Unfortunately, the modern church has failed to properly study or revere the majesty of God. Instead we have tended to imagine a god made in our image. The late biblical scholar Arthur W. Pink once wrote, “The ‘god’ of this twentieth century no more resembles the Supreme Sovereign of Holy Writ than does the dim flickering of a candle in the glory of the mid-day sun.”
However, if we truly seek to develop a biblical worldview, there is no greater task than gaining a true understanding and reverence for the Lord God Almighty, whom we worship. He is our ultimate prize!
Attempting to Comprehend the Incomprehensible
Take a moment and quickly consider the reasons why you are most excited about heaven. What reasons were first to come into your mind? Are you most excited about the glorious bliss? Uninterrupted joy? Freedom from sin? A total absence of fear? Being reunited with lost loved ones? Perfected health? A life free of pain? No more death? No tears? No mourning? No sadness? Utter beauty? Golden streets? Perfected fellowship within the church?
These blessings reserved for us in heaven are absolutely priceless. Yet all these blessings pale in comparison to our ultimate prize. The greatest prize of heaven is not a gift from God, but God himself! In heaven, our most precious and satisfying inheritance will be an everlasting and intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. All of the other collateral blessings of heaven are merely evidences of His immeasurable love, which will be poured out upon us in an everlasting relationship of mutual adoration.
Why are you interested in Jesus? In the Gospels, we see the heartbreaking reality that many of the Jews were only interested in Jesus, because of what Jesus could do for them. The crowds only wanted bread, water, healing, wisdom, comfort, and glory, but they refused to embrace the Bread of Life, the living water, the great Physician, the Comforter, and the King of Glory. Take a spiritual inventory, and ask yourself: "In my walk with the Lord, am I more interested in the Giver or his gifts?"
Unfortunately, we often fail to understand the stunning love of Jesus, because we forget that Jesus is far more than a man. He is fully God! Our God took on flesh to demonstrate His faithfulness and love to a bride who refused to return His affections. When we consider Jesus as only a man, it is far easier for us to understand his gospel pursuit. But if we are to truly treasure the gospel, we need to ask the same question asked by David: “Who is this king of glory?”
If someone asked you to describe the sun, how would you do so? Of course, you could say that the sun is the center of our solar system. Its gravitational pull holds the planets and moons in their orbits. Its circumference measures roughly 2.7 million miles. The sun has a mass of 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons — making it 330,000 times greater than the mass of earth. It is a massive ball of furiously burning plasma and gases.
Though the earth is ninety-three million miles away, the sun’s rays remain our chief source of light, heat, and energy. Without it, all life on earth would cease to exist. While the sun is good for us, we cannot get too close. Its surface temperature reaches upwards of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which pales in comparison to its core temperature of over 27 milliondegrees!
Scientists have estimated that the sun produces enough energy in one second to power the modern world’s energy needs for 500,000 years. Consider the force of the devastating atomic bomb explosion over Hiroshima during World War II. In a split second, the sun’s energy production would equate to 67 trillion atomic bomb explosions. No matter how precisely scientists may define the sun’s attributes, our imaginations cannot possibly grasp its magnitude and intensity. We cannot even gaze at the sun with the naked eye, because its brilliance would leave us blinded. And we could certainly never approach or touch the sun, or we would be consumed by its ferocious heat. The sun is simply awesome!
Ponder this… If the glorious nature of our sun leaves man dumbfounded, then just imagine the glory of the One who created our sun merely by the power of His Word. Despite its incredible power, our sun is merely an average star (i.e., a C-student) in the Milky Way galaxy, which holds at least 200 billion other stars. NASA scientists also estimate that there are 100 billion additional galaxies scattered throughout our massive universe — each of which likely holds more than one-hundred billion stars. The truth of the stars communicates two things: (1) man is inconceivably weak and small, and (2) our God is unfathomably powerful and huge.
The scope of our universe — with its incomprehensible stars and its expansive galaxies — pales in comparison to the infinite nature of our God. The size of God is mind-boggling! The God who created all things out of nothing (i.e., ex nihilo) cannot be confined by heaven and earth. In the words of Saint Augustine, “He fills and overflows them.” The prophet Isaiah tells us that our God has marked off the boundaries of the universe with only the breadth of His hand (Isa 40:12).
Just how big is our universe? Andromeda, which is the closest of 100 billion galaxies, is estimated to be 200 million light years away. One light year is the distance that light travels in one year — traveling at 186,000 miles per second. On paper this distance would read: 1,173,139,200,000,000,000,000 miles away. This is the closest of billions of galaxies — all measured in the span of God’s hand! The omnipresent God of Scripture is bigger than our minds are capable of understanding. This gives new force to David’s question: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4).
Even more amazing than the inexhaustible size of God is the fact that this God “made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil 2:7). The uncontainable God became a microscopic human embryo in the womb of a virgin — for you! Our God cloaked himself in the frailty of human flesh and walked through the towns of Galilee. The Creator of the stars willingly suffered the Cross to quench the wrath of the Father for your countless acts of rebellion and to clothe you in his own perfect righteousness. He came freely offering himself to broken people, but they only wanted his stuff. They foolishly “worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). And he loved them anyway. This, my friends, is AMAZING grace!
This same God — infinitely more powerful and glorious than the noonday sun — promises to pour His infinite love into your soul for all eternity. Heaven is only heaven, because He is there. In the words of Martin Luther, “I had rather be in hell with Christ, than be in heaven without Him.” Thankfully, we need not make this choice! Embrace Christ, and heaven is thrown in free!
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