Attributes of God (Series 2): The Divine Transcendence — A.W. Tozer

Biblical Testimony to the Divine Transcendence

Let me read a number of passages from the scriptures. Having to do with the divine transcendence. Next Sunday night. I want to speak on the eternity of God tonight on the transcendence. First Chronicles 29 11.

Thine O Lord is the greatness and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heaven. In the earth is thine. Thine is the kingdom. O Lord thou art exalted his head above all. Job 11 7 and 8.

Canst thou by searching find out God. Those are rhetorical questions. As you see the answer is always no. Canst thou find out the almighty and a perfection? It is as high as heaven. What canst thou do?

Deeper than hell what canst thou know. Job 26 14. Lo these are parts of his ways. But how little a portion is heard of him. By the thunder of his power who can understand? Psalm 145 3 his greatness is unsearchable as they are 5589.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways of the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth. So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Timothy 6 15 and following.

Which in his own times he shall show. Who is the blessed and only potentate the king of kings and Lord of Lords? Who only hath immortality dwelling in light which no man can approach unto? Whom no man hath seen nor can see to him the honor and power everlasting.

Transcendence and Immanence in God

Man. I'm to speak on the divine transcendence now that may sound. As if it were some took a lot of learning or at least a lot of profound thinking to understand it. But it doesn't. Will transcend simply means to go above to rise above to be above.

And of course. It's very difficult to think of God as transcendent and think of him as imminent at the same time. That is as being omnipresent being here with us in us in things the same time transcending all things.

It looks like a contradiction, but as with many other apparent contradictions. It's not at all Contradictory, but entirely in accord with itself or the two thoughts in accord with with each other. Now sometime I'm going to speak on the omnipresence of God.

And I just would say here that God is always nearer than you imagine him to be. God is so nearer that your thoughts are not as near as God. He is so near that your breath is not as near as God. He is so near that your soul is not as near to you as God is to your soul.

God is so very near and Yet God because he is God in his uncreated being is so far above. That thought cannot conceive it nor words express it. Now I think that I should make it very clear when I say far above I do not mean geographically or astronomically removed.

Because we're human beings and we're born in this world, and we live in it and we learn to speak by analogy. Almost everything we we say is by analogy. You see everybody's a poet and doesn't know it as the boy said and a poet is somebody who speaks by analogies and sees Eternity in an hour and the world in the grain of sand.

You and I are always thinking in analogies. We say that a man is straight. And we're thinking we're comparing a man with a with a foot rule and we say that a man is crooked and we're comparing him with a foot rule.

We say that that it's a foot long and we're comparing that with a man's foot and We say a man higher has two hired hands. We mean he has hired hands and so almost everything we say is taken from the common earth round about us.

We say the man is off his base and that's from baseball and we say that he's counted out and that's from From boxing and we say he puts all his cards on the table and that's from gambling and so we go every phase of life everywhere gives its its tools to us to think with so.

When we say that God is far above we're using an analogy. We're thinking about a star. That's a way above or some planet or body. That's a way under but that isn't what we mean when we think about God.

Oh. Now if you miss this you might as well stay at home and I might as well too. Because this is very important to the understanding of the message that follows that we are thinking in God's transcendence is farness above.

Not about astronomical distances nor altitudes nor physical magnitude. Physical magnitude has nothing to do. God never thinks about the size of anything. He never thinks about Distances. They don't mean anything to God because God is everywhere and because he's everywhere.

He doesn't have to go from one place to another. Because he doesn't have to go from one place to another and distance doesn't mean anything. Because God contains everything. He doesn't have to worry about the size of anything.

But when we when we use these expressions that to help us to think their analogies and Illustrations now, I'd like to make it clear that size hasn't anything to do when God thinks about things He thinks not of their size.

The Image of God and the Value of Human Life

Can you imagine if you will a child that gets lost in a mountain has sometimes happened? They're out having a picnic and the little one wanders off and disappears and they get a sound trucks and Bloodhounds and do everything find that little child.

She's only a tiny little my two years old and she hasn't been in the world long and she doesn't know much. She hasn't much size. She may be if she's good and plump 40 pounds in weight. And as far as this world's concerned she could be she could disappear from it.

