The Vision of God and the Feast Before Him

Exodus xxiv. 11

They mw Grod and did eat and drink.” — Exodus xxiv. il.

THESE are strangely bold words, both for the assertion with which they begin, and for the juxtaposition of the two things which they declare. They come at the close of the solemn ceremonial by which God and Israel entered into covenant. Lightly-uttered vows of obedience to all that God could speak had echoed among the rocks. On the basis of that promise a covenant was formed and ratified by sacrifice. A rude altar was piled, round it were set twelve standing stones — the representatives of the tribes — the whole group being a symbol of Israel gathered round its God. The sacrifices were offered, half of the blood is cast upon the altar, the witness that man enters into amity with God through sacrifice. Half of the blood is sprinkled upon the people, the witness that the blood of the sacrifice cleanses and consecrates the men that accept it. And then a chosen body of seventy representatives of the nation, accompanying the Lawgiver and the future high priest, ascend the mountain. They pass within the fence, the witness that access to God is possible on the footing of Covenant and Sacrifice. Ihey behold, as I suppose, unclouded, the material and fiery symbol of His presence; witness that men through Sacrifice and Covenant can see God.

But our eyes are stayed on the pavement beneath His feet. No form is described. Enough for us that there is spread beneath Him that which is blue and gleaming as the cloudless Heaven above Sinai. “They eat and drink”- — witness that men who draw nigh to God, on the footing of sacrifice and covenant, and thereby behold His face, have therein festal abundance for all their need. So this incident, in its form adapted to the infantile development of the people that first received it, carries in its symbols the deepest truths of the best communion of the Christian life, and may lend itself to the foreshadowing of the unspoken glories of the heavens.

I. — I ask you to consider, first, the vision of God possible for us.

The Bible says two things about that. It asserts, and it denies with equal emphasis, the possibility of our seeing Him. The two things are, of course, (easily capable of reconciliation; the sight which is affirmed is not the sight which is denied. That vision which is impossible is the literal vision by sense, or, in a secondary meaning, the full, adequate, direct knowledge of God. The vision which is affirmed is the knowledge of Him, clear. certain, vivid, and, as I believe, yielding nothing to sense in any of these respects. The God viom we cannot see, either in the sense of perceiving with the eye, or of grasping and apprehending with mind and spirit, is the boundless infinitude of the Divine nature. The God whom we can see is that aspect of that infinite nature which is turned to us, which the Scripture calls “the face of God.” The vision of God of which the text speaks appears to have been an actual visible appearance, probably of that “symbolical fire” which shone on Sinai, and was seen by the people veiled in cloud and smoke, but by the seventy in unveiled brightness. The author of Exodus knew as well as any modern objector, that no man can see God’s face,” and declares that these men “saw the God of Israel,” not because its conceptions of Him are gross and material, but because the invisible God deigned to assume a form of visible brightness in order to certify His presence and friendship. That this is “supernatural” we admit; that it is “gross” or “puerile” we deny.

Now what lessons does this vision bring for us? I am not going to plunge into questions out of place in the pulpit about the nature and certitude of man’s knowledge of God. Our business is wih revealed truth, and this is the truth for us, that we Christians may, even here and now, see God, the God of the covenant.

Jesus Christ is the Revealer. This generation is very fond of saying, “No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him.” It is a pity that they do not go on with the quotation and say,” the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,

He hath declared Him.” The eradiation of His brightness, “and the express image of His person,” is that Divine man, God manifest in the flesh. The knowledge of God which we have in Jesus Christ is real, as sight is real. It is not complete, but it is genuine knowledge. We know the best of God, if I may use such a phrase, when we know what we know in Christ, that He is a loving and a righteous will; when we can say of Him “He is love,” in no metaphor but in simple reality, and His will is a will towards all righteousness, and towards all blessing, anything that heaven has to teach us about God afterwards is less than that. We see Him in the reality of a genuine, central, though by no means complete, knowledge.

