A High And Lofty Perception Of God
Thine, O Lord, is the beauty, the glory; the victory, and the majesty All that is in the heaven and earth is Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord. Wherever L looks, L sees Thy finger¬prints, and my heart sings forth Thy praise. Amen.
Although they do not mean to do it necessarily theologians have a way of hiding the truth behind big words and chasing people away. I have a little tip: You can understand anything any theologian can understand. Do not let them fool you.
The doctor may write his prescription in Latin, hit the layman on the head, and make him feel as if he is up against something big when he sees those Latin words, which he cannot even read. Theologians do the same thing. They talk about the divine transcendence and everybody runs out, buys a novel, and says, Til read what I can understand.”
We can understand theology as presented to us in the Bible. We can understand what God says in the Bible about himself, although we may never plumb the depths of understanding it intellectually.
Take divine transcendence, for example. It means that God is above, high up, and above all things. Supposedly, that contradicts His immanence, which means God is in every place and God is here. God’s omnipresence will comfort you better than your own breath.
God is so high up that He cannot even be conceived. I need to explain now what I mean by “so high up” or “far above.” I do not mean distant, because God does not care anything about distance. God is not high up in the astronomical sense; He is not high up in the sense that He is a ray of light beyond Mars.
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It is important that we think of God as being in His right character, so infinitely beyond everything that you and I know that we cannot explain it. Physical magnitude does not mean anything to God.
Never suppose that God is at the top of the ascending curve of life. That is a great mistake. In some people’s circle of life, they start with one creature and move their way up a little bit to the birds, and then they go all the way up to beasts and then all the way up to man.
Then they think they are on their way up to the archangels and then the burning cherubim, and then at the top of that circle of life is God. That is no way to think of God at all.
Would you be shocked to know that God is just as high above archangels as He is above a caterpillar? The gap that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is of finite depth. How quickly we are to think that the angel has a grade of life that is far higher than the caterpillar that crawls in the room?
They are alike in that they are creatures. There was a time when they were not, and then they were. The archangel with his broad wings spread and the tiny caterpillar inching its way along are both creatures of God.
But God is not a creature. He does not belong in the creature category. We must think of God as separate from, high above, way beyond, and other than. He is God, and there is nothing like God in the entire universe. Only God is God.
When we think of God as being high above, the substance of God is wholly above, and God can never pass over and cease to be God, and nothing that is not God can ever pass over and become God.
The idea that Jesus was a man who became God is not true. Jesus was God and man united in one being. There was never such a thing as man becoming God, and there never can be such a thing as God becoming a creature. That would be to bring God down and falsify the majesty of the deity.
This is the great God, the One you and I are called to serve. All of the things that are said or taught about God are only a portion of God and a small part of His ways. We have what is called the rational element, which is the part you can get hold of with your finite mind.
People would like to pull God down and make Him small so that they could have a God their size—though a little bigger, so He could help them when they are in trouble. That is the kind of God that is in evangelical circles today.
The God of the average evangelical church is too small. He is not the God of the heavens and of creation, but He is a homemade, handmade God pulled down to our level. Our God today is like an old uncle whom we want to keep on good terms, and when the time comes, He will make us rich or help us in some way in a business deal. We want to be able to use God for our purposes.
Let me say clearly: I would not bow my knees to that kind of a God. The God that can get me on my knees has to be infinitely higher than I am. He must be so high and lofty and glorious that I could join the angels, seraphim, and cherubim to cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath.”
He would have to be so mighty that He could put the world in His hand, and He would have to be bigger than the devil, greater and mightier than mountains, and grander than fire. He would have to be all that and much more to be a God I could worship.
The God whom I could think up with my head, I will never get down on my knees to worship—never.
I am an American, and I do not bow to people easily. I do not like the idea of classes, where some men are big shots and some are little shots, and the little shots get down on their knees before the big shots. That is not the way it should be in America, and that is not the way to do it as a Christian.
God made us all so that the humblest little child is just as valuable to God as a Christian with lots of money to write big checks and drive big cars. Let us keep ourselves as free as we can.
And remember, when it comes to God, we go down on our knees along with the mighty man and the potentate and the humble man. Let us not get big ideas about these important people and think that they are more important to God.
When we say, “I accept Jesus,” we are not doing Jesus any favor. Some evangelists make it out as though you will be doing Jesus a great favor if you come to Him. No, you do not do Jesus any favor when you give your heart to Him. And He does not lose anything when you refuse to give your heart to Him.
You hold off, and He loses nothing. Give, and He gains nothing. He already has the world without end. Multitudes of the redeemed and the four beasts at the altar and the living creatures all bow before Him and cry, “Holy, holy, holy, worthy is the Lamb that was slain.”
