God brought the Children of Israel out of Egypt across the Red Sea, through the Wilderness of Shur and Sin to have a face to face meeting with Him. We read in Exodus, “And all the people saw the thundering, and the lightning, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” (Exodus 20:18-19), but they had no desire to meet God because they did not understand His nature. Under the circumstances the Israelites had no desire to approach God. There are people who will approach God under certain circumstances yet will not approach Him otherwise. God may manifest Himself to certain individuals who will not respond.
Here at Sinai God approached the people with manifestations which they could not understand and therefore they feared. When God does things to fit our understanding we more readily accept Him and His work. We are likely to feel uncomfortable with the unknown. Suppose we are walking alone and suddenly come up to a 5 foot bright blue creature with crumpled skin walking like a man. Would we readily and comfortably approach it? Doubtful. Most of us would avoid extremely strange creatures and probably shun totally strange circumstances. This is why some believes can not readily accept certain truths, truths that are foreign to them. If we can conveniently fit truth new to us into our present way of life, then understanding is not too difficult. In any given level of spiritual growth, the believer will meet truth which they cannot handle. They can find no place in their present life into which it will fit and they are not yet willing to have it worked into their life. Sometimes it is quite convenient for the believer not to understand truth. It is less troublesome not to understand certain things than to understand them. Here we can apply the oft repeated statement, “The truth which I do not understand does not brother me; it is the truth I do understand which disturbs me.” There is one way in which we can approach the unknown without fear. The Lord at times will lead us in an unfamiliar way. All through our Christian life we will meet the unfamiliar, things we do not understand. We cannot afford to make our approach to the things of God on the basis of understanding alone. Doing so will head us nowhere. All we need is a desire to hear God, to obey Him and to know Him. These people whom Moses brought to meet God did not want to hear Him. In Jesus’ parable of the sower hearing becomes the foundation of receiving. “But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” (Exodus 13:23) Understanding comes later hearing always comes first. Some people want to understand all about it before, they make their approach. What are these thundering and lightning? What are the trumpets blowing and why all this smoke? If we do not understand all these things we cannot meet with God. Too bad, so sad. There is no faith. Where there is no faith, there is no approach to God! Can God Himself be understood by mere man? No! He must be approached by faith. God is eternal. Eternity cannot fit into man’s small mind. The extensive greatness of God’s love and grace cannot be contained in the restricted human understanding. God will always be drawing man into the unknown, the unfamiliar. Man, responding to God, will always be learning. No matter how far into the unknown we are taken to experience revelation and understanding, we will always have the unknown in God before us.
The unknown is frightening to most individuals. In the case of the spiritual; realm, any approach by God which is not understood frightens most believers. At these times we must be still and know. Charles Haun tells this story of his Bible School class of 200 students. The entire school body became still and silent although the Lord could not be seen, He was heard walking in the chapel, up and down the aisles, they could hear His garments rustling, this happened until a girl screamed in fear. She could not understand what was happening. That ended that manifestation of the Lord. The Lord cannot bring very much from the unknown to the believer fearing it! The Lord can visit us with an usual manifestation. If there is not a proper and correct response in such a visitation, the Lord will not hang around for long. Not all manifestations of the Lord are dramatic and spectacular. Some are so dull or ordinary that most believers would not recognize or respond to them as a manifestation of God. But, revelation will be brought to that one who wholly seeks and desires the Lord. Care must be taken not to place our desires in the wrong areas. A wrong area may be to desire God to do something for us, to give us something for self-satisfaction, or to know and understand certain things to satisfy our curiosity about the Lord. The right area is a desire for Him alone! Remember we are to: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)
Desiring the Lord will be the foundation upon which revelation is brought to us. God’s heart responds to the heart desiring Him. A hunger and thirst for righteousness characterizes this desiring heart. The heart of God desires this same thing, righteousness in human hearts. Thus, kind is answering to it own kind. Remember this basis principle, since it will determine the extent to which we will progress in God. Kind is attracted to kind. This principle is true, not only true in the spiritual realm, but also in the social realm and animal realm. “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.” (Psalms 42:7) As much as we desire what God desires to that extent God brings us into Himself and we become more like Him.
