We are serving a God—the one, true God, to be exact—that is completely sovereign over his creation and is exalted about the heavens and the earth. But that same God who is exalted above all things also condescended to us in Jesus Christ to make himself known, to live a perfectly holy life, to die in the place of sinners, to resurrect three days later to complete his substitutionary work.

There are countless verses in the Psalms that stir the soul, perhaps none greater than Psalm 23. But recently I read Psalm 16, and most of the time I remember that passage because of verse 11, which speaks to the utter joy and abounding pleasures we have in Jesus. That is a wonderful verse as we fight sin on a daily basis. But have we considered a different verse in that Psalm?

“I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken” (v. 8). The latter part of this verse should cause every Christian to breathe a sigh of relief, to ease their anxious heart, to calm their weary mind. Why shall we not be shaken? Why should we not be anxious or stressed or confused? Because God is right here with us!

There are two things in relation to who God is that we must taken into consideration. God is transcendent and immanent. What do these mean? God’s transcendence speaks to his being above us, exalted over his creation. And that’s vital; God must be transcendent over his creation; he is not like us. He is holy; completely other from us. And that is good.

But what’s even more astonishing is, while he is transcendent, he is also immanent. For God to be immanent means he is near to us, with us, coming alongside us. We know this to be true because he made it known to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is called Immanuel, which literally means “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).

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