How big is God?

God, who bounds everything else, is Himself without bounds. He sets bounds to the sea: "Thus far shall you come, and no farther." He sets bounds to the angels; they, like the cherubim, move and stand at His appointment (Ezekiel 10:16), but He is infinite, without bounds. He who can span the heavens and weigh the earth in scales must be infinite (Isaiah 40:22). "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" (Jeremiah 23:24). The humble heart is His throne, in regard to His gracious presence (Isaiah 57:15); and heaven is His throne, in regard to His glorious presence (Isaiah 66:1); and yet neither of these thrones will hold Him, for the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.

We can take account of a thing if it is twenty miles long or wide, and if it is a solid substance that can be weighed. But can we imprison the wind to measure its dimensions, or tell where the light ends? God is a Spirit; and heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Him. He is everywhere present throughout this vast universe, greater than all He has created, not subject to change or break-up. Where could we begin to take account of Him?

But Solomon asks a fitting question: "Will God indeed dwell with man on the earth?" To do so would require an astounding act of grace, for the heavens and the highest heaven cannot contain God. He is infinite, without limits, and omnipresent, present everywhere at all times. We cannot understand the greatness of His being. He cannot be confined anywhere, yet in a very real sense He dwelt in the temple, in the holiest of all, though in thick darkness. This is a paradox in which we may rejoice.

God is infinite (unlimited) and omnipresent (present everywhere), yet in pure grace He specially marked out the temple as the place of His dwelling, in order to concentrate Israel's thoughts on Him as the Centre of all Israel's interests.

He recognises the infinite majesty of God. "But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You; how much less this house that I have built!" The thought of the infinite greatness of God subdues him, and from then on his prayer becomes more like pleading.

The God whom the highest heavens cannot contain is the God whom we may have as our Guest, but only by getting down ourselves into the lowest and lowliest place. So if we have never met Him, it is because we have never come down as low as that level of self-judgment where He is found in grace. But when He takes up His home in the humble and the contrite, it is in the sweetness of His love and the tenderness of His mercy.

Solomon felt it was wonderful that God should stoop to dwell with men on earth. Solomon's temple has gone, but a more wonderful thing has taken its place. The Church, made up of sinners drawn from Jews and Gentiles alike, is now His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16); His house (1 Timothy 3:15); His habitation (Ephesians 2:22). No mere cloud of glory fills this; the Holy Spirit has come from heaven to form the building and to make His home in it.

We cannot know infinity, but we can know the One who is infinite — indeed, know Him to be infinite: know His name, and not know His name.

In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, but it dwells in Him in order to be expressed. He is "the Word" — the expression of everything in the divine mind, the full and blessed revelation of God. Until the incarnation God was unexpressed, and therefore unknown, for "no one has ever seen God"; but "the only God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known" (John 1:18).