It is easy to read about God in the wrong way. Yes (*yawn*), he is big. Certainly (*stretch*), he is powerful. Absolutely (*droop*), he does stuff in our world. These truths are so commonplace, they sound boring to sinful ears. But this extract from D Broughton Knox’s The Everlasting God unfolds the biblical witness to reveal a God whose power is so immense, it’s frightening. And yet his power is the only guarantee of comfort in a broken world. We pray that you might read this slowly and learn again of the God who is there—the God whose infinite power is directed towards you, his friend.

Nothing is too difficult

God is of infinite power. The notion of power is contained in the notion of deity. Wherever people believe in God (and this belief is as universal as the human race), God (or the gods) is thought of as powerful. However, the concept of infinite and unlimited power is not generally attributed to the gods of paganism. And yet it is clearly affirmed of the true and living God of Holy Scripture: “Nothing is too hard for the Lord” is a refrain that runs through Scripture (e.g. Gen 18:14; Job 42:2). It was the sheet anchor of Jesus’ ministry. He told his despairing disciples, as they realized the difficulty of anyone being saved, that what was impossible with people is possible with God (Matt 19:26), and in that last agonizing prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, he based his request on the completeness of God’s power: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you” (Mark 14:36).¹

Two thousand years earlier, when the divine messenger had brought Abraham and Sarah the good news that Sarah would bear a son, although humanly speaking this was a physical impossibility, the assurance was given that “Nothing is too hard for Yahweh”, and so it came about (Gen 18:14). When Jeremiah was told by God that Jerusalem would be destroyed and that he should buy a block of land in Judah, he cast himself onto God with the prayer:

“Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for you …”

Yahweh replied:

“Behold I am Yahweh, the God of all flesh, is anything too difficult for me? … Behold, I am about to give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans … [but] behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in my anger … and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety” (Jer 32:15-37).

And so it came about. There is nothing that is too hard for Yahweh. The virgin Mary received the same assurance from the angel Gabriel in response to her natural enquiry as to how it could be that the promise of a son should be fulfilled in her who had no husband: “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). The true and living God has revealed himself as a God of infinite power. The only things impossible to him are those that contradict his character: he cannot lie, he cannot change, he cannot cease from being good (e.g. Titus 1:2, Mal 3:6).

 Creation

The clearest example of God’s power is the act of creation. All we see around us is the result of God’s creative power. The universe came into being through his word (Ps 148:5; cf. Ps 33:5-9). The concept that God created everything out of nothing is fundamental to Scripture, and is found throughout its pages. The God of Holy Scripture—the God of revelation—is the creator God, the God of infinite power. His powerful acts did not cease with creation, but he controls what he created. His infinite mind controls absolutely, all the time, every detail of created things. We find this thought difficult, but it ought not to be so. God’s infinite mind controls everything, and he can as easily alter it at any moment as create it in the first place. God spoke and it was done, and God’s word continues to have the same infinite power. Whatever he wills comes to pass, and nothing comes to pass except in accordance with what he wills. Chance and luck are nonexistent; they are simply words to describe that which is unforeseeable by us.

The Bible puts before us a consistent world view based on the infinite power of God. Thus Jesus said that God makes the sun to rise and sends the rain (Matt 5:45). In saying this, Jesus is simply repeating the consistent teaching of Scripture: the natural phenomena are the direct results of God’s will, whether there are rainy and fruitful seasons, or whether there is drought. Our minds have difficulty with this. We see only proximate causes (the meteorological laws as we call them), or the laws of cause and effect. But it is the mind of God that gives all these laws their motive force. It is God who makes the sun to rise. It is God who raises up the stormy wind and makes the storm to cease (Ps 107:25, 29). It was God who sent the flood.

After the flood, God promised Noah in the covenant with creation recorded in Genesis 9 that his dealings with the world would be on the basis of consistency—that seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night would not cease so long as the world lasts. This consistency is part of the purpose of God, for without it, human life as we know it could not be sustained. If, for example, there were no consistency in the seasons, we could neither sow nor reap. But this consistency of God’s working must not be mistaken for an inevitable and inexorable law of cause and effect. Ultimately, God is the only cause, and it is his mind and will that causes all things. God wills consistency, and that is why we experience consistency. Although we speak of the laws of nature governing physical events, this is a misnomer. The laws of nature are not laws in the true sense, but are observed consistencies of sequences of past events. They do not govern the future. God’s consistent mind governs the future as he has governed the observed past.

If, in his wisdom, God wills that an event in nature should differ from the unbroken sequence before or after (for example, that the sun should stand still), then it will differ (Josh 10:12-13). We shall call it a miracle. Others who do not know God’s power will deny that it happened. But there is no reason for this denial. Since God is a free person, we cannot lay down in advance how he will create the world or how he will order events within it. We know that he is loving, righteous and holy in all he does, but we cannot know the mind of the Lord from physical phenomena. Experience is our only source of this knowledge.

