In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the infinite nature of God and how it allows us to be bold and brave in the universe. He compares this boldness to that of a young child who feels brave when their father is around. The preacher acknowledges that he can only point people to God and the Lamb of God who takes away sins, but it is up to individuals to have a personal relationship with God. He also discusses the difference between knowing about God and truly knowing God, emphasizing the need for a spiritual rebirth through the Holy Spirit.

Tonight I am to speak on the infinitude, the divine infinitude. And it's an indication of something I don't quite know what, that I am the only man that I have ever known to preach on this topic. I have never read it in any book except a paragraph or two as they go along. I've never heard a sermon on it. That could mean that it's very silly to try it, or it could mean that men need to screw up their telescope and look a little further into the sky. At any rate, I am to speak tonight on the infinitude, the divine limitlessness of God. And tonight I am going to make the greatest demand on you that I have made up to now. After tonight, I'll continue. I haven't any Sunday night engagements until the middle of May, late in May, and out then in Columbus, Ohio, so that I will be preaching on the attributes steadily along right through Easter night and Sunday night. And I'll get over to the goodness of God, the wisdom of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the justice of God, the sovereignty of God, and that'll be easy, and I'll enjoy myself. But tonight I pray that God might enable me to talk about that which can't be talked about. The only prayer that I could make that seems to have any meaning would be the one the dear colored brother made when he asked God to unscrew the unscrewable. And I don't know anything else that I could pray that God would help us to get the unscrewable to become screwable. Well, I want to speak tonight now from two texts. That is, I'll read them. I don't tend to expound them. I tend to read the texts. 1 Kings 8.27. But will God indeed dwell on the earth? A rhetorical question meaning no. Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house that I have built. The heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain God. Then in the Book of Psalms 147, the word is used, 147 Psalm verse 5. Great is our Lord, and of great power. His understanding is infinite. Now, it doesn't say here in so many words, God is infinite. It says God's understanding is infinite. But it would be impossible for a being that was not infinite to have infinite understanding. A finite being could not have infinite understanding or greatness or power. So the Bible teaches that God is infinite. Now, this, above all other things that may be said about God, makes the greatest demands on our intelligence and our imagination and our powers of reason. And the reason for this, as I've explained before, that it requires us to picture a mode of being that we're not familiar with, a mode of being wholly beyond ourselves, a mode of being unlike anything that we have ever known. You and I are very familiar with matter and space and time and motion and energy. We're familiar with that. And we're familiar with creatures that are composed of matter, that live in space, that dwell for a time, and that have some energy and that make motions, that are in motion. We're familiar with that. But now tonight I am asking you to receive into your mind ideas of something that isn't matter and it isn't space and it doesn't dwell in space. It overflows a heaven of heavens and contains space. And it isn't subject to time and it isn't a creature. It's the uncreated one. And it isn't energy, though he has all the energy in the world. And I say this is a bit difficult. It isn't something you do right after you've eaten. And it isn't something you do for an after-dinner speaker. It isn't something for an after-dinner speaker to preach about after everybody wants to hear jokes and they're feeling expansive. But it is something that you need to know. Now we've got to keep in our mind one thing, that all that I say is still not God. Because theology, this is theology, but theology at its finest moment can do no more than to tell us about God. But to know about God and to know God are two different things. That's why there are so many icicles hanging around on the eaves of so many theological seminaries, even in July. Because there is a lot of death there, the reason being that our brethren who ought to know better confuse knowing about God with knowing God. What I'm preaching to you is something about God. But if you ever know God, you're going to have to enter by the new birth, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost and by the revelation of the Spirit. If the theologians were to tell it, they would say there has to be revelation and illumination. You have to have truth revealed to you, but until there is illumination of that truth, why, it doesn't do you any good at all. Only the Holy Spirit can make us know