(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better…and if you listen AND follow along below, you’ll see why)
Focus Question:
If God is infinite, is He near?
Intro:
Some days you just have to tackle the big questions of life like “If God is infinite, is He near?” and “What does it mean, then, to be filled with the Holy Spirit,” and “Why does Roger keep wearing that stupid haircut?”
Hey Hopeful ones, welcome to program #1247, Veteran’s Day here in the US (shoutout to those who have served), and another day where we have the privilege of listening to the inspired word of God.
As you’ll hear in Ezekiel today, we hear the language of God’s glory “returning to the temple”…but, wait, if He’s everywhere — omnipresent — whattup with that? As we always do, let’s get to our reading, then we’ll use that as a jumping off point for our Focus Question in our Bottom Line segment today (which, just warning you now, will make today’s program a couple minutes longer than usual).
New Testament segment:
But as we do, we always start with the Bible, and for our NT segment, let’s start with a reminder.
In the OT, once a judge or a king had been anointed, proclaimed and given God’s Spirit for the task, he had to go out and prove his calling. This is the purpose of these chapters. Mark has said that Jesus was the Messiah and God’s Son, now he shows it.(1)
Mark doesn’t record it like Matthew and Luke do, but “Jesus had already conquered the enemy in the wilderness; now he conquers him in the ordinary everyday life of Galilee.”(1)
Passage: Mark 3:7-38
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 28
Words: ~592
C. The Beelzebub accusation and Jesus’ identity of His true family (3:20–35)
This section has a “sandwich” structure in which the account concerning Jesus’ family (vv. 20–21, 31–35) is divided by the Beelzebub accusation (vv. 22–30). This deliberate literary device is used several times by Mark (cf. 5:21–43; 6:7–31; 11:12–26; 14:1–11, 27–52) for different reasons. Here Mark pointed out a parallel in the charges made against Jesus (cf. 3:21 and 30) but at the same time made a distinction between general opposition to Jesus and a distortion of the Holy Spirit’s work through Him.(2)
Old Testament segment:
Today’s OT segment is a good reason why we read the whole Bible, every bit of it…because if you just said, “oh, the last eight chapters of Ezekiel is all that boring temple and ritual description stuff,” you’d miss out on little nuggets like the return of God’s glory to the temple, “one of the most dramatic moments in the book.”(3)
His return here is the restoration counterpart to the departure in 10:18–22 and 11:23. It also brings completion to the temple tour: all that was lacking from this sacred space was God. However, this moment also forms a new beginning. (3)
Listen and see if you can see how, and I’ll share with you why I think so after
Passage: Ezekiel 42:15-43:27
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 33
Words: ~964
The arrival of God’s glory in his temple inaugurates a new era in the relationship of God and people, and this becomes the focus of the remainder of the vision.(3)
And if you ask, “Why is this important to me?”, I’ll come back to my favorite phrase of late — Remembering what God has done should give us confidence that He’s promised what He can and will do. Do you wish the world was more certain? Well, it isn’t, but God is.
Wisdom segment:
Passage: Proverbs 10:9-11
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 3
Words: ~48
The bottom line:
To be fair, asking a childlike questions often lead to really deep subjects about which volumes were written. “If God is everywhere, why did His glory have to return to the temple? If He’s everywhere, why do I pray for Jesus to come into my heart?”
And I’m desperately aware of, and humbled by, trying to give you a short answer. So I’m going to give you a couple phrases that I hope you can remember, if not hang your hat on, and explain them in a manner that’s faithful even if the explanations leave a lot to be desired.
God is in the universe, but not of it.
Since God is indivisible…, all of God must be everywhere He is. All of God is everywhere, but no part of God is anywhere (since He has no parts). (4)
In other words, He’s distinct from that which He created.
So when we hear about His glory returning to the temple, what does that mean?
One, it’s useful to remember that finite human beings to wrap their heads around an infinite, all-knowing, all powerful Creator, and there are a lot of human beings smarter than me at this. But here’s a key distinction to make…there’s a difference between God as cause and the effects of that cause.
The universe is limited, but God is not. God is “in” the universe the only way an unlimited Being can be in it: He is not in it as being part of the effect, but as being its Cause. The Cause is unlimited, and the universe is limited; the Cause is causing the effect, but it transcends, rather than being part of, the effect.(5)
Remember the language that Paul uses when witnessing to the Athenians in Acts 17:28:
For in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28, CSB)
So…
… in whatever sense God is “in” the universe, He is in it with His entire Being, which is infinite. Further, the sense in which God is “in” the universe is not (a function of his being, the four dollar word of which is ‘ontological’), but relational; He is in the universe as the infinite sustaining Cause, of it, not as being part of the effect. So God is present in the entire universe, and His presence is infinite, not finite.(6)
Now here’s my take on his Glory showing up, and I’ll use an analogy.
Remember when Moses has a crazy moment of talking to a burning bush? That was God talking to him, right? But if God is everywhere, meaning He doesn’t have locality, then it’s not like God had a moment where His presence as a being was local, but there was an effect that was local. Just like the divine nature of Jesus is infinite, but He also was fully human, came to earth, and His human nature was finite. So putting this all together, when Ezekiel describes his vision of God’s glory as filling the temple, I believe that was him witnessing a localized effect.
There are two other super-important implications with regard to remembering that “God is in the universe, but not of it” and that we think of finite things in terms of their relationship to God.
What does it mean to be “filled with the Holy Spirit?” if God is everywhere? Back to his infinite presence in terms of His being versus the effect. I might be out on a limb here, but I once heard it described like tuning into a radio station. The radio waves are already present, but you don't hear until you’re tuned in. So being “in Christ” is a function of our relationship, our orientation, and so does being “slave to Christ or slave to sin.”
But this “in it, but not of it” distinction is really important for addressing false worldviews with four-dollar names like “pantheism” and “panentheism.” I’ll skip the definitions and give the you the descriptors to watch out for. One is the idea that everything is divine, and the other is that everything is divine but God is also transcendent or separate. But here’s the problem and some language that ought to have you asking more questions.
The problem of everything being divine or of God’s omnipresence being interpreted that the universe is therefore divine is twofold -- it’s logically and biblically fallacious. God is perfectly good, right? But if the universe or you are divine, then that’s not true. God can’t be good and not good at the same time and in the same way.
And what should perk your ears up is when you hear people or authors talk about the image of God. We are like God, but we are not God. Sometimes this gets subtly snuck in in language that describes being cut off from God as not living up to your full potential, like somehow we discover grace when we eliminate sin and evil (when it’s, importantly, the other way around – we are transformed by the renewing of our minds after receiving grace alone through faith alone.
So I’m probably out over my ski tips here and have certainly bitten off more than I probably should have for one program, but this is important because worshipping a false god is, uh, disastrous. The Enemy doesn’t walk up to you with the word ‘heretic’ on a big sandwich board…his primary weapon is getting you off course by twisting God’s words. Fortunately, God wants to be known. He speaks and has spoken and is knowable.
Glad you’re on this journey with me to know Him, to be in relationship with Him, and hopefully fall in love with Him, more deeply in His word.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) R. Alan Cole, “Mark,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 952.
(2) John D. Grassmick, “Mark,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 116.
(3) Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 1570.
(4) Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume Two: God, Creation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2003), 533.
(5) Geisler, Systematic Theology, 534.
(6) Geisler, Systematic Theology, 533.