However, since God is a God of order and faithfulness, it is possible to develop the discipline of natural science. Science works through prediction based on precedent—that is, on the observed sequences of the past—‘the customs of the creator’. We call these customs of the creator natural laws. But God’s will is the basis of each event. However, since God has linked events in ‘causal’ chains, it is possible to understand the whole series of events without reference to God. God is an unnecessary hypothesis for science, but not for the reflective scientist. For it is not a contradiction, but rather a necessary element of the whole concept, to realize that every ‘cause’ in the chain has the will of God as its own underlying and true cause. God holds all things together, and in them, he is working all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph 1:11).

The doctrine of God the creator is vivid throughout the pages of Scripture. The gods of the nations are not creator gods and, as Jeremiah puts it, the gods that did not create the world will perish, as indeed they have (Jer 10:11). In our own times, idolatry, which was a universal substitute for the creator God, has been replaced by the widely held theory of evolution. Both are substitutes for the concept of the creator God. Just as the ancients and the heathen today deified and worshipped the creature as the creator, modelling images of man, birds, animals or reptiles and worshipping these, so for western secular people, the modern theory of evolution deifies nature and acknowledges it as creator of all we see. All the beauty and intricacy, and all the marvellous arrangements of the natural world, are supposed to have evolved by a thoughtless, purposeless, mechanical operation of nature, and, in this way, the God who made the world is as effectively shut out of the minds of those who are enjoying the blessings of his creation as he was by the false religions of idolatry. Just as the idolaters could not see the foolishness of worshipping gods of wood and stone, so modern believers in the theory of evolution cannot see the foolishness of that theory. The Bible says that if we refuse to have the creator God in our mind, God gives us up to a reprobate mind (Rom 1:18-28).

God’s infinite power controls what he has created. We have seen that Jesus taught that the phenomena of nature are under God’s control. That is why we may pray for favourable weather. To describe the weather as under God’s control is not mere poetry, but a direct description of the facts. It may not be God’s will to alter the consistent way by which he regulates the weather—a consistency which we call meteorological laws—yet it may be his gracious will to accede to our request. When he does this, he will do it in what we would call a natural way, but the one who prayed will know the real reason why the weather changed.

Evil

God’s control over his creation extends even to the wills of people. Sinful people are within God’s complete control, otherwise sin would be a marvellous achievement, if, by it, we could remove ourselves from God’s sovereign and absolute power. But it is not so. The brigands who slaughtered Job’s servants and carried off his cattle were as much under the control of God (although they did not know it) as the wind that destroyed the house in which Job’s children were gathered (Job 1:13-19). Job acknowledged this by his pious and true reaction to the tragic news: “Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh” (Job 1:21). Ultimately, it was Yahweh who took away Job’s possessions and children. Although the agents were men and spirits of an evil and malevolent character, they were not outside God’s control, and were operating within the sphere of his perfect will and purposes. They originated the evil, but they were not able to act contrary to what God willed should come to pass.

Similarly, in Isaiah 10, the prophet recounts how the Assyrians are the rod of God’s anger. Those cruel armies invading Palestine were the instruments of a well-deserved judgement. Yet the Assyrians were totally unaware that they were acting under God’s control and fulfilling his purpose. They attributed their success to their military prowess, but the prophet foretold that their cruelties would, in due course, receive retribution, just as Israel had experienced judgement through them.

Centuries before, Joseph had reassured his brothers that his captivity in Egypt was part of God’s perfect will to bless: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant … and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. Now, therefore, it was not you that sent me here, but God” (Gen 45:7-8). Again, a little later, he once more reassured them with the words, “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen 50:20). It must have been a great source of strength to Joseph throughout the bitter years of his imprisonment to realize that God was sovereign over every event in his experience. Nothing takes place in God’s creation apart from God’s will because God is of infinite power.

Goodness

The doctrine of God’s absolute and complete providence and control over every event is grounds for banishing fear from the hearts of his people. Jesus reminded his disciples:

“Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? And yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7).

In the Old Testament, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is the comfort and strength of his people. Thus, through the prophet Isaiah, God says:

“I, even I, am he that comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, and of the son of man who is made like grass; that you have forgotten Yahweh your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth?” (Is 51:12-13)

The creative power of God, which brought all things into being, is the guarantee that he is able to sustain us in every detail of life. The doctrine of creation is basic to the Christian doctrine of God.

The infinite power and the infinite mind of God, to which the marvels of creation bear witness, mean that he is able to give full attention, care and protection to every person throughout the world with the same intensity of concern that he would give if he were related to a single individual only. The infinity of God is not overwhelmed by numbers, nor stupefied by detail. God is able to comprehend, and provide for at the same time, the needs of the whole of his creation. Our heavenly Father gives each of us his undivided attention and his full friendship as though we were his only friend.

Endnote

1. A note on the Bible quotations in this article: DB Knox characteristically quoted from either the King James Version or the Revised Version, and sometimes from a combination of both. Sometimes he also drew on his own translations of the original Greek and Hebrew. We have chosen to retain his wording.↩