I. In the Beginning
II. Before the Beginning, Formless and Void
III. Let There Be Light
IV. The LORD Surrounds Himself in Darkness On the Earth
V. The Self-Limiting of the LORD God in Creation
VI. The Word Became Flesh
VII. The Future Revelation of the Creator to the Creation
THE LORD SURROUNDS HIMSELF IN DARKNESS ON THE EARTH
When Moses desired to see the LORD he was told, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (Ex 33:20). The LORD then placed Moses in the cleft of the rock and covered Moses as the glory of the LORD passed by. The LORD veiled Moses from His glory, but allowed Moses to see a limited form of the Creator as He passed by in front of Moses.
Since no man can see the fullness of the LORD God, “My face”, and live, the Creator must limit himself to operate within the boundaries of a finite creation. To accomplish this, David wrote that the LORD, “made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him.”
“He bowed the heavens also, and came down with thick darkness under His feet. And He rode on a cherub and flew; and He appeared on the wings of the wind. And He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.” (Psa 18:9-11)(2 Sam 22:10-13). A psalm of David about the LORD after he was delivered from the hand of Saul.
The believer might find it paradoxical to understand that the “Father of lights” (James 1:17), makes “darkness His hiding place” and surrounds Himself in a canopy of “Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.” If “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5), why is the LORD God compelled to surround His light in darkness?
Mere mortal men and women are not capable of dwelling in the presence and glory of the LORD God, as it is written, He “dwells in unapproachable light, who no man has seen or can see,” (1 Tim 6:16). If human beings are unable to stare at the sun, how much more beyond our power must it be to look at God Himself (Chul, 59b). Yet, the Creator desires to dwell among His creation and when He descends, “Clouds and thick darkness surround Him,” (Psa 97:2-3). After Abram “believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6), the LORD appeared to Abram surrounded by “great darkness,” (Gen 15:12). The writer of Hebrews describes Mount Sinai as, “a blazing fire…darkness and gloom,” (Heb 12:18). Notice the contrast of a “blazing fire”, while at the same time “darkness.”
Scripture takes a position that God has revealed Himself sufficiently for salvation, but not exhaustively that we should know all things about Him. Isaiah wrote of the LORD God, “Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior!” (Isa 45:15). The Creator must hide Himself because the creation is not capable of standing in the presence of the creator. Further, the Creator limits His presence in the creation to give the creation the ability to act with freewill outside the overriding influence of the Creator, which would take away freewill.
Because the LORD hides Himself within the creation, we do not appreciate how close He resides, not far at all. If we could only peal back the darkness, pear into a different dimension, we would realize that God is right next to us, “the LORD is near,” (Phil 4:5).
THE SELF-LIMITING OF THE LORD GOD IN CREATION
When the infinite LORD God elects to manifest Himself in the finite creation, He must by design limit His Own nature. By example, the entire ocean cannot be poured into a cup, but a cup can contain a portion of the ocean. Likewise, a person can stick his finger into a cup, but the cup cannot contain the totality of the person. So it is with an infinite God in a finite creation.
When God appears in the Hebrew text He appears in a self-limited form often referred to as “the angel of the LORD,” (Ex 3:2)(52-times). Other titles include: the “glory of the LORD” (34), “presence of the LORD” (24), the “cloud of the LORD” (2), the “word of the LORD” (102), the “spirit of the LORD” (24), or simply “God”, “the LORD” and “the Spirit.” The writer of Hebrews describes these manifestations of God into the creation as “in many portions and in many ways,” (Heb 1:1).
The Jewish Targums, which are Aramaic translations of the original Hebrew text, often refer to this limited form of God that operates within the creation as the “Memrah” of God. The rabbis concluded a number of principles about the “Memrah” of God:
1. The Memrah was sometimes distinct from God and sometimes it was the same as God. This is reflected in the words of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” (John 1:1).
2. The Memrah was the agent of creation, “All things were made through Him; and without Him was not anything made that has been made,” (John 1:3).
3. The Memrah was the agent of salvation, “But as many as received Him, to them he gave the right to become children of God,” (John 1:12).
4. The Memrah was the means by which God interacted with mankind, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth,” (John 1:14)
5. The Memrah was the agent God used to communicated with man, “The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision” (Gen 15:1), “The LORD appeared again at Shiloh, because the LORD reveled Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD” (1 Sam 3:21), and “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him,” (John 1:18).
6. The Memrah was the means by which God conveyed His covenants, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” (John 1:17).
(to be continued - Scott)
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