Psalm 113:5 Who is like to the LORD our God, who dwells on high,… Who is like unto the Lord our God? The precise point here may be thus expressed: "Who as he combines majesty with condescension?" Both heaven and earth, glorious and wonderful though they are, are alike immeasurably below the majesty of God. The psalmist evidently has the idolatry in mind which seeks for suggestions of God's figure either in heaven or in earth. No fitting ones can be found. They are all made things; and the maker is always grander than the things he makes. No manufactured article can ever do more than suggest something about the man who designed or made it; it can never give an adequate and complete impression of him. Think of the sun as the sublimest of all created things, but it is no more fitting to represent God, it is no more worthily a likeness of God, than the images, hideous or beautiful, which idolatry or paganism may design God absolutely refuses to permit any likeness to be made of him after anything in heaven, or earth, or under the earth. Nothing material must be permitted to limit our large, free, spiritual thought of him. I. LIKENESSES TO GOD IN THE HEAVENS. Men naturally look up into the heavens first, because that is the sphere of mystery, and that inspires awe and leads to adoration. It does so to the uncultured, but how much more it does to the cultured, who know that the seemingly little star Uranus is eighty times larger than the earth, Neptune a hundred and fifty times larger, Saturn more than seven hundred times larger, and Jupiter more than fourteen hundred times larger! The general sentiment of humanity has found in our sun the best likeness of God; but, though this should bring to men sublime ideas of grandeur, purity, and power, even the sun is unworthy to represent God. II. LIKENESSES TO GOD IN THE EARTH. The apostle regards it as a degrading descent, that men, unsatisfied with sun-figures, "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." It is an impressive proof of the uselessness of the material to represent the immaterial, that men who once look to the material for figures of God always tend to go lower and lower in the scale. Nowadays, though we are not likely to worship the sun or manufactured idols, there are still thought-ideals, thought-idols, which may be as unworthy to represent the eternal God as the images of our heathen brothers. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Who is like unto the LORD our God, who dwelleth on high, |
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