His Immensity - Part 2 — A.W. Tozer

God's Immanence and Omnipresence

It is that God is above all things and beneath all things, and outside of all things and inside of all things. That God is above, but he's not pushed up, and he's beneath, but he's not pressed down, and he's outside, but he's not excluded, and he's inside, but he's not confined.

That God is above all things presiding, and beneath all things sustaining, and outside of all things embracing, and inside of all things fearing. That is the imminence of God, that's what that means, and that's taught in Christian theology, so that God doesn't travel to get anywhere.

We say, Oh, God, come and help us. Well, that's good that you can say that, because we mean it in a psychological way, but actually God doesn't have to come to help us, because there isn't any place where God is not.

Can I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall hold me, and if I go up to heaven, even there God will be, and if I make my bed in hell, even there God will be.

So it's impossible to think of a place where God is not, after you have gone out into those millions of light years and found bodies so vast that you could throw all our solar system and all of the galaxies through which the solar system belongs into it, and it would be like throwing a shovel full of coal into a furnace and it would simply swallow it up and go on.

God's Immensity Over the Vastness of Creation

After you've thought of all that, remember that God contains all that, that God is outside of all things and inside of all things and around all things, and our God made this. That is the immensity of God.

Isaiah's Vision of God's Sovereignty

Now, the scripture teaches the immensity of God. Let me give you a few verses. It says in Isaiah, "'Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in the measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance.

The Holy Ghost is bigger than all the universe,' this little hazelnut here that the woman saw, and then another, "'Behold, all the nations are as a drop of a bucket.'". You know, it's awfully hard to get a Christian scared, it's hard to get him panicked if he really believes in God.

If he's just a church member, you can get him panicked, but if he really believes in God, it's very difficult to do it, very difficult for a great big mouth like Krewchaps to get anybody scared if he really believes in God.

You know, Krewchaps is beginning to sound more and more like Hitler. By the way, where is Hitler? He's beginning to sound more and more like him, and the same God that disposed of Mitzitah one of these days.

"'Behold, all the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and they are counted as the small dust of the balance, and he takes up the islands as a very little thing.'". It's small, he doesn't even notice that.

"'All the nations before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him as less than nothing in vanity.'. Oh, Dr. Naber used to say the word vanity in the Hebrew meant a soap bubble, something that floated, just a tiny, infinitesimally thin, iridescent skin, you touched it and it was gone.

Nobody could find it again, and that's what it means. He takes all the world, the nations are to him as a soap bubble. Then he says, "'It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are but grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.

To whom then will you liken God?'. "'For whom shall I be equal?' said the Holy One. "'Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who created these things, that bringeth out their host by number? He called them all by name, by the greatness of his power and might, for there is strong in power, not one who faileth.'.

Isaiah's Cosmic Imagination and the Greatness of God

Now there, as I've pointed out in another set of circumstances, there is probably the most daring flight of imagination ever made by the human mind. I think we have here in Isaiah that which is vaster and more awesome than anything ever struck off of the mind of Shakespeare.

You remember what Shakespeare said, that the lark at morn sings hymns at heaven's gate. Somebody pointed out that nobody else had ever thought of that except Shakespeare, that the lark mounts on her quivering wings to the very gate of heaven and there sings her hymns.

Milton wrote Paradise Lost, and a great critic, I think it was Macaulay, said that Milton could write Paradise Lost and get away with it, but that Shakespeare couldn't have, because Shakespeare's mind was so brilliant that if he had ever tried to take in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, if his mind had ever gone out to try to take in creation and the fall and redemption of man, then he would have died of a rupture of the brain.

His imagination was so tremendous it would have blown his head off, in the language of the street. Milton, not being quite so great nor quite so imaginative, managed to toddle along and not die under it.

But so great was the imagination of Shakespeare that according to this critic, he'd have died under it. He'd have killed him if he'd have tried to think a thought that big, because his mind would have gone so vast.

