Pastor's Message
October 2009
A few weeks ago I went on a fly-in fishing trip in northwestern Ontario with my dad and two of his friends. The outfitter loaded us and our gear onto a float plane, flew us into very remote country, and dropped us off for five days of fishing adventure. There are so many great things about a trip like that, but one of the greatest things is seeing the night sky. Being so far from civilization the number of visible stars is staggering; it is as if there was a starry blanket draped over the earth. Stunning. To stand outside after dark and stare up at the sky is to come face to face with the truth that Earth is incomprehensibly tiny. Tiny, but not insignificant. Not insignificant because the God who created those stars, some of which are millions of times bigger than the earth, casts his eyes toward earth and fixes his gaze on us.
God is immense. Not physically, of course, as he is spirit and has no physical form. But the God who created our incalculably large universe dwarfs that same universe. The psalmist tells us in Psalm 33:6 – By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host. God spoke a word and created the universe. God breathed out the trillions of stars - huge, intensely hot burning balls of gas. He breathed them out. That is a big God.
With an entire universe to superintend God wouldn’t seem to have time for us, such a miniscule part of his entire creation. He is so lofty, he is so other-worldly, he is so immense. He is so distant and so far, so high above us. His ways are incomprehensible and his mind is unsearchable. Who are we that he should waste a second thinking about us?
But through the prophet Isaiah, God says this – For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly” (Is. 57:15). What incredible words.I dwell in the high and holy place. He could have stopped there. God is transcendent; he is beyond us, bigger than us; he is mighty and self-sufficient and independent. God is totally, completely, eternally God apart from us. He did not need to create this world or the beings in it. He was not lonely and was not lacking in glory. God is not benefited or improved by us. He does not receive more glory because we are here. God is God in all the fullness of his deity apart from this universe. So it would make sense if Isaiah 57:15 ended with I dwell in the high and holy place.
But this beautiful passage has two incredible words, and we ought to feel the weight of them……and also. God dwells in the high and holy place…..and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly. This transcendent God, this God who needs nothing from his creation, this God who is perfectly complete in and of himself, this God who dwells in the high and holy place, also chooses to fix his gaze on his creatures and dwell with them. God dwells with those who humble themselves before him. The presence of God is so vast it extends beyond the universe; yet it is so near. Why? Why would God bother with us?
He does not create us because somehow in so doing he is better off. He creates us to be recipients. He creates sentient, rational, moral, Image-of-God creatures so that he can pour himself into us. He creates us to fill us. He creates us empty to be filled. There is nothing God gains in this. We are here for the purpose of God pouring into us a finite portion of his fullness and joy and splendor that are his in infinite measure.
God tells us in Isaiah 66:1-2 – Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” The God of the universe, the Creator God, the God who uses the earth as his footstool, promises to dwell personally with those who humble themselves before him.
God is transcendent – separate from his creation, apart from us. Yet he is immanent – near us, involved in his creation and intimately relating to us. And his immanence came crashing into this world in the person and work of Jesus Christ, his Son, with such force that it changes every living being. The God who could snuff out a 10,000 degree Fahrenheit, million mile diameter star with just a thought, dwelt among us so that we could dwell with him. Of all of his creations, those who are humble before him are above all else his prized possessions, the objects of his affections.
I thought of this as I stood on the shores of that remote lake in Ontario, and I thanked my lucky stars…….no, I thanked my infinitely powerful, loving, bigger-than-a-star God that despite the vastness of the cosmos, he is with me every second of my life.
Pastor Adrian Bolt