or a tent, that they worshiped God in. Verse 46: "Which our fathers, having received it, in turn, also brought with Joshua into the land possessed by the Gentiles, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers until the day of David, who found favor before God and asked to find a dwelling for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built Him a house. However, the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands," as the prophet says, and he quotes Isaiah 66 verses 1 and 2. He says, "Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. What house will you build for Me, says the Lord, or what is the place of My rest? Has My hand not made all these things?"

What Stephen is telling them is that God is greater than the heavens, He's greater than the earth, and He doesn't need our rituals. He doesn't need the things that we think would earn God's favor, as many of the Jews practiced, as the Pharisees practiced to get God's attention. God was already with His people and had promised His presence to be with them. The fact that God is high above the heavens and above the earth doesn't mean He's not involved in the earth.

Without Him, where would the seas stop? Without Him, where would our lungs draw their breath? Where would our hearts beat? He's above us, but He's actively engaged here in this world.

Bible point number two. Immensity is infinity in relation to space. God is not in space. God is free from the dimensions or the measurements of space. All creation is bound by height, depth, and width. Space is the record of place and extent.

Just as we talked last week about how God's eternity is infinity in relation to time, God's immensity is infinity in relation to space. What is space? We often think of space as being the stars and the blackness of outer space. That's not necessarily what we're talking about here, unless you're an astronaut. Space is simply defined as the area or the environment in which we live and move.

If you're a parent, you're keenly aware of space. When you are providing a household for your family, you want to figure out how many square feet does this house consist of? How many bedrooms are there? How many bathrooms are there? There's nothing like when you have four or five kids and you only have one bathroom, right? And you're waiting on that space. As your little ones grow — I remember times when my kids were little, especially my boys — it seems like you would buy them a new pair of shoes and three months later they had already outgrown them, right? Because kids grow, so we're used to sizes. We're used to living in a defined area. And that's what we as creatures do, right? We live within a defined space. Our space is defined by height, by depth, and by width. That's what we call three-dimensional existence. We travel either up or down, don't we? That's height. We travel forward or backward. That's depth. And we travel left to right, and that's width. These come into play every day and we don't even think about it.

My father-in-law and mother-in-law, for about ten years, had sold their home — this was many years ago — and they bought an RV and they traveled the country. Took early retirement, driving this 40-foot diesel pusher towing an SUV behind it. And when you're driving something like that, you're keenly aware of space. You know how wide your RV is because when you're driving down the highway, you're taking up pretty much the whole lane, right? If you need to get over to be able to get off the exit, you need to make sure that you have plenty of depth to be able to cross over. Once you get off the freeway, you're concerned about height, because you have overhangs, low bridges and whatnot — you don't want to end up chopping the top of your RV off and making it into a convertible by going underneath a low bridge. When you get to your campsite, you're very keenly aware of space as well. You've got to find a place to park that's level. Before you open up your slide-out, you need to make sure there are no branches in the trees that are going to impede it. And these things all come naturally to us because we're creatures, right?

In fact, it's the way that God designed us to be creatures of space. It's part of our design so much that God gave us a mandate in Genesis. Genesis 1, verses 27 and 28 says, "For God created them in His own image, and in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"

Us creatures, that's what we do. We live in space, and we're confined by that. But God has no such limits. He's an immaterial being. He has no confinements. He is not in space at all. You could say all space is in Him, right? Because we live and move and have our being in God.

Space is a record of place and extent. We all occupy a finite space, right? We are each sitting in that chair, so we can define exactly where you are right now. And you have a range of movement, right? There's only so far that you can extend your arms. Have you ever tried to reach something? Maybe something fell behind a sofa and you're reaching and it's just out of your reach? There's nothing outside of God's reach. He has no constraints whatsoever.