God. That is why when we speak of the Holy Spirit, we ought not to speak apologetically, and nobody ought to be ashamed to preach about the Holy Spirit or afraid to preach about him for the reason that only he can make us know God. Theology can teach us about God, and that's what I'm teaching tonight. I'm giving you the doctrine of the divine infinitude. Now, what do I mean by the divine infinitude? I mean that God is infinite, and I mean by that that we know from scripture that this is one thing which God has declared about himself to be true about himself. And that's my definition of an attribute, something which God has declared to be true about himself, either in scripture or in nature. And both in scripture and in nature, God declares things to be true about himself. We can know what God is like by nature and by scripture, dimly and imperfectly in nature. There used to be a time, I said this morning, that we threw out the baby along with the bath when we threw out so much of the old traditional ways of the church. We evangelicals went overboard and threw everything out. We've thrown out some very wonderful treasures. Our Puritanic fathers, the old Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Baptists in other days, used to preach about what they called natural theology. And they didn't hesitate. They weren't liberals or modernists. They were the church fathers. And they taught what they called natural theology. They said that God revealed himself in nature and that there was a theology that could be built up just by looking around about you. We all know that's true, but we're afraid to say that nowadays. We're scared stiff. We're afraid somebody will come along and beat us over the head with a Schofield Bible and say, now wait a minute here, you're a liberal. No, no, my brother, I'm no liberal. I hope I'm liberal, but I'm not liberal in the theology. And I am not a modernist, but I believe that God has, through his creation, declared certain things to be true of himself. I know the Psalms say so, and the prophets say so, and Paul says so. And when I go along with an apostle of the New Testament, a prophet of the Old Testament, a psalmist of all testaments, I feel that I'm in pretty good company and I'm not too badly frightened. Well, what I mean about the infinitude of God is that God knows no limits, and right there is where we stick. A human mind can go a long way, but it can't go all the way to limitlessness. But God is limitless, God is boundless, and God has no end. There is no end to anything in God, and there is no bound. There is boundary to the ocean, but there is no boundary to God. God knows no limit, I say. And whatever God is, he is without limit or bound, and whatever God has, he has without limit or measure. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the difficulty we have in understanding things because we fall into the trap of using words carelessly. And when we think about God as being infinite, we've got to eliminate all the popular usage of words. For instance, unlimited. We say why the Trans-Canada Airlines can do so and so, she has unlimited wealth. We say General Electric is able to do that, they have unlimited wealth. Well, that's just a way of saying that they're pretty well healed. But actually, unlimited can't be applied to the wealth of the Trans-Canada Airlines or Eaton's or General Electric or the Rockefellers. No. They have wealth all right, and as far as I am personally concerned, it's to me unlimited. But you could count it after a while and you'd run out of it pretty soon. Even a country as big and rich as the United States is in debt, in debt $240 billion. That makes my headache just to think about it. So that even a country like that or a country like Great Britain or Russia, Germany, they run out of money after a while. They don't have unlimited wealth, and there never was any such a thing as unlimited wealth. When you talk about anything being unlimited, you're either using words carelessly or else you mean God. And then we use the word boundless. We say about a little boy bouncing around over the floor, he has unlimited energy. I remember once reading about a man, he was an athlete. He was 25 years old and was a professional athlete. He had a little boy, four. And he decided one morning that he was going to start at breakfast, right after breakfast, the time the boy started going, and he was going to follow him all day long and do exactly what he did. If he lay down the floor, he'd lay down the floor. If he'd sit down flat, he'd sit down flat. If he'd turn a somersault, he'd turn a somersault. So all day, not all day, but as long as he could keep up, this big strapping athlete followed this little boy. And along about noon, he was lying with his tongue hanging out, and the little boy was still going. So you can easily see who had the energy, but neither one of them had boundless energy. That little boy's energy had a bound to it. And along about supper time that night, little head began to go down over his plate, and you'd have to wake him up and say, eat your dinner, Junior. You can go to bed right after