Well, good morning. It's good to be with you. I'm really glad to be back again. I've been hiding in the back on a big cushy seat back there and listening to last night and then again this morning. I am glad to be with you to speak about the topic that I'm gonna be speaking about, which is specifically John's understanding of the infinite fullness of God, the boundlessness of God, how we see that throughout scripture, the doctrine of God's infinity and how we see that then in the person of Christ and by virtue of a Christian's union with Christ, how we experienced that.

How does that change our lives? Now that's a lot to cover, and lunch is next. I liked it last year when there was nothing after me. I just ignored this, this thing that counts down and then it goes red and starts, you know, the red letters. So I just ignored it, but I can't do that today.

So while that sounds like a great deal, we're only going to be able to kind of hit the high spots. But I do want to say this. I'm glad to be here because I think that knowing God is the only thing in Christianity that makes it worth it. There are so many nice things in Christianity. There's community and there are people that will love you when other people won't.

There are so many good things, but apart from him, I'd have nothing to do with it. And I am ashamed at how long he has been kind to me and how little I know him. And I remember days as a young believer reading Tozer and thinking that if I worked really hard, you know, by the time, you know, I was a couple of years old as a Christian I would probably have figured everything out there was to figure out about God So I am happy to be here to talk to you about the infinite God But I am more happy to be here to ask God to help me to live on the things that we're about to say, to look at. John Newton, the hymnist and pastor in the 18th century, early 19th century, had a statement that I have written on a piece of paper and stuck in front of my study at the church. Newton's prayer as a pastor was this, that God would cause him to preach as he ought and to live as he preached.

So let's ask the Lord to help us. Our Father, we turn our hearts toward you. And because of the glorious work of your son, that wonderful expression of an eternal plan of mercy, we are bold To ask that having given us all this Why would you stop there? We pray that you would stoop down as a father and take us by the hand and show us what we cannot comprehend with our minds but satisfies our hearts your infinite fullness and Then God show us how to live we ask it in Christ's name But God we also ask it for his name where we live. Amen.

Fifty years after the ascension of Christ, half a century since John has seen Christ in the flesh. John, the disciple, who we would, I think, all say probably had the most intimate relationship with Jesus, thinks by the guiding of the Holy Spirit, takes up his pen and gives us the fourth and final portrait of Christ, the Gospel of John. And obviously John's Gospel is different. He expects that you've already studied Matthew Mark and Luke which were written earlier and John's gospel is contemplative It seems as if John just you know is led by the Spirit into the depths of Christ and he takes us into passages that just, there's bewilderment. We're baffled at the things that John reveals and where our hearts are captivated.

50 years of thinking about who this Jesus is, thinking about the things he saw Christ do, thinking about the things Christ claimed, 50 years of seeing the church spread and the gospel conquer hearts throughout the Roman Empire, 50 years of watching Christians cruelly persecuted, watching men and women and young people give up everything for this Christ, 50 years of even seeing the enemy's work within churches, and sadly seeing sin and false teaching betray them. What does John have to say about Christ half a century later, Not contemplating Christ in a library, but on a battlefield. Forgive me, I'm going to have to drink water a few times while I'm talking because of a medication. When John picks up his pen, he writes in chapter one in verse 14, again in verse 16, He writes these things about Christ So if you have your Bible turn to John 1 verse 14 It's a very well-known passage and then verse 16 John describes the word God's glorious expression the clearest unveiling of God that we will ever see, the God-man. In verse 14, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we saw his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." And then in verse 16, he says this, For of his fullness that he just mentioned, we have all received and grace upon grace." So that's John's impression. 50 years later when he thinks about Christ and he says, This eternal son of the triune God was united to humanity. He became flesh a real human fully human and yet he is the Son of God and we saw him and What we saw was glorious What kind of glory John? Well, what comes to mind here is fullness. There was something about this man that possessed the fullness of deity, a fullness also of grace and truth.

