Canst thou by searching find out God?
The unsearchableness of God
You are not to suppose that your God is to be utterly unknown, and that because your faculties cannot pierce the inmost recesses of His being, therefore you are discharged from the duty of thinking about Him at all. Your faculties were given you for use, and the highest exercise of which they are capable is thought on God.
1. The duty of searching into Divine things is one recognised and acted out by very few. Let your own observations convince you of this. It is only by a knowledge of God’s character that we can hope to keep His law.
2. The proper objects of the search. Such as God’s mind about you. God in His dispensations and His ways. This is practical; and it is far more profitable to spend our energies on such considerations as these, than on speculations which are too deep for us, at least while we are on this side the grave, and in the flesh. To know God’s mind about Himself, I invite even the man that would study the character of the Most High, and would “know the Lord.”
3. What measure of success in such study may we expect? Success will not be limited to improvement. It will bring consolation. (P. B. Power, M. A.)
God incomprehensible by His creatures
That there is a first and supreme cause, who is the Creator and Governor of the universe, is a plain and obvious truth which forces itself upon every attentive mind; so that many have argued the existence of God, from the unanimous consent of all nations to this great and fundamental truth. But though we may easily conceive of the existence of the Deity, yet His nature and perfections surpass the comprehension of all minds but His own.
I. God is incomprehensible in respect to the ground of His existence. God owes His existence to Himself, yet we are obliged to suppose there is some ground or reason of His existing, rather than not existing. We cannot conceive of any existence which has no ground or foundation. The ground or reason of God’s existence must be wholly within Himself. What that something in Himself is, is above the comprehension of all created beings.
II. God is incomprehensible in respect to many of His perfections.
1. Eternity. God is eternal. He never had a beginning. We can conceive of a future, but not of a past eternity. That a being should always exist without any beginning is what men will never be able to fathom, either in this world, or that which is to come.
2. Omnipresence. The immensity of the Divine presence transcends the highest conceptions of created beings. God is equally present with each of His creatures, and with all His creatures at one and the same instant.
3. Power. God can do everything. His power can meet with no resistance or obstruction. Who can stay His hand? The effects of Divine power are astonishing.
4. Knowledge. That knowledge takes in all objects within the compass of possibility. Such knowledge is wonderful; it is high; we cannot attain unto it.
5. The moral perfections of God in extent and degree surpass our limited views.
III. God is incomprehensible in His great designs. None of the creatures of God can look into His mind and see all His views and intentions as they lie there. His counsels will of necessity remain incomprehensible, until His Word or providence shall reveal them to His intelligent creatures.
IV. He is incomprehensible in His works. Their nature, number, and magnitude stretch beyond the largest views of creatures. No man knows how second causes produce their effects; nor how the material system holds together and hangs upon nothing.
V. He is unsearchable in His providence. Whatever God has done, He always intended to do; but we do not know at present all the reasons of His conduct, nor all the consequences that will flow from it. Respecting future events, God has drawn over them an impenetrable veil. Improve and apply the subject.
1. In a very important sense God is truly infinite. To be incomprehensible is the same as to be infinite.
2. The incomprehensible nature of the Supreme Being does by no means preclude our having clear and just conceptions of His true character.
3. If God be incomprehensible by His creatures, we have no reason to deny our need of a Divine revelation.
4. If God is incomprehensible in His nature and perfections, then it is no objection against the Divinity of the Bible that it contains some incomprehensible mysteries.
5. Then it is very unreasonable to disbelieve anything which He has been pleased to reveal concerning Himself, merely because we cannot comprehend it.
6. Ministers ought to make it their great object in preaching, to unfold the character and perfections of the Deity. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
Job, in the foregoing chapter, carried the justification of his integrity so far that he seemed to entrench somewhat rudely on the justice of providence. Zophar, therefore, to repress this insolence, and vindicate the Divine honour, lays before him the incomprehensibleness and majesty of God.
I. Assert and illustrate the doctrine of the text. That God is incomprehensible. If in the Godhead we gaze and pry too boldly into eternal generation and procession, and the ineffable unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it will but dazzle and confound our weak faculties. All the attributes of God are infinite in their perfection, and whosoever goes about to fathom what is infinite, is guilty of the folly of that countryman, in the poem, who sitting on the bank side, expects to see the stream run quite away, and leave its channel dry; but that runs on, and will do so to all ages. We cannot comprehend the whole extent of God’s moral attributes. Though God were so far discoverable by the light of reason, as served to render the idolatry and wickedness of the pagan world inexcusable (Romans 1:1-32), yet God being infinite, and His perfections a vast abyss, there are therefore mysteries in the Godhead which human reason cannot penetrate, heights which we cannot soar.
