“How Does God’s Transcendence and Immanence
Fit into Today’s Western World?”
Isaiah 40:12-31
Last week we looked at the beginning of this chapter and read that God’s desire and intention is to deliver His people. Isaiah was writing this during the time that the Israelites had been captured by the Babylonians.
Prophets sure had a difficult job. Put yourself back in time, you are an Israelite and you managed to live through the Assyrian attack, only to have the Babylonians come to take you off to Babylonia. You have come to the temple to hear what your resident prophet has to say, hoping that he will declare that God hasn’t forgotten you, and like all the other times, will bail you out of trouble again, only to discover you are going to Babylon, you are being captured.
Oh and by the way, God loves you and He is still in control.
Oh, and by the way, you have been an excellent history student and remember what your teachers taught you, that up until this point in history, there has never been a group of people, having been captured, ever had the opportunity to be released from their captivity and return to their homeland. So for God to tell you that He is watching over you and will deliver you seems a bit far fetched, if not down right ludicrous.
Yet, Isaiah was not just an ordinary prophet. His approach to answering the question as to whether God was able to deliver them from the Babylonians was to remind them that their God was not like any other god. He was unique.
Isaiah points out that God was not going to deliver them because He was greater than the gods in Babylon, He was able to deliver them because He was the only God. Isaiah uses rhetorical questions to explain his argument.
Isaiah’s first rhetorical question has to do with God’s being the sole creator. He follows this up with the affirmation that God is the Ruler of all nations and rulers.
Next, Isaiah uses a rhetorical invitation to compare God with anything else that exists. Whereas he concludes that God has absolute superiority over any god, whether the god has been conceived as an idol or as a heavenly host.
Let’s look at the first point Isaiah explains, that of creation. Isaiah doesn’t develop a series of logical proofs to make his point. He has received this information and accepts it. His defense lies in the fact that God is “other” than creation. God is not the mountains, or the oceans, or the trees, He is “other” than these. In fact, He holds these things in His hand, He created them, and He is not the world. God is transcendent of all that exists.
In verses 13-14, Isaiah points out the polytheistic religions, and their need of assistance from counselors or magicians to assist other gods in understanding their purposes. Isaiah continues to explain that reality is that God created all of the nations that exist, and He is not an extension of them. Verse 16, illustrates this point by saying that were all the forests in Lebanon were to be set on fire along with all its animals, this would not affect God. He would still have the power to recreate what was gone.
Isaiah continues to remind the Israelites that the transcendence of God means there is no idol that can be made in His image. God is not of the world, and any attempt to represent Him in the forms of this world would lead to deadly consequences. How can something made by human hands be a god? Especially how can it be the god who made the human?
Isaiah continues to elaborate that not only can God not be other than the world, He is also other than the heavens, in fact, in verse 22, Isaiah declares that God is the one who stretched the heavens out like a tent. The result being that not only is God not overtaken by human rulers, He has the ability to reduce the rulers to nothing. He demonstrated this with the Assyrian king Sennacherib.
As we continue to read, in verse 25, we are asked the question, this time by God, if we know of anything that can compare to Him. One may have answered something from the heavens, such as the stars. To which Isaiah retorts that God was the one who created them and brings them out, “one by one, and calls them each by name,” like a shepherd calling his flock.
By this time, in verse 27, Isaiah realizes that those who have been listening to him may have been thinking, okay, all fine and good, however, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God?”
Have you ever been in that place? The place where you have faith in God, you know He is mighty, you believe He is able to do anything, but due to the terrible circumstances that surround you, you have determined that you must be outside of God’s vision or else God has given up on you. I hear it all the time.
“God has better things to do than help me.”
“I’ve messed up so badly God won’t help me.”
“It’s all my fault. I’m a mess.”
Isaiah’s response to this dilemma is that you must have too low a view of God,
Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those who get tired,
gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out,
young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
They spread their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don’t get tired,
they walk and don’t lag behind.
This brings us back to the theme of trust, specifically trust as waiting. This theme has appeared three times previously in the book of Isaiah, and will appear two more times as we continue. Let me remind you of this theme. To “wait” on God is not about marking time. Waiting on God means we live in confident expectation of His action on our behalf. We don’t run ahead and attempt to solve our own problems.
Instead, like Isaiah instructed his people, we are to trust in God to offer us strength when we are worn out and weary, at just the right time, whether to soar, run or walk, and may I add, crawl.
The real problem lies in our culture.
We don’t want to “wait.”
We want it now!
Times a wastin’!
We’ve got things to do, places to go, people to meet.
We want God to help us, but we insist it has to be on our terms. And when it is not the way we want it, we reject it. It’s all about “me.” The irony is that the idea of individuality, the worth of the individual and the willingness to fight to the death for the absolute right of human choice, is a biblical one. Humans are called to voluntarily enter into a personal relationship with the eternal God. From Adam, David, down to Paul, God has interacted with individuals.
Sure, they were part of a nation, but the story is about individuals within those nations.
Our culture also believes in progress. We believe we are not locked into the circumstances we were born in, we have the ability to “better ourselves.” This too comes straight from the Bible. Of all those individuals we read about in the Bible, we can trace how their plans as they progress and as they regress. Yet, throughout their paths we see God transform their lives.
Can God change our circumstances? For the better? Isaiah tells us that there is nothing beyond His compassion or His power. Just like the Israelites in Isaiah’s day, we too, have chains of conditioning on us. God broke through their chains and He can break through ours. The problem is we often have discomfort with the ways God chooses to act on our behalf. It’s not soon enough, or it doesn’t give me what I want. Actually, it is not up to us to dictate the terms and the means.
It is up to us to hold on to God with a confident hope. However, this depends on our faith.
“Uh oh, you may say. If it depends on me, I’m doomed. My faith often waivers and my will often fails.”
God knows that. He is not asking us to do a mental number on ourselves until we believe it is going to happen. Your faith isn’t in yourself, it is in God. And we are asked to live in such a way that we put our faith in God, release ourselves into His hands, without reservation. This means taking our good and our bad, our joys and our concerns and placing them in the Creator’s hands, and leaving them there. The best way to make sure we can do this is to make sure our faith is shaped by the Word of God, and its view of reality, not the reality our society gives us.
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
Let’s pray.
Dear God, help us to actively believe in Your Word, and to remember there are no limits to what You can do for us, for our families, and for our society. AMEN.