Our knowlege of God in Christ is as sight, in reference to certitude. People say “seeing is believing.” I should turn it the other way about, and say “believing is seeing.” For we may be a great deal surer of God than ever we can be of this outer world. And the witness which is borne to us in Christ of the Divine nature is far more reliable than even the evidence that is borne to us by sense of an external universe. We all know how possible it is that sense may be deceived. I suppose we all believe that our consciousness and our intuitions are more certain than the evidence of our senses. And I venture to affirm that in certitude the facts about God which are laid down at all our doors in the person and work of Jesus Christ compare not unfavourably with the evidence of sense.

The knowledge that we have of God in Christ is as vision, or it may be so in reference to its vividness as well as its leality and its certitude. That depends upon ourselves, as I shall have to show you in a moment. But it is possible for men to live so thoroughly, closely, realizing God and His presence, that the things roundabout are seen to be shadowy and phantasmal, and He, the Unseen Reality blazing behind them all. Sight is busy, intrusive, self-asserting; but we may have, and ought to have, a vividness of impression of the Divine love and the Divine presence which make all that bodily sight can show to us dim and far off. Christ, the revealer of God, makes God visible to us.” He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.*’ Remember, too, that when we learn to know, and absolutely to rely upon, and vividly to realize our Father’s presence through Jesus Christ, then we shall see Him in all things and everywhere. The world is full of confused and fragmentary witnesses to Him which may be diversely interpreted according to men’s dispositions; but when we have reached the higher knowledge the lower sources of knowledge become vocal with a deeper music and significant with a better meaning; and a world, which is chaos to a man that has not learned God in Christ, is all order and witnesses of the Father to the man that has.

So it is possible for us, like those Israelites in the wilderness, to see uncreated brightness blazing upon the barren rocks; possible for us to see that everything in life is aflame with a present God; possible for us to have all events, persons objects transparent, and revealing the Father of us all.

People are desperately afraid of what they call, without quite knowing what they mean by it, Pantheism. Christian Pantheism asserts that God is separable from, and independent of, the material universe; but also asserts that the material universe is neither separable from, nor independent of, the upholding and indwelling God. And they who in all material things see the presence and the play of the Divine will have come to understand the secret of the universe. God moves everywhere. There is no power but of God. And they who have learned to see Him in Christ see Him everywhere.

Then remember, further, that the degree of this vision depends upon ourselves, and is a matter of cultivation. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” There are three things wanted for sight — something to see; something to see by; something to see with. God has given us the two first, and He will help us to the last if we like. But we have to bring the eye, without which the sunbeam is vain, and that which it reveals is also vain. Christ stands before us, at once the Master-Light of all our seeing, and the Object that we are to behold. But for us there is needed that the eye shall be pure; that the heart shall turn towards Him. Faith is the eye of the soul. Meditation and habitual occupation of mind and heart with Jesus Christ, the Revealer of God, are needed if we are to “see God.” There are things that cannot be seen at a glance, and this is one of them.

Faith, meditation, purity, these three are the purging of our vision, and the conditions in us of the sight of God.

So, Christian men and women, here is a question for you. Do you know God anything like as really, as certainly, as vividly as you know and see the things that are round about you? Are your eyes darkened that you cannot see, because you have gazed so long and so lovingly on the trifles of life that you cannot focus them to behold the far-off and the infinitely superior glory of God?

The seventy that climbed the mount proclaim a privilege and prescribe a duty. And if we profess to have entered into covenant with God on the footing of sacrifice, and to have made the acquaintance of Christ who reveals God, oh! it is a shame and a sin that we should see Him so dimly, far-off, through mists, and that any trivial object close to our eyes should be big enough to shut Him out and bright enough to dazzle them.” They saw God *’ points to obligation as well as prerogative.