you eat. He didn't have boundless energy, though he had so much of it that we carelessly say it was boundless. Then we say about a musician, he takes infinite pains, or we say about an author, he takes infinite pains. Well, I don't suppose I'll ever cure the unhappy semantic habit of using words carelessly. I do it myself, and so who am I to talk? But when it comes to the word infinite, I never use it. I remember when Admiral Byrd went down to the South Pole and went up over the ice barrier, you remember, and had all those experiences and adventures. He came back home, and they were interviewing, and somebody said, was it a thrill, Admiral? And he said, Thrill is a word that I never use. Everybody is talking about the thrill, but the man who was undergoing it never used it. Well, infinite is a word that I never use. I used it foolishly the other day in writing. I can still edit it out. But I said all but infinite. Well, that's kind of silly because when you use the word infinite, it means boundless, limitless, shoreless, without end, without measure, without weight. It means infinity stretched in all directions from where you are, and there can only be one, and that is God. So nobody ever took infinite pains. They say Flaubert, the great French writer, used to walk the floor for hours to select one word. And Flaubert said, There's no such thing as a synonym. Get the right word. Get the right word. And so he'd search all night for the French word that fit what he was wanting to say. He said, There are no synonyms. You remember that Gray's Elegy took him seven years to write the elegy. Well, that's taking pains, all right, but not infinite pains because at the end of seven years there was an end. But if there had been infinite pains, there never would have been any end. So when we say infinite, we mean God. These are words, these words unlimited and boundless and infinite, they're words that can't be used of God only, of created things. And measureless is another word, or measure. Measureless is the word we can use only of God. A measurement, you see, is a way created things have of giving an account of themselves. You reach into your pocket to see how much change you have, and you count it. You're measuring the number of what you have there. Or you get on the scales and you weigh yourself, or you stand up and they tell you how high you are. That's measure. You're giving an account to yourself. I said to a man once how much you weigh, and he said, I'm afraid to get on the scale. And I am not mentioning any names, but the measure, measure, you see, is a way we have of accounting for ourselves. It gives an account of ourselves. It describes limitations, in other words. It describes imperfections. And God doesn't have limitations, and he doesn't have imperfections, and therefore he doesn't describe God. Everything that we describe by limitations is contingent and relative, whereas God is self-existent and absolute, and therefore he is a boundless ocean, and none can bound him, and none can fathom him, and none can describe how far out he goes in infinite distances in all that he is. Now measure applies to created things, you know. Weight, that's for the gravitational pull of matter. Ever notice what gravity does to you? It never bothers a little fellow, that four-year-old I talked about. It doesn't seem to bother him at all unless he falls out of a high chair. But it pulls the old fellow down after a while. He stands upright, you know, straight up because he defies gravity, but when he begins to get really old, gravity pulls him slowly down and down, and pretty soon he's bent over. Gravity over the pull, the tug of the center of the earth has done that. And then we measure distance. It's the measurement of, between objects in space, and length is the extension of objects in space, and then we have other ways of measuring. We have liquid measurements, and we have measurements of energy, and we have sound measurements. They call those things decibels. That's how many, how much roar comes in on you from the outside. Then we have measures of light. We say that the bulb gives off so many watts, and we have numbers for pluralities. Ones and twos and fives and eights and sevens and tens, that's for plurality. And we even measure intelligence, and we measure our brains, and we measure our ability to do things. But when we do that, we're confessing that we're imperfect, that we're small and limited, and that we're not infinite. You don't measure God, you don't weigh God, for God isn't composed of matter. You can't figure God in distance, for God fills all distance. And you can't measure God in length, for God has no extension in space. And you can't measure the energy of God, nor the sound God makes, nor the light he gives off, nor anything else. And there are no pluralities in God. God is one. One God, one God, we praise thee. Now, God is outside of all this. None of these words in their concept can touch God nor describe him. They describe only the imperfect things which God has made and not God himself. They are the way we see the work of God's hands. You look out on the work of God's hands and you see it. You see a mountain or a man and you have a size there. Size is a relative thing. I've often thought about that. You talk about a big man. If a man weighs 210 pounds, he's said to be a big man. If he weighs like me, 150, when he's wringing wet, well, he's said to be a small man. Now, after all, when you put a 210-pound man over against a mountain or a battleship, he's pretty small potatoes, wouldn't you say? Relative thing, you know. Relative thing. A baby's born into the world, and if he weighs 10 pounds, they say, why isn't he a big one, though? 