And the world would never know that she'd gone except a few bleeding hearts back home. But then there she is in the mountain now that mountain weighs how many billion tons or hundreds of millions of tons I wouldn't claim to know and there's minerals in it worth thousands of dollars and there's timber on it and There are animals roaming it and there are great rocks there.

It's all a very beautiful and a vast and a mighty thing. So mighty that we stand in front of the mountain as the Jews did in front of old Sinai and were Spun by the idea died by the immensity of it and yet one little two-year-old girl in 35 or 40 pounds.

That has only been around a short while. She's of more value than that mountain because the mountain has size. But that's all it has. It can't say mom and her daddy and it can't say now I lay me down to sleep and it can't fish in or throw its chubby arms around your neck and It can't pray and it can't laugh and it can't dance with joy and it can't sleep.

Relaxed and limp in its little bed at night. It lacks all That God values the mountain lacks. It has stability and strength and weight and mass and size and form and shape and color. But it doesn't have hearts and when God thinks about people he thinks about hearts not about size.

So We talked about God being high and lifted up being elevated and lofty and transcendent. We think not about distance for that doesn't matter. We think about quality of life. Its quality of being that matters.

It's the quality of being that makes the child valuable in the mountain. Not the mountain has being but it has not a high Transcendent quality of being a little child has less being but it has quality of being infinitely higher.

God as the Uncreated Creator

And so God has quality of being now I'd like to have you hear me say this you probably won't believe it when I first said you may not believe it at all. That's my business to try to persuade you and that's why I'm here.

But if you shouldn't believe that won't it won't ruin the rest of the sermon. I'd like to say this to you that God is just as far above an archangel as he is above a caterpillar. Now, you know what a caterpillar is.

It's a little worm. Size of your finger with a fur coat on that. It didn't bind didn't cost anything. It's just there. Well, now that's a caterpillar and of course, it's not a very high-class thing it's never been out in society.

It doesn't amount to much. It's just a worm and you have to look very carefully or watch it go to know whether it's traveling West or east or which way it ought to travel because it looks the same all the way around.

Now that's a caterpillar. Now. We have an archangel and an archangel is. Is that holy creature that we see? Beside the sea of God at the presence of God's throne. That mighty creature a little higher than the angels as man was made for a time a little lower.

That that being that can look upon the face of God with unbaked unveiled countenance, this is the Archangel that never was in sin this archangel nobody knows how vast it might be and yet God is just as far above that archangel as it is above the caterpillar now tell you why.

Because both the archangel and the caterpillar are creatures and God is the uncreated one who had no beginning. The self-existent one as I told you last week who never was created who wasn't made. But who is simply God who made all things?

But the archangel is a creature. God had to put it together. God had to speak and say be and it became a creature and it is a creature and it isn't God and it never can Become God and God never can become it.

There is a gulf a vast gulf and all but infinite gulf fixed Between that which is God and that which is not God. That which is God is the great I am. And that which is not God is all created things. From the archangel down to the amoeba down to the caterpillar down to the the tiniest Virus that they can't even find with the naked eye.

God made all that and so there's a separation between that which is God and that which is not God and God is just as high above one as the other because it is God's uncreated quality of life that transcends him or he transcends causes him to be transcendent.

I'll get it straight and it makes him rise as he does high above all other creatures now. We've got to be careful, and I think that we Christians are guilty of it all the time. We've got to be careful and not think.

That life is like this it begins with a cell and goes on to a fish and goes on to a bird and goes on To a beast and goes on to man and then an angel and then an archangel and then a cherub and in the Sarah Seraphim in God that simply put God on the top heap of a pyramid of Creatures and God isn't a creature.

God is just as high above the seraph as he is above the cell he's just as high above the cherub as he is above The amoeba he's just as high above the archangel as he is above the worm. Because God is God you see now God is is of a substance wholly unique and Because he is then why my proposition stands that he is as high above any creature as he is above any creature.

Human Language Before the Incomprehensible God

But how can I go on? Really, how can any man go on? How can I speak of that which which which can't be spoken and continue to talk about that? Which escaped to all our human speech and how can I think about that?

