Deborah P. Brunt

When God shows up, you never know what to expect. He decides the time and place. He who is past finding out chooses what aspects of himself to reveal and how to reveal them. Always the same, he is never predictable. The God of all comfort, he sometimes makes us deeply uncomfortable. The lover of our souls, he may do things we would never have equated with love.

 

Every time he shows up, you have a choice: You decide how you will respond.

When we look at what God said to Israel from atop Mt. Sinai, we typically focus on the "thou shalt not" bullet points. We don't consider the full scope of the lengthier commandments. And we omit altogether the very first words God said - his own remarkably brief introduction of himself:

"I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" (Ex. 20:2).

To the Israelites, that sentence said volumes.

First, God introduced himself by the same covenant Name he had spoken to Moses months earlier when the unsuspecting shepherd encountered a bush that would not burn up.

From the bush, God told Moses, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey ... So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt" (Ex. 3:7-10).

Glad that God wanted to rescue the people but unconvinced he was the man for the job, Moses tried to talk God out of the assignment. In so doing, Moses asked God's name. In response, God told Moses:

"Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation" (Ex. 3:14-15).

Let me quote here from another Key Truths article, an article titled, "I AM":

Frankly, these words bewilder us. To our way of thinking, it doesn't seem particularly significant that the Lord's name is LORD, written in all caps as if shouting.

Ah, but Bible translators have a quandary here. The Name God announced to Moses isn't spelled out in the Hebrew text. Instead - here and throughout the Old Testament - only the four consonants appear, transliterated YHWH.

So wherever in Scripture you see the all-caps LORD, it basically means, "The Name we don't have a clue how to pronounce." Yet, the one true God who has revealed himself through numerous names has told us unequivocally: This Name - this enigmatic, unpronounceable Name - is the one you are to remember forever.

The God who thundered from Mt. Sinai identified himself to the Israelites by the same Name he spoke to Moses from the burning bush. They didn't hear a generic, "I am the Lord." They heard God's own voice say the Name he first revealed the day he came in response to their cries, announcing his intent to rescue them. Further, the people gathered at the foot of Mt. Sinai heard the LORD identify himself as their God.

Suppose a sentry stands at his post. In the darkness, he senses a presence. He cries, "Who goes there?" Consider what he might feel and think if he hears in response, "I am the king," Now, consider the difference for that sentry if he hears, "I am David, your king."

God identified himself to his people by his personal Name. He identified himself as "your God," one already committed to a relationship with them. And he identified himself as their deliverer, who had accomplished the impossible in their behalf. True to his word, he had brought them "out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." No small task.

In Egypt, they had watched God's repeated, tenacious, unanswerable displays of power pry them loose from Pharaoh's grasp. They had experienced the crescendo of divine intervention that culminated with their crossing the Red Sea on dry land.

The LORD has power, all right, and he does not hesitate to use it when needed. But he always displays his power in the context of his Name - the Name that reflects and reveals his character and his ways. When he comes, he may radically challenge our view of him, but he always remains true to himself.

This LORD is paradox and mystery: holiness and love, wrath and mercy, judgment and grace. But he is not contradiction: "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). He is truth; he cannot lie (Titus 1:2). He is upright "and there is no wickedness in him" (Ps. 95:15).

Even when he comes violently, he has never, ever given place to bullying, intimidation or abuse. When he reveals himself in ways that may seem anything but heavenly, the LORD our God has good reason. In the midst of the noise and the fury, he calls out reassuringly, "It's me. It's me."

After identifying himself, God began his short list of commandments. The first four set parameters for how his people are to relate to him. The last six set parameters for how the people are to relate to one another.

Because these commandments warn us where not to tread, we may think of them as negative and restrictive. Yet, Israel's singers loudly touted God's commands as delightful and liberating. The LORD's decrees refresh the soul, make wise the simple, give joy to the heart and light to the eyes, says Psalm 19:7-9. "I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments... How I delight in your commands! How I love them!" cried the writer of Psalm 119 (vv. 45,47 NLT).

Indeed, God's Ten Words function rather like sections of a fence surrounding a school playground. Beyond this fence lie many dangers - streets carrying high-speed traffic, places where children can get lost, predators.

Like the playground fence, God's commandments protect us from roaming into dangerous, deadly places. "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction," says the LORD (Deut. 30:15). Life and prosperity lie within the boundaries he sets; death and destruction, outside them.

The God who set the boundaries is not daring us to cross them. Rather, he wants us to delight in roaming freely within them. When he first introduced the Ten Commandments to Israel, he did so as a parent might introduce small children to the playground fence. Knowing children's propensity to go where they should not, as well as their inability to comprehend the dangers of doing so, the parent speaks sternly, painting a dark picture of punishment if the child takes the boundaries lightly.

The parent would rather have a child grudgingly stay within the boundaries to keep from getting into trouble than a child devastated and even destroyed by venturing past the fence. But the parent loves most the day the child realizes the fence protects and frees - and that it was built in love.

And so the LORD couched his message in hair-raising, heart-stopping spectacle. Thunder crashed, lightning flashed, a dense cloud descended, earth quaked, mountaintop blazed, smoke billowed - while God himself came down. As if all of that were not enough, a long blast on a ram's horn, or shofar, sounded louder and louder.

The Israelites who stood, trembling, at the foot of the quaking, spewing mountain had already seen God use some of the elements to announce his presence. Thunder and lightning had accompanied the plague of hail. They well remembered the day hail decimated Egypt, but did not touch Goshen, where the Israelites were.

