'Majesty' is a word which the Bible uses to express the thought of the greatness of God, our Maker and Lord. The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty ....your throne was established long ago.(Psalm 93:1f)
They will speak of the glorious splendour of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works (Psalm 145:5)
'we were eyewitnesses of his majesty' (2 Peter 1:16)The word majesty can even be used in place of the word God (Hebrews 1:3 & 8:1)!
It is always a declaration of his greatness and an invitation to worship.
'Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we are - weak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But this is not he God of the Bible! Our personal life is a finite thing: it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power. But God is not so limited. He is eternal, infinite, and almighty. He has us in his hands; but we never have him in ours. Like us he is personal, but unlike us he is great! In all its constant stress on the gentleness, tenderness, sympathy, patience, and yearning compassion that he shows towards them, the Bible never lets us lose sight of his majesty, and his unlimited dominion over all his creatures.'
The opening chapters of Genesis illustrate this - for here we are introduced to the personal and majestic God!
Personal: 'Let us....' (Gen 1:26); bringing animals to Adam (2:19); walking in the garden (3:8). Asking questions to evaluate and direct people (3:11, 4:9; 16:8). Grieved (6:6). All these representations and others bring home to us that God is not a cosmic principle, impersonal and indifferent. He is a living person. But we are not to gather from these passages that God's knowledge and power is limited, or that he is normally absent/ignorant and so has to come down and ask around to find out what is going on.
Majestic: the Creator, bringing order from chaos, life from nothing, creating and ruling with his word alone. He curses the ground and subjects mankind to physical death (3:17). He floods the earth in judgment (6-8), he confounds human language (11:7); he overthrows Sodom and Gomorrah (19:24). Abraham calls him 'the Judge of all the earth' (18:25) and 'God Most High, maker of heaven and earth' (14:19-22). He is present everywhere and observes everything: Cain's murder (4:9), mankind's corruption (6:5), Hagar's destitution (16:7). And it is not just in isolated moments that God takes control - his detailed predictions of the tremendous destiny he purposed for Abraham's descendants (12:1-3; 13:1-17; 15:13-21 etc.) indicates this.
So we need to:
1. Remove from our thoughts of God limits that would make him small
Psalm 139
Job 38-41
2. Compare him with powers and forces which we would regard as great
Isaiah 40: look at the tasks I have done, the nations I am greater than, the world I rule, the great ones I dictate to, the stars I made and know intimately.
And how should we respond to THIS God?
1. We should think great thoughts of him, not comparing him to ourselves, but acknowledging him as incomparable and limitless.
2. We should rejoice that this God loves and is covenantally committed to people like us in Christ!
3. We should be ashamed and repent of our slowness to believe in God's majesty - our unbelieving pessimism is deeply dishonouring to God.
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