10 pounds. And a mom, he comes in a whale way, they put that little fellow up and you can put him between the scale of Leviathan, not miss him. You'd hide him in there, you know, old David's Leviathan, Isaiah's or whatever it was. Well, it's just a relative thing. But in God, there's no sizes. In God, there are no degrees. In God, there's no measurements and no lengths and no pluralities and no weights, because God is just God. Now, if I might be allowed to do this, a man risks a lot. I was always making myself promises and breaking them and risking things, you know, risk having nobody come back. You know, every once in a while, I have a dream. And I'm looking for my text, and while I can't find my text, everybody leaves. That's a dream that I've had. I have that on the average about twice a year. While I'm looking for my text, everybody gets up and goes. And when I finally get my text, there's nobody down there but one or two people scattered about in a large auditorium. And it's all misery to me. I wake up, you know, shake it off. I've had an awful time. And I'm worried sometimes and for fear that I may do this because I break so many rules, so many rules you learn in school. But I'm going to break one now. And I'm going to quote a hymn to you and comment on it. Not explain it, but comment on it. There was a man who wrote a hymn about the infinity of God. Nobody ever sings it, but he wrote it anyhow, and he got it out of his system. And I read it, and it blessed me. And it's a prayer to God. And he says, O majesty unspeakable and dread, were thou less mighty than thou art, thou art, O Lord, too great for our belief and too little for our heart. In other words, he said that if God were just a big God, he'd be too great for us to believe and too little for us to worship. And I believe that. If God were simply a big God, I hear people say, Brethren, we have a big God. I don't like it. I don't like it. A lot of these salesman expressions, these American businessman salesman expressions that some of our Christian businessmen use, I don't like them at all. I don't like them a bit. Because I don't think we ought to pull God down and sell him over the counter like dry goods. I think that God is too holy, too infinite, too high, too wonderful, too glorious for us even to think of him like that. But what he says here is that if God were just a big God, he'd be so big it'd scare us, but he'd be too little for us to worship. I couldn't worship a God who was just an outside man, could you? I couldn't even worship a God who was simply a huge archangel. That's why I don't go much for these religious pictures stuck around. I remember seeing in an art gallery, I attend an art gallery whenever I'm around where they are, I walk through real fast and come away discouraged. But I remember seeing a painting of Michelangelo's God creator. Here he was, a great, monstrous, big, old, bald-headed man sitting on a cloud or lying outstretched on a cloud, and he's doing this with his finger and Adam's coming into being. Well, I don't like to think of God. I couldn't worship that God at all. I don't know how Michelangelo ever got down on his knees to a bald-headed old man. I couldn't do it. I'd want him at least to have a decent head of hair. Even if I don't. But this was a bald-headed old man. And that was Michelangelo's concept of God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, who dwelleth in eternity in light no man can approach unto. I think it's tragic and terrible. So if God were just a big God like that, he'd be too great for our belief, but he'd be too little for our worship. Then he says, Thy greatness would seem monstrous by the sight of creatures frail and undivine. Yet they would have a greatness of their own, free and apart from thine. If God were simply a huge man, then I'd say, Well, he's bigger than I am, but here I am. Here I am. An American Indian chief went to Washington one time to represent his tribe before the president. They expected him to come cringing in, you know, before the great white father. But he walked in, stood straight up, leaned back, folded his arms over his breast and said, You are a man, I am another. I've always been proud of that Indian. I forget who it was, but I like that. I'd like it. You are a man, I am another. Don't you look down on me. Well, the chief was chief over a tribe of a few hundred, and the president was president of a few million. But after all, there wasn't too much difference. And if God were simply a big God and great God, why, I'd have a