The Incomprehensible God

 Have you ever tried to comprehend God?  Have you ever tried thinking about how big or awesome or powerful He is?  There is no way to be able to comprehend the vastness of how great God is. 

Let me ask you another question.  Do you remember a teacher ever telling you that there's no such thing as a bad question? There probably isn't; there are just some questions that may be better than others.

In Exodus chapter 3, Moses asks a couple of questions that may help us define the incomprehensible God.  This is the passage where Moses, at the burning bush, is called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

The first question he asks is “who am I?”  What a great question.  Although that question goes unanswered in the passage there is an answer to that question.  Moses was human: limited and finite.  As we consider an infinite unlimited God, we cannot grasp Him nor can we attain to Him.  He is beyond our comprehension. He is absolutely transcendent.  In order for us to have any hope of knowing Him at all, He must stoop to us.  He must reveal himself to us.  He did that through His Son and does that today through creation and His Word the Bible.

The second question is equally intriguing:  “Who are you? “  Now Moses doesn’t say that in so many words.  Neither does he mean any disrespect.   In Egypt in Moses’ time there were hundreds of gods.   He is simply asking; amongst all these gods, “Who then should I tell them sends me?”  Unlike the first question, God answers this one:  “Tell them the great I AM sends you.”  That name, amongst all the other names that God uses for Himself, is probably most descriptive.  It sets him apart from all of His creation and all of the hundreds of gods that Egypt had.

That name tells us that He is self-existent.  He is eternal. No one created Him; He always existed. It is absolutely necessary that God exist. Creation would not change if we did not exist.  It would not change if any of those gods in Egypt did not exist.  However, creation would change if God did not exist.

That name also tells us that He is absolutely independent. His very existence does not depend on our belief in Him.  No one can counsel him, no one can tell him what to do or where to go.  God does not have to work at existing. Conversely we exist because of His will.

That name also tells us that He is unchanging.  We get older, wiser and stronger in some approximation. He does not.  For us, time is a series of changes. Time for Him is nothing; He never changes, there’s no need. He is absolutely and infinitely perfect in every way.

He is also incomparable to anything.  We tend to compare ourselves to everything and everyone around us.   When He is compared to anything such as King of kings and Lord of lords, He is stooping.

When we begin to try to understand and comprehend God it should cause us to become increasingly aware of how ignorant we really are.  We are closer to knowing nothing about God than knowing anything about Him.  We may know more about Him today than we did 5 or 10 years ago but we are no closer to the end of knowing who He is than we were those many years ago.  God does want us to get to know him. He has revealed himself to us and has given us a lifetime to get to know Him.  What a great privilege to know the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.