Andromeda

The very first reference to the stars comes just sixteen verses into Scripture, on the fourth day of the world's history.  On several occasions in that first book (15:5, 22:17, 26:4), God uses the stars as an illustration for a prodigious number.  Take Genesis 15:5, for instance:  "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them...So shall your descendants be." 

Had Abraham counted all the stars in the sky he could see over a number of months, his tally would have culminated in the thousands.¹  Advance ahead to our era, and Joe Anybody can point his binoculars into the night sky and count far, far more - perhaps 200,000 if he travelled to both hemispheres (Joe can get to South Africa with far less inconvenience and time than Abraham could). 

Having established that, it is all the more remarkable to note that scientists now place the estimate for population of stars in the Milky Way at 100 - 400 billion.  To put that figure into some semblance of perspective, this means that for every star you can see with your binoculars, there are at least half a million behind it in the Milky Way that remain invisible. 

Right now in the late summer sky, somewhere in between Cassiopeia and the Square of Pegasus, there resides a small and somewhat vague area of white light, visible to the naked eye, if one knows where to look.  This is the Andromeda Galaxy.  Consider this a moment.  Every star you can see, unless you have some serious hardware, is a card-carrying member of the Milky Way clan.  Even these are indescribably distant from our tilted heads, but then, beyond the silver veil of all these constellations and stars, some 2,500,000 light years (or 14,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles, if you prefer) from our own modest galaxy, resides the Andromeda Galaxy.  You are looking at another galaxy.

Now, it was not settled that Andromeda was even a galaxy until about 93 years ago - before this, the general thought was that ours was the solitary galaxy in the universe.  By 2013, the calculated estimate sits at 170 billion galaxies stretched across the 13.8 billion light years of the universe that we can discern.

This is all very interesting, certainly, but what possible spiritual bearing does this have?  Here are a few thoughts:

1.  God's sovereignty is exalted.  David says, "The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all." (Ps. 103:19) Suddenly, the word "all" takes on such a weight, such a crushing mass, that we are helpless to conceive of it.  God's sovereignty is, of course, just the sort of sparrow-preserving, hair-numbering control that Christ himself described in Matthew 10:29-30, and the psalmist would have us know that this sovereignty extends to all things - even a molecule of gas floating through the Triangulum Galaxy.  Such is the extent and the specificity of God's incontrovertible will.

Some would ask, "Why would He bother with this degree of sovereignty?  Why should God be concerned about the shape of a dust cloud in some galaxy which science can barely even recognize across the cold marches of space?"  To this, we simply respond, why would He not?  God is not overburdening Himself in the maintainence of billions of galaxies and all they contain, is He?  Was His intellect taxed to the breaking point as He spun His all-encompassing plan?  Does He now wish He had just a few more hands (like parents everywhere do) so He could get more done with greater care?  Of course not!  His sovereign plans were planned and are executed with perfection; they subjugate every atom in the universe, and for God, this is easy.

2.  God's omnipotence is exalted.  These familiar words open God's Word:  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  Consider such understated words in the light of our incomprehensibly vast cosmos!  We further discover in Genesis 1 that God created all things from nothing, that He used mere words, only powerful pronouncement, to create all things, and that He fashioned the heavens in a single day:  perfect power personified. 

Our Lord applies that infinite might in His sovereign rule over all things.  The fact that His power is infinite means that He can distribute that power across every single atom in the universe, and He is still applying infinite power to every atom.  Our powers of explanation simply come unhinged at such lofty notions.


Science, then, continues to grow our understanding of the universe, and, as a result, continues to grow our wonder toward the God of all things, the divine Architect of these wonders, which have been laid up quietly in His keeping through the millennia, until we were able to see them.  Science, which so often seeks to turn God to flinders, is a gift from God to help to describe His own glory - incredible.

I want the Creator and Keeper of all things for my God.  The One whose very words causes the entire cosmos to endure (Heb. 1:3), the One who does as He pleases with that overwhelming sovereignty (Ps. 135:6, Rom. 8:28), the One who declares as Creator that He alone is God, and that we ought to turn to Him alone (Is. 45:22) - this is the God we are privileged to serve, brothers and sisters. 


Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,

"I, the Lord, am the maker of all things,
Stretching out the heavens by Myself
And spreading out the earth all alone,
Causing the omens of boasters to fail,
Making fools out of diviners,
Causing wise men to draw back
And turning their knowledge into foolishness,
Confirming the word of His servant
And performing the purpose of His messengers.
It is I who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited!’
And of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built.’
And I will raise up her ruins again."

     - Isaiah 44:24-26

¹ The text of this website provides good insight on this and other matters.

Powerful Answers to Prayer in Judah - A Monumental Request

See 2 Kings 17-19, 2 Chronicles 32, & Isaiah 36-37.


The northern kingdom has fallen.  The Assyria armies have taken Samaria. 

Something like these words no doubt reached the ears of King Hezekiah of Judah, and their reception would excite a definite measure of concern for his tiny kingdom.  Hoshea, king of Israel, had defied Assyria years before, and quickly found himself imprisoned and his kingdom besieged.  Three gaunt and bleak years passed before Israel succumbed and was carried into distant exile - such was the strong and settled resolve of the Assyrian host.

Hezekiah, a king rare and conspicuous in his humble servitude of the one true God, a man blessed with manifold successes by the Lord, had also defied Assyrian rule and refused to pay tribute.  For three tenuous years, Israel had absorbed Assyria's martial energies - for three fleeting years, Hezekiah's defiance was suffered by the Assyrians as Israel's resistance wore away.  Now this buffer was dashed to pieces and swept away.  What would come now?  We gather from Isaiah 28 that, against the wishes of the Lord, the rulers of Judah treated with Egypt in a bid for greater military strength, but the next eight years were met with an ominous silence from Assyria.

We have received reports, my lord, that Sennacherib has fielded a vast army and they are moving along southward along the coast.¹  It is impossible to discern their objective at this point.
 
The Assyrian host has shifted its advance eastward.  Even now they are crossing into Judah.

It is as we feared.  Our fortified cities are being overrun.

Lachish has been sacked.

Mareshah cannot hold.

Adullum is under attack.

We have lost Hebron.

There are no free strongholds left in Judah, except Jerusalem.

The southwestern region of Judah was by no means the soft underbelly of the country, militarily speaking.  It had been strengthened extensively by Rehoboam (2 Chron. 11:5-12) and others, but it may as well have been shored up with straw as King Sennacherib gobbled up city after city.  If there was an alliance with Egypt during this time, Egypt did not stir.  Hezekiah stood alone in a shrinking territory.  He could not fight Sennacherib on equal terms, and Judah's weakness was showing day by day - she was dying.  The noose was tightening.  The Assyrians could push to Jerusalem in mere days, and there was nowhere to retreat.  The councillors stood silent; the generals were grim.  What can we do?  What remains to be done?  Send to Sennacherib; tell him we have erred in defying him.  Offer him anything, anything, and beg that he might desist in his bloody campaign. 

Sennacherib demanded 30 talents of gold, and 300 of silver.  Alas that Hezekiah's forebears had trodden this same dolorous path several times before (2 Kings 12:18, 16:8), and Judah's treasuries lay emaciated.  This total could not be extracted from them.  Hezekiah conceded to empty the house of his Lord of its silver articles, but even then, he wanted for gold.  There is gold on the doors and doorposts of the temple.  Let it be stripped off.  How his heart must have grieved to make this pronouncement, as he himself had clad the temple in such splendor!  The gold that he had dedicated to his holy, precious God, he now freely took back in order to fearfully deliver it to a pagan king who lived in utter defiance of God.

Twice Hezekiah had conceived plans to save his land apart from faith in the intervening hand of the Lord, and the first, his alliance with Egypt, had come to nothing.  His hope in the second would also prove disastrous as an envoy of Sennacherib came to Jerusalem, demanding Hezekiah's surrender, in spite of the painful tribute that had been proffered.  There is nothing to save you.  Other nations have beseeched their gods, and their gods have all utterly failed them.  So it will be with Judah. 

