A
Perspective on Greatness
Students of scripture understand the
“First Mention” rule of interpretation. That is, when the
Spirit of God introduces a word in scripture for the first time, the
significance attached to it by the context tends to extend to every
other instance of the word. Consider the word “great” as found early on
in the inspired text. Its first usage is in Genesis 1:16, where it is
said: “God made two GREAT lights.” So when God says something is
“great” he provides a point of reference or sense of scale for
that greatness. Its second usage comes a few verses later: “God created
GREAT whales” (1:21). The whale is the largest oceanic creature and
provides a sense of scale to the idea of greatness.
We now come to its third usage in
Genesis 6:5: “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was GREAT in the
earth.” In its first two usages, we find two GREAT (massive) heavenly
bodies and GREAT (massive) fish. When scripture speaks of GREAT
wickedness, how massive that wickedness must have appeared in the sight
of God?! It was so pervasive that “every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart was only evil continually.” The collective corruption of the
minds of men (their thought lives) produced equally corrupt behavior.
As men think in their hearts, so they act out those thoughts (Proverbs
23:7). The origin of every wicked act is a wicked thought!
The Hebrew word for “wickedness” is rah, meaning “bad,
evil, disagreeable, malignant.” It so happens the first biblical
mention of “wickedness” is in 6:5. The BAD state of the minds of men
and their wicked behavior stands in stark contrast to all the GOOD God
built into his creation (Genesis 1:4; 1:10; 1:12; 1:18; 1:25; 1:25;
1:31). It took just about 1,400 years for man to corrupt totally
everything God had made good. But such is the malignant nature of sin.
Can you imagine how Adam—the man by whom sin entered the world—must
have felt to witness during his 930 years of life the steady
degradation of mankind into a state of GREAT wickedness? How
many times do you suppose Adam might have asked, “O God, what
did I do?!” with the memory of Eden's bliss and sweet divine communion
still etched in his mind.
It seems only fitting then that in
Genesis 7:11 we find the fourth usage of “great” to describe the divine
response to the GREAT wickedness of man in the form of the Flood: “All
the fountains of the GREAT deep [were] broken up, and the windows of
the heaven were opened.” The GREAT (massive) deep is a reference to all
the subterranean waters around the globe. God had a massive answer to
the massive wickedness of mankind, which exceeded the wickedness of man
in its massiveness. In Isaiah 53:6, the scripture says: “The LORD hath
laid on him the iniquity of us all.” The sum total of ALL our
iniquity includes the great wickedness of Noah's day as well as
ALL the iniquity of both Israel
and the Gentiles through ALL the ages. What does this say
about the massive weight of wickedness
Jesus bore on the Cross of Calvary for man's iniquities? Moreover, what
does it say about the
divine strength of Jesus the God-Man, who alone was able to bear that
massive
burden on our behalf?
It would be wise for us to keep in
mind the biblical usage of “great” when hearing “Make America Great
Again!” What does it matter when men applaud the greatness of America
as the “Most Economically Competitive Nation on Earth Again” when God
sees the greatness of America in terms of its wickedness? Whatever
'greatness' men may think America has achieved under President Trump,
virtually NOTHING has transpired to diminish its GREAT wickedness—murder on demand via abortion, godless curricula,
homosexuality, transgenderism, lies and deception in our politics,
hate, violence, murder, fornication, pornography, destruction of the
family, et al.
The antidote for America’s GREAT wickedness lies in the GREAT suffering of the Lord Jesus for
our sins, an event accompanied by “GREAT drops of blood falling to the
ground" in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44), a “GREAT stone” that sealed his
tomb (Matthew 27:60), a “GREAT earthquake” that rolled back the stone
at his resurrection (28:2) and “GREAT joy” in those who learned he was
alive from the dead (28:8). For every GREAT stone set by men to
restrain the glory of Christ, there exists a GREATER divine power to
release it!
God set a rainbow in the sky as a
sign he would never again Flood the earth as he did in Noah’s day. But
I cannot help but believe all the natural disasters America is now
experiencing are somehow related to the greatness of its wickedness!
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