Preaching Daily - August 29

Today's Reading...

Do you think you can explain the mystery of God? Do you think you can diagram God Almighty? God is far higher than you can imagine, far deeper than you can comprehend, Stretching farther than earth’s horizons, far wider than the endless ocean. Job 11:7-8

Today's Devotional Insight...

The Inexhaustible Masterpiece

Robert Dawson

They say that students and lovers of art will spend weeks sitting before a single masterpiece by one of the great artists.  Some repeat this process year after year. To fully enjoy such a masterful work of art they deem it necessary to immerse themselves in a painting for prolonged periods of time. Austin Phelps, in The Still Hour, recounts a conversation he had with an admirer of one of Raphael’s great works of art.  This man said he spent years studying that painting and is able to “discover some new beauty and a new joy.”

To me, an untrained and uncultured barbarian, it seems impossible that a person, even an expert or enthusiast, could spend weeks and weeks pouring over a piece of art and continue discovering something new, a “new beauty or joy.”  To invest that kind of time, attention and appreciative scrutiny to something I believe myself to be so familiar with and find some never seen nuance, a part of the painting, a certain stroke of the brush, a use of color or other fine detail is almost unthinkable.

If there is that much beauty and intricate detail in a painting, a creation of man, how much truer of God’s creation, one so vast we have yet to discover its full splendor much less study and observe it.  That begs the question.  If creation is so expansive and magnificent, what does that say about the one who created it?  Our feelings of familiarity can easily become blinders that shield our eyes and serve as anesthetic to dull our mind and cause us to feel flush with a malaise of laziness that refuses to look beyond what we have always seen.  Yes, God does not change.  The picture is set.  He is and always will be who He has always been. He is immutable.  There is comfort in that but as we approach this never-changing God there is a word of caution as well.

This God who does not change is also transcendent. He is much bigger than we could ever imagine.  Job 11.7-8 says, “Do you think you can explain the mystery of God? Do you think you can diagram God Almighty? God is far higher than you can imagine, far deeper than you can comprehend, Stretching farther than earth’s horizons, far wider than the endless ocean.”  There is a depth to the nature of God that we have yet to see and enjoy.  You can set out to swim in the ocean that is God and find that after a life-long pursuit of knowing Him and His ways that your toe has only touched the first ripples of God’s majesty.  Ten-thousand years into eternity we will have only waded beyond the shoreline and have yet to dive into the immensity of His glory.

(To read the full article, click here.)

Today’s Pastoral Resource...

Preaching Employers

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