Isaiah 45:22 “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”
My 8-year-old grandson and I are reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We just finished the part where Susan asks if Aslan is safe. Mr. Beaver answers, “Safe? … Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
Like Aslan, the God of the universe cannot be boxed into our meager definitions. He can do anything in any way he determines. That’s what makes him so appealing, as well as frightening. He remains consistent in his love, faithfulness, kindness, mercy and justice. But offers no predictable blueprint for how he accomplishes his purposes.
C.S. Lewis argues that the unpredictability of Christianity is what drew him to its truth. He writes, “It is a religion that you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up.”
Yet, for some, it’s the unpredictable quality of God that presents temptation to turn to other gods, more controllable ones. We worship God, but also our good works. Or we worship God, but also our family, our career, our status. We deem the sovereign God insufficient to satisfy our aspirations, so we crowd our heart with other loves, loves that become idols.
But there is room for only one God in our hearts.
In Isaiah 45, the prophet repeats the phrase no other God nine times in its twenty-five verses. No other God can form light and create darkness. No other God can crush our enemies and save us. What other God would empower a pagan Persian ruler (Cyrus), who doesn’t even know him to restore his captive people to their homeland? I doubt that was on anyone’s bingo card.
Friend, if you have elevated anyone or anything, any person or position, above (or even beside), the sovereign God, it’s not too late to change course. No other God can help you become the person you were created to be…because he’s the one who created you! No other than this unpredictable, mysterious, all-loving, powerful God stands worthy of your worship.
He’s the only one who does. There is no other.