Matins Devotion: May 30, 2025
There is, of course, only one God. So when the Old Testament speaks of Israel’s God’s being greater than all other gods, it’s not really a competition between two distinct divine beings. It’s a competition between the one true God and the imagination of men. It’s a competition between the one God who is and the countless ideas that men have invented.
And so, when Asaph asks, in our Psalm for today, “what god is great like our God,” this isn’t really a question in search of an answer. Asaph isn’t looking for someone to suggest a god of the Canaanites or Moabites or Chaldeans who could give Yahweh a decent challenge. He’s proclaiming that no man could conjure up anything in his mind that could compete with the wonders, the majesty, the mercy of the One true God.
And this is true. Man could never imagine or invent the Gospel. The idea of God taking on human flesh and dying to save His enemies is as antithetical to the natural man as black is to white. But, thanks be to God, that’s what the true God has done. When you were lost in the darkness, drowning in the sea of sin, buried under the rubble of your own wickedness, God did something you never could have imagined. He came to you through the nail-pierced hands of Jesus Christ. When you despised and hated your God through your transgressions, your God loved you by sending His light into this world, by plunging His hands into the icy sea to bring you home, by tearing His flesh apart to find you in the rubble and bring you home. What God is like this? No other, not even in the imagination of men. And thanks be to God, the greatest God, and the only God, now calls you His own.
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