Isolated in a barren desert the people of Israel make camp before a stark, craggy mountain. The scene is a depressing contrast with the lush pastureland they had left in Egypt. But it was here they were told that their God was going to meet them. And meet them he did. With supernatural shock and awe God made it clear the Israelite people had better take seriously what so often is called the “religion thing”.
Critics of the Bible explain the fire, thunder and lightning as products of a primitive culture which understood God to take sadistic pleasure in terrorizing human beings. However, to dismiss the God of Mount Sinai where he gave Moses the largest and most precise description of himself would be ingenuous.
If God is worth being called God, power is a part of his personality. To deny that would be to deny God. But there is so much more in the mountaintop meeting God had with Moses. When Moses reported what he had seen and heard to the people, those individuals had a greater understanding of who God is than any other people up to that time. The demonstration of power was God’s way of getting peoples’ attention so that he then could share with them what they needed to know about him. The account of the giving of the 10 Commandments is not about the raging God, but the revealing God.
A prominent skeptic once said, “If I believed that God existed, the only thing worth living for would be to find out about that God.” Well, God does exist. And more than that, he has made finding out about him readily accessible. That access is called the Bible.
God’s specialty is not rage, it’s revealing himself to people so that they might know him, receive his love for them and love him in return. Bottom line is that what the revealing God wants is for you to come back to the family.
Sunday Morning Worship Service – 10:00 am