And John writes and says, not only has John for 50 years Lived on that fullness But every believer that has read John's words has lived on that same fullness of that fullness We have all received and grace Upon grace now, we'll return to this passage as we talk about the application, but for now I think we need to consider this. Verse 16 possesses enormous potential to transform the daily thoughts and actions of Christ's people, to transform us, to wreck us, to just crush the pride and the self-sufficiency that creeps back in and to bring us to this infinite fountain of all that we long for. But how you benefit from verse 16 will be greatly determined by how you define the little word fullness. Getting the right measures in Christianity can be so difficult. We tend to measure things by what everyone else around us is saying about a thing.

So a Christian is certainly not above measuring the fullness of God in Christ by what the world says about Christ, whether it mocks Him or praises Him after a fashion of an unbeliever. This is an admirable teacher. This is a great example. I don't think that's where you're getting your measurement of Christ, but probably, if we were honest, most of us are getting our measurement of Christ from our church, our Christian culture, or maybe from your own experiences in church or in a Christian home, your own experiences as an individual Christian. But I'm telling you that all of those are ultimately inadequate.

So we go back to the Word and we humble our intellects and we ask God, can you teach us what the word fullness means? Because if we can get the right measures of that, It changes everything. So I want us to look at the infinite fullness of God or the infinity of God as one of his great attributes and then how that affects the life. The infinity of God. Well, there are some things we probably need to hit before we study the attribute.

What is an attribute? Well, it's just one of God's perfections. We're talking about who He is, what He is. It's the essence of God. It's the character, the divine nature.

God has revealed to us in His Word certain things that are essentially true of Him. So we're not just talking about His actions, we're talking about His perfection. But when we think of these, we have to be very careful. These are things that are essentially true of God, and that means that none of the attributes of God are things that exist in Him by effort. That's very different from us.

You might be called a kind person because by the grace of God, you are laboring to be kind and thoughtful. But then if you're not thoughtful and kind, if you forget to be careful in that area, someone may say that you're a very unthoughtful person. When we think of qualities in each other, we tend to think of things that are in our lives by effort, but we are not talking about that. When we talk about any attribute of God, whether it's His infinity or His eternity, His all knowledge, all power, all presence, His purity, His faithfulness, His patience, His wrath, His justice, His zeal, nothing of the character of God is there by effort. So we could say in a very simple human-like way, God doesn't start the day maintaining His infiniteness.

It is what is essentially true of God in the same way that Humanity is essentially true of us. You can be a bad human, you can be a good human, but you woke up today and you were human and it took no effort. Also an attribute is something that though it is something we can investigate and We can appreciate individually the attributes of God These really do not exist individually. They are part of one perfect unity God is not fragmented like we are There is no possibility that love is in conflict with wrath or mercy with justice. I mean, there is in us, but not in God.

But the reason I mention that is that one of the sweetest things that I have found personally in my own quiet times, that in pursuing any study of the attributes of God, when I learn more about one attribute, I thereby... I'm enabled to enlarge and sweeten my understanding of every other attribute. Now, the old writers tended to divide the attributes of God into two categories, the incommunicable and communicable, or in other words, aspects of God that cannot be shared with anything in creation. No angel, no believer has this, only God. And then those aspects of God's perfection that are shared with us, the moral qualities.

So we could name them the greatness of God and the goodness of God. Now, I mean great, not as in really good, you know? I've been trying to eat healthy, so I'm trying to find ways to cheat but still be healthy. So I found keto ice cream, you know? That stuff is chalk.

It's terrible. But I found one company and One flavor after a lot of bad starts that I really I like it Okay, so I would say that tastes good But if you take me to Baskin-Robbins and get my favorite flavor there, I would say that tastes great. That is not the way that we're using the word here. When the Bible speaks of the greatness of God, it's not talking about the really, really, really goodness of God. It is talking about a different category.

It's talking about the immensity of God, the majesty of God, the transcendence of God, the shocking difference in God. So when we talk about the attributes of God's greatness, we think of things like eternity and self-existence and all knowledge, all power, all presence. But when we talk about the goodness of God, we're talking about those moral perfections like purity and holiness and righteousness and benevolence kindness love compassion pity zeal faithfulness patience and wrath. When we study God, let me give you this suggestion. If you go home from this conference and say, I do know the Lord, but I want to know Him better than I know anyone else, my suggestion would be that as you begin to consider the attributes of God that are revealed in scripture, that if I were you, I would start with the attributes of greatness, the bigness, and then move to the attributes of goodness.

