Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


11.01.2004  

Seeking Satisfaction in His Face

Our souls were created for one thing, one beautiful thing: to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. In Psalm 27, two verses ring brilliantly with that heart-lifting truth: 4 and 8.



"One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek:

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,

To behold the beauty of the Lord

And to meditate in His temple."



"When You said, 'Seek My face,' my heart said to You,

'Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.'"



In thinking this past week about being satisfied in the Lord, really truly satisfied, I had to do some self-examination. (The Puritans were often in the habit of searching out the depths of their souls; it would go better with me if I learned to be in the same habit.) I thought of how shallow my desires for the Lord are, and how easily "satisfied" by Him I am. By no means, however, is this anything for discouragement, for such is human nature! Though Clives Staples Lewis once said, "we are far too easily pleased!" we do not have to despair. What it comes down to is what we do with our shallow satisfaction. Do we press on and seek the Lord in such a way as to continually thrust forth our little Dixie cups into the abundant waterfall of His grace, drinking as deeply and as often as we might despite the fact that we can only take tiny portions of His grace at once? Or do we walk away from that waterfall of grace, content with the one mouthful of grace our Dixie cup portions will grant us?



In looking into my heart, I see the shallow satisfaction I take in the Lord, and I shudder. Why? Because I allow that shallow satisfaction to be all that I seek of the Lord! Though the Lord makes a way to overcome my tiny capacity to enjoy and savor Him, I walk away from His waterfall of grace holding naught but a tiny portion of that Living Water, horrifyingly content. Oh Lord, forgive me! Do I press on and seek more and more, drinking as much as I may at once, yet seeking still more? Do I kneel before the Lord, constantly imploring Him for the One Thing that David spoke of, the One Satisfaction my soul truly longs for and was made for? No, for I am asily satisfied by the tiny portion of grace I sip at daily! Oh, how I make a ockery of the surpassing riches of His grace!



One thing...one thing...one thing. My heart reveals so many "things" that it has sought out, and they all fall short of the glorious pleasure to be found in God's grace. Do I truly desire to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty and delightfulness of the Lord, and to meditate in His temple? Is my one true desire to behold the Lord, to see His beauty, to cherish it and delight in it? Do I desire to be consumed by His holy presence, to rejoice that the Lord has called me, a wretched worm, to be His beloved child? That I can be in His presence at all ought to be stunning; that I am called "beloved" is beyond all comprehension.



David could not have written these thoughts of the Lord unless the Lord had placed them there in his heart. It was said that David was a "man after God's own heart." I think that perhaps a little of this intimate interaction between the Almighty and the man is revealed in verse 8, when the Lord says to David, "seek My face." (Whoa. Just killed a fly while it was in mid-flight with my hand. Heck yeah...who'z yo Daniel-san now? I don't even need those stinkin' chopsticks! Hehe.)The very command from the Lord to "seek My face" is one that ought to cause us to pause. At the very least, we need to be aware that our sinful nature causes an infinite rift between us and God, an irreparable rift that we are helpless to do anything about. We are, in our sinful nature, suppressors of truth, stiff-necked and obstinate, unfaithful as a prostitute, objects of God's wrath, and enemies of God. So why would the Lord tell David to seek His face?



In the Old Testament, the face of God is something that seems to signify a particular holiness or intimacy. The Lord told Moses in Exodus 33:19, "you cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" The Lord then puts Moses in a cleft of a rock and shows him His backside. In the vision of the throne room of God that was granted to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, Isaiah cries out in dismay and says, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." A seraphim then takes a burning coal to Isaiah's lips, thus taking away his iniquity and forgiving his sin. In contrast to Exodus 33 and Isaiah 6 we can look at Numbers 6. Here the Lord instructs Moses to tell Aaron and his sons that they are to bless Israel by saying, "The Lord bless you, and keep you; the Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace."



In yet another contrast, another portion of Exodus 33 says that the Lord would speak to Moses "face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend." This is a part of the narrative that comes before the Lord telling Moses that he cannot see the Lord, as no man can see Him and live. How do those two depictions of God's face reconcile? Are they at odds with one another? Or is it simply that the Lord is holding back the fullness of His glorious presence when Moses speaks to Him face to face? In verse 18, Moses does request of the Lord, "show me Your glory!" Perhaps this request is one that Moses is not, in his sinful human state, truly able to handle, and the Lord knows this. Perhaps in this way, the Lord is showing Moses that there is far, far more to meeting with Him face to face than even Moses had ever thought, and that the intimacy between Moses and the Almighty still did not go as deeply or as gloriously as it had potential to.



Still, it seems odd that the depiction of the Lord's face seems to be so varied. In some cases, we have a transcendent nature clearly showing through, as when He told Moses, "you cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" Isaiah's vision also seems to confirm this. In other cases, it seems that the Lord still desires to "make His face shine" upon us, despite the fact that His face is something we're not worthy to look upon. Indeed, as that priestly blessing indicates, by shining His face upon us the Lord would "be gracious" to us. Perhaps this is a little of what we're seeing in Psalm 27 with David. There's a distinct transcendence and condescendence that's being portrayed here; the Holy One of Israel, the Lord, is making Himself intimately known to David.



Perhaps the Lord is portraying yet again how we ought not to be able to seek His face so intimately and freely, yet in Christ we are able to do far more than just that.



We can ask to dwell in the house of the Lord, that we might behold His beauty and meditate in His temple. We can, as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, behold "the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." Such a thing is cause for amazement, that in the face of Christ we can behold the infinite glory of the Lord, that glory which Moses longed for, the very glory which caused within Isaiah such a fear and trembling as I have never known. In Revelation, John writes of Christ's face as being "like the sun shining in is strength." Is not His glory shining forth in this depiction? Indeed it is! John's reaction to this glorious presence? He says, "I fell at His feet like a dead man."



It seems so very mysterious, yet so very beautiful, this salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. We see how the Lord's glorious face, though it is utterly beyond us, has come to be near to us. His glory is revealed and made our own; the Lord can say of us with near-complete satisfaction, "You are mine!" We are, like David, commanded to seek His face. We are commanded, in essence, to seek satisfaction in that which we should not be able to seek, in that which should be a horror and a death to us, not a satisfaction beyond all other satisfactions. As mystifying as it is, in Christ we are made worthy to behold the face of God; indeed, in Christ, the ord's glorious face is revealed and made a joy to us! What could possibly be more atisfying? Nothing! David seems to bring Psalm 27:4 and 8 together in Psalm 17:15.



"As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness;

I will be satisfied with beholding Your likeness when I awake."

posted by Bolo | 1:50 PM
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