greatness and he'd have a greatness. His would be bigger than mine, but I'd say, Well, I'm not as big as you, but I'm coming. But this God, this great God, is infinite, and so I have no greatness apart from God. But greatness which is infinite makes room for all things in his lap to lie. Because God is infinite, he makes room for all things to lie in his lap. And we should be crushed by magnificence short of infinity. We'd be crushed by it if God were so large and yet wasn't quite infinite. We'd be crushed by his size, but we couldn't worship that kind of God. We share in what is infinite, his hours, for we in it alike are thine. For I enjoy a great God by right of thee is more than doubly mine. Thus, thus thy grandeur make us grand ourselves. His goodness hides, bids us fear. Thy greatness makes us brave as children are when they love or near. God is infinite and because God is infinite, you and I can be bold and brave in the universe. Why? Just the same as a little boy is brave when his dad's around. He says we can be brave as children are when those they love are near. Never was anybody quite so bold as a four or five year old boy when his great big strapping father's around. No, no, he's really brave. Great God, our lowliness takes heart to play beneath the shadow of thy state. The only comfort of our littleness is that thou art so great. How could I stand myself if I didn't believe in an infinite God? How could I endure myself if I didn't know that God was eternal? How could I endure the passing of my years if I didn't know that I had been baptized into the heart of one who knows no years, who is the ancient of days, who had no beginning and can have no end? How could I endure my weakness if I didn't know that I had been baptized into the heart of one who has infinite strength? So this is our God and this is the God we adore. So God is what he is now without limit. He knows no extent and he knows no measure. And if there were a point where God wasn't, if you could get on a beam of light and fly at 186,000 miles a second, way out yonder for a billion light years and come to a spot where God wasn't, you'd say, well, right here is where God ends. God has a big spread, but this is the border. This is the limit. This is the end. You're great Canada here, bigger than the United States. This vast Canada. All right, it's big, all right, and the whole world knows how big it is and is rapidly learning how big it is. But right down here, a little below, what you may call it, there's a little line and there's where it ends. Canada ends where the nose of Uncle Sam begins, and Uncle Sam's northern boundary ends where Canada begins. There's a limit to great countries, a limit to great wealth, but there's no place where you can put a boundary and say, now, God, don't overflow this. God speaks to the sea and says, this far and no farther, but who can speak to God and say, this far and no farther? Who dares tell God what he can do or can't do? Well, God is without limit, I say, and if you can think a limit, you're not thinking about God. But if you can't keep from thinking of a limit, if you think and think and think out and out and up and out and up and out and try to think as far out as God and then you break down, don't let it worry you. Augustine had his troubles, too, and so did Paul and David and Isaiah. No human being can think infinitude, yet I'm preaching about it. Nobody can think it. You've got to believe it. You've got to believe it in your heart. Occasionally, somebody will write me and say, why don't you make it more clear, brother? Why don't you tell us exactly? And I write back and say, I can only do what John the Baptist did. I can point to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world and after that, you're on your own. I can't take anybody by the hand and lead them into the kingdom of God. I can only point them to the Lamb of God and then he and they are for it. And I can't, by any means, describe the infinitude of God. I can only point with wonder and amazement and awe-struck admiration and say, behold God. And then after that, it's you and God for it. One of these days, I'll be gone and it'll be you and God for it. One of these days, your friends will be gone and it's you and God for it. So it's good that we now know all that we can know about the infinite God. Now, what does all this mean to us? If God is infinite, I think it's true. All theologians believe it. The Bible teaches it. We sing about it and I've tried to preach about it tonight. But what does it mean to us now? Have we had a lesson in theology upon which we're to be examined one of these days? No, not that. There are some things that if this is true and it is true, then God's love is infinite. The love of God is infinite. I heard a man preach years ago. Don't remember his name. I don't remember his name at all. But he left a beautiful thought with me. He preached from that text where Jesus said, The same is my brother, my sister, and my mother. Remember those words? He that loveth me, the same is my brother, my sister, and my mother. And he said, Now that's the way it works. Your