The
Priority of God
… because there is nothing else
without Him
Matthew 22:37
“You shall love the Lord with all
your heart”
When I entered
junior college, the wheel had just been invented, or so it seems that long time
ago. I was unprepared for the antagonism I was to receive with regard to my
faith. I took a class in geology. On the first day, we were given a lecture on
the age of the Earth and a sub-lecture on the foolishness of the Bible. We were
informed that only fools believed in a God. We were asked on that first day to
define God. When a well-meaning student innocently attempted to respond to the
professor’s probing, he systematically shot down every response until no one
else was willing to respond. Little did I know then how foolish and impossible
his question was.
People
cannot be defined … they are too complex. People can only be described; every
description falls short. If I identify
someone as “John,” I separate him from all people on this planet who are not
called John. If I add the description “tall,” I separate him from all of the
non-tall Johns on this planet. If I add
“blonde hair,” I narrow the field even further. At some point, I will give you
enough of a description for you to identify who it is that I am talking about;
never, however, will I be able to define “John.” No matter how many
descriptions I use, he will remain more than I have described. Every
description is laced with comparatives and subjective perceptions and, thus,
not always completely accurate.
For example,
“tall” is a relative term and not an absolute. If you are 6’5”, a person would
have to be very tall to be considered tall. If you are 5’2”, everybody is tall.
The terms, dark brown, black and blacker, remind us that even colors can avoid
being absolute. I am tempted to tell you
that my first college professor in junior college was a “jerk”; but that would
be an opinion. It would also be unfair, because he was much more than a jerk,
and I refuse to write any more about him. If it is this challenging to describe
another finite creature, you now may understand the difficulty of our task when
speaking about the Infinite Creator and Sustainer of the universe. With the
entire Bible gathered together, we have less than a pinhead of adequate
information.
Today, I shall
open a few windows of revelation from God’s Word so that we can look into the
wonder of Who our God truly is. I have diligently spent the last half of a
century trying to understand the wonderful person that I now call my wife. She
still is a wonderful and delightful mystery to me. The process of knowing her
is the highest of all experiences next to knowing God.
The one fact that
the Scriptures tell us about God is that He is beyond the understanding of this
planet’s wisest men. The Bible invites us to know Him; but the greater
invitation within Scripture is to love Him. That is one of the things we do
when we study His Word with a hungry heart.
The Priority of God
…
because there is nothing else without Him
Matthew
22:37
“You
shall love the Lord with all your heart”
Incomprehensibility
Psalm
139:3
Triune
Hebrews
9:14
Immutability
Malachi
3:6
Justice
Galatians
6:7
Wisdom
Romans
11:34
Power
Luke
13:7
Holiness
I
Peter 1:16
Wrath
Romans
1:18
Love
Jeremiah
31:3
Grace
Ephesians
2:8