Which is above all thought and how can I talk when silence would become me better? St. Augustine said Oh God when I would speak of thee I can't and yet if I did not somebody must speak and so he burst out and spoke, but you know something I think that If there were some watcher or Holy One from the Vasti universe yonder who spent has spent all his centuries by the sea of God looking Looking upon the holy face of God.

I I wonder Maybe that holy creature listens listens to our speech listens to our talk listens to our vain and idle words. Listens and looks and here's the chatter verse busy tribes of men and a meaningless talk of the pulpits.

How strange and how welcome such a talk as this tonight would be? Even though it would have no more relation to through the high truth of it all Than a two-year-old child playing a violin would have relation to fine music and yet every father would smile If in obedience to the suggestion of his father the little one took up the violin and tried to play.

Every father who's away from home knows what it is to get a letter written in a block. Letters by a child in school misspelled and run down the edge and all the rest. But it's a letter from home and from a little one that he loves very much.

And so I suppose that this message that I'm giving tonight is certainly far from being all that it ought to be all that it Could be and all at some time. I may be able to give yet, I think God is pleased because Compared with all the chatter of the world.

It's at least an effort to talk about the great and holy one high and lifted up you know I Wonder if some holy one some watcher who had spent his centuries by the sea of God. I wonder if he were to come to this city and get into one of our pulpits and be allowed to speak.

I suppose that if he spoke here, he would say very little that we usually hear. I suppose that he would charm our ears and fascinate our minds and Cheer our hearts by his talk about God the great God the Rapture is God.

The one that gave his son to die for us the one in whose presence we expect to live while the ages roll this great God whose Love brought the Psalms into being whose love brought the universe into being this is God.

And I suppose that after we'd hear such a being speak about such a God. We'd never consent again. They are a silly timely sermon preached out of time magazine. I imagine we'd insist if any man dares to take our time preaching to us that he preach about God God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and not try to settle the political problems or the economic problems of Canada the United States or England or Germany, but would talk about God and God only.

We praise the Oh God we acknowledge thee to be the Lord all the earth doth magnify thee the Father everlasting. To thee all angels cry aloud the heavens and all the powers therein. Holy. Holy. Holy Lord God of Sabbath the glorious Company of the Apostles praise thee the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee Noble army of martyrs praise thee the Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee father of an everlasting Majesty and also Jesus Christ our Holy Son our Lord and the Holy Ghost the Comforter.

Thus saying our fathers in what's known as the today? We've forgotten it now because we're not spiritually capable of understanding it. We want our ears tickled and so we want to hear men talk that will tickle our ears.

Now the holy man of God said below these are parts of his ways. But how little a portion is heard of him see all that we can think or say is intellectual. It's rational, but God rises above rationality.

He rises so high above the rational. That he rises as high above the rational as he does above the physical. Because God being himself of an essence and substance. It's the like of which nothing else exists in the universe.

He is above it all and yet we can know a little portion of God's ways. And I preach on the being of God the attributes of God what God is like what kind of God God is I? Am approaching it respectfully from afar off and pointing with a reverent finger to the tall Mountain peak which is God that rises infinitely above my power to comprehend.

But that's only a little portion and the paths of his ways that can not be known the rest is suprarational. My brother, I believe that we ought to get back our spiritual mysticism to the church again.

Returning to the Worship of the Transcendent God

Believe that we ought to come back to our effort to find God and to walk with God and to talk with God and live in the presence of God. We have pulled gospel Christianity down until it's been programmed.

Until people and men and gifted men and talented men and men with personality have taken over the holy place. And we've forgotten that we are here. And to worship God that that God is is the source and center and foundation of all.

How shall says the hymn 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. Even in our church services. We can see only the shadows of God's face.

For God transcends and rises so high above it all the very angels in heaven Veil their faces and the living creatures cover their faces and cry. Holy. Holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty. How terrible it is that in the presence of this awesome awful God.

How terrible it is that some people are untouched by it all. How frightful how awesome how awful it is. That most people are untouched. We don't want to hear about God. We want to hear about something that can tickle our fancy or satisfy our morbid curiosity or our longing after romance.

