Thursday, July 6, 2026

           The greatness of God is well beyond the human ability to declare, describe or define. He is surpassingly great—infinitely great.  Now words would ever be adequate to describe Him. Indeed, Paul said that God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than all we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).  His power exceeds our highest imaginations. The opening four words of the Bible attest to the greatness of God: “in the beginning God” (Genesis 1:1).  The prophet Isaiah spoke of God’s greatness in a memorable and clever way. He wrote, “Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear (Isaiah 59:1).  Isaiah emphasized the power of God’s strength and the depth of His comprehension.  Simply put, God can do all things and understand all things.  He has never learned anything.  Nothing ever scared or surprised God.  Nothing has ever occurred to God.
            His arm “is not too short to save.”  God can redeem those who are lost in sin.  God can rescue those who are drowning in temptation and testing.  God can save people from prisons of their own making.  God can course correct people who have gone off-road into pride and conceit.  We remember that the Lord Jesus calmed storms, healed the sick and gave sight to those who were blind.  His arm was not too short.  God’s power and sovereignty are not limited by anything.  Our expectations of God can often be too small and too inconsequential.  We fight the temptation to reduce God to something closer to what we can understand and maybe even control.  A number of years ago, J.B. Phillips wrote a book by the title Your God Is Too Small. Often today, our vision of God is too frail, too meager and too paltry.  But Scripture corrects those fallacies by pointing us to the Lord God who created everything there is—even placing stars, galaxies and constellations in the sky.  God’s arm is not too short to do anything.  He is able to accomplish anything that He chooses to do.
            God’s ear is not “too dull to hear.”  He hears His people.  He receives our heartfelt praise.  In Genesis, God heard the cries of a struggling mother named Hagar.  He heard the cries of a childless Hannah.  He heard the request of King Solomon who asked for wisdom to lead God’s people.  Jesus heard the cries of a blind man named Bartimaeus above the sounds of a crowd trying to silence him.  He felt the touch of a woman suffering from a bleeding problem.  He hears.  He knows.  Jesus told us in Matthew 6 not to worry—and in moments of worry or anxiousness to consider the birds of the air and the way the Father provides for them.  How much more does He hear and provide for us today! 
            Yet, Isaiah shows us what separates us from the God whose arm is not too short and whose ear is not too dull.  In the next verse, Isaiah 59:2, the prophet wrote, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”  Sin does separate us from Him.  Our defiance and disobedience do divide us from Him.  Isaiah 59:10 shows us the power of sin over us, “Like the blind we grope along the wall, feeling our way like people without eyes.
At midday we stumble as if it were twilight; among the strong, we are like the dead.”  Our greatest need for the arm of God and the ear of God is for our forgiveness from sin and our salvation to a new life in and with Christ.  We can often grow indifferent toward sin—even calloused and blinded to it.  We can find ourselves excusing it, minimizing it or even trying to explain it away in a convincing fashion.  
            But God calls us to come to Him in humility, contrition and sorrow—recognizing what we have done and how He alone can set us free from this scourge and stain.  There is freedom to be found in dealing honestly and confessionally with God.  Sin cost Jesus His life.  It hangs over us like a cloud that we cannot possibly move.  No need to make light of sin or look for others to blame.  Isaiah offers some hope for those stumbling under the burden of sin, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations” (Isaih 65:2).  God first held out His hands to a wayward Israel.  And now God holds out His hands to wayward men and women in 2026—hands that are not too short to save and ears that are not too dull to hear.  Have a good Monday!