THE GODNESS OF GOD

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The longer I know Christ and the more that I understand His ways, the more  I realize how little I really know him and how much there is to learn. Last week I wrote a post about the revelation of God being a happy God.  This is one of the many things that makes God uniquely who He is. I call this the "Godness of God".  Today I want to reflect on another aspect of His uniqueness in how He thinks and feels and wills. 

God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. 
 He is the supreme being who describes himself in infinitely unique categories. 

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Consider His unique emotional categories. 

For example, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem He knew what was about to happen. The Pharisees were going to get the upper hand. The people would be fickle and follow their leaders. And Jesus would be rejected and crucified. And within a generation the city would be obliterated. Look how Jesus says it in Luke 19 verses 43-44:

"For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation."

Yet Jesus’ is also tenderly moved. We read in the proceeding verses 41-42,

"And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.."

Jesus felt the sorrow of the situation. This doesn’t mean His sovereign plan has thwarted by human rebellion and will. It means that Jesus is more emotionally complex than we think he is. He really feels the sorrow of a situation. No doubt there was a deep inner peace that He was in control and that His wise purposes would come to pass. But that doesn’t mean He couldn't cry.

Another time we read that when Lazarus died, Jesus said,"for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe" (John 11:15). He promised to Martha in verse 23 "Your brother will rise again" and in verse 40 that they would "...see the glory of God". So Jesus had purposely planned to let Lazarus die and that his death was good and that in this death the glory of God would be made manifest.

Yet we also see Jesus' response to the sorrow and mourning of Mary, Martha, and the family in verse 33, "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled"; verse 35, "Jesus wept"; and verse 38 "Then Jesus, deeply moved again." Jesus had planned the death and resurrection of Lazarus yet could feel deep sorrow and compassion over the situation.Amazing!

God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. That is what makes Him God. Oh the challenge to know a being who is and expresses Himself in categories beyond our logic, frame of references, experience, and comprehension!

Who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of 10 million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring father as Hebrews 4: 15 says, even though among those 10 million prayers some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time, in fact, are always coming to him with absolutely no break at all? Who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked and grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over repentent rebels who come back to Him?

Who of us could say what complex of emotions is not possible for God? All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible. God's heart is capable of complex combinations of emotions infinitely more remarkable that ours. 

Humbly basking in my limited understanding of the depths of God's nature and glory.

Pastor Bill