Whereas the great God is there and we're going to have to face him now or face him. Then this mighty God like a great burning universe will burst in upon us someday burst in upon us and break down our Defenses and destroy everything that we put up around ourselves and we'll have to deal with him.

And yet the average man isn't worried about it at all he Sleeps well at night and he thinks out his job and does it on in by day. Eats and sleeps and lives and breathes and gets old and dies. Never having given a good high thought to the great God who transcends all this God.

About whom it is said thine. Oh Lord is the greatness and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that in the heaven that is in the heavens. Thine in the earth. It's thine. Thine is the kingdom.

Oh Lord and our exalted this head above all This great God and yet we care so very very little about him. How tragic I say that men will follow their lusts and live in their pride and their money and live for business and appetite and ambition.

No more. Additional additional proof needs to be made no more needs to be said about the spiritual death that lies in the hearts of men. She that liveth in pleasure is dead says the scripture while she liveth.

He that liveth in ambition and lust and appetite and pride. Lives for money and fame. That man is dead also. So there's the blind man can't see the sunrise so that dead man though He may be only 25 years old weigh 200 pounds and be athletic and intelligent and well to do.

He still is dead and rotting in his death. Because the great God rises above the horizon of his understanding and he doesn't know the Sun has come up. Like a flatworm in a cave or like a toad under a rock.

He lives his life out and forgets that he's got to deal with God sometime the great God Almighty. Now when God breaks in upon us I want to live for the day when God will crash in upon me when God will crash past my human Understanding.

When God will crash past everything every defense that I might have as a human race might have put up. But what happens when that when that happens now? There is such a thing as having that happen right now in this world and that's partly what conversion is my brother.

That's partly what it is to be saved to repent to be forgiven of your sin. To see a vision of God in your heart to see Jesus Christ on his cross and on his throne. That's partly what it is. And when we brought into the presence of this Holy God, you know.

You can go through the church the whole routine of the church and never have an experience at all about this. You can come and learn to say God is love when you're me little tiny thing and You can go on up and get your Bible from passing from one grade to another and then get big enough to make a speech in Sunday school programs and you can get old enough to sing in the choir and then you can join the church and then you can be baptized and Then you can be asked to teach a class and then you can entertain missionaries.

And then you can learn to tithe and you can give of your money to the work of the Lord. You can be faithful in it and never have ever had an experience of the great God breaking in upon your consciousness.

But to live always wants removed from God. To live in another part. And to live as the king live. Why does the king's son live in the city of Jerusalem and never see the king's face? For the conclusion of this message, please turn your tape to side to Jerusalem and never see the king's face.

That's what happens in the churches, but when God becomes real to a man. When he becomes real to a man where we're affected we're touched. We're touched by what I have mentioned here and called before Echoing or a thing another in mysterium tremendum a tremendous mystery.

This is God now. Dread is one thing. There is a dread, you know, everybody. I just read this week. Somebody said this week I never read it. Nobody in this town said it. I don't know how many there would be that say it.

But uh, and I say that uh, he gives them from here. He's from another place. Said I don't read him. He says he's too negative. Well negative my brother before before there can be any healing there has to be diagnosis when you go in to see a doctor.

The doctor can't just smile look up for me coffee break and say take pill number nine. You can't do that. Because maybe you don't need pill number nine. Maybe that'll kill you. Maybe what you need is be a knife or be straightened out and something.

And so what you have to have is diagnosis and sometimes I think the diagnosis worsens disease. I i've had more trouble having seen what was wrong with me and finding it wasn't. Then I have with the treatment and This that I preach may be negative.

I don't know that's god's negative. All right, man. If the god I lifted up and that I can love him and worship him and live in his presence and pray and then do it With him forever if that's negative give me a whole Bastard full of negatives.

I want them. Well, one thing that comes to us when we meet god is dread. And I started to say that. People don't like that. They don't want to dread anything. They want to be cheered up. They want to go to church in order to be cheered up.

Oh, it's one of the silliest things I ever heard in my life. I'd rather preach to 25 people upstairs over a barber shop. Than to preach to a whole church full of people who couldn't stand the sight of god.