II. Reflections upon this proposition. Use it--
1. To let out the tumour of self-conceit.
2. To justify our belief of mysteries.
3. To vindicate the doctrine of providence. The incomprehensibleness of God solves all the difficulties that clog the doctrine of providence. (Richard Lucas, D. D.)
God incomprehensible
That there is a God is almost the universal belief of mankind. There are few absolute atheists. Zophar reproves Job for pretending to a perfect knowledge of God. The charge implies that God is incomprehensible. We cannot perfectly understand His works, His ways, His Word, or His attributes--such as His eternity, power, wisdom, and knowledge, holiness, justice, goodness. Practical lessons--
1. We should learn to be humble.
2. Infer how base a thing is idolatry, or image worship.
3. If God is incomprehensibly glorious, how should we admire and adore Him!
4. Let us calmly submit to all His dispensations in providence.
5. Seeing that the nature of God is so wonderfully glorious, let us study to know Him.
6. Learn the reasonableness of faith.
7. This subject should render the heavenly state exceedingly desirable; for in that state “we shall know even as we are known.” (G. Burder.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
This term or attribute is a relative term, and speaks a relation between an object and a faculty, between God and a created understanding. God knows Himself, but He is incomprehensible to His creatures. Give the proof of the doctrine--
I. By way of instance or induction of particulars.
1. Instances on the part of the object. The nature of God, the excellency and perfection of God, the works and ways of God, are above our thoughts and apprehensions. We can only understand God’s perfections as He communicates them, and not as He possesses them. We must not frame notions of them contrary to what they are in the creature, nor must we limit them by what they are in the creature. The ways of God’s providence are not to be traced. We take a part from the whole, and consider it by itself, without relation to the whole series of His dispensations.
2. Instances on the part of the subject, or the persons capable of knowing, God in any measure. The perfect knowledge of God is above a finite creature’s understanding. Wicked men are full of false apprehensions of God. And good men have some false apprehensions. The angels do not arrive at perfect knowledge of Him.
II. By way of conviction. If the creature be unsearchable, is not the Creator much more unsearchable. He possesses all the perfections which He communicates, and many which cannot be communicated to a creature.
III. The clear reason of it. Which is this--the disproportion between the faculty and the object; the finiteness of our understandings, and the infiniteness of the Divine nature and perfections. Apply this doctrine--
1. It calls for our admiration, and veneration, and reverence.
2. It calls for humility and modesty.
3. It calls for the highest degree of our affection. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
Doctrine of Trinity not a contradiction to reason
The doctrine of the Trinity is not at all more incomprehensible than others to which no opposition is offered. A man can comprehend the Trinity as well as he can the eternity of God, or the omnipresence of God.
1. Certain considerations from which you will infer the presumption of expecting that the nature of God should be either discernible or demonstrable by reason. If we would but observe how little way our reason can make when labouring amongst things with which we are every day conversant, we should be prepared to expect that when applied to the nature of the Deity, it would be found altogether incompetent to the unravelling and comprehending of it. We are to ourselves a mystery. There is a presumption which outweighs language in expecting that we can apprehend what is God, and how He subsists. A revelation from God may be expected to contain much which must overmatch all but the faith of mankind. We are continually in the habit of admitting things on the testimony of experience, which without such experience we should reject as incredible. We may assert this in respect to many of those operations of nature which are going on daily and hourly around us, e.g., husbandry. We do not, in regard of the things of this lower creation, measure what we believe by what we can demonstrate. Where then is the justice and the reasonableness of our carrying up to the highest investigations of God a rule which, if applied to the facts or phenomena of nature, would make us doubt the one half, and disbelieve the other? If we reject one property of God, because incomprehensible, we must, if consistent, reject almost every other. This is not sufficiently observed. It is customary to fasten on the mystery of the Trinity as the great incomprehensible in God, and to speak of it as tasking our reason in a measure far higher than the rest. We admit that whilst the whole of a revelation may be above our reason, there may be parts which seem contrary to it; and if there exists a repugnance between reason and revelation, we do right in withholding our assent. If it could be shown that the received doctrine of the Trinity did violence to the conclusions of reason, there would be good ground for rejecting that doctrine and regarding the Bible as wrongly interpreted.
