The Gospel of Isaiah: Ch. 66:1-2, Bigger Than the Universe
The Gospel of Isaiah: Ch. 66:1-2, Bigger Than the Universe.
WANTED: An imaginative scribe who can write exquisite poetry. A faithful, articulate believer in Yahweh who can switch from one extreme to another at the Lord’s command… from a sublime vision of God’s glory, to a ridiculous demonstration of shameful nakedness; from confronting the people over their sinfulness, to comforting people with hopefulness; from being an outspoken messenger one minute, to a living object lesson the next; from having one foot in the immediate surroundings one minute, to one foot in the future messianic realm the next. Must be adaptable, thick-skinned, and extraordinarily brave. Person who answers, “Here I am. Send me!” will be especially considered. (from The Jerusalem Post, 740 BC).
“This is what the Lord says: Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. What house could you possibly build for Me? And what place could be My home? Didn’t I Myself make all these things? This is how they all came to be,” says the Lord Yahweh. ‘The kind of person on whom I look with favor is one with a poor and humble spirit, who trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:1-2).
In Other Words: Do you realize how vast My Being is? The immense universe of stars and planets and galaxies is my throne room, my seat of honor, where I sit in power and authority. And the earth? The earth is a place of rest for my feet, a mere footstool. So where could you possibly build for Me a house in which I would be contained? How would you go about building Me a place in which I would live? And yet, even though everything you could see or imagine was made by Me and came into being through Me, My eyes continue to be drawn to the humble and poor, the contrite and those who are crushed in spirit by their sins. And I will continue to look with favor on those who are in holy awe before me, who reverently tremble at My Word. Those who fear me in sacred fearfulness get my attention.
God Outside the Box. Time to climb into our imagination, which is something we should do whenever we start thinking about God. Okay, so think of a small box, something you would get from a jeweler after purchasing a ring. Now, think of that tiny box as representing the entire universe including the earth and the planet and the billions of galaxies. Imagine that the world as we know it could fit into that little box. And now, think of God’s hands carefully holding that box in His immense hands as if it were a priceless but miniscule possession, something along the lines of what a subatomic particle would look like in our human hands. That’s a meager attempt at describing something indescribable, the size of God’s greatness. Our Creator God has more substance, more spiritual girth, than all the universes put together. Our Sovereign Lord outweighs the world if we were able to put such things on a scale. There is no space that can contain Him, there is no place where He isn’t. As Herbert Lockyer once said, “God’s center is everywhere, His circumference is nowhere.” Or as the early church theologian John of Damascus once claimed, “God, then, being immaterial and uncircumscribed, has no place. For He is His own place.” That is, God has no particular place. God is a spirit, so He has no particular location, but is present everywhere at the same time.
The Wisdom of Solomon. “Then he knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands toward haven, and said, ‘O Lord Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth… But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built!” (King Solomon at the dedication of the new Temple, 2 Chronicles 6:18).
The Wisdom of St. Stephen. “Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet Isaiah says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is the resting place for my feet. What kind of house will you build for Me,’ says the Lord, ‘or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” (Stephen, the Church’s first martyr, courageously quoting this Isaiah passage when confronted by unbelieving Temple authorities, Acts 7:48-50).
The Fringes of His Cloak. Because God is literally other-worldly, we are not able to discern Him unless he chooses to reveal Himself, which He has through His Chosen People and then through their Messiah, the Anointed One Jesus Christ. We can only understand God on His terms, otherwise we’re stuck in ignorance of Him. As Job proclaimed, we are merely on the outer fringes of his ways, we are only approaching the outermost borders of His Being, and even with that we can understand enough to follow Him and his ways. Even considering all that we know about God through His Word, His people, and personal experience through His Holy Spirit, we nonetheless have only heard the faintest of whispers from Him and about Him. (Job 26:14).
Mystery Upon Mystery. Noting the unfathomable greatness of God, is it not the most miraculous mystery that the Lord God seems most comfortable hanging out with the likes of you and me, we mere human beings. And not just any human, but the humble and broken person, the contrite who are crushed by their own sins and the sinfulness of the world. The eyes of the Lord God are drawn, not to the great, powerful and important, but instead to those who are needy and insignificant, the plain and simple. Our mighty God looks with favor, not on those who are most successful and important, but instead those who recognize His awesome Being and look at Him with reverence and awe. The meek who are fully aware of God’s power, majesty and goodness, His profound presence, are the ones who draw God’s attention. Even though God’s complexity is a million miles past our comprehension, He nonetheless seeks out the simple. Even though God is the author of all splendor and far past any definition of the beautiful, He nonetheless has His eyes peeled for the plain and spiritually homely. The truth is that our God is worthy of all worship, and that we are made to find our joy and meaning in our worship of Him. So, naturally, since He loves us and wants what’s best for us, He would be pleased when we fear and reverence Him, thus finding the sweet spot that He has designed for all of humanity.
