THE “I AM” GOD
Come along with us on a short journey to an imaginary land that might help us discover God. Walk with us along a narrow path in a quiet jungle that meanders beside a remote and forgotten African village. Our ethnocentrism makes us reason to be superior to the resident villagers who are clad in rags and leaves. Surely we would be greater than they; we would be somewhat in the eyes of a god whom we have created after our own image. But to our surprise, this journey will take us to a realization that we are not as much as we think we are. We are all clothed in spiritual rags wherein we thirst for the grace of a God who is far greater than our comprehension.
As we speed by the village in a modern-day car, our fellow man becomes a passing blur in our peripheral vision. We still retain our egocentric personality, proudly passing ourselves off as those around whom the universe must surely evolve. We are important; people to be noted, recognized, considered by a god whom we conceive to be culturally identified with us alone.
We now pass over our fellow man in an airplane at five thousand feet. We recognize houses and cars. However, what was once the passing blur of a fellow man outside a car window has now disappeared from view. We are alone. What seemed so significant on earth has now dwindled to non-recognition from a distance by our finite eyes. We can no longer see the human bodies on earth. It is too small, too insignificant in a world that is far bigger than the individual.
We are now at forty thousand feet in a jet that whizzes over the earth. We see no houses, no cars, but especially, no human beings. Earth now becomes increasingly small as it whispers below in gradual movement. Even the small planet on which we reside now starts to become small, insignificant in a galaxy of other worlds.
Something now comes to our awareness. We begin to struggle, to look through the mind of a God who must be infinitely greater than anything that we could invent on earth. The man who felt so great in the African village now contemplates his own insignificance from the viewpoint of a God who can whiz by galaxies beyond light speed. It is a humbling experience. It is humbling to realize that our world is so small. And if our world is so small, then we are smaller. We are insignificant existences of space. Who do we think we are?
Aboard a space ship blasting to the outer fringes of the universe, we begin to ponder. We look back over our shoulders and see a faint glimmer of a small blue marble clothed in silk white clouds. Would the God we now conceive consider such a finite speck as us from the vastness of space? Would we be so arrogant to believe that He would even identify our existence?
Who is this God, that by a few words of revelation from Him, He has excited our imagination? Can He be so great that He can consider something so finite? So small? So useless and insignificant? Human reason and rationality frustrate us. But faith excites our thinking to believe that such a great God can consider such a small particle existence. Our faith drives our minds to dimensions beyond our empirical limitations to conceive a God beyond our imagination.
We so reason that certainly His creation is not larger or more mighty than His existence? He is the Creator and creation can never surpass the greatness of the Creator. The universe is so gigantic, so awesome, so beyond the reach of our largest telescopes. Who is this God who can be so immense and yet so individual? Would we dare locate Him somewhere among the galaxies of His creation? We dare not.
If we say He is “here” or “there,” then we are wanting to locate Him in a position among the galaxies. We humanly struggle to place Him somewhere in order to identify His presence. If we place Him here, we want to mentally dislocate Him from there. If He is the God who is there, then can He be here also? Our human postulations frustrate us as we struggle to conceive a God who can be here and there at the same time. Our only recourse is to revelation, to a simple explanation on a small mountain in Sinai whereupon this God proclaimed, “I Am, that I Am.” This humanly precise, yet inadequate statement leaves us wondering. Therefore, we must again walk by faith. We will never fully understand this GREAT I AM.
As our space ship returns to earth, the enlarging blue marble becomes more significant. Amidst the background of a billion planets and stars and suns, this God who is greater than all has chosen to visit this one planet alone. Could He be so considerate, so specific in His work as to count men one by one in a universe so immense? This is the God who is so great that He can consider that which is so small.
Our aerial flight brings us home. We alight from our car. We meander again down a trail, through that village of those over whom we once foolishly exalted ourselves. If the God of the universe would be so individual with us, what right do we vainly assume to place ourselves above the most humble of His creation? Would we dare stand before Him and cry that we were somewhat? Would we plead for special consideration? Would we then be so arrogant as to pass ourselves off for special judgment?
The God who is so great, but can consider that which is so small, certainly must be the one God worth believing. If not, then we are hopelessly lost in a galaxy that is so immense that we are reduced to bust specks of existence.
The God who is so complex, but can be so individual, must certainly be of such presence that He is infinitely beyond our understanding. Nevertheless, we trust He is great, and yet, so individually considerate, for in Him we would live and move and have our very being. He is the God who can count the hairs on our heads just as He can count the galaxies of the heavens.
The only God who is worth having is the one we cannot fully comprehend. If we wonder why He can consider just one human speck in a universe composed of galaxies, then we prove that He is a God greater than our minds. It is this God in whom we must walk by faith. It is this God we must wholly trust. It is this God before whom we dare not show the slightest pretense above our fellow man. Because He is the great “I Am,” we are lowly individuals in all His creation. Because of who He is, we are individuals He has chosen to love and save and consider for eternal dwelling. Oh, how majestic and wonderful our God is. He is far beyond our greatest imagination.
[Next lecture: February 2]