Radio Voice
“Therefore take good heed to yourselves, for you saw NO form on the day the Lord spoke to you.”
I think it is a safe to bet to say we all are guilty of hearing the guy on the radio and imagining in our minds what he must look like. If I ever saw a photo or a poster of the real radio guy, not the imagined one, I was always shocked and slightly disappointed.
Deut 4:15 “Therefore take good heed to yourselves, for you saw NO form on the day the Lord spoke to you.” Then He goes on to say be careful to not create an image or form anything to go along with His voice. Basically we have God warning us against that very thing we have been guilty of concerning the radio guy. Here is God drawing our attention to the dangers of adding our own form to His voice. He calls this “idolatry”. Hence don’t add form to Gods voice, don’t form Him into an image that you can manage! We obviously become idolatress by painting God into a mold to easy our impatience, our need to know, or our need to control. These so called “needs” we have to know and control our lives and situations can get us in trouble by igniting a spirit of desperation within us, causing us to take our needs into our own hands. Didn’t Sarah do that when she handed Hagar over to her husband? “Oh, this must have been what God meant.” As she impatiently took measures into her own hands, getting a son one way or the other. Or what about the Israelites getting impatient with their leader’s time with God and making a golden calf? “Oh, that must have been what God wanted us to do.” As they justified their need to have God’s presence in a tangle form. Desperation equals rash, extreme behavior!
We may not always imagine God in a human form like we do the “radio guy” but I know I’m guilty of making my thoughts become His and my plans become His, and my desires become His. It’s easy to trust God when we hear Him and can see Him working on our situation. Not so much during those times that we heard Him but see no evidence that He remembers what He told us. I think for us today we aren’t literally making a “golden calf”, but our need to have instant answers, gratification, and control, we surly place our terms on His words. I am not sure if someone out there deserves credit for this saying, but I say it often, which is “Don’t doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.” Meaning, our faith and hope are strong when things are clicking along and we have proof that God is doing what He promised. However, when things get quiet or still we start to doubt Him, feel hopeless, act rash, and ultimately take things into our own hands. Much like the “second-class son” and the “golden calf” we say to ourselves “this must be the husband God promised me”, “this must be the job God promised me”, sadly the list could go on for years! Here’s the thing, we either trust God or we don’t, and if every time it feels like He’s taking too long or forgotten us, we start to find forms and images to fill our need to know and control, we have then filled the space that He wanted to fill with His perfect will and gift.
Going Beyond
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