brother, his love is pretty good, but it's not too strong and he could desert you. But your sister will stick to you after your brother has dumped you over. And after your sister can't stand you anymore, you still have your mother. He said, My brother, my sister, and my mother. And then he said, There is a love that is closer than the love of a mother yet, and that's the love of God. I remember that. Oh, it must have been thirty years or more ago, but it was a beautiful sermon. And I'd just like to pass that thought on to you tonight. That a mother's love can be outraged and die. Or a mother can die and her love die with her. But God can't die and because he can't die, therefore, his love never died. But you say, Did not Jesus die? And do not we sing, When God, the mighty maker, died for man, the creatures sinned? Yes, yes. The second person of the Trinity took upon him the form of a man and died for our sins. But the eternal God remained alive and raised him from the dead. Deity never died, but the man called Jesus who was man and God died for our sins. No contradiction there no confusion at all. God can't die. God is the immortal who only has immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. So the love of God is infinite. Kierkegaard, the great Danish writer, in a little chapter on the love, on love, let's see, love covers a multitude of sins. That was his text. And he lived a hundred years ago and I just discovered him a few years back and everybody's talking about Kierkegaard now. But Kierkegaard wrote a little sermon on that text that love covers a multitude of sins. He said, How did Jesus Christ deal with our sins? How did he do it? He covered them. He covered them. And he said, What did he cover them with? His life. He said if he had covered them with his life, they could have taken his life away and exposed our sins again. But he covered them with his death. And so when he died, he covered them with his death. And he played back and forth on that one theme that by his death on a tree he covered our sins and hid them as a fog hides the landscape forever and ever from the eyes of angels and demons and God. So the love of God is infinite. Now you can be certain of that. The love of people isn't infinite. It's an awful thing to fall in love and fall back out. I've always thought how shocking it is when you read in the newspapers of cases, divorce cases, where a person will say, a woman will say, I no longer love him. She once did and no longer. Love didn't last. It didn't last. And we sometimes hear about mothers who forsake their children so that even the finest love the world knows. The love of a father, a mother, a sister, a wife, has limits, but the love of God has none because God is infinite and anything God has is limitless. So there's one thing you can be sure about. There's no limit to the love of God. Those who believe in the complete salvation of all the universe, that is they believe that when Christ died, he died for everybody, including the devil and demons. That's a universalism, which I don't go along with, as you don't. But as far as the love of God is concerned, the love of God is big enough to take in all of heaven and all of hell, too. But God in his infinite planning planned that only those who repent and believe shall be saved. But the love of God is vaster than the measure of man's mind and the heart of the world. And the eternal is most wonderfully kind. So the love of God is infinite. Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, an everlasting love. Then God's grace is infinite, the grace of God. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. I was praying the other day and thinking to myself about it, and I was thinking about how vast the grace of God is as compared with our human sin. There's a peculiar contradiction here, ladies and gentlemen. If you don't think your sin is big, then the Lord can't save you. But if you think your sin is bigger than God, then he can't save you. You've got to realize that though your sin is big, God is infinite, and therefore God is bigger than all of your sin. Where sin abounded, the grace of God does much more abound. When God says more, referring to himself, we ought to expect more and more. extend our imagination into borderline infinity. And then when God says much more and puts a qualifying word behind it, what can you do but kneel and say, My Lord and my God? How grace does much more abound, the abounding grace of God. John Bunyan wrote a book, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. In the old days when they wrote a book, they gave them long titles, long titles. I have a book written by an Irishman by the name of Thomas Traherne, and I forgot, I think about 16 words to the title of that book, but nowadays we have short titles. They had long ones then, and he called his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and that was a little of the story of his life, the abounding grace of God. Some night I'm going to preach on the love of God, another night on the grace of God, so I'm going to do that, so I'll not exhaust the subject now, only to point