Let us not imagine we are doing Jesus a favor by testifying or witnessing. We are not doing Jesus a favor by giving our hearts to Him. Rather, He is doing us an infinite favor by accepting us and receiving us unto Himself. The mighty God looked at man and took upon Him flesh as man, and died and rose again.
Now we are set before this mighty Lord Jesus. So do not get too proud. It was Jesus who rose from the dead and said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth,” and He is not going to, for one second, allow himself to be pawed and slobbered over by carnal men and women whose concept of love came from Hollywood.
I understand that certain Muslims who cannot read, if they see a paper lying on the ground and do not know what is written on it, put it up carefully on a shelf somewhere, where it is safe. They are afraid that the sacred name of Allah might be written on it.
They do not want to be guilty of trampling on that sacred name. They are more reverent than many Christians. They bow before Allah more than many Christians go before the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Do you know this awesome God? This God the philosophers have called the mysterium tremendum— the tremendous mystery, the awesome mystery. Before this mysterium tremendum,9 Jacob cried, “How dreadful is this place; this is the house of God.55 In the New Testament, Peter said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am unclean.55 Abraham said, “I am but dust and ashes.
The job was speechless before God. Job was an orator and probably would have made a good politician or an evangelist. He could open his mouth and words would flow out like water out of a flask. But when God revealed himself to him, Job laid his hands on his mouth and said, “O God, I cannot speak.
Many people are not getting anyplace with God because they have never met that kind of God. Their God is a self-made God and carries with Him no mystery or majesty. I will never bow my knee to a self-made or handmade God. I bow my knee to that mysterium tremendum—that awesome majesty we call our Father, which art in heaven.
I have been teaching and preaching since I was nineteen years old, and I must confess that the older I get, the dumber I get. I know so little. People come and ask me things that I could answer by pointing them out in the Bible. However, honesty compels me to confess that I do not know very much anymore.
Once I knew a lot, or thought I did, but as I spend time before this tremendous God, I become more and more aware that I do not know very much anymore. And really, I believe it ought to work this way.
Nobody who is proud will ever be acceptable to the awesome presence of the most holy God. The God who knows all that can be known in one easy, effortless act, and knows all power, all spirits, all minds, all matter, all relationships, all energy, all history, and all the future—compared to this God, I know very little.
None of us knows very much, and the man who thinks he knows the most is the man who, according to Paul, knows the least. If we would just admit how utterly ignorant we are, we would begin to get somewhere with God.
God is not interested in your head. He is not interested in how many degrees you have. After I received my honorary degree, I did not preach any better, nor did I pray any better.
Degrees do not mean anything, and yet some people imagine that if they do not have a degree, they cannot get anywhere. Some of the simplest people in the world know God far better than a person with a Ph.D. does. Pray with your heart, and God will hear you.
Some people will come to the altar and pray and then go away disappointed. The reason is they have a controversy with God. They are holding out on God, fighting Him. Do not be fooled by this.- God is still the awesome God that sent fire on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and turned the people into ashes. He is still that God.
If you have a dispute with God, keep in mind two things: One, you cannot win, and two, God cannot lose. If you are fight¬ing God at any point, you have no chance of winning. My advice is, simply, to quit fighting, surrender, and say, “God, here I am.”
Throw yourself into the hands of God. You cannot win as long as you are resisting God, and God cannot lose because He is sovereign and is working according to a plan He established before the foundation of the world.
When it is all over, the crown will be on the head of Jesus, and His bride will walk with Him into the presence of the Father, with great joy. God will win in the end.
All those who fight will lose. Either God will win over you now, to your everlasting blessedness, or God will win over you later, to your everlasting loss and sorrow and shame. Stop fighting God and you will win peacefully, for God loves you, and Jesus died for you, and the Holy Spirit is anxious to apply the blood and break every fetter in your life and set you free. He cannot do it, however, while you resist Him.
Not I, But Christ
Not I, but Christ, be honored, loved, exalted;
Not I, but Christy be seen be known be heard;
Not I, but Christy in every look and action,
Not I, but Christy in every thought and word.
Not I, but Christy to gently soothe in sorrow;
Not I, but Christy to wipe the falling tear;
Not I, but Christy to lift the weary burden!
Not I, but Christy to hush away all fear.
Not I, but Christy in lowly, silent labor;
Not I, but Christ, in humble, earnest toil;
Christ, only Christ! no show, no ostentation!
Christ, none but Christ, the gatherer of the spoil.
Christ, only Christ; ere long will fill my vision;
Glory excelling, soon, full soon, I’ll see—
Christ, only Christ, my every wish fulfilling—
Christ, only Christ, my All in all to be. –A. B. Simpson(1843-1919)