Because if we start with greatness, it fills all those attributes of goodness, like love and purity and wrath and justice. It fills them to the right size. It expands them in front of our eyes and they don't stay those small sentimental statements that the world makes when it talks about God. But don't stop there because if you stop there, it could be very terrifying. The attributes of God's goodness then inform our view of His greatness, and that is if God is infinite, that's not necessarily good news unless he is also pure and compassionate and right and straight and just.

So they both benefit each other. All right, let me go ahead now and just mention a few things that the Bible says about God's infinite fullness. When we talk about the infinity of God, we're saying that in His nature, in His character, the qualities of God, His perfections are essentially unlimited, unmeasured, unbounded, incalculable, incomprehensible. Unlimited, unmeasured, unbounded, incalculable, incomprehensible. Everything that the Bible reveals to be true of God's nature is a thing that is beyond limitation, beyond measurement.

In fact, none of God's perfections have ever in the history of humanity, In the history of creation, none of them has ever been limited by anyone outside of God, and none of them has been fully comprehended by anyone outside of God. One of the sweetest attributes of God in my mind is that God is the only one that possesses the knowledge of God. Only God knows the true measure of God. Now God may limit the exercise of his attributes. So When we think of his wrath, he certainly limits the expression of wrath.

He may limit his patience, he may limit his zeal, he may limit the felt awareness of his presence, but in themselves they are without measure, without boundary. When we think of God, we must understand that He is the one being who is infinite. Does the scripture back that up? Well, it does, but it doesn't use the word infinity over and over. It just uses different pictures.

Let me run through a few quickly with you. His rights as king, his sovereign rights are infinite. There is no limit. Every other authority, every created authority on this planet has limitations. There are boundaries to authorities.

That's why when someone goes beyond their boundary, we get upset. I don't want to get into all the talk about our government overstepping. Let's just think of our kids. Do you never hear your kids talking to each other? And one kid, there's always one kid that thinks they're very grown up.

It's usually the girl. And so she says to her little brothers, you need to do that. You stop doing. You know mom and dad say, and then you hear from the other room, you hear the brother say, you're not my boss. You know, if he was a grownup, he would say this, you've overstepped the boundaries of your authority.

Every authority has a boundary. The government has a right to govern us. God has given government that right. Parents govern children. My boss at work has a right to govern my actions, but there are limitations.

My boss governs actions during the workweek, but he doesn't say when you go home, I still command what you do at home. Government may control my outward actions, but can it really control my thoughts? But when we come to God, Being an infinite being, also being sovereign, that means that He has infinite right to rule us. Every aspect of John Snyder is under the rule of God, whether I like it or not. Every moment of every day, every friendship, every dollar, every place I go, I go as a person under someone else's authority.

In Daniel chapter four, Nebuchadnezzar said it this way. Speaking of God, he said, his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. But he does according to his will in the host of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth. And no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?

Remember, this isn't something that God has to work at. He just is infinite and sovereign. And therefore, when God acts, what Nebuchadnezzar said is right, there is nobody who can say, God, wait, wait, wait, what have you done? Let me give you another picture. His Understanding is without limit.

We grow in knowledge. The smartest person we know worked to become smart and will, if they live long enough, diminish in their intelligence. We grow, we work, we learn, we begin to diminish, we forget. God never studies, God never investigates, God never reasons through things to come to a conclusion. When we speak of God that way, we're using very human language, but if we're being very strict, God knows all things infinitely.

That is, He knows all that is or might have been or would be. God knows all things at once. God knows all things effortlessly. He does not work at it. The psalmist says, great, big, immense is our Lord and abundant in strength and his understanding is infinite.