Look at Romans 8, verses 38 through 39. This is speaking, of course, about not being separated from the love of God in Christ Jesus, but it tells us something very unique about space. It says, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Those things can't separate us from God. The dimensions of where we live cannot, because God is not subject to space, right? You can go as far as you want away and you'll never be able to outrun the love of God. You'll never be able to outrun the command of God. Ask Jonah, right? Remember what happened to him when he tried to run from our Lord.

The application is this: rejoice that God is king everywhere. He's the Lord of space. There's nowhere where God is not king. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, had the famous quote that's called "Kuyper's Inch," and the quote goes something like this. He says, "There is not a square inch in the domain of human existence where Christ, who is sovereign over all things, does not cry, 'Mine.'"

God is sovereign everywhere, in the heavens and in the earth, right? Isn't that what Christ said when He gave the Great Commission? He says, "All authority has been given to Me in both heaven and in the earth." The book of Revelation, chapter 1, says that Christ reigns in the heavens and over the kings of men.

He reigns everywhere. He is the Lord of space. He has no limitations. Let's look at Psalm 104, verses 5 through 9. This whole Psalm — Psalm 104 — I encourage you to meditate on it this week and read through it. It talks about God being the Lord everywhere. It says, verse 5: "You laid the foundations of the earth so that it should not be moved forever. You covered it with the deep, as with a garment. The water stood above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled. At the voice of Your thunder they hastened away. They went up over the mountains. They went down to the valleys to the place which You founded for them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth."

God is the boss of the waves, of the oceans, right? We used to live, when my kids were little, down in Jupiter, and loved it down there. However, the east coast of Florida is very different from the west coast of Florida. If you go over to St. Pete, nice, fine sugar sand beaches, and the beaches are pretty shallow, and the waves don't roll over. But when you get over where Jupiter is, the beach is slanted. It's kind of gray gravel, and the waves are tough. That's why a lot of surfers like it there. Windsurfing capital of the world, constant wind blowing around 12 miles an hour at all times, and there's a wicked undertow. You have to be very careful with your little ones, because they're swimming and before you know it they are a mile down and out to sea. It can happen that quick, right?

But who stops those waves from threatening us all, from coming over their bounds, but God? God commands them all, because He's the Lord of space. He's the Lord everywhere at all times.

Also for point number two, Psalm 33: "The Lord looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashions their hearts individually and considers all their works." Even though God is above the heavens and above the earth, He's intimately involved with the heaven and the earth. He fashions our hearts individually. He knows your heart intimately. And we'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks when we talk about the omniscience of God.

Bible point number three: God's immensity speaks of His greatness, glory, and majesty. His glory is the sum of His attributes. When we're talking about God and how great He is, that He's above the heavens and He's above the earth, we're not talking about His physical dimensions, are we? Because we studied in week one that God is a spiritual being, right? He doesn't have a body like men. But we're talking about His greatness, His majesty, His glory. Everything about God is infinite and everything about God is perfect.

So when you consider, for example, the love of God, we can't even grasp God's love. It's so high above us. It's so perfect. It's high above the heavens. Who could ever attain to that? Our love, in comparison to His love, is like a little grasshopper, right? Because we have a finite and limited capacity — limited not just by our frame, but also by sin, and by our disobedience — where He's perfectly righteous, right? What about God's truthfulness? His truthfulness is beyond our imagination, right? All of His promises are true. They always come to pass. Ours are not, right? Think about God's knowledge, His wisdom. We can't even contain the smallest of His thoughts. How many of us know more than just a handful of Bible verses by memory, right? But God knows everything, because His greatness is so vast. That is what we talk about when we mean His greatness and His majesty. It's the sum of who He is. His glory is the sum of all His attributes.

Studying right now are the attributes of God. And that vast weight of all of that added together, if we could comprehend it, would be what we mean by God being above us in every respect in His infinite perfections.

