His Voice

 

Monday, June 5, 2023

The voice of the Lord echoes above the sea.  The God of glory thunders.  The Lord thunders over the mighty sea.  The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic.  The voice of the Lord splits the mighty cedars; the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.  He makes Lebanon’s mountains skip like a calf; he makes Mount Hermon leap like a young wild ox.  The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning.  The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.  The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forests bare.  In his Temple everyone shouts, “Glory!”  Psalm 29:3-9

Long ago I heard for the first time a preacher say these words:  If you’ve never trembled in the presence of Almighty God, it’s because you’ve never really stood in the presence of Almighty God.  He was making the point that we misunderstand a lot of things.  And sometimes we miss God, because we don’t know Him very well.  We hear about something marvellous being discovered – a cure for this disease, or that syndrome, or a new invention like driverless cars, or pilotless planes – and we mis-label a move of God for human inspiration.  We praise the Nobel laureates instead of marveling over Heaven’s gift.

Psalm 29 is attributed to King David.  It’s not hard to understand why; as a boy David spent many nights alone in the desert wilderness keeping watch over sheep.  To this boy, ordained to be the anointed king of Israel, the resounding crackling of lightning bolts were not merely storms, but the sacred voice of JHWH, the burst of almighty God’s love for His creation.  David heard THE Voice.

There are plenty of Biblical references concerning the presence of God, and how we are to enter boldly, to come closer, to dwell-in that presence.  Those are welcoming sounds – words of invitation to be near and experience God’s lovingkindness and majesty.  That is good, and it is right for us to receive those words as true; God means to provoke us to respond.  He wants His family to enter the house, and drink-deeply of His goodness.

But, somewhere, deep-down, within the center of our existential soul, there must be fear; not the kind of fear you might have facing a hungry lion in the wilderness, without a weapon or a place to hide.  Rather it is the awe of a majestic voice that thunders loud enough to split the cedars of Lebanon…trees that have withstood hundreds of years of storms and earthquakes.  This voice can make a mountain jump like a cat that’s been startled from behind.  His voice can strip a forest bare in an instant.  The power of God is limitless and unstoppable.  Scripture tells us that God’s power to rearrange, end, or begin life is without boundary.  He is God; his voice is final!  Apostle John was given a glimpse of that voice, and the finality of how it will preside over that great and final day of the Lord:

And a mighty shout came from the throne in the Temple, saying, “It is finished!”  Revelation 16:17

For You Today 

There is a day of reckoning approaching.  We’ve been advised in Scripture not to set a date, but rather to be prepared to meet that day.  If, as my preacher friend once said, you have never stood and trembled before a holy God, there will come a day when you will.  Better to stand there now in humble prayer, pledging your commitment to Him, and tremble as his thundering voice and loving arms embrace you.  The alternative is to stand before him later to receive judgment.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Joy & Judgment  The Voice of God  

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

APOCALYPSE - a not-so-gradual Global Warming

 

Thursday, November 5, 2020

Then the seven angels with the seven trumpets prepared to blow their mighty blasts.  The first angel blew his trumpet, and hail and fire mixed with blood were thrown down on the earth.  One-third of the earth was set on fire, one-third of the trees were burned, and all the green grass was burned.  Then the second angel blew his trumpet, and a great mountain of fire was thrown into the sea.  One-third of the water in the sea became blood, one-third of all things living in the sea died, and one-third of all the ships on the sea were destroyed.  Then the third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from the sky, burning like a torch.  It fell on one-third of the rivers and on the springs of water.  The name of the star was Bitterness. It made one-third of the water bitter, and many people died from drinking the bitter water.  Then the fourth angel blew his trumpet, and one-third of the sun was struck, and one-third of the moon, and one-third of the stars, and they became dark. And one-third of the day was dark, and also one-third of the night.  Then I looked, and I heard a single eagle crying loudly as it flew through the air, “Terror, terror, terror to all who belong to this world because of what will happen when the last three angels blow their trumpets.”  Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen to earth from the sky, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.  When he opened it, smoke poured out as though from a huge furnace, and the sunlight and air turned dark from the smoke.  Then locusts came from the smoke and descended on the earth, and they were given power to sting like scorpions.  They were told not to harm the grass or plants or trees, but only the people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  They were told not to kill them but to torture them for five months with pain like the pain of a scorpion sting.  In those days people will seek death but will not find it.  They will long to die, but death will flee from them!  The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle.  They had what looked like gold crowns on their heads, and their faces looked like human faces.  They had hair like women’s hair and teeth like the teeth of a lion.  They wore armor made of iron, and their wings roared like an army of chariots rushing into battle.  They had tails that stung like scorpions, and for five months they had the power to torment people.  Their king is the angel from the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon—the Destroyer.  The first terror is past, but look, two more terrors are coming!  Revelation 8:6-9:12

• You are probably all too familiar with the syndrome of “then”. 
• You were only four, and your big brother was going off to school; you were told that someday soon you would also get to go; you couldn’t wait until then. 
• You were 12 and bigger kids played on the teams…you would grow and then.
• You were 14 and still had to wait to begin driving…wait until then.

We wait, anticipate, long-for-the-day, and then it comes.  We’re excited (for a while), and then we’re on to the next set of waiting, longing, and arriving.  In light of that then stuff, how do you feel about the End of Times…apocalypse?  This prophecy of Apocalypse, the End Time terrible tribulation, is not on many peoples’ front burner; not even “theologians”.  Truth be told, it is an icky kind of truth to tell.  After all, who wants to hear about a third of the earth’s waters, lands and creatures consumed by fire?  Some people believe…and tremble.  But, even then, one-third leaves you a two-out-of-three chance of surviving.  Good odds, even in a Las Vegas casino.

But this isn’t a roulette wheel, and we’re not talking about vacation time or silly games.  This subject is God’s impending righteous judgment of the world for sin.  And it won’t be a third of the world being judged; the last sentence of the text completes the equation…this bloodbath is only 1/3 complete…the other two-thirds are right on its heels.  That hammer WILL fall.  The only question is WHEN?

Many have taken a step onto that ledge of predicting the when of the then.  But that is as foolish as ignoring the coming of judgment.  When Jesus was teaching his followers about the end of times he told them they couldn’t know the “when” – that was in the Heavenly Father’s hands:

“However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself.  Only the Father knows.  Matthew 24:36

For You Today

 I can think of a lot of ways I’d rather suffer than by fire, but the moment and circumstances of our judgment is not something we get to choose.  The good news is that we can choose to take a moment in time to change the outcome of that judgment.  That is the gift of Jesus’ death on the cross.

It may be a hard truth to contemplate, that sin will be judged, and every person is accountable to God, and guilty before God.  But, the Word of God declares this judgment is coming.  There are three “thirds”.  If you add them up, they total 100%.  All will be judged when God sets it in motion.  So, accept Christ now, and be spared the terror of judgment for your sins.  He has already paid the price of your redemption.  It’s your move. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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Title image:  Pixabay.com   W   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For another post on this text see:  Going Out in a Blaze of Glory - Part 1