Think of his greatness the bigness of God There is a bigness of in God that is beyond Knowing the Bible calls it Unsearchable Psalm 145 great is the Lord and he's greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable You can't You can't get to the edge of it. His presence is infinite. We know this. God never travels and yet He is everywhere. When Solomon built the temple, 1 Kings tells us that he said this, will God indeed dwell on the earth?

Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens the galaxies that cannot contain you God How much less this temple which I have built? We sing a hymn in the church where I pastor that says this, thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere. God is like a great sphere that has a, Where one old writer said, the center of the sphere is everywhere, there's no edge. God's thoughts toward you cannot be calculated. Psalm 40, Your thoughts, David writes, toward us cannot be recounted.

If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. God's deeds that shock us cannot be numbered. Job says this, he, God, does great things past finding out, yes, wonders without number. Now these are all just samples, but it really becomes very sweet and practical for us when we come to what Paul writes in Colossians. So if you have your Bibles, jump there, Colossians chapter one and then chapter two.

Paul is going to take all that the Jew knows from the old covenant about the infinite God and he's going to pack it into a human body and soul. And then he's going to connect that to the believer. Colossians 1, verse 19, for it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. What a critical passage. It has always been throughout eternity.

That means, if we could say it humanly, there has never been a moment in the life of God the Father where it has not delighted his heart, where it has not been his pleasure to consider the union of all the fullness of deity, the infiniteness of deity with true humanity in the womb of Mary. But it gets sweeter. Look at chapter two, verse nine and 10, we read, in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him, you have been made complete. Now, if you mark in your Bible, there's a couple of things that are very significant in the Greek of this text.

First, bodily form, what's he talking about? Why does he say it there, not in other places? I think the best understanding is this, that when Paul says all the fullness of God dwells in Christ he wants us to be sure that he is not talking about symbolically, because we have seen the fullness of God as God comes down on Mount Sinai and the whole earth Shakes before his presence and the sky is lit up We've seen the fullness of God in the Shekinah glory as God allows his presence to be physically seen in this glorious glow in the Holy of Holies, but that's symbolic. And Paul is not saying that Christ is like that. Paul is saying that Christ is actually Possessing the fullness of God that this is not symbolic but true substantial and That has been the pleasure of God, but then the second thing to notice in the verse and that's hidden with our English translations, is that the word in the New American Standard, fullness, and then the word complete.

In him all the fullness of deity dwells, and at the end of the verse, in him you've been made complete. These are the same Greek word, root words, all right? So different grammar, but same root word. So you could translate them the same. You could say this, in Christ, all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form, really.

And in Christ, because of that, you're made full. Or in Christ, the completeness of our God is there, and because of that, every Christian who is in Christ is complete. What a wonderful, gracious gift that when God goes to display to the world that is full of rebels, Adam's fallen race sees the clearest picture of the infinity of God and the boundlessness of God, it's such a gift that He shows it to us in the person of Jesus Christ, a Redeemer. And in uniting the sinner to Christ by faith, in weaving our lives together with Him by His Spirit, we are made full from that fullness. Now that takes us back to John's statement.

"'The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory. Oh, it was glorious. It was glory of the only begotten from the Father, full, full of grace and truth and of that fullness every believer's received. Let's try to now look at this question. How does John apply that to other believers and how does it affect John?

I haven't said anything about the infinity of God that you probably don't already know. And most of you, older believers and pastors, you could have added so much more, but I want to give our focus here. How do you take a truth that we would acknowledge God is infinite, without limit, cannot be measured. How does that change the way you live this afternoon? How does that turn your life upside down in a way that you look back on years later and you are so grateful?

A.W. Tozer said that when we come to these great truths about God that have become kind of like dusty objects in an old closet in the very back of our mind, so we don't deny them, They've just been left kind of neglected. Tozer said, how do you ever get those truths to shine with the beauty that they used to shine with when you first learned them? And his solution was simple. You go and you pull them out of the closet, you dust them off, you study them again, you go back to the Bible, you read the Bible in a sense as if you had never read this before.