1 Chronicles 29 — this is David. King David was told he can't build the temple, that it would be built by his son Solomon. But he could take up a collection and provide the materials for it, and David wanted to do that. He wanted to have one part, so to speak, in honoring God. So he called upon Israel to bring their treasures, to bring their talents, and to provide the materials for his son Solomon, who would one day be able to build the temple of the Lord. And they responded greatly. And when they brought all this vast treasure to David, he welled up and praised God. And 1 Chronicles 29 gives us that prayer. He says, "Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, and the glory, the victory and the majesty. For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and You are exalted as head over all." He goes on, and in verse 12 he says, "Both riches and honor come from You, and You reign over all. In Your hand is power and might. In Your hand it is to make great and give strength to all. Now therefore, our God, we thank You and praise Your glorious name. For who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? For all things come from You, and of Your own we have given You. For we are like aliens and pilgrims before You, as were our fathers. Our days on this earth are as a shadow without hope. O Lord our God, all this abundance that we have prepared to build You a house for Your holy name is from Your hand, and it is all Your own."

He's dedicating all this to God, recognizing that it's from God to begin with. And it's just an emblem of His greatness, an emblem of His majesty.

The application is this: in all things, live for God's glory. This is your life's purpose. Let His glory be your aim. We often think of our purpose as being manifold. Maybe we want to provide a good home for our kids, which is a noble thing. We want to maybe save up and possibly leave our kids an inheritance. That's a noble thing. But our true aim in this life is to bring glory to God. That's what He's created us for. Look at Isaiah 43:7. God says, "Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory — I have formed him. Yes, I have made him." God formed us for His glory. So we need to live for His glory.

How are ways that we can live for God's glory? Being faithful. Obeying Him, right? Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." And study. You don't know who He is — how can you give Him glory? To know Him, to know His promises, which is to trust Him, right? To obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. That's the first commandment with promise. That is one way that we glorify God. Serving others. Jesus said that the greatest among you, let him be your servant, right? And by doing good works. Jesus says that in Matthew 5. He says that we're to let our light shine before all men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So that should be our life's purpose — in all things to glorify God, because He has made us for that purpose. And if we seek to glorify anything else, we're not living up to that purpose, are we?

I think the greatest need in churches today — talking about evangelicalism as a whole — is again to capture the high view of God, a transcendent God, a God who is great, who is worthy, who is glorious, and whom we want and should seek to glorify, rather than seeking to glorify ourselves.

Psalm 100 — this is the entirety of Psalm 100. It's only five verses long, but it talks about living for the Lord. It says, "Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. We belong to Him. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations." Never forget that we are the sheep of His pasture, right? We are to live for His glory.

Number four: God created space — and again, space, we're not talking about necessarily the Star Trek space, the final frontier. We're talking about the area in which we live and move, the environment that we live in. God created space to reveal Himself to man. God wisely and graciously lets us experience life with limits, for the finite cannot contain the infinite.

As we talked last week, God remembers our frame. He knows that we're but dust, and so He allows us to live a linear existence, to live our life in successive moments, so we are not overwhelmed. If we could even contemplate time as God sees the past, present, and future all at once — the same way with space — we would be overwhelmed. We have such limited attention. There's no way that we could be above the heavens and above the earth and in the earth at the same time. We can't be two places at once. We're not that great, right? But God is, and so He graciously lets us experience life with limits.

In week one, when we studied the spiritual nature of God, we talked about Moses, how he prayed, "God, let me see Your glory," right? Here in Exodus 34, we actually see the answer to that. God had told him, "Yes, you can't see My face, but I'll let you see the backside of My glory, and I'm going to put you in the cleft of a rock." We actually see this narrated here in Exodus 34, verses 5 through 7. "Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there." God comes down from heaven in a shekinah glory, and He stands with Moses. What an honor, right? That God would come down to relate to His people. "And He proclaimed the name of the Lord, and the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth.'" He's declaring His attributes, who He is, and that's why it's important that we know His attributes, right? It says, "Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children's children to the third and fourth generations." He is holy, and He's loving, but He's holy, and He's just, right?

