No Safety Among the Stars

 

Your presumptuous heart has deceived you, you who live in clefts of the rock in your home on the heights, who say to yourself: Who can bring me down to the ground? Though you seem to soar like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, even from there I will bring you down. This is the LORD's declaration. – Obadiah 1:3-4 HCSB

 

Amazingly, Obadiah foresaw the possibility of space travel, warning Edom that even soaring like an eagle and making their nest among the stars was not a God-proof strategy.

It’s odd how often this concept of escaping God comes up in history. Jonah thought that going from Joppa to Tarshish would be enough.

  • Jonah 1:3 HCSB  However, Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the LORD's presence. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. He paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, from the LORD's presence.

 

Nikita Khruschev, before sending cosmonauts into space, declared that the Soviet Union was sending men into outer space and if they found God there, they would topple Him from His throne.

God is omnipresent. He is equally present in and aware of every spatial point of the universe simultaneously. God does not merely live on earth. The heavens themselves cannot contain Him.

  • 1 Kings 8:27 HCSB  But will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain You, much less this temple I have built.
  • Psalms 139:7-10 HCSB  Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?  (8)  If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.  (9)  If I live at the eastern horizon or settle at the western limits,  (10)  even there Your hand will lead me; Your right hand will hold on to me.

Where could we go from His Spirit? Where could we flee from His presence? If we go up to the heavens, He is there. If we make our beds in the depths, there He is. If we rise on the wings of the dawn and settle on the far side of the sea, even there will be His guiding hand, holding us tightly in His loving grasp.

 

He is not merely a God who is nearby, but also a God who is far away. There are no secret places where we can hide from His all-seeing eyes. Elah Sh’maya V’Arah fills both the earth and the heavens. I

In Him, we live, breathe and have our being.

  • Acts 17:28 HCSB  For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

 

For the tzaddikim (believers), this is a comforting truth. We are never far from our Shepherd and Friend. Even in the depths of Sheol, our Guide is within range.

Ah, but for the unrighteous – what frustration this must present. Their position, power or social status will be meaningless on the great day of God’s wrath.

  • Revelation 6:15-17 HCSB  (15)  Then the kings of the earth, the nobles, the military commanders, the rich, the powerful, and every slave and free person hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.  (16)  And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb,  (17)  because the great day of Their wrath has come! And who is able to stand?"

They will hide themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They will cry out to those rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, because the great day of Their wrath has come! And who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:16)

Who indeed?

How exactly does one hide from a God who is able to resurrect the dead? What hope is there for the unrighteous dead, though their bodies lie in the depths of the Marianas Trench? There is no hiding, even in Hades.

  • Revelation 20:13 HCSB  Then the sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up their dead; all were judged according to their works.

 

There is only one place to hide – in the arms of the one we call the Christ.

  • John 14:6 HCSB  Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
  • 1 Timothy 2:5 HCSB  For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, a man, Christ Jesus,
  • Revelation 19:16 HCSB  And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS
  • Revelation 22:16 HCSB  "I, Jesus, have sent My angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright Morning Star."

 

Your choice: in His arms now, or on your knees later when it’s too late.

  • Philippians 2:9-11 HCSB  (9)  For this reason God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name,  (10)  so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow--of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth--  (11)  and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.