Thursday, February 09, 2006

God's Terrible Revelation

In recent days through a seminary class and personal Bible study I have been reflecting on God's revelation of himself. In Exodus 19 we see God's revelation of himself at Mt. Sinai to Moses and the people of Israel. What an amazing and frightening scene! Before He manifested himself on the mountain, God made many provisions of protection for the people through his strict guidelines in terms of them approaching the mountain and their corporate consecration of themselves to prepare for the physical revelation of the Lord. There soon after, the people of Israel in effect said to Moses, “Moses, we don’t really want to deal with this God in this way. You can take it from here. We’ll stay back here and you let us know what He has to say for us.” It was a terrible thing for them to come into the real presence of the Lord.

Later on in Exodus 33, Moses asks to see God. God says that he will reveal himself to him, but along with it, there was the provision of protection, for if God was fully revealed, he would be killed. Here is the account from Exodus 33:

Then Moses said to him, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?" And the LORD said to Moses, "I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name." Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."

I wonder if these thoughts about God’s revelation of himself have an application for today?

Recently in a class on preaching that I took from Zack Eswine of Covenant Theological Seminary, he taught us that God’s word is God’s "baby talk". It is not all that he knows, or understands, but it is given to us in love, as much as we can handle and as much as we need, in order to know Him as he wants to be known for us in the flesh of humanity. It's like me holding out a rubber ball to my one-year-old and saying, "Ball, this is a ball. Ball" I could try and describe the chemical composition of rubber and how if you throw it really hard it will bounce really high, or we could talk about angles of reflection when throwing against a wall, but she would not, as a one year old, be able to handle that information. For her, the knowledge of the word, “Ball” is all she can handle and is all that she needs.

There great mysteries in the Bible, things such as how it specifically works that God can cause a willing choice and hold us accountable, or the precise nature of the Godhead as three persons each fully God, but yet one God. Are these ideas and pictures found in scripture concerning God shrouded in mystery simply because if God were to fully reveal how it all specifically works, it would literally blow our minds? Is the fact that there is mystery in scripture really in effect, God’s loving provision of protection for us; his “putting us in a cleft in a rock”?

This should lead us to greater humility as we come to the Bible. We what know is not all that God knows. The Bible teaches that God knows infinitely more than we do. Maybe when we find our home in heaven God will have all of eternity to reveal more and more of himself and teach us all those things that we longed to understand while on earth. He will have an infinite amount of time to show us all of his infinite knowledge. Then, in our resurrected bodies, we won’t need his protection from himself, and all the knowledge won’t “blow our minds”. Can’t wait to get there.

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