The application is this: God's revelation leads to humble worship. When God did this, when He passed before Moses, when He revealed His character to Moses, look what it says in the very next verse, Exodus 34:8. "So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped." Moses didn't wait a minute. He made haste and he bowed down to the ground, humbled himself, prostrate before the Lord, and he worshiped Him.

Because God is the object of our worship, right? God has revealed Himself to us in space, according to our limitations, that we can know Him, and the proper response is humble worship.

It says Psalm 19 on the notes, but that is wrong — it should be Psalm 8. It should be Psalm 8, verse 1, and verses 3 and 4. "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth! Who have set Your glory above the heavens? When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?" How great that we have a God who comes down and descends and stands with us, reveals Himself to us that we may humbly worship Him. Amen.

Bible point number five: God shares His surpassing glory with us in Christ. Our God who is so glorious and so majestic and so high, He shares it with His people because He delights in us. We are the bride of Christ, and what He lavishes on Christ is lavished upon His bride, lavished upon His people. He is our God, and we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

John 17, in the high priestly prayer, Jesus prays, "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world." He's telling the Father, "I want to share My glory. I want them to know My glory, to see You by seeing Me. That's what I want for My bride, for My people."

The application is this: behold God's glory in Christ. You are united to Christ through faith and are always in Him. So we behold God's glory in Christ.

Do you want to see the glory of God like Moses saw, where God came down in the shekinah glory and stood next to him and all of His attributes passed before him? Do you want to have that experience? Look to Christ, because in Christ we see the infinite perfections of God. Christ is the exact, express image of the Father. Read the Gospels. Spend time listening to the teachings of Christ. Look at the works of Christ, how He had compassion on the lame, on those who sat in darkness, how He made the blind to see. You want to know the character of God? You want to see the glory of God? Look to Christ. Study and know Christ's person. Study and know the work of Christ, because that's where we find the full glory of God on display — in Jesus Christ.

We are united to Christ through faith and are thus always in Him. Praise God that as believers, the moment that we put our trust in Christ, that we turn from our sins and we return to God forsaking all things else, Christ comes to live within us by the Holy Spirit. We are said to be in Christ and He is said to be in us. The Holy Spirit — Christ promised in John 14, 15, 16 and 17, there are so many promises of the Holy Spirit there in that upper room discourse of Christ — that the Holy Spirit would take the things of Christ and apply them to us. He would bring to remembrance the sayings, the teachings of Christ, so we may grasp them and understand them and be changed into that same glory in our own lives, right?

Colossians 3, verses 1 through 4 says, "If you then were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, you will also appear with Him in glory." We're to seek those things above, to walk closely, to know Him in this life, and when He returns — which may be sooner than we can even grasp — when He does return, we're going to appear with Him in glory. We're going to be sharing His glory, the glory that He has bestowed upon us. Because in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we are going to be transformed, right? In a very finite way we are going to be an image of His infinite perfection. In some capacity we're going to be perfected, as much as a limited creature can be, to reflect His glorious radiance, and His presence that He's had forever with the Father is going to be bestowed upon us. And what a glorious day that's going to be. That's going to include not just our spiritual renewal but our physical renewal as well. Amen. No more pain and no more sorrow. All things will be made new.

Ephesians — which we're about to start — the pastor texted today that he's so excited to start with Ephesians when he gets back, talking about our identity in Christ and what it means to be found in Christ. Ephesians 2 says, "But God, who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace have you been saved — and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, where we are being blessed by Christ even now. That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus." For all eternity, you know what God's going to be doing? He's going to be showing us the exceeding kindness that He has towards Christ. He's going to be pouring it out on us, world without end. Ages upon ages forever. What a blessing that's going to be, to experience the glory of God that He shares freely with us.

Romans 8, verses 16 through 17 says, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together." We're going to be glorified together with Christ, receiving God as our inheritance, who will live and dwell with men. Nothing greater could you hope for. The Powerball — that's what, almost 2 billion they've been talking about on the radio — that's nothing compared to inheriting God Himself. Amen?

