I Found: An Awesome God
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
Isaiah 40:28 ESV
Isaiah had some revelation about the awesomeness of God and about his worthiness to serve. He had a remarkable vision of God which is recorded in Isaiah 6. In Isaiah 40, verse 28, the Word of God speaks of three ways that God is totally awesome. Firstly, God is everlasting. Secondly, he is all-powerful and thirdly he is all-knowing. God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. In this post, we will look at God’s omnipresent, everlasting nature.
God’s omnipresence can be expressed by saying God is ‘eternally present’. As humans, we find it hard to comprehend ‘eternity’. We see all existence as being related to a point or place in time. If something exists at a point in time, something must have existed beforehand and something must exist afterwards. This is where we get the concept that everything which has begun to exist- must have a cause.
However, God did not come into existence; He is the eternal God. His existence is not contained within the universe. He is self-existent, the uncaused cause. By Him, all things that do exist have come into existence. (John 1:3)
When Moses stood in front of the burning bush asking God, “Who shall I say has sent me?” God said; "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you’" Exodus 3:14. God was declaring that He is the uncaused caused, the first cause of everything that has come into existence. God is the self-existent being. This is the meaning of the name of God- Yahweh - I am who I am. By calling Himself, ‘ I am who I am’, God was also declaring his immutability. He does not change, because change requires imperfection.
Jesus also declared himself to be God Eternal, by using the name of God, 'I Am’ to describe himself; which really upset the Pharisees!
“If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ … Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. John 8:53-59 ESV
God’s existence outside of time, allows him to see and act without the limits of time, space and matter. God sees events that are still to come and speaks of them as though they have already occurred. In the book of Revelation, Jesus is described as ‘the Lamb, slain since the foundation of the world’.
All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. Rev 13:18 KJV
In Genesis 22, when Abraham took Isaac into the wilderness to offer him as a sacrifice, God told him not to kill Isaac. Instead, he found a ram with his horns caught in a bush. Abraham was so amazed that God had seen ahead and put a ram in the thicket as a substitute for Isaac, he called God, Jehovah Ra ah- or the Lord who sees ahead and provides in advance. This doesn’t mean that God pre-determined Abraham’s actions- rather that God foreknew what Abraham was going to choose to do, and made provision for him. There are two illustrations that may help us to understand God’s awesome eternal existence and how it relates to us.
If you can imaging sitting atop Skyscraper with an amazing view of a city. Below you people are moving from place to place, street to street, with virtually no idea what awaits them around the corner. In one sense, you are existing outside of time and space, because you can see who will meet whom, or which people are about to get caught in a traffic jam.
C S Lewis describes God as being like the author of a play, who writes himself into the script. God sees the whole story of our lives, and of eternity and at the right time moves on our behalf. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for making cameo appearances in his movies. In fact, he appeared in forty of his own films. For example, in To Catch A Thief Hitchcock sat next to Cary Grant on a bus- a minor role. God wrote Himself into history as a babe in a manger who became the saviour of mankind.
We have a truly awesome God, an eternal God who exists outside of time and space, yet revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the ‘alpha and omega’:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Rev 1:18)
This truth, and knowing this truth, has implications. You could say it is the ultimate ‘inconvenient truth’. A truth that will eventually stop all of us in our tracks- one way or another. What will our response be, when we discover the true and awesome God?
At the name of Jesus
every knee will bow,
in heaven and on earth
and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
Phil 2:9-11
