Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.  Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. 1 Chronicles 29:11

 

In describing God, theologians at times grasp for words, falling back on Latin terms which very few understand any more—like omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.  Perhaps clearer is the term Bible teacher Arthur Pink used in describing one of God’s attributes, God’s Supremacy!  God is Supreme!

Few men throughout history have had the personality or the perceived power, to call themselves Supreme Leaders.  Think of Hitler, Mussolini, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran or one of the most infamous:  North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.  Kim Jong-un is known for reportedly executing both his uncle and half-brother for treachery.  Surely no one in North Korea has more power than he.

But Kim Jong-un’s power is limited.  He is human; God is not.  Although no one is quite sure what day it actually was, Jong-un had a date of birth when he came into the world kicking and screaming.  And someday he will die.  But God had neither beginning nor ending.  Man grows weary and tired.  God never does.  As we grow a bit older and perhaps wiser, we have to come to grips with the vastness of our limitations.  But God, of course, will never be any wiser or older than He is now, because He never changes.

Is there anything that God cannot do?  Could He make a rock so big that He could not move it?  Or create something that in turn would be greater than He?  Whether or not you’ve thought much about it, there are some things that this Supreme God cannot do.  He cannot lie, for He is absolute truth.  He cannot violate His nature for His nature never changes, and He cannot create evil.  And I suppose with thought, you could add a few more things to this list of contradictions.  No wonder it is tough for us to understand God’s power and might!  At the same time, even a definition of God limits Him because the moment I have defined Him, I’ve drawn a circle around Him and I’ve confined Him to a definition.  God will always be bigger than my comprehension.

As a child, my favorite old hymn was, “How Great Thou Art.”  We sang: “Oh Lord, my God, when I, in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.  I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder.  Thy power throughout the universe displayed,” go the words of the hymn.

Our universe is very, very great.  The vast distances between our planet and some of the astral bodies defy our understanding. Yet God is greater than the distances between us, and certainly greater than the work of His hand.  As the writer of Scripture put it: “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all” (1 Chronicles 29:11).

The other overwhelming fact about this God Supreme that awes me is simply that He would choose to love me and forgive me, and accept what His Son did in my stead, so that for all eternity I can be in His presence and enjoy His again perfect Creation, rejoicing with those from every tribe and nation as we praise the Name of the God Supreme.

And a last, overwhelming thought: this God Supreme is never so busy running the universe that He cannot listen to my cry and reach down to touch my life when I’ve lost my way and need His help.   Is your god too small?  Never settle for anything lesser when you can worship the GOD SUPREME, the maker of all heaven and Earth.

Resource reading: Isaiah 40:21-31