John, tell me about this God-man Jesus of Nazareth. And John tells you, and you begin to research it. So what is the fullness of God and how does that fullness reach a believer? How much can I have? How does it come to me?

And when we live on it, then the beauty of the doctrine returns and it's lively again. What haunts me this morning is not that I fear that you or me, that we don't believe that God is infinite. What haunts me is that we believe that He is infinite, but we look like we don't believe He's infinite, that I am so ready to slip back into the rut of living the way I used to live when I had to scratch and scrape throughout a day to try to find something worth waking up for? How is it that we can be so easily charmed by the empty lies of sin and self and pride that that comes under religious masks? How Can I be so quickly drawn off from the infinity of God in Christ?

Well let's look at some ways that this infinite fullness in God affected John and us. First of all, let me just give an example from John's own life the infinite fullness of God in Christ Produces a delight in the believer It produces the delight of humility that is you are so happy to be self-forgetful when you see how big God is. Andrew Murray and his little book, Humility, which a classic book, and Not all of it's perfect, but there certainly are some very, really helpful things there. Murray talks about different sources for humility in the Christian life. And we need to talk about that because Paul says, as you grow in knowledge, Sin can grow, pride can grow.

So how do you stay humble? You know, do you want God... You think that God wants you just to not learn anything new. Is that the key to humility? But no.

So how do we increase in knowledge and not increase in sin or not increase in pride? How do you not become puffed up after going to a conference on knowing God? And then you go home and you say hi to your neighbor and they say something about knowing God that is just so unbiblical, so wrong, and deep within there is a quiet whisper that you believe. They don't know God like I do. How can you come to a conference on knowing God and not use it to become more like the enemy of our soul instead of becoming more like the savior.

How do I not become puffed up? Have you not met enough doctrinally informed people to realize how easy it is to become arrogant? One of the wonderful things about the infinite fullness of God is that when we see it, not when we talk about it or just agree, but when the Lord pulls the veil back, we are happy to be nothing. So let me go back to Andrew Murray's book. He said there's three ways to promote humility.

The most popular way in evangelical churches, in Murray's opinion, was to talk about how sinful we are, and that certainly is one of the sources of our humility. He said another popular way then is of course to talk about grace if you deserve Punishment and God has given you friendship doesn't that humble us the sight of God's grace does humble us But there is a third thing And Murray said that he felt that neglecting this produced a type of humility in the church that was a bit sour. I mean, if humility is always produced by thinking of how unlike Christ you've been, then when someone talks about humility, you might have a... You know, it kind of gets a bad rap. Murray said, the fundamental way to promote humility is for the believer to look at God in His immensity.

And when we see Him in all of his transcendent bigness, we are so happy to be nothing because he is everything. To be lost in wonder, love, and praise. To become self-forgetful, are you ever self-forgetful? To be freed from the tyranny of self-awareness for one moment just to be caught up in Him. And one way we promote that is to see what a vast difference there is between our smallness and his bigness.

Spurgeon said it this way, there is something exceedingly improving to the mind in the contemplation of God. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity, so deep that our pride is drowned in His infinity. Good question to ask. Has your pride been drowned in the infinity of God today, you know you wake up you Scurry about to get ready you throw the Bible open you turn your heart toward him Have you been drowned in His infinite perfections again? Now, for John, of course, it's so easy to see examples of this, and there's so many, we can't spend much time on it, but think about him on the Isle of Patmos.

And John is there exiled, and he's been cruelly treated and persecuted and here he is alone and his heart is turned toward his Lord and amazingly God gives him the revelation, the unfolding of what is yet to come and of the present and future glory of his Lord. Last time John saw Jesus, he was here in his humility. Now John sees him high and lifted up. He sees him receive the scroll from the Father and be enthroned beside the Father to be the co-governor of all creation Entrusted with bringing to pass all that the Father has ever desired John sees the scenes of the world being crushed under the foot of Christ and the believers gathered safely to Christ and every knee and bowing and every tongue confessing that he's Lord. John sees him in chapter one as John is there and he hears a voice and he turns and he sees a vision of Christ And he falls at his feet like he's dead.

