2007-08-11 - Majestic Lightning

Psalm 29:3-5, "The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon."

The verses here in Psalm 29, are very similar to Job 37:1-5, "At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place. Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightnings beneath the whole Heaven and sends it to the ends of the Earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God's voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding." The lightning is just one of many things that declares the Lord to be the God of glory. It is fitting that in the middle of summer, we consider the majesty of the voice of God in the lightning, but also look how God speaks to us even beyond this loud voice in the sky.

The lightning tells us of God's power and glory. Let not be foolish about this. Pharaoh was a dumb guy, but in not recognizing the voice of God in His thunder and lightning. We are duller in the head than he was. He at least knew that the thunder and lightning was from God (Exodus 9:28). Should we be more foolish than one of the most foolish men recorded in the Bible? Proud, pompous men have trembled under God's majestic voice in the thunder. The emperor Caligula would hide under his bed when it thundered. Horace, in one of his odes, hears thunder and trembles before Jehovah. The heathens tremble at the majestic voice of God in His thunderous speaking from Heaven. Should we not also acknowledge God's power in the midst of the storm? When the thunder claps, let it lead us to thoughts of God, and how He majestically speaks to us today. God's words and works go hand in hand. God still speaks to us today, but His primary way of speaking to us now is through His Holy Word, the Bible.

When God speaks in His Word, it is our first business to silently pay attention to what He says. It is not our place to question, correct, or disagree with what the Lord would say to us in His Word. We take His Word and meditate upon it. We digest it, and our only proper response is to, by faith, heed its admonitions to us in our lives and practices. As the majestic voice of the Lord in the thunder and lightning is compelling, so also His clear voice, in His Holy Word, is commanding. He speaks truth, can only speak truth, and we are called to believingly respond with our whole beings. His voice in His Word is majestic, because it is from Him. It compels simply because it is. Our fidelity unto our Lord is only as exact as our faithfulness to the majestic voice of the Lord in His Word.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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