Dulles Family Life Church

When you read the book of Exodus, one of the things that truly stands out is the difference between how Moses knew God, and how the people “knew” Him.  I think the clearest example of that is found in Exodus 21:20, where the people, terrified of the Lord’s appearance among them with thunder, lightening, and darkness.  Moses tried to tell them to have no fear, that the Lord was displaying His awesome power to them, but they would not listen.  They tell him in verse 19, “You tell us what God says, and we will listen.  But don’t let God speak directly to us.  If He does, we will die.”  Then, in verse 20, it reads, “As the people stood in the distance, Moses entered into the deep darkness, where God was.”
    To our very human, and fleshly way of seeing things, it doesn’t make sense that the Lord should appear to us in the midst of darkness.  After all, He’s the God of light.  He should always be making things clear to us, and in ways that we can understand.  All that He does should make sense to us, and there should be little, if any, mystery involved.  Yet, His Word tells us that the Lord Himself is a mystery, one that He invites us to enter into, and discover in ever greater ways.  Yet, in our day to living, if He should approach through life events that look like what the Israelites were seeing here, our reaction is very much like theirs.  We don’t want to enter into the darkness.  We’re afraid it will kill us.  If there is mystery here, we want someone else, our pastor, our more ”spiritual” friends, to tell us what’s happening.  We look for a “word” from Him, something prophetic.  We certainly don’t want to enter any darkness, and we really have a difficult time believing He would be there.  So, when the blows of life come about, sickness, divorce, grievous happenings with our children, job losses, costly financial setbacks, death, in effect, darkness, we draw away, not near.
    Yet, it is in the midst of these things that we will find Him.  Chinese Christian Brother Yun wrote while int he midst of some of His deepest sufferings for Christ, that the Lord spoke from the Psalms into his darkness, “In the hidden place, your Father shall protect you.”  In a place where there seemed to be no light at all, He discovered His presence in a way he’d never known.  Larry Crabb, in his book, “66 Love Letters,” writes, “Suffering without explanation creates the opportunity for faith in Him, the kind of faith that sees His heart……..It’s the road of trusting Him in darkness so dark that all reason for trust is obscured.”  He then quotes Soren Kierkegaard, “As long as their are many springs from which to draw water, anxiety about possible water failure does not arise.”
   The great tragedy in the lives of those who followed Him in Exodus was that in all those years, they never came to really know Him.  They expected from Him a life that He’d never promised.  When their lives and experiences failed to match their expectations, they became angry, disillusioned, defeated, and they drew away, grew away, from Him.  Moses, whom the Bible tells us the Father ”Spoke to face to face,” had come to know Him is such deep, intimate ways, that he didn’t fear to any enter into the deep darkness.  He knew who he’d find there.  The very God he’d known in the light, except that in the darkness, He came to know Him even more deeply, and trust Him more completely.

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