Psalm 106:7-12

Psalm 106:7-12

B.

“Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, did not consider you wondrous works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.  Yet He saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make known His mighty power.  He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry, and He led them through the deep as through a desert.  So He saved them from the hand of the foe and redeemed them from the power of the enemy.  And the waters covered their adversaries; not one of them was left.  Then they believed His words; they sang His praise.”

The sacred and fantastic stories of the Old Testament—the history of an ancient nation, through whom, when the earth was young in sin, God demonstrated His presence and goodwill, with overt manifestations of power, to guide them through the tumultuous economy of warring nations, that they may endure to birth a Savior, begotten of God—gives comfort to my heart to believe that these things happened neither according to human reason nor standard practice of nature.   And if we rightly consider it, the existence of the entire universe is of the same miraculous nature as the parting of the Red Sea.  To think all things appeared as ‘something’ out of what can only be described as ‘absolute nothing’ is just as unnatural and unreasonable as to think a sea can stand up on its hind legs to provide safe passage through an, otherwise, impassable road.  Either way, it is as if the universe is filled with the command of some personal whim to which we see it quicken, unquestionably, like a dog to the side of his master, when we see circumstances arise from conditions that are unsuited to produce them.  When we are told of, or witness a miracle, we call this ‘unnatural’, but in all actuality, in context of nature as we can perceive it, we are not communicating what is unnatural, but only recognizing that nature is behaving in a way that is ‘unfamiliar’.  If we disbelieved miracles for being unnatural, we would have to disbelieve in our own existence for the same reason since there is nothing more ‘unnatural’ than the existence of nature itself.  Therefore, when we witness, or hear testimony of nature behaving in a way that we are unfamiliar, we have no more reason to question the possibility of such occasions than we have to question the existence of all things natural.  The only reasonable conclusion, when we consider the ‘unnatural’ state of existence, and the contradictory notion of the autonomy of nature, is to believe that the state of the universe is not fundamentally unnatural, but profoundly supernatural— the consequence of the personal whim of a being from whom all things flow, and to whose will and word all things conform.  When seen in this light—for it is His light that reveals such things to our hearts—it becomes reasonable to the point of assurance that such things as miracles readily occur, and they become reminders of our God’s constant and patient attention to the quality and direction of a world that is established for our good and His glory. 

The only actual ‘unnatural’ event that occurs in the universe is when nature acts contrary to the will of the One to whom it is dependent.  There is only one creature that has the freedom to behave in such a truly irrational manner—man—and his blasphemy destroys the world with the same power he was given to enjoy it.  But God, who is rich in mercy, has once again disrupted the flow of nature, the waters of the sea, to give rebirth to a dying world with the power of the Word through which it was first created, and it is this act of immense benevolence—this grace that is deeper and wider than the comprehension of our natural experience—that men are tragically unfamiliar.  For what is more ‘unnatural’ than to justify the wicked?  What is more ‘unnatural’ than a glorious king to put on peasant’s clothing, or the righteous to fall by the hand of the wicked, or a dead man raised to life?  Though it may seem unnatural, we must not consider it so.  For, just as God has parted the waters and flooded the earth, just as He has delivered Israel from amassing armies by the hands of angels and retrieved Elijah from the ground with a chariot of fire from heaven, so will He produce a harvest of righteousness in an unworthy, ‘unnatural’ sinner if we are found to have believed His words, having known His deeds.  And when He does, not by means of our natural existence, but by His supernatural power, being redeemed from the power of the enemy, we will sing His praise. 

For this ‘reason’, I receive great comfort from the stories of old that defy my natural reason to comprehend.  For it could only be by such power that my heart will depart from the sin that it cherishes, and when all evidence proves contrary to His promise to sanctify and redeem, we must remember that it is not by our experience or our reason that we are assured of such things, but by His purpose and His power.  It is only through trusting Him amidst the unexpected and unfamiliar conditions of our lives that we become intimate and familiar, not with the natural universe, but with a supernatural God who turns it any way He will.  And it is only when we become familiar with a supernatural God that our unnatural existence returns to its appropriate place in the natural world, conformed to His word, magnifying His name.