God's thoughts seen in God's works.
"How great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep." Reminding us of the fine passage in Isaiah 55:8, Isaiah 55:9, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." The "thoughts" of God, his purposes and plannings, bring him before us as a moral Being, the sublime moral Being. And just as we read a man's character by his acts, so we may know God's mind by the study of his works. A man is always greater, always better, than anything he does; and yet it is only from what he does that we can gain our apprehension of the man. So God is infinitely above and beyond anything of his handiwork; and yet only through the handiwork can we get to know him. It is not enough to say that God's moral government is illustrated in nature; we must say that God himself—and it is in what God is we find the secret of the character of his government—is known through the works of his hands. The point suggested by the first sentences of this verse is that the more man studies God's works, the more he feels their greatness, their mystery, their beyondness. And then he can no longer be surprised that God's thoughts and purposes, the higher moral ends he ever keeps in view and works towards, should be deep, altogether out of his reach.
I. THE KNOWN REVEALING WHAT CAN BE KNOWN OF GOD. We can understand much of God's handiwork. We can see God's purpose in much, and use many things as God designed they should be used. We can see the moral message in much of God's work. So argues St. Paul, in Acts 14:15-17; Romans 1:19, Romans 1:20. We may know, thus, all the natural attributes of God, and gain also some apprehension of the moral attributes. But what can be known of God in this way must always be incomplete.
II. THE UNKNOWN REVEALING THAT THERE IS AN UNKNOWN IN GOD. "His thoughts are very deep;" quite beyond man's plummet. There is mystery in Nature. She holds secrets which even man's science cannot force her to disclose. And those mysteries declare that there must be deeper mysteries in him who holds the secret of them all. He is more mysterious than they.—R.T.