This morning in once again meditating on the giving of the Law of God on Mt. Sinai I was struck with something that I have always wondered about as I am certain you have as well. It hit me when I read the second commandment:
Ex 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
I got to thinking about how man has so often looked to nature to try and visualize God and the result has always been the creation of some image, from a golden calf to an eagle to a sea turtle. Man simply has a difficult time worshiping a god that he can’t see, touch or hold. We can have that same tendency and my guess we all have at some point in time.
Haven’t you pictured God the Father as just that… a father? Have you ever imagined yourself arriving in heaven to be greeted by Him and you just wanted to crawl up in His lap. Perhaps not, but that thought opened up something for me that has given me a much better understanding of the Trinity.
When God called all Israel to the foot of Mt. Sinai He specifically told Moses that they were not to come near lest they die in His presence. Only Moses was allowed to come up on the mountain and talk with God. Why? Because God the Father is not described in the Bible as being a kindly gentleman having a long white beard as Michelangelo may have pictured. Far from it!
In the book of Revelation (Rev 19) He is described only by “color.” Jesus told us that God is Spirit (John 4:24). The point is that God can’t be contained in a body or an image we create no matter how great we make them. The Word tells us that He is everywhere, He is omnipresent. In the Holiest Place it was only His Glory that the high priest was able to see. All that Israel saw on the Mountain was fire and smoke and His voice was like a trumpet.
So how do we put that together today? Let me share something the Lord showed me this morning.
We may not understand the Trinity but we, as the bride of Christ, know by faith that it exists. Since God is a spirit and we are not allowed to see Him, He sent Himself down to us in the form of a man that we could see. And in order to validate Himself for us He gave us His Spirit to lead us into seeing Himself in Jesus. What we have is the full revelation of God in the life and character of Jesus as revealed by God’s Spirit.
God knew that we would hunger for an image to hold onto and so He gave us Jesus. Where do we find that image? Not in paintings, not in pictures. It’s found in the Word of God. That is where the understanding of the Trinity and the image of the Father is found. In the life of our bridegroom is all the image of God that we need or that He has given us. And it’s when we allow His Spirit to reveal the Father to us that the image of Him becomes clearer.
Israel needed Moses to reveal God to them. We need Jesus.
Israel needed smoke and fire to know the presence and reality of God. We need the Holy Spirit.
Do I now have the answer to the age old question of what does God look like? No… and then again yes. He is a Spirit and He is all around us. He dwells in us and Jesus relates Him to us. Consider the message delivered to the Jewish believers in Hebrews:
Heb 1:1-3 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…
So, at the end of the day, our walk with our bridegroom isn’t about making some image of God in our mind. It’s just about looking at the image He has already given us… Jesus. And as the Holy Spirit invites us to look at Him through the Word of God, we’re going to find out (and be incredible blessed to realize) that in the process we are being made into His Image.