But here I find something bigger yet than anything thought that Shakespeare even ever had, and it is the thought of the great God, the Shepherd of the Universe, moving through His light years with its trillions and billions and millions and thousands, with its light traveling at 186 ,000 miles a second, with its world so big that our whole solar system would look like a grain of sugar or sand by comparison, and God stands out yonder and calls all of these millions of worlds as His sheep, and calls them all by name, and says, Come on, and lead them out across the vast sky.

I say this is the highest thought that anywhere that I know anything about in the Bible or out of it, this vast, huge, illimitable thought. And because of the greatness of His power, not one fails, just as the Shepherd keeps all of His sheep and not one is lost, and so God keeps all of His universe.

Men point their tiny little glasses at the stars and talk learnedly, and when it's all over they've just been counting God's sheep, nothing more. And God is running His universe, and then in the Psalms, Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord, my God, Thou art very great.

Psalm 104 and God's Rule Over Creation

Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, who coverest Thyself with the lightest of garments, who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain, who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds His chariot, and who walketh upon the wings of the wind.

Well, there we have the greatness, the immensity of God, the imminence of God set over against the vastness of the world and the littleness of the world. For she said, I saw all of this vastness reduced, and I saw how big it actually was set over against God Almighty, for the size of a hazelnut.

God's Love Sustains Everything He Has Made

Then she said, I marveled at one thing, and I've thought of that myself. I marveled at what could hold it together. Did you ever wonder about what held things together? Did you ever wonder why things didn't fall apart?

I have. I had a younger brother who used to lie on the floor and cry, and they'd say, What's the matter, Huey? And he'd say, I'm afraid I'll fall up. And I've had my imaginations like that, too. I wondered how things didn't come apart, didn't tear loose at the seams.

Well, she said, I marveled at how it might last. Now, since distance is all in God, and since matter depends on God's word, and since life is a ray from God's heart, then there isn't too much to worry about.

But she said, How can all this last? How can it hold together? And she said, Tenderly, I saw it, that I saw that all things have a being in the love of God, and that God made it, and God loves it, and God keeps it.

Now, I can't think of a better formula, my friend, for you to take home with you. That's why you don't fall apart, because God made you, God loves you, and God keeps you. And what God made, God loves, because it's inconceivable that God should make anything that he didn't love.

The Creator's Love for His Work

A fellow recently brought a picture that he had painted. He'd been working on a picture, and he did what he said quite a while on that picture. He brought it and showed it and said, See if I liked it.

Well, now, it's inconceivable he didn't like his own picture. I liked it, too, but he liked it, and that's the reason he brought it to show it to me. We like that which we make, and God loves that which he made.

And because he made it, he loves it. And because he loves it, he keeps it. And nobody is going to lose anything that they love if they can help it. Now, a mother may lose her baby by death, but she won't do it if she can help it.

A man may lose his property or estate or his car or his job, but he won't if he can help it. And so God Almighty is in a position never to lose anything, because he's able not to lose it. He keeps it.

He keeps it because he loves it, and he loves it because he made it. Or did he make it because he loved it? I don't know. But he keeps it because he made it and loved it, or loved it and made it. I heard Nephistopalian Rector one time preach a sermon on immortality, and he gave one of the finest arguments for immortality that I've ever heard.

Abraham as God's Friend and the Hope of Resurrection

He said, the Bible says that Abraham was a friend of God. Now, said the Rector, how would it be that a man should ever give up his friend? He said, if a man is your friend, you wouldn't lose him if you could help him.

And if he died, you'd bring him back if you could. You'd keep your friend if he was your friend. Well, God Almighty is able to keep his friend. So that's why we know that Abraham will rise again from the dead, because he's God's friend and God isn't going to allow his friend to lie around rot forever.

He's going to bring him out of the grave again, and that's why I believe in immortality. I believe that God made us and God loves what he made and is keeping what he loved.