2. There is no repugnance to reason in the doctrine of the Trinity. It is above reason, but not contrary to reason. The sense in which God is three, is not the sense in which God is one. The doctrine stated with simplicity, the doctrine that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are so distinct as not to be one with the other, and so united as to be one God, carries nothing on its front to convict it of absurdity. There is no contradiction in three being one, unless it be said that the three are one in the same respect. We are not now endeavouring to establish the fact that Scripture teaches the doctrine of the Trinity; we only show that there is nothing in the doctrine which reason can prove impossible. The testimonies of Scripture to the Divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, are numerous and explicit; the declarations that there is only one God rival these in amount and clearness. You will be told that this doctrine is a speculative thing; that even if it is true, it is not fundamental; and that, whatsoever place it may fill in scholastic theology, it is of little or no worth in practical Christianity. Remember one truth. If the doctrine of the Trinity be a false doctrine, your Redeemer, Jesus Christ, was nothing more than a man. The Divinity of Christ stands or falls with the Trinity or Unity. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Feelings after God
When the Creator formed man He placed within him a religious sentiment, a sense of a superior existence, and this being the nature of the subjective mind, the outer realm became at once peopled with supernatural creatures. The religious feeling in the soul, in the first years of its strivings, saw gods in every storm, and in every ray of sunshine, and in all the shadows of the night. Paul says God so made the rational world, that they should “seek the Lord, if haply they may feel after Him, and find Him.” All the mythological and theological phenomena of the past are manifestations of this feeling after the true God. Christ stands the nearest of all alleged divinities to any historical fact. There have been claims to Divine honours set up by others. Christ stands farthest from myth, and nearest to reality. Think of the less questionable elements in this historic fact.
1. It was a great gain to our race that at last the search for an Incarnation came up to a real, visible being. Man had gone about as far as he could upon a theology of legend and absurdity. There was no valuable religious faith in the world at the time of the Advent. The Roman Empire had all forms of greatness except religious faith. Mankind will always exchange legend for history. The development of reason works against myth and in favour of the actual. Examine further the quality of this Christ idea. It was the first incarnation lying within the field of evidence. How far was this Christ an-incarnation of the Divine?
2. It should soften our judgment that we do not know the nature of Deity. There is every reason for supposing that man was created in the intellectual likeness of God, and hence for God to become manifest in Christ was only a filling to the full of a cup partly filled in the creation of man. Man himself held a part of the Divine image. Christ held it all. The picture of Jesus Christ is the best picture conceivable of a mingling of the earthly and the heavenly. The whole scene is above life and below the infinite. It was God brought down, and man lifted up. (David Swing.)
How can I know there is a God
A knowledge of God is necessary. It is important to have strong faith in God.
I. I know there is a God, because He has revealed Himself to men. In all ages God has spoken to men, and given them a knowledge of Himself. All along the ages God was constantly speaking to men, and revealing Himself to His people. As large numbers of these men gave their lives as witnesses for God’s revelation, I believe their testimony, and am aided in searching to know God for myself.
II. Because He has revealed Himself to me. In three ways--
1. In His Holy Word.
2. In the world in which I live.
3. In my own heart, and soul, and life.
III. Because He made the world. It could not have made itself.
IV. Because I can see His wisdom in the harmony and design which exist in the world. Wherever you see design, you may be sure there has been a designer. Things do not happen by chance.
V. I am confirmed in my knowledge of God when I learn that men everywhere have believed in God. Go wherever you will, you will find men who believe in God. Rather than be without God, men will make one. The universal failure of man has not been to have no God, but to have too many. (Charles Leach, D. D.)
Searching after God
I. This is a righteous occupation.
1. It agrees with the profoundest instincts of our souls. “My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” It is the hunger of the river for the ocean--every particle heaves towards it, and rests not until it finds it.
2. It is stimulated by the manifestations of nature. His footprints are everywhere, and they invite us to pursue His march.
3. It is encouraged by the declarations of the Bible. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him whilst He is near.”
4. It is aided by the manifestations of Christ. “Christ is the brightness of His Father’s glory,” etc.
II. This is a useful occupation.
1. There is no occupation so spirit-quickening. The idea of God to the soul is what the sunbeam is to nature. No other idea has such a life-giving power.
2. There is no occupation so spirit-humbling.
3. There is no occupation so spirit-ennobling. When the soul feels itself before God, the majesty of kings, and the splendour of empires are but childish toys.