II. — Secondly, notice the feast in the Divine presence.

“They did eat and drink.” That suggests in the singular juxtaposition of the two things, that the vision of God is consistent with, and consecrates, common enjoyment and everyday life. Even before that awful blaze these men sat down and fed, “eating their meal with gladness and singleness of heart,” and finding no contradiction nor any profanity in the close juxtaposition of the meal and the vision. There is no false asceticism as the result of the Christian sight of God. It takes nothing out of life that ought to be in it. If we see God there is only one thing that we shall be ashamed to do in His presence, and that is to sin. For all the rest, the vision of God blends sweetly and lovingly with common service and homely joys. It will interpret life. Nothing is small with such a background; nothing common-place when looked at in connection with Him. It will ennoble life. It will gladden life. The dustiest, dreariest, loneliest road becomes less lonely, dreary, and dusty when he that travels it can say, “I walk in the light of His countenance “; and all sad things are less sad when we link them with a present God. It will consecrate life. Like the fabled Venetian glass, which shivered into pieces when poison was poured into it, the thought of God’s presence, the loving vision of His face, passes out of our hearts when we yield ourselves to sin. And the test ot evil is, “Dare I do it before the flashing Shekinah on the mountain top?” The feast that is spread in the presence of the Lord is a feast of pure dainties and of unintoxicating wines.

But there is another thought here, to which I must refer for a moment. That strange meal on the mountain was no doubt made on the sacrifices that had preceded, of which a part were peaceofferings. The ritual of that species of sacrifice partly consisted in a portion of the sacrifice being partaken of by the offerers. The same meaning lies in this meal on the mountain that lay in the sacrificial feast of the peace-offering, the same meaning that lies in the great feast of the new

Covenant, “This is My body; this is My blood.” They who are in fellowship with God, on the footing of covenant and sacrifice, and are gladdened by the vision of His loving face, are nourished and sustained by the sacrifice through which they come near. The Christ that died for us must be the Christ on whom mind and heart and will and memory and hope, and all our nature, feed, and by whom they are nourished. God spreads in His presence a table, and the food on that table is the “Bread which came down from Heaven that it might give life to the world.” The vision of God and the feast on the mountain are equally provided and made possible by Christ our Passover, who was sacrificed for us.

III. — And so, lastly, we may gather out of this incident a glimpse of a prophetic character, and see in it the perfecting of the vision and of the feast.

We recall the Apostle’s wonderful statement of the difference between the beatific knowledge of heaven and the indirect and partial knowledge of earth. Here we “see in a glass darkly; there face to face.” It is not for us to try before the time to interpret the latter of these statements; only this, let us remember that, whatever may be the change in manner of knowledge, and in measure of apprehension, and in proximity of presence, there is no change in heaven, in the medium of revelation. For heaven, as for earth, God is the King invisible; for heaven, as for earth, no man can see Him: the only begotten Son declares Him. Christ is for ever the Manifester of God, and the glorified saints see God as we see Him in the face of Jesus Christ, though they see that face as we do not. Yonder there are new capacities indeed. Where there are more windows in the house, there will be more sunshine in the rooms. When there is a new speculum in the telescope, galaxies will be resolved that are now nebulous, and new brightnesses will be visible that are now veiled. But with all the new powers and the extension of present vision, there will be no corrections in the present vision. We know the best of God, as I have said already. Certainly, the divinest thing in God, if I may so say, is His love, and it is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Much will drop away, forms of thought will disappear, inadequate conceptions will crumble; we shall put away childish things. There will be progress, but no corrections, in the revelation of God that Christ has made. We shall see Him as He is, and learn that what we knew of Him in Christ here is true for ever. And on that perfect vision will follow the perfect meal, which will still be the feeding on the sacrifice. For there were no heaven except “He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever,” and there is no spiritual life above except a life derived from Him.

The feast means perfect satisfaction, perfect repose, perfect gladness, perfect companionship, It is possible for us to sit here as the guests at the lower table, looking up the hall and seeing our Host from afar; and then to be bade to go up higher, and seat ourselves closer to the Lord of the feast. And then we shall say, “They shall be satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou makest them drink of the river of Thy pleasures. In Thy light shall we see light.”

Whether is that life, dear friend, better, or the life which sees God at intervals through mists that make His face lurid and hostile; and is, therefore, a life of hunger and unrest, ending at last in banishment from the banqueting hall and abandonment to the outer darkness?

Christ shows us God and spreads the table for earth and for heaven.