He goes limp. What a wonderful thing to see him so clearly that we just fall at his feet. As we talked about just in this service prior to this, pride wears a thousand masks for all of us. And as you grow older as a believer, pride does not become easier to deal with. I find that it becomes more difficult because it just seems natural to think that when I'm a kid, when I'm young, when I'm in my 20s, I see myself kind of in the hierarchy of humanity, like, you know, I'm in college or whatever and I think, well, I'm here and the professor's here and I'm here, my parents are here, but what happens when I get married?

Well, I bump up a little. I think, well, I'm not here anymore. I have a family now. I'm kind of here then children I'm a dad. I'm here.

I'm a pastor How quickly pride assumes such religious pleasant masks in my life and I find myself quick to be self-aware. I don't mean strutting through the streets as if we're the greatest thing ever. Let me give you this example. Pride in the sense of its kind of its petulant complaints as a parent There is enough in our lives to break our hearts You know the sleepless nights where you cannot go to sleep no matter how many Bible verses you quote to yourself, no matter how many times you repeat the prayer for your child, especially as our children grow into young adults, their problems aren't little anymore. And you cry out to the Lord and the enemy mocks your hope in Christ and You think does anybody know what this is like am I all alone a couple of months ago I was sitting on the steps in our home praying for a Family member that was you know suffering and I have prayed for this person for months and months and years, and they're a wonderful believer, but they were still suffering terribly.

And I couldn't do anything more to help. And so at three in the morning, I just sat on the steps and I just cried and said to God, all these years I've prayed and I don't see anything happening yet. And God, the first year it was easy to say, God's Timing is perfect, but this is year six, and I'm still crying out, and the enemy says things about you to me that I'm finding hard to answer. And at times like that, sometimes I become proud in this way. I say to God that He's been cruel.

He's tricked me. He's given me work to do as a dad, as a pastor that I just can't do it. And God, you just seem to leave me alone on my own. And I find a very complaining heart, and That's pride. I am so aware of the problems in John Snyder's life that that's all I can see.

Why? Because John has such a big view of John. Have you ever been there? Are you there now? You say, Well, fine, we talk about an infinite God or a God worth knowing or a God worth chasing after with all of our heart, a God that we can experience.

And those are all wonderful things, but God, I've got problems and you've abandoned me. And there's that complaining pride. Eventually, I came to this place another night, praying in the night and brokenhearted again. I don't normally get emotional, but crying all by myself, locked in a room again. By the help of God, I was able to say this, I don't understand the delay and This it's killing me But I will not join the accuser in what he says to you about you.

I will hope in you One of the things I find as an adult is that it's a miserable job to be an adult, and I would never choose to be an adult. When we heard about the bouncy room, I'm all for it. I built a bouncy room for my kids one time. I built this giant version of the Dawn Treader. My wife was like, wow, you're such a great dad.

Everybody in the church was, you're so, I'm like, yeah, I am. It's for me, really. I built this big wooden Dawn Treader in my house, kind of, and the whole bottom half was a bouncy castle and I filled it with all those little balls and I'm the only one that ever played in it. I don't like the weight of leadership and adult life, But I mean, that's what the Lord's called us to. And so I find such rest in this fact.

His bigness lets me forget me. Let me give you another quote. Saint Anselm said this, up now, slight man, get up little man. Flee for a while your occupations, hide yourself for a time from your disturbing thoughts. Cast aside your burdening cares, put all your toilsome business away.

Yield room for some little time with God and rest for a little time in him into the inner chamber of your mind and shut out all thoughts except those of God and such as can aid you in seeking him. Speak now my whole heart. Speak to God and say, I seek your face, Lord. You I will seek." Well, that's one application, to be just so forgetful because of his infinite bigness. Quickly, a second.

Christianity, belonging to an infinite God, means that you have the great privilege of being the only kind of worshiper in the history of humanity that can delight in not being able to explain your God. Sometimes we feel guilty. Our children ask us questions. We say, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. We try to explain the holiness of God.

