Word of Salvation – Vol.37 No.16 – April 1992
The Darkness And God
Sermon by Rev. H. de Waard on Exodus 20:21
Scripture Reading: Exodus 20:18-21
Singing: Psalm 11, 467:3, 253:2, 434, 207, 379, 367, 528
Dear congregation, beloved in Christ,
On July 16, 1945, the first atom bomb exploded in New Mexico. At 5.30 am the sky was suddenly ignited. A yellow reddish fireball, hotter than the sun, began an 8 mile ascent into the heavens and turned night into day for more than 100 miles.
Scientists who had worked on this project stared in shock at the awesome mushroom cloud. ‘It was like a vision,’ one scientist said. A reporter quoted Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light!” An army general spoke of ‘an awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces reserved to the Almighty.’ (S.Mosloy, Glimpses of God.)
Something of the awesomeness unleashed by the splitting of the atom was experienced by Moses and company at the foot of Mount Sinai. God appeared to them in a majestic display of fireworks, lighting up the sky. The mountain shook and seemed to be ablaze. When the priests blew the trumpet, God thundered back from an enormous dark cloud. In our text we are told that Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.
This text indicates:
- the majesty of God
- the demands of God
- the Mediator of God.
Girls and boys,
When you sleep in a pitch dark room, do you feel happy? Most likely you will want a very small light left on or the door open just a little. Or once in a while you call out for Mum or Dad, just to make sure they are still there. We don’t like the dark very much. We were made for the light. On the first day of creation God said: Let there be light!
The apostle John said: ‘God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.’ Yet here we meet God in thick darkness.
The people of Israel had been delivered from Egypt; they had crossed the Red Sea and were now assembled at Sinai where God affirmed them as His special people. (Ex.19:6). He gave them the Ten Commandments, accompanied by a great display of might and power. God Almighty, El-Shaddai, used the world of nature to demonstrate his majestic holiness. Everything is shaken up when God appears.
For three days the Israelites had prepared for this occasion. But the display of might was such that they stood afar off. It was terrifying.
Does God involve himself in scare tactics? Is God like those thundering preachers who love to dangle us over the fires of hell, flames licking at our heels?
Brothers and sisters, we must not regard God as a cruel tyrant. God is not cruel. The Psalms constantly celebrate the Father’s love. His lovingkindness is better than life! It fills the earth and stands forever. That Father-love was present at Sinai too. All God’s actions are moulded by love.
Why did God thunder from Sinai? Look at verse 20. So that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning’. What God is after is holy reverence and awe, not cowering terror. Not all fear is bad. Fear helps us anticipate real dangers. Fear helps us run away in the face of danger. In that sense fear too is a gift of God. I am afraid to do things that would hurt my children or wife. I fear to break someone’s heart. I fear to displease God. That’s the kind of fear God intended to instil in his people.
The God of storm, lightning, and earthquake seems far removed from us. In a church building with stained glass windows, neat pews and predictable worship, you expect God to assume a lower profile and speak in quiet ways.
True, but we too face the majesty of God. From this passage we learn something about ourselves. We learn what Isaiah learned when he came face to face with God’s majesty and the cry: Holy, holy, holy….! He called out: Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips.’
God is holy, we are unholy.
He is perfect, we are imperfect.
He is strong, we are weak.
When we see ourselves as we really are, we are encouraged to lean on Him and to trust Him. Knowing God as the majestic, holy one gives us the desire to be like Him.
The most natural thing for us is to become like our parents. Teenagers may say: When I grow up I don’t want to be like Mum and Dad. Yet a few years later, they are just like mum and dad. Naturally, because they have been around them for so long. Parents print an indelible mark on the lives of their children. That’s the way it is with God. The more we know Him the more we become like Him. And that’s what God intended. That we should be like him in holiness. Holiness brings delight to God. To be holy is a consuming passion for God. So God gave the Ten Commandments as a way in which holiness of life could be expressed. When you get close to God you can’t be morally indifferent. You want to please Him.
Let me mention a few examples from church history. When he had met God, the English mystic, Anton Boehme, wrote: ‘If all trees were clerks and all their branches pens and all the hills books and all the water ink, yet all would not sufficiently declare the evil that sin has done.’ Following one of her alleged revelations, Teresa of Avila exclaimed: Oh, the madness of committing sin in the presence of a Majesty so great and to whose holiness our sin is so hateful.’
