Everything God Does...

...reveals his glory and majesty. Beautiful words. Powerful words. The whole verse reads: Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty. His righteousness never fails. (Ps 111.1, NLT). The Psalmist connects God's glory and majesty to his righteousness in an interesting way. As if to say, in all that God does (which reveals his glory and majesty) he is and acts righteously. As we would expect God's righteousness is inseparable from his glory and majesty.

Astonished at His Majesty

Luke uses a curious choice of words at the end of the section in which Christ casts a demon out of an epileptic boy (Luke 9.43). Luke says that Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. Then he follows with his comment about the reaction of the crowd. All were astonished at the majesty of God. Matthew and Mark who record this same incident do not include this comment. I'm wondering why the crowd was astonished at the majesty of God when the boy was healed? It seems like a more natural comment would be to say that the crowd was astonished at the power of God to heal, or maybe the crowd was astonished that God did heal. Why majesty?

Luke must be trying to tell us something here. BDAG defines μεγαλειότης as quality or state of experiencing high esteem because of awesome performance, impressiveness. Louw-Nida further defines it as: : a manifestation of great power—‘mighty power, mighty act.’ which Luke seems to want to communicate that those who witnessed Christ's actions and words understood that they were not witnessing the ordinary here. They were witnessing the extraordinary. Christ could not be a man with a penchant to heal. He was something beyond that, and his commanding an evil spirit out of the boy demonstrated the fact.

Splendor, Majesty, Strength, and Joy

All four are characteristics of our God as David points out in 1 Chr 16.27. I especially like strength and joy juxtaposed together because we do not normally associate the two. Strong people are not normally marked with joy, and joyful people are not normally renowned for their strength. Our God is both.

Worshipping the Creator Rather than the Creation

In Psalm 148.13 this morning. I take the Psalmist to mean that the name of the Lord is exalted above every name to the point where it is the only name exalted. The reason for this is then stated his majesty is above earth and heaven. His majesty is above earth and heaven because he created them. This is why it is so foolish to worship the sun, moon, stars, or man (like the modern world). There is something far greater than creation in the universe, the creator of the universe.

This agrees completely with Paul: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Rom 1:20-23 ESV)