Many O Lord my God are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us-ward. They cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” Psalm 40:5 KJV
Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, They would be too numerous to count. Psalms 40:5 NASB
David speaks of the impossibility of “reckoning up in order,” or setting in a row from beginning to end, God’s thoughts toward him. What would he have said had he lived in the age when grace was abounding and revealed in all its fullness?
How do you measure something? How do you set a series in order? You have to have a beginning, and sequence, and an end or terminus. When did God begin to think about you? When did the first thought of grace enter His mind? When did the first movement of love leap up in His heart? Can you locate that initial point? Can you determine when it all began?
“Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world!” is the wondrous statement of Paul through the Spirit of God in Ephesians 1. There was no initial point in time when He began to think about you. Eternally, in the heart and mind of God, was your name and mine!
What about an end? Will He ever stop thinking of us and making provision for our eternal joy, blessing, and wonder? Paul reminds us in that same epistle that “in the ages to come” we will be the recipients of His increasing and ceaseless manifestations of grace. There was no beginning and there will never be an ending to His “thoughts to us-ward.”
But what about all the thoughts in between? Can they be numbered? Just as the High Priest continually wore the names of the people of God upon his shoulders and breastplate, so there is not a moment that you and I are not in His thoughts.
Consider
- Think of some other things in the Psalms which were beyond “numbering.”
- While we cannot reckon them up in order or number them, what are some of God’s thoughts toward us? If you limit yourself just to the Ephesian epistle, what are some of His plans and thoughts for us?
- The verses speak of God’s works. What are some of the things accomplished at Calvary? Not only was sin put away, but far more was accomplished. Think of some of the results of what The Lord Jesus Christ did.