They have a whole church full of people giving their money and riding me around in a Cadillac. Or a Lincoln. And yet they couldn't they can't they want me to talk about god. They don't want me to embarrass them by talking about god well.

The dread of god he's called the dread vibes if you'll remember. And jacob said how dreadful is this place and peter said depart from me lord for i'm an unclean man. You'll find all down the years wherever a man looked upon god even dimly and briefly.

It affected him so terribly. And the dread i'm talking about not physical danger. When you meet god you get over the dangers of the world. And the fears of the world but the danger the fear the dread.

It is god. It's not a sense of danger. It's a sense of being in the presence of someone very awful. Very wonderful. Very transcendent. Very highly lifted up. And there's a sense of creature consciousness.

Abraham said I am but dust and ashes. Oh lord. Allow me to Allow me to speak. I who am but dust and ashes. Abraham had been asked to lead in prayer or rather let's put it around like this if abraham Had come out of that place and had been thrown down suddenly in the midst of some of our gospel churches and had heard somebody live lead in prayer.

He undoubtedly would have been shocked at what he heard. For he wasn't so fluent sometimes. I think our very fluency is an indication. We're not very near to god. We're just repeating what we've learned.

We blame the catholics for reading out of their prayer books and at least what they read is good english and it's fluent and dutiful and We we pray prayers that are just as embalmed as those prayers are.

Only that we make them up as we go along. They're just as dead because there's no sense of creature consciousness. There's no feeling that i'm in the presence of this great god before whom angels fold their wings and shut up their mouths.

Only to open them again and cry. Holy holy holy that sense of creature consciousness that sense of abasement of being overwhelmed in the presence Of that which is above all creatures. You ought to have that return again.

I say i'd rather have 25 people Like that than to have 2 ,500. That are simply there as religious socialites meeting socially in the name of the lord. They tell me that martin lloyd jones a great english preacher one of the greatest english preachers of them all.

They tell me that he once in a while goes gets on the train or drives. I don't know how he gets there, but he travels a long way a day or so way up into wales. And there he gathers with 12 or 15 people.

And charges his batteries again before he comes back to his great London pulpit where he preaches to 1500 or more people. But he wants to go up there and he says after I have been with those simple-hearted worshippers a little while I am a better man and I come back to london better prepared to preach.

I believe that this is what we need in this hour my friend. And the feeling of awful ignorance. Now there is a certain cult abroad i'm not going to mention their names because I don't want to advertise them.

But there's a certain cult that says we can answer any question there is in the bible anything to be answered. We can answer it and I have run on to a lot of people that felt the same way. They uh, they would be what the cicero.

Wasn't it that said that some men would rather anything in the wide world and that they should seem to be in doubt about anything. They were so sure of themselves that they'd rather almost rather die than seem to not know anything.

But you know the closer we come to god the less we know and the less we know and the more we know we don't know. Our our Afflipency in these days. I don't want to say it about canadians because i'm a guest among you and i've only been here a year.

And I haven't learned to say left-handed yet rightly. But I will say about americans without hesitation. I said to them for 40 years. That this flippancy is a terrible sin in the presence of the holy god.

What would you think my friend? It's the queen Of the commonwealth the queen of england. Where you're to be in her presence with some friends. And you'd start kidding and telling jokes and trying to be funny and making cracks about things.

Oh what a shame and how horrible it would be. Nobody would do such a thing and she's only a woman a human being like you. How much more terrible that we can be so flippant in the presence of the great god who is god of all Lords and king of all kings.

That feeling of ignorance. We know too much. It should be a speechless humility among us speechless humility in the presence of the mystery and inexpressible. And then there's a sense of weakness. I don't think that you'll ever be strong till you know how utterly weak you are.

And you'll never know how utterly weak you are until you have stood in the presence of that great Plenitude of strength that we call god. That great fullness of infinite power that we call god. And with the eyes of our heart for an awful happy terrible wonderful moment have gazed upon the transcendent god.

High and lifted up with his train filling the temple, then we'll know how weak we are. Let me tell you sir that god never works out of human strength. And the strongest man is the weakest man in the kingdom of god and the weakest man is the strongest man in the kingdom of god.