We try to explain the rightness of God. We try to explain the love of God the compassion of God the zeal of God We try to explain God in three persons God united to our humanity and we quickly run to the edge of our ability But that's okay. He's infinite and we can say these are things that I know from the scripture, but listen, beyond that, I am baffled. John writes about one aspect of God. Let me just give one example.

He writes about one aspect that does deal with God's Just baffling immensity First John 3 verse 1, you know this verse see how great a love the Father's bestowed on us that we should be called children Of God what an amazing thing that's numeric and Standard not the best translation This is ESV see what kind of love the Father is given to us this is the New King James behold what manner of love and those are better because John is not saying look at how big look at how enormous the love is. John is saying, look at how confusing, how shocking, how strange and unique this love is. The Greek word was used in John's day to express this. When a person comes in, they're confused and they say, what sort of thing is that? Or what kind of thing is that?

Or where does that come from? In everyday language, we would say it like this. John turns to the baby Christians and says, listen, look. Oh, what a shocking, surprising kind of love. What a strange delight God has shown.

What a compassion that is so rare and unique that we want to ask, where in the world does something like this exist? What country does that come from? From within God, there comes a love that like God is incomprehensible. The infinite fullness of God means that you and I will never fully figure him out, that he will be incomprehensible. And he has always been incomprehensible and he will always be incomprehensible even in heaven.

We can know him. We can grow in our knowledge of him, but we can never fully figure him out. We will never kind of circle in our mind all that there is to know of God. No angel in heaven and no theologian in the past has ever connected this circle and said, now my mind has contained in its thoughts the infinite God. It's very helpful to us because it helps us not to become proud as we learn.

We know that we're really beginning to be gripped by the infinite God when you find yourself more and more aware of how little you know of him. Yes, he's revealed himself to us. Yes, he's given you everything you need for faith and life, but he has not told you all the tale. He has told you what is perfectly suited to your limited capacities, And what he has said is accurate. The Puritan John Howe describes this mysterious incomprehensibility like this.

He, God, has given us a true report of himself, but not a full one. Such a report as will guard you from error, but not from ignorance. We can apply our minds to contemplate the attributes whereby the blessed God reveals to us his being though we will still have but low and defective conceptions of every one of them. Let me give you two examples in scripture. In Habakkuk, when Habakkuk is wrestling with the fact that Israel is so wicked And God doesn't seem to care and he cries out to God then God gives his answer Do you remember this and God's answer is Babylon?

I will judge my people and the judgment is so thorough That Habakkuk looks at wicked Babylon and Says how can you use a people more wicked than us to deal with us? And so he cries out to the Lord again and in chapter 3 Habakkuk finds in a sense his answering in God and and in chapter 3 he talks about the coming of God in a glorious rescue. He says this, and in this he's quoting from Deuteronomy, where Moses talks about the glory of God in his rescuing his people from Egypt. So he's giving a direct quote for part of it. He says this, describing this vision of God coming to rescue.

God comes from Timon and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His splendor covers the heavens and the earth is full of his praise. His radiance is like the sunlight. He has rays, lightning bolts, flashing from his hands. Pretty impressive picture.

God comes, it's going to be like a sunrise and The glory or the splendor of our God that is solitary it's only His will be seen in this great rescue and it's like the sky will be aflame and the earth is shaking and the mountains, those two mountains He mentioned, it's like the sunrise hitting them, they'll light up with the glory of God and then he says this strange thing verse 4 and there when God comes in glory and there is the hiding of his power or the veiling In the midst of one of the most glorious displays of God's infinite power, Habakkuk says, see him come, see the earth reflect his glory. Do you see it? Do you see the hiding of his power? Why use that phrase? Why not say there is the revealing?

Matthew Henry explains it this way. The operations of God's power compared with what he could have done are rather the hiding of it than the discovery. In other words, here's our logic. God being infinite without limit. When God shows us something of His greatness through His activity, what we see may boggle our minds.

