Psalm 29:7
The voice of the Lord strikes with
flashes of lightning.
This psalm
by David was written to explain the greatness of God who is unseen and is
seated in the third heaven. As such God is higher that all the creation that He
made, looking at the universe, no scientist can measure the vastness of God’s
creation. In fact the universe is so vast those scientists have created a measurement
of light years which is not linear measure but it is a measure of the distance
that light can travel in a full year.
So in trying
to give an understanding of the vastness of the universe, scientists try and
explain it in terms of the distance each light year will work out to. When we
can now see the greatness and bigness of our God, surely He is not a man like us.
He is far greater and superior to us.
How superior
is God and how can we give Him some form of dimension to represent Him awesome
greatness. Instead of measurement in light years, the patriarchs of old did not
know the science of measuring the distance of the speed of sound. So in their
limited knowledge they equate God’s greatness to the understanding of what they
can see and what they can hear.
In nature,
we can hear the blast of thunder over great distance. The awesome loudness of
thunder is frightening. In the city where we live, there are large groupings of
high rise buildings and I think because of the large amount of metal components
in them, they seem to draw the thunder to strike above them in greater
intensity.
We have
witnessed very huge thunder storms where the loudness of the thunder is so frightening
that it sounded like so many massive bombs exploding around us. That was how it
sounded. The doors and windows will shake and rattle when these thunder strike.
The intensity of these thunders cannot be measured but they are indeed very
loud and threatening.
The writers
in the scriptures therefore related such great thunders to the voice of God
because they knew that God is so great and is beyond any methods of measure. They
use the loudness of thunder to try and illustrate the greatness of God saying
that it is like the voice of God. David used this as a comparison in Psalm 29
where he ascribes the greatness of God in words.
In another
part of scripture Job who loved and knew God in a most intimate way also described thunder as symbols
of God’s voice Job 37: 2- 4 Keep
listening to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his
mouth. Under the whole heaven he lets it go, and his lightning to the corners
of the earth. After it his voice
roars, he thunders with his majestic voice, and he does not restrain the lightning
when his voice is heard.
Of course we
know that God is actually way above the sound of the thunder but there is no
other way known to man to illustrate his greatness. To the minds of such
ancient people, comparing the greatness of the voice of God to thunder was the
only way that they can make some sort of comparison.
God said His
ways are higher than our ways; His thoughts are higher than ours. Therefore
there is no one who can understand Him except Jesus Christ who had come down
from heaven and have now returned back to heaven. Jesus Christ is also God as
He is part of the Trinity. Jesus assured us that when we know Him we will know
the Father.
Such being
the case, it is therefore to our good that we must know Jesus more and more. We
must love Him and learn all about Him. This is the only way that we can learn
to know God. There is no other way.
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