Or think of Francis of Assisi in 1209. He heard the priest read from Matt.10:7-19: Freely you have received, freely give. Do not take along gold or silver or copper in your belt…’ Suddenly the word of Christ struck home.
He saw his calling. He gave away everything he had. He caught the fire, preached peace, ministered to the sick, evangelized Muslims, loved beggars, flowers and birds. He prayed: Make me a channel of your peace! He entered on a life of total giving of self.
Israel should have been a channel of peace to the world. But Israel failed miserably.
Romans 9 tells us: ‘Theirs is the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law…!’ Great privileges indeed. Did they believe? No, hence Paul’s great sorrow for his own people. Throughout their history they constantly lost sight of the majesty of God. They forgot all the marvellous acts God had done on their behalf. They became unfaithful and idolatrous. What did God do? Did God just grieve in his ivory tower? No way! God protests. He takes sin seriously and allowed His people to experience the darkness of exile. They groaned in the darkness of God-forsakenness in Babylon. God wanted to shake his people out of the grip of sin.
Even in that there is grace! But that grace became much more clear when God acted in a majestic way when the Light of the world was born. in Bethlehem. The love of the Father took on flesh and blood and dwelt in our midst. When Jesus came in Bethlehem and particularly when He rose from the dead, God was showing ‘the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.’ Ephes.2:7. In his great love, Christ fulfilled all the obligations of the covenant. We could never do that. Jesus did. We are amazed and we fear God in all reverence.
The people who stood at Sinai found their experience very unsettling. They begged Moses to get close to God. Moses could then report back to them. Moses became the Mediator between them and God. But Moses was not a perfect mediator. Moses could not take away sin. He pointed forward to Christ who is our only Mediator.
Today we are faced not with the dreadful spectacle of a dark and shaking mountain, but with the living Christ. As the NT writer to Hebrews says: You have not come to Mt. Sinai with its thunder and lightning. That was fearful enough. You have come to something far more awesome. You have come to Mount Zion. You have come to God, to angels, to the church of the firstborn, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant… You have come to the spiritual realm. You have come face to face with a majestic God. We have a much fuller revelation than the people at Sinai.
How much more reason for us to worship God, believe and be grateful. We have Jesus as the Mediator of the covenant; his blood speaks of pardon, forgiveness and healing. When we blow it again; when all our good intentions dissolve; when we show no spiritual backbone… you would think that God would turn his back on us. He does not. He is gracious and patient. And we are encouraged when we see that grace displayed at Golgotha.
On Golgotha God acted again in an awesome way. Darkness again covered the earth. There was an earthquake. The sun hid itself. This was symbol of God’s rejection; symbol of God’s wrath against sin.
‘Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut His glories in
When Christ the Mighty Maker died
for man, the creature’s sin.’ (Watts)
In those 3 hours of darkness God was there, redeeming His people in a majestic way. The awful sin of nailing Jesus to the cross was the very heart of God’s plan of redemption. It was God’s way of carrying our burdens. And when He rose triumphantly from the grave, we are comforted to know that all our ills and sorrows are not the final word. The final word is God’s eternal love for His people.
Do not reject such love! The only response, brothers and sisters, is expressed in Heb.12:28,29
‘Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.’
Do we always praise God for his salvation? I guess not. There are days when Hallelujahs irritate you; when you would like to cry out: I don’t believe all this pious stuff! All God’s saints experience days like that. They are the dark nights of the soul. But all God’s people have found that when the soul experiences its hours of darkness – God is there. God reveals His grace and majesty precisely in the hour of darkness.
Think of Elijah and think of Jacob. Think of your own darknesses. Darkness is part of our sinful condition. At present we are often left naked and anxious with the question: Who can stand in his presence? We deserve the darkness of hell. But Christ has shone into our hearts the light of God’s favour. And if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 1John 1:7.
You see the darkness is not eternal.
In heaven the majesty of God will still be there .But because obedience to God will be perfect, very significantly Scripture says: There will be no night there. No darkness. A world without sin. A place where no evil or false thought defiles the mind. We shall be like Him.
Since we have this hope, beloved, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name. Hebrews 13:15.
AMEN