And we want to say like John, what manner of power, what manner of love, what manner of purity is this? But no matter how much you and I see, because it's infinite, there is always more hidden than revealed Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the biblical writers are using hyperbole to encourage you today They are using Understatements Never has anyone told the full tale of our God. In Job 26, Job says this, verse 14, behold, he talks about all the great things God does. Then he says this, behold, These are the fringes of his ways how faint a word or a whisper we hear of him No matter what you see You're like a person as you study the Bible You're like a person who sees the edge of a garment like an infant who can't crawl yet. Dad comes home from work, walks past, infant sees the bottom inch of dad's pant leg and knows it's dad.

But if you were to ask the infant, so tell me about dad, What could he say? He just saw the edge of the pant leg You see the edge of the garment of our God when we study the infinity of God and we say God It's so wonderful but I only know the edge or I walk into a room like this and there's a lot of noisy chatter and Before the service I sit down and somebody over here is whispering Mom and dad talking kind of quietly and you don't mean to but you hear a couple words How much if someone Said to you so explain that conversation. I mean they talked 15 minutes. You heard three words. Could you explain it?

You say well Actually, I don't think I could explain it Listen, you can spend your entire life pursuing the clearest highest most biblical views of God but At the end of your life you heard a whisper from a long conversation So important that we not grow puffed up Let me give you one last one Complete cleansing in John chapter 1 John says of his fullness we have all received. And then he says, now Moses gave us the law, but Christ brought grace and truth. He's not comparing two men. Obviously Christ is superior to Moses. He's comparing two men and their function as covenant representatives.

Under the old covenant, Moses brought us that beautiful display of God that we just heard about in the law. It's the unfolding of his moral perfection in ways that we can see Moses brought us ways to approach him Moses but the best Moses's law can do is to expose and To stir up aggravate sin and to Condemn you Paul says it in Romans 7. It's like an MRI. It shows you what's going on on the inside of you But it does not cure you Christ's fullness is this grace upon grace Strange Greek word there grace in the place of Grace old grace that you lived on yesterday taken away new grace given as if you had never drawn on the Treasury ever grace in the place of grace a transaction in John's day a Purchase So I want this object and so I'll give you this money and so they're in the place of each other grace following on the heels of grace Christ's fullness means like John says in first John 2 that though the rescue of Christ has the goal that we would not live for ourselves, when you sin, you have an advocate with God who is the propitiation.

If the infinite God-man is your advocate, you have no fear that he will lose the case. I said one more. Can I give you one more? Because I was really good on that one. I shortened it.

All right, here's the last. When John writes his letter to people in the first century, 1 John, in chapter 1, He opens up and he talks about listen the Word of God the living word in the beginning He came to us and we saw him we handled him. We heard him. He was life and Then he says this He says What we have seen and what we have heard we proclaimed to you also so that you too may have fellowship with us And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ and these things we write to you I'm writing you this book about Jesus of Nazareth So that our joy your joy and John's joy so that all of us our joy might be made complete. I think one of the sweetest applications of the infinite God united to humanity in Jesus Christ is this, that if you are a nice person at a good conference, in a good family, and at a good church, but you know that you still stand at a distance from Christ at what you feel is a safe distance.

And you still stiff arm him, And you are not quite ready to risk everything for him. It is because of your small views of him So go to the scripture and plead with God God show me what John saw Teach my heart what you taught John's heart so that when John writes to a group of people and he knows that they are likely to suffer the loss of everything they need to be happy in this world and In in place of all that they Used to be happy with all they get is Jesus. John doesn't apologize John doesn't you know kind of reduce the cost he just says look All I offer you is Jesus But I'm telling you that will make you completely joyful John is not embarrassed to say to a group of people, you can lose everything and find Christ and you will be so much better for it. The infinite God. Go back to scripture, cry out to the Lord, search these descriptions of God, plug them into the man Jesus Christ, and be willing to risk everything to see if he is as full as he says he is.

Do not rest easy until you can say, I call nothing mine except Him, and I call no one master but Him. Well, may God help us all. Let's pray. We ask God That you would do it that you would entice us in a way that we find irresistible and that we would live More and more on the infinite fullness that you have united to your son for his people. Give us grateful hearts.

We ask it in his name, amen.