For some people, knowledge of God is primarily rooted in what they read and the doctrines they believe in. For others, knowledge of God is primarily rooted in how they feel about God personally, and what they have experienced in their lives. But a true and deep knowledge of God, it would seem, requires both knowledge and experience.
For ancient Israel knowledge about God and experience of God went hand in hand. They did not separate their doctrine from their experiences. What they knew about God was grounded both in historical realities and in the teachings and stories passed on to them from trustworthy sources. True knowledge of the Father came from receiving God’s grace and love not just in words, theories and myths, but in action.
God’s revelation of Himself to Israel at Mount Sinai is maybe the ultimate example of this. It was the Father’s will that His children should know Him. Not just know about Him, but have personal knowledge of Him. And so God acted for Israel in a unique way, liberating them from slavery in Egypt, leading them out into the wilderness, and making a Covenant with them. God invited this people into relationship with Himself, a relationship that would be a blessing to them and to the whole world through them. And at Sinai he announced what that relationship would look like, through the giving of the Law.
God expressed this Covenantal relationship to Israel at Mount Sinai by speaking to them through thunder, trumpet, earthquake, smoke, fire and voice. These methods of God’s revelation show his majesty and power, but it is the content of the revelation that shows God’s identity. God reminded Israel of what He had done for them, how He had graciously and powerfully delivered them from political, economic, social and spiritual slavery. That was who He was. This is what they were to remember and know about God.
Mount Sinai was Israel’s great face to face meeting with God. But we know from Exodus 34:20 that no one can see the face of God and live, so how could the people of Israel have met God face to face? To say you knew someone’s face was the same as saying you knew their presence. At Mount Sinai Israel was in the presence of God, in the presence of his power, his grace, his love, his faithfulness, in a totally unique and personal way. God is “present” everywhere, but God was specifically, powerfully and obviously “present” at Mount Sinai in front of his people, and in the Exodus. So God’s people could recognise and know his presence, his face, through his loving actions towards them. But God’s face was too much for them. They were terrified of the fire, and pleaded for Moses to intercede and mediate for them.
God’s power, grace, love and faithfulness were also on display through the cross. This is another time when God distinctly and uniquely showed his face to his people and to the world. And just like at Mount Sinai and in the Exodus, to know the face of God through the cross is to know God as the Saviour who pours out grace on a people who have not earned it, but whom the Father loves nonetheless.
But we were not there to experience the Exodus, or God speaking through the fire at Mount Sinai, or Jesus dying on the cross, or the Holy Spirit falling at Pentecost. So if our knowledge of the Father’s face is to be grounded in these historical realities, how are we to truly know His face? The people of Israel were instructed to re-read and re-tell the story of the Exodus and the Covenant and the giving of the Law, so that future generations would know the story together and reaffirm God’s presence amongst them. They were also instructed to re-enact the story of God’s deliverance through worship and through feasts like the Passover. Likewise, Christians re-read and re-tell the stories of God to one another, and re-enact the loving actions of Jesus through worship and when we gather to remember his broken body and spilled blood. These things help ground our knowledge of God in the ongoing story of the Father and his people, so that we don’t just create whatever God we feel most comfortable with. And we also have been filled with the exact same Spirit that filled the first believers at Pentecost, so that we, like them, can cry out to our Abba Father.
(Much of the information used in this and the following cell outlines is taken from Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament by Christopher Wright, From Paradise to the Promised Land by T Desmond Alexander, and A Survey of the Old Testament by Hill and Walton.)
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