By pastorbillwalden
Deuteronomy 4:23, 24 23Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the Lord your God has forbidden you. 24For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Hebrews 12:22-29 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
25See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, 26whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” 27Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. 28Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. 29For our God is a consuming fire.
AO
It is late, I am am having another one of those frightening moments with God. It is one of those times that we might be afraid to talk about, because people might ask too many questions, and we can’t quite explain ourselves, or we might start talking and have a terribly wonderfully frightening epiphany in front of someone when we’d actually prefer to be alone.
It is far too easy to bump along in the Christian life and not be frightened, shocked, or righteously bothered by God. We have sanitized much of our Christian faith. We have made it predictable, safe, and manageable. We do what we do, we know what needs to be done, we have committed to rightly turning away from some things and turning to others. That’s all well and good.
But every once in a while, God silently shocks me. He privately undoes me. He intimidates me as he holds me in His grace. He reinforces the truth that He is a Jealous God and a Consuming Fire.
AO
He wants more of me. He demands more of me, but doesn’t force me to surrender. And yet, where is this pressure coming from? How can He not be demanding me, and yet so strongly be reminding me that He is a Consuming Fire, and a Jealous God?
Songs about God being jealous for us and being a Consuming Fire should not be sung in major keys or in 6/8. It’s not strong enough. Consuming Fire and Holy Jealousy demands a stronger beat and a demanding melody. Maybe we need some of our “worship” songs that have some holy terror to them. Maybe we need some actual awe in some of our “awesome” worship. Maybe we just need some “awe”, knowing that appropriate worship will follow?
AO
What is more important is that “I” have an awe of this wonderful, terrifying, holy, consuming, jealous God that I’d rather be friends with than be a slave to.
Maybe I am so “comforted” by His grace that I have lost some of the “shock and awe” that Isaiah experienced.
PRAYER- “God, please keep me righteously fearful of you as I rest peacefully in your arms of grace”.
By pastorbillwalden
Each Sunday I receive questions from our congregation regarding either what I just taught, or about the Christian life in general. We read a Psalm corporately at the beginning of each service. On 2/27/2001, we read Psalm 8, which speaks of “the son of man”, in verse 8.
The question that came was as follows: Is the reference to to “son of man” in Psalm 8:4 a prophecy regarding Jesus? If so, what does it mean that God would “visit” him?
In the context of the Psalm, I don’t believe that the psalmist is intentionally referring to Jesus, though Jesus did use the title “The Son Of Man” when speaking of Himself.
Regarding the passage in Psalm 8, David Guzik writes:
What is man that You are mindful of him: Considering the greatness of the heavens also made David consider the relative smallness and insignificance of man. David wondered why just a big, great God would bemindful of such small beings.
i. “We gave you but a feeble image of our comparative insignificance, when we said that the glories of an extended forest would suffer no more from the fall of a single leaf, than the glories of an extended universe would suffer though the globe we tread upon, and all that it inherits, should dissolve.” (Chalmers, cited in Spurgeon)
ii. God is so big that He makes the universe with His fingers; man is so small that he is dwarfed by the universe. Yet David did not doubt that God was mindful of man; he simply said “You are mindful of Him” and only wondered why. Before we share David’s question, we should first share his assured confidence that God is mindful of us; He thinks of us and considers what we do.
iii. “Sorry, sickly man, a mass of mortalities, a map of miseries, a mixture or compound of dirt and sin . . . And yet God is mindful of him.” (Trapp)
iv. “David’s question can be asked with many nuances. In Psalm 144:3f it mocks the arrogance of the rebel; in Job 7:17 it is a sufferer’s plea for respite; in Job 25:6 it shudders at human sin. But here it has no tinge of pessimism; only astonishment that thou are mindful and thou dost care.” (Kidner)
And the son of man that You should visit him: Indeed, using the poetic method of repetition, David repeated the idea in a stronger way. Son of man is a title that emphasizes the “humanness” of man, and we might say that visit him is yet stronger than are mindful of him.
i. David was confident that God not only carefully thought about man, but that He had some kind of personal connection and contact with men (that You visit him). He thinks about us and acts in our life.
ii. “The contrast between the stately splendor of the moon and the stars, and man – Enosh – frail man – and the son of man Ben-Adam – of apparently earthly origin. The contrasts are graphic.” (Morgan)
My Final Thoughts On This- The immediate context speaks of the comparative smallness of man compared to the greatness of God, and yet God is interested in man. I don’t believe that David was writing a direct statement about Jesus.
Ezekiel was also called “son of man” by God (93 times), as was Daniel.
It is to be noted, however, that Jesus was identified as “son of man” 88 times in the New Testament. When used of Jesus, whether prophetically in the Old Testament, or in real time (Jesus’ time), the title carried the significance of describing the Messiah of Israel.
As David Guzik mentioned the term “son of man” emphasizes the humanness of the one being spoken to or about. ”Son of Man” simply emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, who was both God and men. The passage in Psalm 8:4 doesn’t seem to speak of Jesus directly, or that God would “visit” him. The “son of man” spoken of in Psalm 8:4 seems to speak of humanity in general.
Good question!