Number six, our last Bible point: God's immensity displays His mercy and truth. If you recall, that sounds like last week. We talked about God's eternity displaying His mercy and truth. Well, God's eternity highlights God's mercy, which is His covenant faithfulness, His grace to us, and His truth that He always keeps His promises. It shows us the duration of that when we talk about God's eternity. God's mercy is always for His people. And when it seems like His promises are long past and He's yet to answer them, that's just because of His gracious compassion and His mercy, right? That all should come to know Christ. So when we speak of His mercy and truth in relation to His eternity, it's showing the duration of His mercy and His truth. But when we speak of it in relation to His immensity, we're talking about the vastness of His mercy and His truth.

We sometimes think — have you ever talked with someone who's not a Christian and they were honest and they said, "I've done so many bad things. God can't forgive me"? I've heard people say that. Have you heard anyone say that before, or something like that? "You don't know what I've done, brother. I have committed so many sins. My sins are so great." His mercy is greater. His covenant faithfulness is greater. Christ was infinite when He died on the cross, right? The infinite value of the divine person bearing our sins, dying on the cross in our place, provided an infinite atonement. There's no sin that God cannot forgive you of, other than unbelief, right?

So whatever vast number of sins haunts you at night — if you're like me, even as a Christian, your mind runs sometimes and you think back about some of the things you said or the things that you did, whether it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago or longer, or whether it was two or three weeks ago — and you're like, "I can't believe I did that." And we get down on ourselves, right? Remember not to let your own heart condemn you because God is greater than our hearts, right? His mercy is in the heavens and His faithfulness reaches into the clouds. His promises are so vast they know no end. They stretch for all eternity.

Look at Psalm 57, verses 9 through 11. This is a beautiful Psalm because it was penned by David when he ran from Saul, fearing for his life, and he hid in the cave. Now when you're in the cave, as David was, remember he'd been running from Saul, so he was hungry. He was tired. Outside the cave was Saul and his armies. So he felt outnumbered. He literally had his back against the wall. It's a dark, confined, limited place, a limited existence, right? There was nowhere for him to go. If he made a noise, or one of his men made a noise, that could give Saul's army an idea that they were there and they would surely be killed. In the midst of his limitations, in the midst of the fear that would come upon any man in that situation, look at David's meditation.

He says, "I will praise You, O Lord, among the peoples. I will sing to You among the nations, for Your mercy reaches into the heavens." God's covenant faithfulness, His grace, reaches into the heavens. He was in a cave where he had a confined existence. There was a roof over his head, so to speak. He couldn't go any higher than that. He couldn't see the sun there in the cave. But rather than focusing on his confined circumstances, his limitations in which he lived and moved at that point, he was focusing on God and His faithfulness and His truth, which knows no limits and knows no bounds. He says, "For Your mercy reaches into the heavens, and Your truth unto the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let Your glory be above all the earth." When we feel like we are constrained, when we're between a rock and a hard place, when everything is against us and there's no way out, we need to focus on God's greatness, right? That His mercy is in the heavens and His faithfulness reaches into the clouds.

The application is to trust God and to take refuge in His immensity. In the same Psalm, Psalm 57, David says, "Be merciful to me, O God. Be merciful to me, for my soul trusts in You, and in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by. I will cry out to the God Most High, to God who performs all things for me. He shall send from heaven and save me. He reproaches the one who would swallow me up. Selah. God shall send forth His mercy and His truth." Did not God do that for David? Did He not deliver him from the hand of Saul? Yes, He did.

God's mercy and truth are so vast, they're so high above us as God is, that Paul prays for the church to be able to grasp and understand them. And that's a prayer that we would do well to pray as well. Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19: "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

He gives us a way that the God who is high above heaven and earth, through Christ, who is the fullness of the Godhead bodily, that fullness dwells within us by His Spirit. What an amazing promise that is. Amen.