A Study of The Knowledge of the Holy - Chapter 13 - The Divine Transcendence

Chapter 13 – The Divine Transcendence

·        Prayer - O Lord our Lord, there is none like You in heaven above or in the earth beneath. Yours is the greatness and the dignity and the majesty. All that is in the heaven and the earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, O God, and You are exalted as head over all. Amen.

·        God’s transcendence –  God is exalted far above the created universe, so far above that human thought cannot imagine it.

o       far above ≠ physical distance; “far above” refers to the quality of being.

§         A child strays from a party of sightseers and becomes lost on a mountain and immediately, the whole mental perspective of the people in the party is changed.  Admiration of the grandeur of mountain and nature gives way to distress for the lost child.  The group spreads out over the mountainside anxiously calling the child’s name and searching desperately every secluded spot.

§         What brought about this change of perspective?  The majesty of the mountains is still there, but no one notices.  All attention is given to the tiny two-year old girl weighing less than 30 pounds.  It is because the little girl can love and laugh and speak and pray, and the mountain cannot.  It is the child’s quality of being that gives it worth.

§         As high as the child’s quality of being is to the mountain, God’s quality of being is infinitely far above the quality of being of the little girl.

o       God is spirit, so to Him, magnitude and distance have no meaning. They are only used as analogies and illustrations, in order for God to communicate to our limited understanding.

§         “For thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. (Isa 57:15)

o       Imagine a race of 2D people living in a 2D world.  How would you communicate a 3D object, such as a box or a house to them?

§         Draw the object using perspective, but even then, they would not fully perceive what we perceive.  They may even be a little perplexed about the lines of perspective.

§         So it is with us, inhabitants of a 3D world, trying to fully perceive what God is like, the place where He resides, how God is three yet one, etc.

·        Though God is far above, He puts in the hearts of the ones He
chooses a desire to seek Him and to know Him.

·        The olden days men of faith “walked in the fear of the Lord” and
“served Him with fear.”  However intimate their communion with God,
however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the
conception of God as awesome and dreadful.  The fear of God was unlike a natural fear of danger, but it was a nonrational dread, a feeling of personal insufficiency in the presence of God Almighty.

o       Genesis 17:1-3, Exodus 3:2-6, Isaiah 6:5, Daniel 10:7-9

o       A vision of the divine transcendence ends all controversy between the man and his God.  The fight goes out of the man and he humbly asks, “Lord, what will you have me to do?”

·        Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is. “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of lif,” (Prov. 14:27) but this healing fear is today hardly found among Christian men.

·        People treat the divine name of God as if the incomprehensible, most high Being, who is beyond the reach of thought, were only their equal.  Often, His name becomes a mere word, to which no thought is attached.  If truly they were impressed by His greatness, they would be speechless, dumbstruck with awe and reverent worship.

How shall polluted mortals dare
To sing Thy glory or Thy grace?
Beneath Thy feet we lie afar,
And see but shadows of Thy face.
--Isaac Watts