III. This is an endless occupation. “Canst thou by searching find out God?” Never fully. The finite can never comprehend the Infinite.
1. This endless work agrees with the inexhaustible powers of our nature. Searching after anything less than the Infinite would never bring out into full and vigorous action the immeasurable potentialities within us.
2. This endless work agrees with the instinct of mystery within us. The soul wants mystery. Without mystery there is no inquisitiveness, no wonder, no adoration, no self-abnegation. (Homilist.)
The Divine nature incomprehensible
Mankind supremely desire knowledge. In the pursuit of it every encouragement should be given. Yet there is a sort of knowledge which some busy and unsatisfied tempers are too inquisitive after. It is out of this arrogant deceit that they take upon them to be so well acquainted with the Divine nature, and to fathom all the deep things of God. As the term God must imply in it every perfection that is conceivable of a power infinitely superior to us, the very idea of such a Being must be sufficient to make us stand in awe and keep our distance. What ought effectually to deter and discourage too bold researches into the Divine nature is--
I. That it seems to be a sin to attempt to find it out. Our lust after knowledge should be put under restraint. It was a forbidden curiosity that ruined the first members of our race. Certain it is that we are under limitations; and it must be very unadvised to pretend to find out God to perfection. And--
II. It is impossible to accomplish it. Neither prophets nor apostles were capable of comprehending all knowledge: at least they were not thought fit to be entrusted with more important discoveries. Some things angels even might not look into. Will reason supply the deficiency? The immensity of the Divine nature, and the weakness of human capacities, will be perpetual discouragements to such a rash experiment. It is true that the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator are so easily deducible from the things that are made, that those are pronounced without excuse that do not discern them, and act agreeably to their conviction. But what is man that he should with so much impatience covet to know the hidden things of God before the time? Secret things belong unto God. Highly then does it concern us to cheek that petulant and wanton desire of prying into things which God hath industriously concealed from us. We may know quite enough to make us religious here, and happy hereafter. It is not unreasonable to believe that it will be one of the beatitudes of good men to have their understandings enlarged at the great day of the manifestation of all things. Let no one fancy he is injured, or that God’s ways are not equal, in not suffering us at present to see Him as He is; since He never intended that this life should be a state of perfection in any kind. Let us be thankful that God has graciously revealed to us the way of salvation, and not be dissatisfied that He hath not given us to understand all mysteries and all knowledge. (James Roe, M. A.)
The incomprehensibleness of the Divine nature and perfection
1. We can apprehend that God is a being of all possible perfection. He is the first, or self-existent being. What has no cause for its existence, we naturally think can have no bounds.
2. We cannot find God out to perfection. Were He less perfect, the attempt might not be so utterly impossible. That we cannot perfectly know God may be argued from the narrowness of our faculties, and from the great disadvantages for knowing God which we lie under in the present state. Moreover God is infinite, and all created understandings are but finite. We cannot fathom infinite perfection with the short line of our reason; or soar to boundless heights with our feeble wing; or stretch our thoughts till they are commensurate to the Divine immensity. Consider some particular perfections--eternity, immensity, omniscience, and omnipotence. Consider the moral attributes of God His holiness, goodness, justice, truth. Practical reflections--
1. Let us adore this incomprehensible Being. It is the grandeur, the infinity of His perfections which makes Him a proper object of adoration.
2. Whenever we are thinking or speaking of God, let us carry this in our minds, that He is incomprehensible. This will influence us to think and speak honourably of Him.
3. This will help us to form a more raised conception of the happiness of the heavenly state. (H. Groves.)
The incomprehensibleness of God
I. As to the creation. That work of God is perfect, with regard to the ends for which it was designed. But our wisdom is not sufficient always to trace out the Divine.
1. We cannot perfectly understand the production and disposal of things at the beginning. Creation is of two kinds: out of nothing, and out of pre-existent matter. Of creation out of nothing, it is not possible that we should form the least conception. Of creation out of preexistent matter we can have some idea, but only an inadequate one.
2. We cannot perfectly understand the causes of things in the stated course of nature. A thousand questions might be started, about which the wisest philosophers can only offer their conjectures. The way of God is too deep and winding for us to find out. We have no reason to boast of our knowledge of the works of God, since what we know not is much more considerable than what we know.
