Behold Your God

~ Daniel Swaim “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.” 

~ Job 42:5-6

Consider this quote by A.B. Simpson:

“The greatest moment in every life is when Jesus Christ becomes present, intensely real and vivid in our consciousness. Beloved, has that moment come to you?”

Beloved, has that moment come to you? Job appeared to have believed by the report of others until He encountered the presence of the Lord. Today, salvation often comes by hearing the Gospel, and it is only as we mature as believers does the presence of God grow more real to us. And whether it’s through suffering like Job or simple, constant time with the Lord, we as believers ought to grow so we are able to say that we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. 

But what does it mean to taste the Lord’s goodness? Who is this God? 

He is Almighty

The Bible describes God as awesome, powerful, and mighty. He is sovereign over all creation, and everything in creation is subject to Him. Colossians 1 tells us that Christ is head over all things. Throughout his letters, Paul attributes the claim of authority and dominion to God alone. 

“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, measured heaven with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains in scales And the hills in a balance?”

 ~ Isaiah 40:12 

Isaiah 40 is full of questions like these. Who is mightier than God? Who knows more than Yahweh, our God? His glory is immeasurable and His character unsearchable. He is the great God of wonders who calms the seas and causes mountains to quake and smoke. Yet this same God went out of His way to humble Himself and take on the form of a feeble human to love us, His own creation that rejected Him.

Zephaniah 3:17 explores this further. He uses His power not to condemn, but to save and love. He, the Lord God, is in the midst of His people, He delivers us from wickedness, and loves us with an everlasting and unconditional love. In fact, He is the One that quiets us with His love. I know many of you are familiar with the anxieties of this present life—as am I. When our world is shaken and our minds roar with a thousand thoughts, the Mighty Lord of the Universe speaks to each of us in a still small whisper and showers us with His unending love and compassion. When faced with His love, it is the only thing that overwhelms us. 

He is Holy and There is None Like Him

The angels exclaimed in Revelation 4:8, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” 

To quote the 2021 National Bible Bee winner Jedidiah Persall, “The Holiness of God is not something that we can comprehend.” Just like our nature is sin, holiness is God's nature. You cannot separate His nature from His holiness just like you can't separate sin from a human's nature. Our finite minds can only grasp so much of the holiness of the Lord. And because we are not holy by nature, the idea of being set apart from sin is abstract and far off. But holiness is so much more than an abstract idea—it’s the very character of God and the character that He gives us when we receive His gift of salvation.

No one else has this quality of holiness. Our God is alone in His character. Believers bear His righteousness and we stand holy before Him. Yet, that is only a reflection of the full image of His holiness. 

He is Faithful

What’s more, this holy, all powerful God is also faithful in His promises to His beloved. 2 Timothy 2:13 declares that even when we are faithless and stray from following God or struggle to keep the faith, our God remains faithful to us and is always near us. Hebrews 10:23 exhorts to “hold fast the hope of our confession without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” In any season we’re in, we know that the Lord will be faithful to fulfill the promises He gives us in His Word. This is encouraging because we know that God’s promises will be fulfilled and that the Lord’s plans will always be made with us in mind. Because of His faithfulness, we are also assured that our sins will be forgiven and we will be sanctified if we confess our iniquity. 

Our Response

“The greatest moment in every life is when Jesus Christ becomes present, intensely real and vivid in our consciousness. Beloved, has that moment come to you?”

You’ve just had a mere glance at the rich beauty of our Lord. You probably have heard much of this and more as well. But has it ever become real to you? Yes, this moment isn’t just salvation, but it starts there. Can you sincerely say you are satisfied after constant feeding on the Lord’s goodness and seeing His goodness through faith? These are questions only you can answer. Salvation is more than just believing the report of the Gospel. Salvation should be a change in heart and the world should only see Christ in you. Salvation is the Gospel made real to you the moment you are saved and through all eternity. Beloved, has that moment come to you? 

But it is more than salvation. Job believed, but he had to go through fires before the presence of the Lord became more real to him. Sometimes in our own lives as believers, we forget the goodness of the Lord or we have never encountered the reality of Him outside of the moment of salvation. And perhaps even then, we forget the power of that salvation and what really happened in that time. Only through His Word, prayer, and letting the Lord reveal Himself to us can we truly taste and see His goodness. It is also through much pain and suffering, as Job experienced. Those are the moments all you have to go off of are the promises of God and wait to see if He fulfills them. God revealed Himself to Job in the midst of his questions, and notice Job’s response in Job 45:2 when it finally clicked to him:

“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.” 

This is part of salvation, but it’s also the response the believer should have. When we truly behold the power and character of the Lord, it should cause us to feel feeble and weak—to even be ashamed standing in His presence as a finite and sinful human. It also should result in repentance of sin. Not just apologies, not just shame, not just sorrow, but a resolve to get right with God, forsake our sin, and switch gears to follow Christ. Repentance comes with a broken and contrite heart—true disgust and horror at the sin we’ve committed—and the decision to turn from that sin and leave it behind to chase after holiness. This is the kind of repentance the Lord desires of Israel in Joel 2:13. And when we embrace Christ, we embrace the holiness He provides for us, so we no longer have to feel the shame or guilt of our sin. We may still experience the consequences, but those sins have been blotted out of our lives. 

Knowing this should also excite and challenge us to desire more of our great God and Savior! To the believer who fills himself with Christ, however, it is not enough to keep it within himself. The overflowing of the goodness of God leads him to spread the news abroad. 

Final Challenge

Read Job 1-2 and 38-42 and consider the truths God declares to Job. Personally reflect on who the Lord is in comparison to Job and his suffering. Behold your God.