out that sin is man's doing, and because it is man's doing, it has a limit to it. Grace is God's doing, and because it's God's doing, it has no limit to it. And when you have for your medicine that which has no limit, trying to cure a disease which has a limit, you can be sure the patient is going to get well. And when the infinite, limitless grace of God attacks the finite, limited sin of a man, that sin has no chance. If we'll only repent and turn from it, God will pulverize it and whirl it into immensity where it can never be known again while the eternity rolls on eternity. That's what I think happened to my sin. That's what I think happened to the sin of everybody that believed. I've heard of men like Billy Bray arguing with the devil and sassing him back. I never sassed the devil. I have a very high respect for the devil. I don't like him, and I know he's the personification and distilled quintessence of all that is sinful. But I also know that even the archangel Michael, when contending with the devil about the body of Moses, did not rebuke him, but he said, The Lord rebuked thee. So I'm not going to fuss with the devil. I'll let God handle him. He's the only one that can. But I like just in the sneaking way to have the devil know about this. I like to have the devil know that Jesus Christ, our Lord, is infinite and his blood is infinite. The purchase of his blood is infinite. And if all the sands on the seashore and the stars in the sky were human beings, each one, and if every corpuscle in the bloodstream of every human being in the world was a human being, and they had all sinned as bad as Judas, still the grace of God being infinite and limitless, could cure it, because God has no limit, and sin has limit. You read about the galaxies, beyond galaxies, beyond galaxies, billions of stars in the galaxies, and if they were all human beings and all had sinned, they would still have a limit. And if your sin is big as a mountain, you look back on your past, you remember the things you did, you know the big sins have never been the ones that bother me, but the sneaking little mousy sins, the sins you're ashamed of, the sins you don't want even to think about, they're the ones that bother my conscience and bother me. But even though you've sinned all those little rascally sins, they have a limit to them. God could set eight or ten angels counting, and in ten years he could count them with an adding machine. He could find my sins and add them up and say, well, here's the total, and it would stream clear across the room. And then some angel would say, well, I guess he's doomed. And God would say, no, look at my grace. It extends not across the room, but from eternity past to eternity to come. Infinite grace of our loving God, we sing. And it's correct and proper that we should. Well, then there's atonement, atonement. When he died for us, when Jesus died, it was enough. I'm glad to have enough of something, aren't you? Enough at once, enough of something sometimes. And there's enough. When Jesus died on that tree, it only took him six hours to die, but because it was infinity dying, it was because the man who died was charged with the deity who couldn't die. But because God counted infinity there, atonement is enough. I remember a great hymn by a man by the name of St. Paul. And he says, Lord, I believe we're sinners more than sands upon the ocean shore. Thou hast for all atonement a ransom paid for all the full atonement made. Now, that was a good Arminian that wrote that, you know. And I was looking through a good Presbyterian hymn books not long ago, and you know they skip that verse, they skip that one because they don't quite believe that he died for everybody. I believe he died for everybody. And I believe that Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, not only died for the elect, I believe he died for every human being that was ever born into the world, or ever will be born into the world. I believe he died for every baby that died at birth, and for every man who lived to be a hundred and fifty. I believe he died for all. Lord, I believe that we're sinners more than sands upon the ocean shore, who has for all a ransom paid for all the full atonement made. So we can go all around the world telling people that Jesus Christ died for them. Some of my good friends say that, well, he died for the elect, and when you go preaching the gospel, God finds his elect. Well, if there were a hundred people there and I was preaching the gospel to them, they would and only ninety of them were elect, or ten of them, say, were elect, and the other ninety weren't. I'd be lying to ninety of them. When I say, Jesus died for you, put a period after it, I'd be lying to ninety of them. He only died for the ten who were the elect. If I said, Whosoever will, let him come, I'd be lying to the ninety, because they were not the ones that should come. Well, I love all of God's children. I love the ones that have good sense, and the ones who don't, and the ones who have good theology, and the ones who don't. I love them all. I throw my arms about them all, and I suppose that