3. We cannot perfectly understand the reasons and ends for which all things are what they are, and their exact adjustment and correspondence to these ends. The general and ultimate end of all things is the glory of God. And we can perceive that things are admirably fitted to answer this end. Yet we do not clearly understand in what manner each thing contributes to this purpose. We should be cautioned against censuring any of the works of God in our thoughts, because we are not able to tell what good they answer.
II. As to providence. We can easily demonstrate that there is a providence, and this, in all its dispensations, consonant to the perfections of God, but we can by no means fathom all the depths of it. Some instances may be given in which the unsearchableness of the ways of providence appears. Such as--
1. God’s manner of dealing with the race of mankind, especially in suffering it to be in a state so full of sin and confusion, of imperfection and misery.
2. The providence of God, as exercised over His Church, is beyond our deciphering. Why is the Church so small; and why has it been so overrun with errors and corruptions?
3. The providence of God in weighing out the fates of kingdoms, nations, and families. Baffled as we are in our attempts to solve a thousand perplexing difficulties which present themselves to our minds, we should inquire with modesty, judge with caution, and always remember that God is not bound to give us any account of His matters.
4. The providence of God in relation to particular persons will be forever inexplicable. Some reasons why the ways of providence are inscrutable may be given. We have not a thorough insight into the nature of man. God governs man according to the nature He has given. The ends of providence are unknown to us, or known very imperfectly; therefore they appear to us so perplexed and intricate.
5. Only a small part of providence comes under our notice and observation. How then can we know the beauty of the whole? The subject teaches the greatest resignation both of mind and heart. (H. Groves.)
Difficulties concerning God’s providence
Zophar reproved Job as if he had replied against God in order to justify himself. The argument upon which Zophar proceeds is this, That after all our inquiries concerning the nature or attributes of God, and the reasons of His conduct, we are still to seek, and shall never be able perfectly to comprehend or account for them. But we may upon a modest and pious search have a true notion of God’s attributes, and justify His providential dispensation. Difficulties--
I. In relation to the Divine attributes. By our strongest efforts we cannot know what the essential properties are of a Being infinitely perfect. By the attributes of God, we are to understand the several apprehensions we have of Him according to the different lights wherein our minds are capable of beholding Him, or the different subjects upon which He is pleased to operate.
1. With respect to God’s power. That power is a perfection will not be disputed. How shall we form to ourselves any perfect idea of infinite power? Especially if we consider Omnipotence as operating on mere privation, and raising almost an infinite variety of beings out of nothing. And if creation implies only the disposing of existing things into a beautiful and useful order, this equally gives us a sublime idea of power.
2. With respect to God’s eternity. Who can distinctly apprehend how one single and permanent act of duration should extend to all periods of time, without succession of time? But how the eternity of God should be one single and permanent act of duration, present to all past as well as future time, is a difficulty sufficient to turn the edge of the finest wit, and the force of the strongest head.
3. With respect to the immensity of God. That a single individual substance, without extension or parts, should spread itself into and over all parts; that it should fill all places, and be circumscribed to no place, and yet be intimately present in every place; are truths discoverable by reason and confirmed by revelation. To say that God is present only by His knowledge does not solve the difficulty of conceiving His ubiquity. Where God is present in any attribute, He is essentially present.
4. With respect to the omniscience of God. God does not only foreknow what He has effectually decreed shall come to pass, but what is of a casual and contingent nature, and depends on the good or ill use man will make of his liberty. So that we must suppose in God a certain and determinate knowledge of events, which yet are of arbitrary and uncertain determination in their causes. The best answer is, that God is present to all time, and to all the events which happen in time. Futurity in respect to Him is only a term we are forced to make use of, from the defects of our finite capacity. The difficulty, however, of His predictions remains. We have more clear and distinct ideas of the moral perfections of His nature, than of His incommunicable properties.
II. In relation to the Divine providence.
1. How far is God’s wisdom affected or impeached by the sufferings of good men? One of the principal designs of God is to promote the interests of religion. The sufferings of good men appear to obstruct such a design, as they seem to lessen the force of those arguments which we draw from the temporal rewards of religion; and as circumstances of distress are commonly supposed to sour and embitter the spirits of men. The promises made to the Jews rap all along upon temporal blessings and enjoyments. But the principal motives to our Christian obedience are taken from the happiness and rewards of a life after this. Religion does, however, entitle men to the temporal advantages of life, but the Christian promises relate principally to the inward peace and tranquillity of mind which naturally flow from a religious conduct; or to the inward consolations wherewith God is sometimes pleased more eminently to reward piety in this life. The necessary supports of life are assured. To lay too great a stress on the temporal rewards of religion seems of ill consequence to religion on two accounts. As it tends to confirm people in the opinion that the happiness of human life consists in the abundance of things that a man possesses. And men are hereby tempted to suspect the truth of religion itself, or to make false and uncharitable judgments on persons truly religious. Such judgments the friends made of suffering Job.
