No One Is Like You

A question was born at a sea. A handful of slaves stood on the far bank with wet clothes and dry feet, looked at the water that had closed over their enemy, and sang the highest words a human being can know: who is like You among the gods, YHWH? And that question set out on its way, through all of Scripture, until it was given a face.

Now the question stands before a gate. It is an old gate-liturgy, a song of David that, according to a long tradition, rang out as the ark entered the holy city, carried on the shoulders of priests, with all Israel dancing and rejoicing around it. Two choirs call to each other across the walls. Gates, lift up your heads, sings the one; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in! From within, from behind the closed gate, the answer comes back as a question. It is the same question, now in its royal form: who is He, this King of glory?

All of Scripture may now answer, and it does not whisper.

In the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah stood in the temple and saw Him. The throne was high and lifted up, and the hem of His robe filled the house to its corners. Above Him stood seraphim, burning creatures, who covered their faces with two wings because even they could not look at Him, and they called out to one another: holy, holy, holy is YHWH of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory. At that cry the doorposts shook in their sockets, and the house filled with smoke.

That smoke rises, above the roof of the temple and the roofs of the city, into the clouds He uses as His chariot. Above them, where the night begins, hang the Pleiades and Orion, hung there by His hand, and every star He calls by its name. Under those same stars the army of Assyria once slept, 185,000 men, the mightiest on earth, already counting Jerusalem as its plunder. That night one messenger of His went through the camp. At daybreak there was nothing but silence and a field full of the dead. Empires that called themselves eternal are a drop in a bucket to Him; He deposes kings and sets up kings, and He blows world powers away like chaff before the wind.

Yet the sun that rose that morning was pale beside His face. On Patmos John saw Him: hair white as snow, eyes like flames of fire, feet like bronze glowing in a furnace, a voice like the roar of many waters, and the face, the face like the sun shining in its full strength. John had once leaned his head against His chest. Now he fell at His feet as though dead. 10,000 times 10,000 angels stand around His throne, He dwells in a light no one can approach, and He is a consuming fire.

That is the King of glory. YHWH of hosts, strong and mighty, mighty in battle: He is the One. And the gates open, and the King comes in, and the question that was once born at a sea no longer stands outside begging for an answer. It walks, like a recognized beloved, through the wide-open gate.

Here the wonder happens that this whole book has wanted to say. For that God (before Whom the seraphim cover their faces, who calls the stars by name, who fells an empire with a single messenger and whose face is brighter than the sun) is the Father who comes running down the road to a son who smells of pigs. That God lets Himself be woken in the night by a child who is thirsty and comes for a cup of water. That God bends down toward you, remembers that you are dust and carries you from the womb to your gray hairs. His mercy is new every morning, new each day, as if He makes it in the night for the one who is about to wake, and great, infinitely great, is His faithfulness. All of Scripture reels at that matchlessness. That He is high does not yet make Him unique, for plenty of high gods have been invented; nor does His nearness, for there were tame household gods to spare. The wonder is that the Most High, the consuming, the unapproachable, is the same One who stoops like a Father, and runs like a Father, and sings like a Father over His homecoming child. The greatest power in the universe and the tenderest heart in the universe dwell in one and the same God. John says why, in three words: God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). And he says what that does to us: "We love, because He first loved us" (4:19).

But the song of the gate holds one more question, and it is addressed to us. Before the gates open, David asks: who may climb the mountain of YHWH, who may stand in His holy place? The answer is honest and hard, for it reads "the one who is clean of hands and pure of heart." That shuts us all out, for who has clean hands? We do not climb the mountain on our own clean hands; we go up in the hands of the Lamb, who was clean in our place, who opened the scroll no one else could open, who bought us with His own blood. The gate that was closed against our guilt stands open because the King of glory first went in through a lower gate, the gate of a grave, and came out again. That is why we may go in with Him. Our hands are not clean; His were, and He has wrapped them around us.

Perhaps you are reading this from the dark. Perhaps you have come here with a faith that has broken down, with a night that will not pass, with an image of God damaged by a father who was not there or never satisfied, by a church that hurt you, by years in which God felt above all like someone who found you just not good enough. The God at the end of this journey is not the God you feared. The fear of being rejected may go; the awe remains, and it grows deeper the better you know Him. Lay your damaged image down beside Him, and you will see how crooked it stood. If you cannot yet believe that you are welcome, do not begin with believing, but with coming. He asks no more than that first step.

Look back one more time, now that you know Who was seeking you all along. It was He who rose up in Egypt for a son who did not yet know Him. On the mountain He proclaimed His Name right over the betrayal, compassionate, and a moment later Jealous, because He had no intention of leaving His bride to a calf. He allured her into the wilderness to speak to her heart. He lay awake over Ephraim. He wept over Moab. He sang for joy over a handful of people who had nothing left. He lay with His face in the dust of an olive grove, and at Golgotha the Father did not stay the hand. All of it was one love. The Song of Songs, the song of love itself, has the words for it: strong as death is love, relentless as the grave its jealousy; its flames are flames of fire, a flame of Yah. Many waters cannot quench this love, nor can rivers sweep it away (Song 8:6–7). This book began at the water, and no water has been able to quench it: not the sea that closed over the pursuers, not the deep into which Jonah sank, not the sea into which He hurled your sins. The same love that burned then burns now, and it burns for you.

Who is a God like You? No one. No one dwells so high, and no one stoops so low. No one is so righteous, and no one forgives so completely. No one let himself be humbled so far to bring home a beloved so lost. The question that began at the sea, with a tambourine in hand and seawater still in the hair, was never a puzzle asking for a solution. It was a hymn asking for a voice, and it is the first line of a song that never ends.

To Him now, who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before His glory with great joy, the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord: to Him be the glory and the majesty, the power and the authority, from before all ages, and now, and to all eternity. Amen.

A note on the source text. The gate-liturgy and "who is the King of glory?": Psalm 24 (the ascent of the mountain, 24:3–4; the open gates, 24:7–10). The majesty of the King: "holy, holy, holy" and the shaking thresholds: Isaiah 6:1–4; the glorified Prince of life with the face like the sun: Revelation 1:12–17; John at His chest: John 13:23–25; the Creator of the Pleiades and Orion: Job 38:31; Amos 5:8; the stars by name: Psalm 147:4; Isaiah 40:26; the clouds as His chariot: Psalm 104:3; "an unapproachable light, that no one can come near": 1 Timothy 6:16; deposing and setting up kings, empires like chaff before the wind: Daniel 2:21,35; the nations as a drop in a bucket: Isaiah 40:15; the one angel and the 185,000: 2 Kings 19:35; the heavenly Jerusalem with its tens of thousands of angels and "a consuming fire": Hebrews 12:22,29; 10,000 times 10,000: Daniel 7:10; Revelation 5:11. The Father who runs: Luke 15:20; "God is love": 1 John 4:8, 16, 19; the mercy that is new every morning, "great is Your faithfulness": Lamentations 3:22–23. The love that is strong as death and that many waters cannot quench: Song of Songs 8:6–7. The closing doxology: Jude 24–25. The threads come together from the whole book: the song at the sea (Exodus 15), the Name on the mountain (Exodus 34), the closing hymn of Micah (7:18–20), the descent and the Lamb, and the wedding (Revelation 19). The divine Name as YHWH.