No earthly recourse lay at hand - no alliance, no armies, no wealth, no negotiations could intervene.  Hezekiah's hands were finally emptied.  Such times are often used by the Lord, are they not?  In the face of our faithless acts, He will at times systematically remove all options until we are obliged in helplessness to remember Him and to look to Him.  For Hezekiah, the temple of the Lord (which now stood stripped bare - not by Judah's enemies, but sadly by his own decree) became his place of refuge, and he prayed earnestly and humbly to his Lord.  O Lord, the God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.  Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.  Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them.  Now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O Lord, are God. (2 Kings 19:15-19)

This is a very comely prayer indeed, and we must note several features in passing.  First, it does not reproach the Lord with any note of sourness, as in "Why have You not labored with me in the plans I have made?"  Where it could be accusatory, it is instead worshipful:  it acknowledges wholeheartedly God's unique and independent sovereignty over all things.  Neither is it presumptuous; its requests are not demands.  Finally, it transcends the immediate circumstances and looks ultimately not at the plight of God's people, but at the glory of God's name.  Hezekiah words righteously importune, "Vindicate Your holy name, O Lord," and not "Vindicate Your obviously deserving people, O Lord."

This is not a formula by which we unlock the power of God to work on our behalf, of course.  Our omniscient God cannot be coerced by any means.  Rather, this is a mindset whereby we submit ourselves to the perfect will of the living God.  If His mighty hand moves on our behalf, we are glad; if, for reasons all His own, it does not stir, we are not offended.  We wait confidently on His good pleasure. 

The Lord did not hesitate to send His answer through Isaiah:  God had purposed from before time to give Assyria its strength for toppling cities and kings; however, their rebellion against Him had made them worthy of defeat, and the time had come.  The Lord declared that He would lead Sennacherib back to his own land, and furthermore, that he would neither set foot in Jerusalem, nor lay siege to it, nor fire arrows into it, nor assault it.

To put it more bluntly, after Hezekiah had exhausted his own paltry options, to absolutely no avail, he humbled himself before the Lord, and the Lord responded that He would surely deal with Assyria, and in such a way that Judah would not by any stretch be able to claim any part in that victory.  Assyria would be turned aside even before it could move upon Jerusalem.  Assyria's strength and Judah's helplessness would both contribute to God's amazing glory in this matter.

Hezekiah's prayer to God prompted Him to unveil yet another brilliant gem of glory as well.  God raised up the Assyrians and allowed them to perpetrate their massive conquests.  In so doing, he used them to show the falseness of local idols throughout the region as city after city was overthrown, despite the prayers offered to gods of man's handiwork.  How incredible, then, that God should bring these overwhelming conquerors, these idol-killers, against Himself, and use their efforts to demonstrate beyond doubt that He is very real, and insurmountably powerful, and always sovereign!  Hezekiah's prayer brought an incredibly glorious answer from the Lord of glory Himself!

Most are familiar with the particular form that this glorious response took - in the span of a single night, the Lord Himself, the pre-incarnate Christ, came and simply killed 185,000 from Sennacherib's army - specifically all the valiant men and all the leaders.  This constitutes more soldiers than the entire Allied force that invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944.  It is more soldiers than those who fought at Gettysburg - on both sides.  Our search, and indeed, Sennacherib's search, for an explanation apart from divine intervention, is definitively confounded.  This was an act of God - pure, divine, and simple.  Judah was saved by the Almighty on that day, and Sennacherib quickly withdrew, never to return.

How wondrous it is that such a response should come after a prayer given by an imperfect man who had acted faithlessly not so long before!  I need hardly mention the incredible trove of grace, patience, power, and authority that this event reveals within our God, but I would urge you to consider this wonder, to rejoice at it, and to marvel at how strongly our God responds to prayers from people not unlike ourselves.  We will, I think, find both glad adoration and steadfast prayer close at hand as we do so.



¹ So says the Beitzel's New Moody Atlas of the Bible in its various maps of this campaign.