2. Prejudices against the goodness of God. The notion we have of goodness is, that it disposes to good and beneficent actions. But pain and sickness, etc., are things naturally evil. Such things seem inconsistent with the nature of God. But God may have special ends in view in afflicting, and He may be treating men as a parent treats his child.
3. Prejudices concerning the justice of God. But the best of men are conscious to themselves of many sins and defects which might justly have provoked God to inflict what they suffer upon them. And this life is not properly a state of rewards and punishments, but of trial and discipline. So the afflictions of good men are parts of the training work of Divine goodness and mercy. Seek then to have the best and largest thoughts of the Divine perfections you possibly can. Frequently reflect on the moral perfections of the Divine nature. Since we cannot by searching find out the Almighty to perfection, nor even discover all the particular reasons of His providence in this world, let us labour for eternity. There our minds will not only be united to God in perfect vision, but our hearts in perfect love. (R. Fiddes.)
God searchable and yet unsearchable
Job sometimes spake a language difficult to be interpreted by his friends, and easy to be mistaken by his enemies. The men who came to comfort him made no allowance for the anguish that his flesh suffered, and hence they took undue advantage of every self-justifying word that fell from his lips, to humble him with reproaches, and to declare him guilty of some heinous sins in the sight of God, of which the world knew nothing. These so-called friends mistook chastening for punishment. There is something singularly ungenerous in the way that Zophar delivers his thought here. He makes assertions without proofs, and states fallacies, which he calls truths. His heart was overflowing with rancour. As if he would strip this holy man of all the brightness of hope, he proposes two questions to him which, although to a certain extent true in themselves, were, in Job’s ease, most unsympathising and comfortless.
I. All the natural searching in the world cannot find out God. Man’s reason is not equal to the work of apprehending the spiritual. We are compelled to rest conjecturally upon visible impressions; we can go no further. Supposing we are intelligent enough to set every faculty to this searching work, the result would be the same. The world by wisdom never yet knew God; common earthly intelligences move in every ether direction than towards heaven. Philosophy deals with things on the earth, under the earth, and above the earth; but not one tittle of that which relates to God forms any part of it. The high-class moralists of the most civilised heathen states have no standing at all in their religious creeds. In them you perceive at once the utmost length that an unenlightened understanding can go.
II. There is a searching which can find out God, yet not unto perfection. “Search the Scriptures.” For thousands of years there was a dispensation in which terror prevailed over hope, and a hard bondage over spiritual liberty. It was deeply covered with a veil which hid the wonderful workings of God, as a pardoning and a reconciled Father in Christ Jesus. But when the mind has become acquainted with Scripture facts, what is its real gain? It knows more, but does it ascend higher? By such searching no man profitably finds out God. Notwithstanding all that the best searching achieves, in the way of experimental knowledge, not the holiest saint that ever searched the most, is able to find out the Almighty in His perfection.
III. In what manner are we to glorify God in the discovery of His redemptive character? Our desires must be longing and panting after fuller flowings in of His love. It is in the heart that we are’ the most sensible of the tender relationship which He bears to us. (F. G. Crossman.)
The unsearchableness of God
It is scarcely a paradox to say that God is at once the most known Being in the whole universe, and yet the most unknown. Our subject is the inevitable limits which are placed to the human intelligence; not only in relation to all Divine subjects, but extending, more or less, to every department of human inquiry. The claim to unlimited knowledge is never put forth by the true philosopher.
1. We find evidence of the unsearchableness of God in His own Being and perfections. Hence all the humiliating failures of the ancients in their endeavours to find out God. In the economy of nature and providence. In those providential aspects which more immediately concern our own happiness.
Practical lessons.
1. We should be prepared for some corresponding difficulties in the written word.
2. We should show great diffidence and caution in interpreting the disclosures which God has been pleased to make of Himself, whether in nature or revelation.
