God Transcends Our Understanding

MEMORY VERSE: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” —Romans 11:33

EXODUS 33:19, 20

NO human has seen God at any time. This is in keeping with his statement to Moses, “No man shall see me, and live.” Ile explained to Moses, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee; … and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”

God caused his “goodness” to pass before us of the present age by granting us a knowledge of his glorious plan of the ages. It is through this grand design that God reveals his mercy, and through it we are assured of his gracious purpose to bless all the families of the earth. Indeed, all the Creator’s attributes are revealed to us through his plan—his wisdom, his justice, his love, and his power. These combine to make up his glory, and in his own due time a knowledge of his glory will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

ISAIAH 40:18-26

Many have tried to imagine what God looks like. They have made images of him out of gold and silver and wood. They suppose that this helps them to understand God better, and to render obedience to him. But in this making of images the people fail to realize the true characteristics of God. They fail to grasp in its fulness the thought that it is God who “sitteth on the circle of the earth,” and that the inhabitants of the earth “are as grasshoppers” by comparison. In passing, it is interesting to note the reference to “the circle of the earth.” It was not until many centuries after this was written that the knowledge became general that the earth was a sphere.

“It is he that … stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in,” further writes the prophet. Here again is a profound scientific truth. Man does live in an oxygen tent. It is one of the arrangements by which life is sustained in this human “mansion.”

A characteristic of many fallen humans is the almost uncontrollable urge to be rulers, to exercise power over others. God gave his human creation dominion over the earth and the lower animals, but not over one another. But eventually all unauthorized rulers will be banished, for God will bring “the princes to nothing,” and will make “the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.”

Yes, God is supreme over all! He has no equal. To impress this thought the prophet states, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.”

The magnitude of the universe with its countless millions of heavenly bodies is quite beyond our comprehension, and so much the more is the One responsible for such a vast and glorious creation.

ROMANS 11:33-36

Paul’s lesson in Romans, chapter 11, pertains to God’s dealings with the natural descendants of Abraham, the Israelites. God had made wonderful promises to these, but their continued disobedience, particularly in their rejection of their Messiah when he presented himself to them, brought about their rejection. To these unbelieving Israelites Jesus said, “Your house is left unto you desolate.”—Matt. 23:38

But Paul explains that this did not imply the cutting off of their opportunity to be saved from death, through Christ. Blindness had come upon the people of the nation, but that blindness is to be removed, and, as Paul explains, “All Israel shall be saved.” (Rom. 11:26) What a wonderful display of God’s wisdom and mercy this will be! And it was concerning this, in part, that Paul wrote:

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” Let us continue to rejoice in the attributes of God, and seek to be obedient to his precepts.

QUESTIONS

How does God now reveal himself to his people?

What aspects of God’s attributes is Paul referring to in our memory verse?

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