3Great [is] the LORD and One
being praised greatly, and to His greatness [is] not a search.
This is at first glance a very
simple, very familiar statement of praise: “Great is the LORD and greatly to be
praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.” However, as I’ve stopped to ponder
it, I think rather it is a profound statement of faith itself. I’ll try to
explain.
“Great is the LORD and greatly to
be praised.” We humans love “greatness.” We are enamored with “celebrities.” We
fill our minds with people who are amazingly beautiful, amazing athletes,
amazing musicians – anyone who for almost any reason “stands out” or stands “above”
the rest of us. I read once that someone had calculated and determined that Patrick
Ewing of the New York Knicks basketball team made an average of $100,000 for
every basket he scored over his career. The paparazzi torment celebrities
because we’ll pay them a fortune just to see a picture of someone “great.”
What the simple verse before us
explains is the root of this almost unfathomable fascination. Why are we so
enamored with “greatness?” Is it not because of that “God-sized hole in our
hearts?” “Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised!” He IS the greatness our
hearts long to be filled with. One of the realities we deal with is that we
usually mustn’t dig too deeply into the lives of “great” people lest we find
out they aren’t all we’ve imagined them to be! How often has our world been
suddenly disappointed when the truth about someone is exposed?
Yet, this can never be true of
the Lord. To know Him better is only to love Him more, to be more amazed. He is
the Great One. We humans only exhibit greatness as a reflection of His. If we
would worship greatness, our journey must find its way to Him.
I’d like to say here that this
has been one of the delights of my Bible study through the years. It seems like
every passage I ponder gives me clearer visions of just who He is, clearer
understandings of His amazing kindness and grace and wisdom and power. It’s one
of the things that keeps me studying. “For this is eternal life, that they
might know Thee…” “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and
mighty things which thou knowest not!” He fills the “God-sized hole in my
heart.”
I suppose too it’s worth pausing
to ponder what this means as I see myself.
He is the Great One – not me. I would
suggest one of the problems we all have is that we want to be “great.” We want
to be “important.” The Lord has to tell us, “Let another man’s lips praise you
and not your own.” “Boasting” is a huge human problem. Perhaps a lot of us
would say, “I don’t think I’m a boaster,” but what about our hearts? While our
mouths may have enough sense not to say it, are not our hearts still longing to
put ourselves forward, to impress others, to be seen as admirable? That foolish
festering in our hearts has led all of us to say and do really stupid and
embarrassing things down through the years.
What this verse tells us is the
answer – God’s greatness. He is the
Great One, not me. If I would but accept that and live it, then I don’t have to
be “great” any more. I can just be me. I can do well at the things I do well
and then be completely transparent to allow others to realize I’m not great. I can honestly own the
reality that you’d best not look too closely or dig in my life too deeply, or I
promise you will find out I’m not great
– because I’m not. God is.
The other thing I want to record
is that I think there is an atom bomb contained in the second phrase of the
verse: “…and His greatness is unsearchable.” Paul marveled at this truth in
Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”
God is not only great, He is infinitely great! That means in short
that, being ourselves finite, we can study God forever and ever and we’ll never
see the end of His greatness. As I sit here typing, I like saying I “know” God.
I enjoy rehearsing the ways I can say with Isaiah, “Mine eyes have seen the
King!” As I’ve said before, it seems hardly a week goes by He doesn’t show me
some new nugget of who He is. Yet what will it be like when we’ve been in
Heaven for one million years??? My “knowledge” of Him here will have been so
incredibly shallow. And yet, even then, we will only have begun to know Him! Our
wonder at His greatness will be new every morning and continue to be new and
fuller and deeper for ever and ever and ever!
Here’s the “atom bomb” to me: This
explains the inadequacy I always
sense in my attempts at worship. Even as I was studying verses 1 & 2, I
found my heart struggling. I wanted to echo those words, “I will extol Thee, my
God O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever.” And yet, as I tried,
I felt this underlying inadequacy. Somehow, I just can’t do it. I can’t work up
a “worship” that feels like it’s getting the job done. I don’t like that. I
want to. But I can’t. No matter how I try to say, “I worship You,” somehow it
falls flat, falls short.
Verse 3 explains why – because His
greatness is unsearchable! Of course
my praise is inadequate. No praise I could ever offer could be sufficient. It
is an atom bomb of truth to me to realize it is okay that my praise feels insufficient.
In fact, the insufficiency is part of the praise itself! I come to the Lord to
praise Him, realizing even my praise itself gets lost in His greatness! That is
awesome. I should feel inadequate!!!
The recognition of my inadequacy is a part of the praise I offer Him! That is
precisely why I need Him! He is great and I am not!
Charles Spurgeon actually came to
the same conclusion. He said, “No chorus is too loud, no orchestra too large,
no psalm too lofty for the lauding of the Lord of Hosts…The best adoration of
the Unsearchable is to own Him to be so.”
I guess what it comes down to is
that this simple finite man will need all eternity to speak the praises of Him
whose greatness is unsearchable. And that’s called “Heaven.”
No comments:
Post a Comment