3. We should cherish a feeling of thankfulness for the knowledge we already possess. (D. Moore, M. A.)
The incomprehensible character of God
I. Of what we cannot find out. These are things both in providence, nature, and grace. What wonder that there is a mystery in the Trinity, that the mode of the Deity’s existence is too high for earthly thought? The inability which we may feel to understand the reason of a fact, does not in the slightest degree interfere with the fact being credible. A great moral lesson is taught us. The propensity of man is to self-exaltation. He overvalues his own righteousness, his own wisdom, his own power. There is both a wisdom and an utility in the fact that we cannot by searching find out the Almighty to perfection. There are truths which, as facts, we must receive, though the reasons of them we may be inadequate to apprehend. Still we must remember,, that nothing like a blind unreflecting credulity is imposed upon us.
II. What we may reach to. Though we cannot in the abstract comprehend how the three in their essence are but One, yet what Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are to us we may know, together with the unity of their will and purpose, so as to exhibit to us most clearly our consolation and salvation.
1. The Father is displayed in this unapproachable Godhead, the Former and Maintainer of all created things.
2. Whereas the Father in shewing mercy must not obliterate justice, it is in His Son, the eternal wisdom of God, that these two, apparently so opposite, are brought into union.
3. Though we cannot comprehend how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet the necessity of the new birth is plain enough; and the might of the Spirit to effect it is sufficiently described. Thus, while we cannot find out the Almighty to perfection, we have enough of His dealings exhibited to guide our conduct. And remember that it is necessary to search into truth, not speculatively, but experimentally and practically. (John Ayre, M. A.)
The soul’s way to God
We hope for the reconciliation of science and faith. At present the struggle continues in undiminished intensity. A strict philosophical justification of faith is hard to find, and the intellect of man is always failing in the attempt to show the reasonableness of religious emotion. But whether religion can be logically justified or not, it lives. The questioning and the believing instinct, the faculty of criticism, and the faculty of faith, are equally ineradicable, and yet, apparently, essentially irreconciliable. Are we driven to the sad alternative of believing without any justification of reason, or of suffering reason to lead us into the grey twilight of unbelief? Both these tendencies of human thought and feeling are represented in the Old Testament. The moral difficulty of the universe is that which weighed upon the Jew. There were those who broke their minds against problems of providence, and could not comprehend how the good should be afflicted, and the bad be suffered to erect himself in pride of place, and one fate to befall all the children of men. Among the Greeks the speculative instinct was strong, and the religious instinct feeble, and there we find theories of the universe in plenty, physical and theological, theistic, pantheistic, atheistic. Something is to be learned from the constant inability of philosophy to arrive at a consistent and satisfactory theory of the universe. The long outcome of philosophical speculation is not simply the rejection of the religious theory of the universe, it is the rejection of all theories upon a subject which is too vast and too complicated for human thought. When the materialistic philosophy of our day bids us confine ourselves to phenomena, it does not deny the existence of that which it proclaims itself unable to comprehend. There is a point where physics and metaphysics touch, and when that is reached, men are involved in mysteries not less blinding than those of religion itself. The nature of God is not the only unintelligible thing in the world. If we are told that through physical science is no path to God, it is of the greatest importance to show that physical science, pressed with her own ultimate problems, cannot help admissions which make room for, and even point to, the thought of Him. If philosophy shrinks from the affirmations of theism, and will own no more than a possibility, what can be more necessary than to point out that the philosophic method is not the one by which God can be surely approached? We have been accustomed to speak of God as the Eternal, the Omnipresent, the Omnipotent, the Absolute, the Infinite. These are wide words, and, taken at their widest essentially unintelligible to us, for the very reason that their opposites accurately describe the limitations of our own nature. Still, we put into them as much meaning as we can, and make of them the most that the extent of our knowledge and the force of our imagination will permit. (C. Beard, B. A.)
The incomprehensibility of God
The nature of God is the foundation of all true religion, and the will of God is the rule of all acceptable worship. Therefore the knowledge of God is of the greatest importance. To know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is eternal life. The mysteriousness of the Divine nature and government is no reason why we should neglect what may be known concerning Him. Give one the spirit of adoption and self-renunciation, and he cannot be frightened from the presence of his Maker either by the lustre or the darkness round about His throne. The doctrine of this text is, that there is in the nature and ways of God much that is incomprehensible to us.
