I was reading the story of Exodus yesterday evening, and Israel had just settled for a while at Mt. Sinai for Moses to hear from God. What grabbed me was God’s glory present in the Israelite community. I could only imagine what it would have been like for the people of Israel to hear from God.
God said to Moses, “Go to the people. For the next two days get these people ready to meet the Holy GOD. Have them scrub their clothes so that on the third day they’ll be fully prepared, because on the third day GOD will come down on Mount Sinai and make his presence known to all the people. Post boundaries for the people all around, telling them, “Warning! Don’t climb the mountain. Don’t even touch its edge. Whoever touches the mountain dies – a certain death.”
It’s as though the real glory of God, the real “weight” of God, is too great to be in our presence; or, I should say, for us to be in his full presence. We “know” this, yet we lose sight of the reality, the experience of it. Sometimes we’re too busy caught up in the minor details, the particularities of life, that we miss the big picture that God is almighty, all-glorious, and all-consuming.
I was also reading Reggie McNeal’s The Present Future, and in it he says, “The power of the gospel is lost on church members who can sign off on doctrinal positions but have no story of personal transformation.” We are far too easily pleased (C.S. Lewis), as we are wallowing in our reduced theologies, cliché statements about God, and petty ways of relating to him. Personal transformation (the heart of a gospel-receptive experience) is where Jesus came to touch us, yet it as if (as Steven Curtis Chapman says) we’re playing a gameboy in the middle of the Grand Canyon, because we don’t wake up and see the glory.
I’m guilty of this so often. I wander around in my view of God as a completely understandable person whose love, holiness, and blessing will affect my life (and it will). Yet I miss the all-consuming power and glory of the one who came to heal/save/restore my life and make it whole.
The start of restoration is to say, as Josh Davis does in his song, “King of Glory, Lord Almighty, You are welcome here.”
