Who is like you?
By Pieter Hermans
We begin a new series by inquiring of the Lord together. We start with a question, not an answer… What is He like? To whom can we compare Him? How can we even begin to describe Him? What is a right response to the revelation of His nature - of His holiness? This is the journey that we’re inviting you to join us on over the next 11 months.
“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”
The Story…
Our short verse is taken from the middle of a song, spontaneously sung by Moses and the Israelites at the Red Sea but forever etched into their memory as a people birthed upon that day. So as we consider this verse we need to have in our minds all the events that led up to that day… the promises made to their ancestors but apparently forgotten, their cruel slavery in Egypt, their cries to the Lord for deliverance, the plagues that alienated them from their neighbours in the land, the passover that finally struck all the firstborn who had not been secured by the blood of a lamb, their miraculous exodus, their pursuit by Pharaoh’s armies into a dead end & finally the parting of the sea and swallowing up of Pharaoh’s armies. Wow… those were some serious birth pains!
The Song…
While it is right to see the exodus leading straight through the wilderness up to Sinai - and even beyond that to the land of promise (for this song even looks forward to the day that God takes up His habitation upon a holy hill in that land!) - this song is quite deliberately recorded in full as their first and spontaneous response to their deliverance. Everything that God reveals about their ritual worship in the tabernacle (and later in the temple) finds its root here in the response of their innermost being to the revelation of God. Before anything else, for there is much promised of this people for their own sake and for the sake of the nations, they are a priestly people redeemed to worship God as a gracious privilege and a fearful duty.
The Question…
Which brings us to the question repeated in our verse this month. Who is like you? The song moves from recounting the deeds of the Lord to wondering at who He is! So many times the Israelites will see His works in the wilderness but fail to penetrate to the knowledge of God and His grace towards them. Psalm 106 tells us that “they believed his words, they sang his praise. But they soon forgot His works…" But now, with the casting down of Egypt’s idols so fresh in their eyes and their ears, they inquire of the Lord together. Their pride is silenced - the pride that exalts their own imaginings in the place or God or reduces His glory to what they can tame. For as they enter the wilderness they are confronted with a wild God… a great and terrible God, before whom it is right to tremble… without which the message of His grace and mercy may become so much empty sentiment. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so as we ask for a spirit of wisdom and revelation we can anticipate becoming familiar with a holy awe as we stand before the Lord.
Reflection
The nature of revelation is to enable us in the limits of our humanity to know God. It isn’t to fully disclose the mystery of who He is, that would be to reduce Him. We’ll spend eternity beholding His glory and responding with the cry of Holy and never come to the end of knowing Him. How can we sing together this question and sincerely position ourselves for revelation simply because that is the nature of the mystery? Not for an answer, but to respond to His holiness…
