To Encourage You

Ephesians 2:7 “. . . immeasurable. . .”

Everything about our God is immeasurable.  It’s something that is impossible for our finite minds to grasp, yet God would have us to meditate on this truth, for He’s filled His Word with it.  God’s Word itself is immeasurable.  It’s an infinite book. There’s none other like it on the face of the earth. The psalmist put it this way in Psalm 119:96: “I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.”  It means it stretches on in all directions – exceedingly so.  

The Bible tells us about the eternal life that is in God.  In Hebrews 7:3 we are told that Jesus is like the priest Melchizedek who showed up seemingly out of nowhere to bless the patriarch Abraham, “having neither beginning of days nor end of life.”  In John 1:1 we are told that in the beginning Jesus already was.  Can you conceive of anything that always was, who has existed from eternity past and will exist into eternity in the future? I didn’t think so!  

The knowledge of God is immeasurable. 1 John 3:20 simply puts it this way: “He knows everything.”  We are told that he knows how many hairs are on our heads, and that he knows every sparrow that falls.  These are simply different ways of telling us that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that God doesn’t perfectly know.  

God’s presence is immeasurable, which means He is always everywhere.  As King Solomon prayed to dedicate the temple he had built to represent God’s dwelling place on earth, he said this: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!” And as David considered this same truth, he said the following in Psalm 139: “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”  

God’s power is immeasurable.  I love how the King James version of the Bible expresses this in Ephesians 3:20 where it says that God “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Think of this. He is able to do whatever we might ask or think, i.e., anything that our minds can conceive.  But more than that, He is able to do ABOVE all we ask or think.  Not only that, but He is able to do ABUNDANTLY above all we ask or think.  But that’s not enough to get to the end of it all, for He is able to do EXCEEDING abundantly above all that we ask or think.  What He is able to do is immeasurable!

But then think of God’s attributes, such as His infinite love.  The last verse of the wonderful Hymn, “The Love of God,” attempts to explain it this way: “Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill, and everyone a scribe by trade; to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.” What magnificent words to describe the magnificent love of God!  

In contrast to all this, man is so finite.  James 4:14 put it this way: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”  And yet, for those who would place their faith in God, God’s immeasurable riches are poured out upon them.  It is those who receive the eternal life of God. It is those that can know “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). It is to those who have placed their faith in Him, that God pours out His “peace which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).  And when we think that there are some temptations that are just too great for us to resist, we have been told that “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).  Our infinite, immeasurable God has told His finite, yet immeasurably loved children, that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).”  

So, if you don’t know this immeasurable God, believe me – rather, believe HIM, you do not know what you are missing.  Yet He invites you to know Him.  As Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, one who was very aware of the limits of human love and whose sinful life had left her empty, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  And so, Jesus urges us, just as He urged her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”  

Do you want this water? Are you “thirsty” as you think about all the limitations of your life?  Then come to the infinite, immeasurable God of all Creation and drink the living water that He, and only He, can give you. You see, this immeasurable God wants to save us from the dead end which defines a life without Him, “so that in the coming ages he might show the IMMEASURABLE riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (which is the rest of Ephesians 2:7, the verse which is referenced above). And if you don’t think that this is all possible for you, then you are just like those at Capernaum, which was Jesus’ hometown.  You see, it is at this one place that we are told that Jesus’ power SEEMED very limited, but it was limited for one reason, and one reason only.  And that reason was an amazing thing to even the infinite Son of God, for He “marveled because of their unbelief” (Mark 6:6).