1. The adorable first person of the Trinity, the Father, is and must ever be beyond the grasp of our senses and faculties. It is generally agreed that the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is, and ever will be, beyond the direct and immediate notice of all creatures. He is far beyond the grasp of both our bodily and mental faculties. The brightest manifestation of the Godhead is in the incarnation of the Son of God. We may behold His glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, but we can go no further. This manifestation is for all practical purposes sufficient. But even in Christ divinity shone forth under great obscuration. Whatever eludes all our senses and faculties is to us necessarily clad with mysteriousness. Whatever is concealed from every perceptive power excludes the possibility of original knowledge. In such a case learning without instruction is impossible.
2. The incomprehensibility of God’s nature and ways is often asserted in His Word. Nowhere is the incomprehensibility of God spoken of in Scripture as cause of sorrow to the pious. Our inability to find out the Almighty to perfection is not merely moral, but natural. The same would have been true if man had not sinned.
3. So very wonderful are the perfections of God, compared with the attributes of the most exalted creature, that His nature and ways must always be mysterious, just in proportion to our knowledge of their extent. How should man, as compared with God, have knowledge either extensive or absolute? God’s plans are founded on the most perfect knowledge of all things. Man’s information is very imperfect both in scope and degree. The moral character of God presents greater wonders than His natural attributes. His moral character--holiness, justice, goodness, truth, faithfulness--is presented in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
4. God has shown Himself to be incomprehensible in His works of creation. Out of nothing God made all things, our bodies and our souls, all we are, all we see, all that is within us, above us, beneath us, around us. Most of our knowledge of God is negative. Our positive knowledge of Him is very limited. There will ever be topless heights of Divine knowledge, to which we shall have to look up with inquiring awe.
5. In God’s government and providence are several things which must ever make them incomprehensible to us. How noiseless are most of His doings. But when He chooses He can make our ears to tingle. God hides His works and ways from man by commonly removing results far from human view. God’s ways respecting means are very remarkable. He, apparently, often works without means. Perceiving no causes in operation, we expect no effects. God also employs such instruments as greatly confound us. We often tremble to see God pursuing a course which, to our short sight, seems quite contrary to the end to be gained.
Lessons--
1. The Christian lives and walks by faith, not by sight.
2. As the object of God in all His dealings with His people is His own glory and their eternal good, so they ought heartily to concur in these ends, and labour to promote them. God’s glory is more important than the lives of all His creatures.
3. Let us put a watch upon our hearts and lips, lest we should think or say more about God’s nature and ways than befits our ignorance and our selfishness.
4. Note how excellent are Divine things. “Divinity is the haven and Sabbath of all man’s contemplations.” Every honest effort to spread the knowledge of God is praiseworthy. (W. S. Plumer, D. D.)
Man can never apprehend first causes
All our knowledge is limited, and we can never apprehend the first causes of any phenomena. The force of crystallisation, the force of gravitation and chemical affinity remain in themselves just as incomprehensible as adaptation and inheritance or will and consciousness (Haeckel, History of Creation.)
Man’s imperfect knowledge of God
If I never saw that creature which contains not something unsearchable; nor the worm so small, but that it affordeth questions to puzzle the greatest philosopher, no wonder, then, if mine eyes fail when I would look at God, my tongue fail me in speaking of Him, and my heart in conceiving. As long as the Athenian inscription doth as well suit with my sacrifices, “To the unknown God,” and while I cannot contain the smallest rivulet, it is little I can contain of this immense ocean. We shall never be capable of clearly knowing, till we are capable of fully enjoying; nay, nor till we do actually enjoy Him. What strange conceivings hath a man, born blind, of the sun and its light, or a man born deaf of the nature of sounds and music; so do we yet want that sense by which God must be clearly known. I stand and look upon a heap of ants, and see them all, with one view, very busy to little purpose. They know not me, my being, nature, or thoughts, though I am their fellow creature, how little, then, must we know of the great Creator, though He with one view continually beholds us all. Yet a knowledge we have, though imperfect, and such as must be done away. A glimpse the saints behold, though but in a glass, which makes us capable of some poor, general, dark apprehensions of what we shall behold in glory. (R. Baxter.)
Nature’s testimony of God insufficient
All nature is incapable of discovering God in a full manner as He may be known. Nature, like Zaccheus, is of too low a stature to see God in the length and breadth, height and depth of His perfections. The key of man’s reason answers not to all the wards in the lock of those mysteries. The world at best is but a shadow of God, and therefore cannot discover Him in His magnificent and royal virtues, no more than a shadow can discover the outward beauty, the excellent mien, and the inward endowments of the person whose shadow it is.