it's good to believe good, strong theology, but I can't go along with those who believe that Christ died only for certain ones. I think Christ died for all of us. When he was out there on the cross, I was in his heart. Hitler was in his heart, and Khrushchev was in his heart, and Bluebeard was in his heart, and I was in his heart. When he died out there on the cross, Eichmann was in his heart. You say, how could it be? These horrible men, these were horrible men. Judas was a horrible man. But Jesus Christ, having infinite efficacy in the atonement, atoned for Judas. If somebody had only told Judas, and Judas had only repented, there might have been a Saint Judas tonight! Don't you imagine, because Abraham Lincoln and McKenzie King were good men and Hitler was a bad man, that Christ died for those two and didn't die for Hitler. He died for all men, good and bad, vicious, wicked, bestial, around the world. He died for the homosexual, died for the dope fiend, died for all. Ah, the patience of Jesus, the infinite patience of Jesus, the patience of God, and the power to save. He has infinite power to save. He breaks the power of cancelled sin. Paul Rader used to say, You name it and God will bust it. You name it and God will break it. You're right. So God being infinite is not a theological bit of lumber to put up in somebody's attic and label and say, This is the infinitude of God. If something gets down where you are, and somebody comes at you with a sword, and you look to the infinite protection of God, and you wonder if maybe this is your last hour, and you look to the infinite forgiveness of God, and you expect to face that awful judgment hour, and you look to the infinite protection of the atoning Lamb who died from the foundation of the world. So it's better that we know what infinitude means. So I recommend that you believe this and believe that God is limitless and Jesus Christ is limitless and the Holy Ghost has no limit. There is no end, no bound, no shore. But all that you need, you'll find in God. All that you need. You can find it now, tonight, this night, the 5th of March. Find it here in this building, now. I knew a man once years ago by the name of Everett Rowe. He was a southerner, and he never quite made the English language hang together. But he was a dear saint of God, a dear saint of God. He was converted somewhere down in the southern part of Ohio, and he had a little church. And it was so real to him and so marvelous, he knew when and he knew where. And he became a great soul and great soul winner and prayer warrior. And every year, he'd go back to the little place where he was converted. And he'd go in reverently and walk down the aisle and he'd measure off from the end of the altar, the old-fashioned wooden altar, and he'd walk over and he'd measure off from where he'd been. He'd kneel down there and he'd have an hour of thanksgiving, thanking God Almighty that he ever found this sinner Everett Rowe. So one summer he went back, and in the meantime unknown to him, they'd sold the church and they'd turned it into a garage. And they had a concrete floor and there was oil and dirt and grease over the floor, you know, and hunks of this and that lying around. So he said, it was the same building, only the only that it had been gutted out and concreted, and now they're using it for a garage. He said, he stepped it off down the aisle and then over from the side of the building in, and he said, now I think this greasy spot right here is where I ... So he went over to the boss and he said, excuse me, but this used to be a church. Yeah, he said. Well, he said, I was converted in this church. Sure enough, yeah, I was converted in this church. And he said, every year I come to this church and kneel down at the spot where I met God. He said, would you mind if I knelt down over there in the grease and thank God almighty again after the passing of the years for saving my poor wretched soul? The fellow said, no, it's all right with me. So he went over and knelt down in the grease and the fellows around him, you know, pounding and working and drilling and they looked at him and thought it was another nut drive. But everybody knew what he was doing and there in the grease he knelt down and thanked God that he ever converted, ever arrived. You know, I believe there are some of you here tonight, if you'd only dare to believe in the infinite love and grace of God and the infinite, limitless, measureless power of the atonement, you could make this the night that you come out of darkness into light. And as long as you live, you're going to have a warm spot in your heart for Avenue Road Church. You may not want to do what he did. But your mind would go back in memory to the 5th of March for the years that God may have given you on earth and said it was back there in Toronto that wherever you might wander over this wide, wide world, at least once a year your thoughts would roll back like a sparrow coming back to Capistrina for a swallow and you would say, I remember when God met my soul. The infinite grace of God rolled over me with cleansing power. And I would say, I