February 22, 2011

ob 22
You know, I can’t get my mind around how large the earth is. Last summer I flew over the polar icecap to Mongolia. It took slightly less than 12 hours of non-stop flight from Beijing to Chicago. Since it is a 12 hour time zone difference, I actually arrived a few minutes earlier in Chicago than was when I left in Beijing. As we flew we were at an altitude that was so high that very few land masses were distinguishable to me. Were it not for the computerized map on the screen in front of me, I would have had no idea where I was or how large the earth was beneath me. It really makes one feel insignificant to realize how small on is in comparison to the earth. Yet the earth is just a sub-microscopic particle in relation to the universe.
Consider the largest found structures in the universe. They are “giant, three-dimensional filaments of galaxies extending across 200 million light-years of space. . . They are the largest found structures to date. . . They are studded with more than 30 large concentrations of gas, each up to ten times as massive as our own galaxy.” http://www.universetoday.com/399/the-largest-structure-in-the-universe/ (accessed 2/22/2011). Does that make you feel small? I don’t know, I still can’t get my mind around how big the earth is. That description just kind of buries me.
Consider how many stars are in the Universe. Think about this information that I collected from
http://www.universetoday.com/24328/how-many-stars/ (2/22/2011):

Almost all the stars in the Universe are collected together into galaxies. They can be small dwarf galaxies, with just 10 million or so stars, or they can be monstrous irregular galaxies with 10 trillion stars or more. Our own Milky Way galaxy seems to contain about 200 billion stars; and we’re actually about average number of stars.
So an average galaxy contains between 1011 and 1012 stars. In other words, galaxies, on average have between 100 billion and 1 trillion numbers of stars.
Now, how many galaxies are there? Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies in the Universe. So if you multiply those two numbers together, you get between 1022 and 1024 stars in the Universe. How many stars? There are between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the Universe. That’s a large number of stars.
I think I have some kind of concept of one million. I used to live in Portland, Oregon which had a metro area population of roughly one million. I can kind of get my mind around that number; although, it is a big enough number that I don’t really want to. So when you tell me that a dwarf galaxy has just 10 million stars, I kind of lose it. Then to find out that just the number of galaxies is between 100 billion and 1 trillion, I cannot fathom it. Then to tell me that the number of stars in the Universe is a number that has about 24 zeroes following it, I am lost.
Eliphaz responds to Job:
12 God is so great—higher than the heavens,
higher than the farthest stars.
13 But you reply, ‘That’s why God can’t see what I am doing!
How can he judge through the thick darkness?
14 For thick clouds swirl about him, and he cannot see us.
He is way up there, walking on the vault of heaven.
In the vastnesss of time and space, it is easy to think that God cannot see through the darkness to my little world. Eliphaz is correct. God is higher than the heavens—higher than the farthest stars. Could He possibly see me? The answer is an unequivocal, “Yes! He can!” As I think on the vastness of the universe, I remember that God created it. If He created it then He must be greater than it! He did not create something out of nothing that He cannot control! In order to control it, He must be able to come down to the tiniest microscopic unit. (Hmm. . . Do tachyons exist? Well now, there is a big can of worms.) Anyway, Jesus upholds all things by the word of His power. The doctrine of the omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience of God requires that He can and does actively see me, and yet at the same time, He sees every point in the universe with equal clarity! Lord God, how awesome You are!
So why is Eliphaz wrong? Eliphaz assumed that he could see even as the infinite God could see. He assumed that since this infinite God could see all that Job was and had done, then Job must have done some specific sin, which this infinite God had seen and for which He was now punishing Job. Eliphaz assumed too much. He thought too little of God and too much of Himself. Lord, keep me from that presumptuous sin! Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john