Psalm 115:3 God Is Without Comparison
“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (NIV).
Of course He does what He pleases. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God is omnipresent. Anyone who has those characteristics certainly can do whatever he pleases. Who is going to stop Him? That is an interesting question, and there is an answer. The one who can stop Him is Himself, but He has done nothing that would need to be stopped. There are those who fear God—fear that He will destroy us or destroy the world. He certainly has the ability to destroy us and the earth. After all, He created it—it is His. The one thing that keeps God from destroying us is another of His characteristics. There is one other “God is” that gives us peace and joy, one that shows His primary characteristic, one that is even more notable than the others. GOD IS LOVE! That trumps all the other “God is” characteristics. When that characteristic is combined with one not yet mentioned, “God is truth” we see that He will do and has done what is most beneficial to all of mankind. We can trust Him to act in our best interest. We are His creation. Why would he create us just to harm us or kill us? His words are creative, so He cannot lie. Whenever He speaks something, it happens, so it is impossible for Him to lie. One Scripture shows how much God loves us and how far He went to bless us, to bring us to His side for eternity. Most of us know those words of God, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (NIV).
We are all familiar with sin. We instinctively know when we have done something wrong—that’s sin. We all sin frequently. One other characteristic of God is that Father God cannot stand sin. In fact, He does not allow sin in His presence. Because of this characteristic we are all in great danger. Every man and every woman who has ever been born, has sinned, and continues to sin. God created us so that our spirit lives forever. With that in mind, we realize that there must be a place for those who sin to spend eternity, and if it can’t be with God, it must be someplace else. That place is called Hell, and it was provided as a place for satan and his demons who have rebelled against God to live for eternity. You don’t have to be a strong Christian to know that hell is a place of torment.
Okay, we’ve all sinned. God can’t stand sin. He will not allow it in His presence. Does that mean that we will all, sinners that we are, have to spend eternity in Hell? No, it doesn’t, and we read the reason above in John 3:16. In God’s love He sacrificed His Son, Jesus Christ who never sinned to receive all the punishment for all of us so we don’t have to go to hell. Wait, that’s not quite right. Anyone who wants to can go to hell. Going to hell is a decision. Anyone who decides to not believe in Jesus, God’s only Son, has made the decision to go to Hell. Don’t do that. Allow the love of God, His greatest characteristic, to be the cornerstone of your life. Receive Jesus and fulfill God’s greatest desire—to spend eternity with you.