And the holy apostle said when I am weak, then I must strong. And he can turn it around and say when I am strong, then I am weak. Whenever I feel that I can do it. I've been preaching now since I was 19 years old and i'm 63.

And I began to preach when I was 19 and yet to this hour after all these years of preaching I came into this pulpit tonight shaking inside. Not because I feared you. I have nothing to fear from you. You're my friends and you're hospitable beyond anything.

I knew of any people i've ever met. I don't have to fear you. But I don't. I feared god. It's the fear and trembling of knowing that I stand to speak of god. And if I don't speak rightly about god, what a terrible error it will be.

And if I speak evilly of god, what a frightful crime. And it's only when I speak well of god. That I dare sleep at night without forgiveness. Weakness Daniel said after he had been talked to by god. I set my face toward the ground.

I became dumb. There remains no more strength in me. Neither is there breath left in me. That's the effect. Of self-depreciation and in sense of impurity. I there said woe is me. I'm undone. I'm unclean.

I'm a man of unclean lips. Feeling of absolute self-sameness you say must I live in all the rest of my life in a state of dread? And in a state of ignorance. In a state of weakness. In the state of impurity.

Repentance, Self-Knowledge, and Cleansing Through the Cross

No, but I say that unless you arrive at that conviction about yourself and not be told that now. It's all right for you me to tell you you were born in sin. I grew up being taught that I was born in sin.

I was born in sin. They told me that as soon as I got where I could hear teachers. They said there's none that do us righteous. No, not one. All your righteousnesses are filthy rags and I believed it when I began to preach.

I began to tell other people. Your righteousness is all filthy rags, but I thought their filthy rags were filthier than my filthy rags. And I thought their sins were worse than my sins. I you you can be as you can be as orthodox as john calvin and believe in total depravity as much as any baptist.

And still when it's all over be proud of yourself and self-righteous. If you had asked a pharisee are all men sinners. They'd have said yes, but they said with us being accepted. And they looked down upon the publican and the harlot and the pharisee.

For the pharisee looked down upon the publican and the harlot. And jesus looked down upon the pharisee for he knew that they were just as sinful. The pharisee who'd never broken the law to his own knowledge was just as sinful as the harlot who'd broken it every night.

And yet is there anybody that's never broken the law? No, I didn't say there was. I said that the pharisee was never consciously broken the law. You can strike a compromise with your own conscience. You can learn to look at yourself In the glass and see something better than is there.

Old wise esau the fabulous who wrote so many great tables. Old of a man with two bags tied with a rope. Thrown across his shoulder and he was walking and they said what is that in the those bags? Well, he said in the front bag.

In the rear one. He said that that's my fault and in the front one, that's my neighbors. He had him out where he could see them, but he had his own back where he couldn't see them. So we live. But once we have been brought into the presence of god in true repentance.

We will never again never again think of ourselves as good. We'll never again think of ourselves as pure. We'll only have to say lord. I'll know it. That's all. As god says to you son, are you pure? We can only say the blood of jesus christ cleanses from all sin god.

You said it. But I didn't know how I feel. I feel as if I was the worst of all men. Saint theresa that dear woman of god Said that the Closer we are to god or worse to this effect. The more conscious we were always of how bad we were.

Oh the paradox the mystery the wonder. Of knowing that god the transcendent one is so high above all others that the gothics nobody can cross. And yet condescends to come and dwell among us. The god who Who is across on the other side of that vast million mile gap to separate that which is god from that Which is not god.

That that god one day Came and condensed himself into the womb of the virgin who was born and walked among us. And the baby that tramped around on the floor of joseph's carpenter shop and got in the way.

And played with the shavings. There was the great god so infamously lifted up and so transcendent that the archangels gazed up to him. There he was. I remember hearing a song. I've never heard it sung in public since oh many many years ago.

I heard the methodist church years back. A little song a nice song it starts out by saying. It has a Sort of antithetical idea that one thing's one thing and other things another. And the man who's the sinner He sings which way shall I take shouts the voice on the night I'm, the pilgrim are wearied and changes my life.