At a certain point high up in the air is no longer high. A spacecraft launched out into orbit goes from being very high above the land to simply outside of the earth. Once outside of the atmosphere your perspective would change from being high above the land to far beyond the earth- out of the atmosphere, out of this world. If you keep going in this spacecraft the earth itself becomes smaller. If you keep going eventually you can no longer see the earth.
Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? (Psalm 113:5-6) This perspective from the spaceship is only a momentary glimpse of the Lord’s perspective on creation. God does not only look down on the earth, but on the whole universe. The universe is itself is as a tiny speck of the earth to our God.
Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple: “But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built!” To us the earth seems vast, but the LORD has a different perspective.
Yet the prophet Isaiah says “Call upon him while he is near.” He is near us. The one who the heaven’s cannot contain, who looks from so far above is near to us. We know our God is near to us as the unrighteous man is called to forsake his thoughts and return to the LORD. How far away can God be when He has compassion on us, and He promises to abundantly pardon our sins?
We may think the Lord is distant because his thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and our ways. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the LORD.” However, the reason our thoughts are so different from God’s thoughts is because of our sin.
Because of sin our ways are very different. They may involve trying to know God through speculation about how the weather is or how well our year is going, or even how well life seems to be going- instead of what God says to us in His Word.
Our ways may involve glorifying ourselves for being such good Lutherans. We argue we have put in so much careful attention to our faith, where is our extra recognition? We are like the workers in the vineyard who have been working since the morning and we look at the world around us and think maybe we are deserving more compared to what work others are doing and when they started to work.
This may also include anger and envy at the good fortunes of others. As we look at the world around us through the eyes of our sin- seeing the fortune of others as competition or as potential testimony to God showing favoritism against us.
Our ways may also involve negotiation with God. “I have lived my life well and been going to church, so please bless me with many years of health.” Or: ‘I promise not to keep holding hate in my heart toward others if I can just get this job opportunity in life.’
God’s ways are beyond what we can understand. As Jesus told the parable of the laborers in the vineyard he portrayed how differently God sees things than we do. When it comes to the work we do, we cannot help but notice if other people should do far less work than us and be recognized and compensated just as much.
In the parable once those workers who came out at the eleventh hour and the ninth hour were paid the full wage the workers who came out early in the morning began to expect they would be paid more than was promised them- as they saw the full denarius paid to those hired at the end of the day.
Where once they were content to work for the one denarius wage and felt blessed by the opportunity to work, now their attitude has shifted. They complain how they worked through the scorching heat and they feel the master is insulting their work by means of the compensation to those who came at the last hour.
God’s ways are not our ways. The gift of work and a wage represents in the parable the provision God gives to us in salvation in Christ. The fact that others could come to faith in the last days of their lives and receive the same reward could make us angry. Yet God’s ways are so generous that salvation is a gift to all of us- whether we have believed and lived out our faith year after year, or if we have come to faith later in our life.
God’s ways are not only beyond what we can understand but they are also beyond what we can obtain. “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”
God’s Ways are not our ways, someone can be a believer who calls on the name of the Lord day after day- and is still persecuted and killed for his faith. “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” The death of believers is precious because the last are first, because Jesus has cared for and redeemed the life of the saint who has died. Because the gift of life in Christ is of ultimate worth and everything else is rubbish in comparison. As we heard in our Epistle lesson: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
The Lord’s infinitely higher thoughts and ways are to be compassionate and to pardon. He forgives our inability to understand him. He forgives our inability to live according to his commands.
He accomplishes this in a way that we never could have thought: The God who is as far above us as the heavens are higher than the earth became one of us. Then this God humbled himself to death on a cross.
The Lord is near to be present with us. In Christ he does allow himself to be found. This is why Isaiah chapter 55 can talk about seeking the Lord while he may be found. His Word is present to us and calls us to repentance. The Lord has compassion to forgive us.
Although God is infinitely higher than us, high ceases to be high as He becomes in Jesus as near to us as the ground we walk on us in Jesus. We do not look at envy for how much higher God is to us. Instead we look with gratefulness for what God has accomplished for us in the gift of Jesus.
As we live our lives abiding in Jesus, with Him near us, our thoughts are Christlike. Instead of envy or resentment, the gifts the Lord presents to others are for us causes of joy and rejoicing. In Christ we have the freedom to live not according to our sin, but in a manner of life worthy of the gospel.