- A familiar passage, these verses begin with a declaration of how awesome God is. The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. Just thinking about God being eternal is mind boggling in itself, and when you add the fact that He is infinitely powerful (i.e., the Creator), it's even more humbling that He loves us. I see five descriptions of God in these verses.
- An everlasting God
- God has no beginning. He has no end. He is "I AM," not "I-Used-To-Not-Be-But-Now-I-Am." He has always been "I AM" and He always will be. It's just so confusing to us because we are human and we cannot think outside the limitations of time, and yet God Himself ordained and made time, setting everything into motion at the beginning.
- A Creator God
- Not only did He create time and establish physical rules for the universe (such as gravity, speed of light, etc.), but He made all the heavenly beauties, from far off stars to our own, tiny planet called Earth. On top of that, He made trees, grass, mountains, animals, and everything else we have on earth, and they're all witness to His glory. And then for the apex of His design, he crafted the incredibly complex human body, starting with Adam, and making Him in the image of God. He designed our veins, our brains, our fingers and toes, our hair, our everything, all made so we could image Him, worship Him, and give Him glory. As Romans 11:36 says, "from Him and through Him and to Him are all things." God is the Creator.
- An never-tiring God
- God does not faint or grow weary. He's not a finite God, limited by work and sore muscles. No, He's an infinite God, ever powerful. That means that He won't suddenly grow too tired to care for us. He won't cease acting because He's exhausted. God is as powerful today as He was when He began, and He'll always be like this.
- An unfathomable God
- Personally, I love it that God is unfathomable. Verses like Isaiah 55:8 and Job Chapters 40 & 41 are supremely satisfying to me. Our humanity wants to know things, and understand things, but God is so far above us that we cannot possibly hope to truly understand Him. Thankfully He's given us His Word and the Spirit to help us. But for me, I'm glad God's understanding is unsearchable, knowing that He's not like Us, prone to wander and fail. I like the New Living Translation here: "No one can measure the depths of his understanding." His thoughts are essentially bottomless and so complex that to think we understand them is to cheapen God.
- A giving God
- And all of this sums up to an even greater mystery. This everlasting, never-tiring, unfathomable, creator God loves us so much that He gave us His Son so we could be reunited with Him in heaven and live eternally worshiping Him. This is stunning love. And even more (as if this wasn't enough), God gives us so many other blessings. Like verse 29 here, He gives power to the faint and strength to the weak, so that when we're weak, we can trust that He'll be our strength. And just in a practical sense, the fact that I'm typing this on a computer attests to how much God blesses. It means that I have functioning fingers, eyes, and thoughts; I have electricity and resources to provide the system to work; I have shelter to sit and do this; I have food available, else I wouldn't waste time here but instead find food and water; and there are so many other blessings just from this one thing. Yes, God loves to give and bless us. Just look around.
- I can't help but think of Chris Tomlin's "Everlasting God"* when I read this passage. There are many songs based on these verses, as well as the following two (which are next week's memory verses), but I really dig the Tomlin song.
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*"Everlasting God" was written by Brenton Brown, but it's been covered by many artists, including Chris Tomlin, Lincoln Brewster, and others.
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