A Proper Fear of God. Are we careless or casual with God in our churches, our hearts even, that contain the holiness and presence of God? “Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a package tour of the Absolute? On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” (Annie Dillard, An Expedition to the Pole).
Our Best Fear. Imagine an old-fashioned scale with two sides hanging down, ready to weigh different objects and compare their relative weights. On the one side you place all our human fears, and you watch as the scale is overwhelmed, dramatically revealing the heaviness of these fears. But then on the other side you place the holy Fear-of-the-Lord. And you will clearly witness a miracle… the Holy Fear side significantly outweighs the Human Fear side. All the human fears we can come up with, our worst fears, are outweighed by our best fear, our holy fear. The Fear-of-the-Lord ends up having more weight, more substance, more density, more eternal meaning. Holy fear is heavier and more significant than human fear. In a broken world, we are prone to fearfulness. In our weak moments, we are vulnerable to fear. On the other hand, “The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; He will fill Zion with justice and righteousness. He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.” (Isaiah 33:5-6).
Seminary professor Ellen Davis, in her book Getting Involved with God, points out that we need to have a “conversion of fears.” In other words, our human fears need to be converted to a holy fear. She then mentions a powerful example of that conversion in Scripture, at the crossing of the Red Sea. On the western shore, Israel looked up, and “here is Egypt coming after them, and they were really afraid.” (Ex. 14:10). And then, on the far shore, Israel looked again, and this time it saw “Egypt dead, on the edge of the Sea. And Israel saw what the great hand of the Lord had done against Egypt, and the people feared the Lord...” (Ex. 14:31). The Israelites’ very human fear was converted to a holy fear. As we face and experience our fears, ask God to convert them to the fear of the Lord. We may still experience various human fears, we’re only human, but living into a life-changing fear of the Lord will go far in deepening our conversion experience.
Holy fear involves the raised hands of adoration; the knocking knees of apprehension; the bare feet of awe; the dry mouth of uncertainty; the quickened heartbeat of anticipation; the bowed head of reverence; the humbled spirit of devotion; the straight posture of respect; the closed mouth of deference; the open mind of discovery; the tender heart of gratitude; the open ears of full attention.
Exploring God as the Final Frontier. It seems like Isaiah, through his countless rhetorical questions regarding the Lord’s greatness, is begging us to explore God as mankind’s final frontier. To explore a frontier means to investigate uncharted territory, to seek something where settled territory is at the edge of wilderness. To explore a frontier is to search the extreme outer limits of something for knowledge and understanding, and to detect something unknown or unexplored. Every adventurer knows that an exploration like this often leads to discovery of something new and unexpected. What could be a better subject of exploration than the unimaginably immense Person of Creator God?
A Job Description. Adventurers who want to explore creation’s Final Frontier, the greatest Wonder of the World; must be extremely curious about the nature of God’s Being; motivated to know more about God than you know presently; inspired by the thrill of discovery; need to be challenged and changed in the process of exploration; have the courage to step into a safe unknown; able to invest considerable mental energy to pursue life inside God with a mustard seed of trust in Him; be comfortable with the certainty of endless exploring; have the patience to pursue the quest one step at a time for as long as it takes; must explore with the vision of C. S. Lewis in his Narnia tales, “Further Up and Further In!” Jesus beckoned His first disciples by asking them to imply follow Him. When they asked where they were going, He said merely, “Come and see!” The follower of Jesus requires the adventuresome spirit of the hearty explorer.
The Scope of the Exploration: The Subject of the exploration is far beyond even the imagination of the explorer. Even eternal heaven will not provide enough time or space to explore God. Even if we impossibly reach the limits of eternal time, there will be more to explore about God. Even if we somehow have discovered the outer fringes of God’s presence, there will be more than enough Being in which to explore His essence. Even within an everlasting timespan and the most immense cosmos imaginable, we would find it literally impossible to discover the full dimension of every aspect of God’s Being. Once started, we would never be able to exhaust our Final Frontier, we will never reach the end of our adventure. No boundary or border exists in the expanse of God’s Personhood; There will always be more to explore, even if eternity somehow came to an end, always more of God to discover even if we found the furthest of the 100 million galaxies. The joys of the everlasting Kingdom will include the ongoing exploration of God to our heart’s content, and the excitement of discovering more of Him around every corner. There will always be more to discover, which is fine because we will have all the time we need.