The billowing cloud by day and fire by night had guided them from the moment they set out to leave Egypt. When Pharaoh's army had pursued them, the cloud and fire had moved behind the Israelites, guarding them until they safely crossed the Red Sea.

On all those occasions, God had made clear that he uses his fearsome power to protect and deliver those following him. But never had he pulled out all the stops quite like this.

God had also forewarned the Israelites that a shofar blast would signal his arrival. If we'd been orchestrating the first visit of God with his people, we might have set the whole thing to the music of a symphony orchestra. We'd have woven together the sweet sound of the flute, the melodious sound of the harp, the commanding sound of the trumpet, the sweeping crescendo of the strings.

When God planned his entrance on Sinai, he picked the one instrument that doesn't fit with any others. Hard to blow and extremely hard to blow well, the shofar creates a sound that is neither beautiful nor soothing. Indeed, no sound grates like a poorly blown shofar, and no sound pierces like a shofar blown with the authority of the LORD. The blast seems to bypass your ears and shoot straight into your gut, reverberating there until your entire inner being rattles. As the shofar blast continues, the jarring sound forcibly, profoundly grips you until you don't know whether to cry for mercy or to cry for more.

The Israelites at Sinai had heard the sound of the ram's horn. Yet never had they heard a shofar blast like this.

In the big middle of his big entrance, as the shofar sounded and the mountain writhed, God did what no Hollywood producer would ever have scripted: The LORD hit the pause button. Before saying his own Name, before uttering his Ten Words, the LORD called Moses up the mountain a third time.

As Moses trekked upward into the smoke, onto the quaking mountain, toward the lightning and thunder, he must have wondered what monumental revelation God was about to make. Yet when Moses reached the top, God gave no new revelation. He only restated what he had told Moses during mountaintop rendezvous number two: "Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the LORD and many of them perish. Even the priests, who approach the LORD, must consecrate themselves, or the LORD will break out against them" (Ex. 19:21-22).

A little perturbed, Moses responded, "The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, because you yourself warned us, 'Put limits around the mountain and set it apart as holy'" (Ex. 19:23).

Adamantly, the LORD responded, "Go down and bring Aaron up with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the LORD, or he will break out against them." Obediently, "Moses went down to the people and told them" (Ex. 19:24, 25).

The LORD who hit the pause button to call Moses up the mountain does not set limits because he enjoys catching and punishing trespassers. He sets limits and keeps reminding us what they are because he is holy AND he is love. His Name reveals his holiness and his love. His rules reveal his holiness and his love. His displays of power reveal his holiness and his love. His warnings reveal his holiness and his love.

The LORD "does not want anyone to be destroyed" (2 Peter 3:9 NLT). Centuries after Moses lived, the Father sent his Son down for the same reason he called Moses up: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

"I think there is no such thing as casual love," writes poet and author Calvin Miller in his memoir, Life Is Mostly Edges. "So I love the church the only way I can: violently."

The LORD our God echoes that sentiment. But the people of God don't always run toward the violent love of God.

"When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.'

"Moses said to the people, 'Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.' The people remained at a distance while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was" (Ex. 20:18-20).

People can respond to the presence of the LORD with two kinds of fear. The first kind is cringing fear. It comes from the evil one, who loves to twist the truth. Cringing fear paints God as a bully, who makes impossible rules, then waits for you to break them so he can punish you. Cringing fear kills love. When Moses said, "Do not be afraid," he urged the people not to let the enemy superimpose fear based on lies onto their encounter with their God.

Knowing the enemy's tactics, God takes the risk of cringing fear in order to create reverential fear. This fear sees the truth: The God who came down on Sinai - the God who speaks his personal Name into the spirit of those who are his - is holy and he is love. The fear he imparts keeps us from getting chummy or casual with him, yet draws us inexorably toward him. Isaiah said, "The fear of the LORD will be your treasure" (Isa. 33:6 NLT).

This fear keeps us from sinning. It "leads to life" (Prov. 19:23). It "adds length to life" (Prov. 10:27). It is "the beginning of knowledge" (Prov 1:7) and "the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:10). "The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life" (Prov. 14:27).

It is also a fountain of deep, pure love for the LORD our God.

In spite of Moses' reassurance, the Israelites expressed a cringing fear of God. Ah, but Moses saw the same violent spectacle and, at God's invitation, set out toward it - not just once, but again and again. The man could not get enough of God's presence.

Of course, that was long ago and far away. So, while Moses heads back up the mountain, let's consider the words of two men who've lived this side of the cross - contemporary American author, Calvin Miller, and nineteenth-century British hymn writer, Frederic Faber.

In his memoir, Miller writes, "Now that my hindsight is 20/20 I can honestly admit that I was never a very good pastor. Perhaps I didn't want to be one all that much. It was him I wanted, this exalted Christ, this perfect end of all my imperfections. This gentle Jesus was my quest.

"I now know that all who want to really know him must walk the edges of fear. It is not an easy thing to carry the burden of wanting such knowledge. It is like being a nine-year-old boy in a roller-coaster line. He fears the ride but craves the experience. He must know it. He must feel the force of the Gs, the rush of adrenaline, the churning bravado of rocketing into sky, the inverted tracks that hang you from the straps and beg you admit that you were not as brave as you thought. Loving God is even as Frederic Faber wrote:

"They love Thee little, if at all

Who do not fear Thee much,

If love is Thine attraction, Lord,

Fear is Thy very touch."

. . . . . . .

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures references are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV ® Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ® All rights reserved worldwide. Also quoted:

Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, [NLT] copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Keith Green, Oh Lord, You're Beautiful, complete lyrics

Calvin Miller, Life Is Mostly Edges (Thomas Nelson, 2008), pp. 227, 228-229.