Arkansas has only two seasons, December and Tornado Season.  And even December may not be twister-free.  Locals always have a plan for cover.   When the sirens go off, the church basement becomes a community center for both man and beast.  Every school opens its saferoom.  Those outside towns have storm shelters.  We all have multiple weather apps on our phones.   And we know how to program those old NOAA weather radios as a backup.  

Our storms follow well-travelled paths.  Past destruction and regrowth surround us.  Silent reminders that a tornado is not to be trifled with.   Its fury is prodigious.   Its power is immense, destroying everything in its path.  It shatters, dissembles, disintegrates, and strews the debris of broken lives over vast areas of space and time.  Deafening and terrifying, every warning of its approach tells us to “seek cover immediately.”   Only the most foolish of fools refuses the offer of a sturdy storm shelter.

Yet our instinct and experience with tornadoes does not translate to our spiritual lives.  Like the spiritually blind Pharisees and Sadducees, we “know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but cannot interpret the signs of the times.”  No storm we will ever encounter is more deadly than the judgment of a holy God for our sin.  Our refusing, despising, and disregarding his law is the perfect storm from which no man-made shelter can protect us.  

Whenever God spoke directly to men in Scripture his voice was deafening and terrifying.  Time and again, he spoke out of a storm.  The Psalmist likened his voice to a tornado that breaks the cedars and strips the forests bare.  At the foot of Mount Sinai, even Moses trembled as God spoke to them out from

“a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken [directly] to them.”  

Hebrews 12:18-19

Every sense of the people was filled with the terror of God’s holiness and majesty.  Every commandment made clear the impossibility of law keeping as a way of righteousness.  And the thick darkness, rolling thunder, and flashing lightening underscored the deadly consequence of failing to do all that God commanded.  In their terror, the people of Israel sought a storm shelter.  

They cried out to Moses to mediate with God, saying “you speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”   Before the Law was given, they hastily confessed, “all that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  But faced with God’s consuming glory, they realized their need for a mediator.   And so, we read “the people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”

Our God is a consuming fire. For him to look upon us without a sufficient covering means certain, eternal death.  Our only hope is for a shelter, a mediator, who can endure the blast of God’s justice.  Unbelieving men seek flimsy shelters “calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.’”   But Scripture invites us to shelter under the True and Perfect Mediator, Jesus Christ.

Jesus entered the thick darkness of God’s justice on the cross.  He shelters us under the righteousness of his perfect obedience and the satisfaction of his perfect sacrifice.   No other shelter will do.   Where will you shelter from God’s judgement?  Under your works?  Your family?  A faithless ritual?  What mediator can you trust?  The Bible tells us there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.”   And “whoever comes to [him he] will never cast out.” 

Do you have a storm shelter that can weather the ultimate tempest? Join us as we examine Exodus 20:18-21 and consider how the Ten Commandments lead us to understand our need for Christ.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.