"Yet He did not stretch out His hand..."

"Yet He did not stretch out His hand against [them]... and they saw God"

As I was doing my reading this morning, I was in Exodus chapter 24, and I was particularly struck by one particular verse, and a couple of ideas that were later reinforced in the rest of my reading.  The verse is Exodus 24:11, and more generally verses 9-11 and also verse 17.
       "Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself.  Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and ate and drank." (Exodus 24:9-11 NASB, emphasis mine.)
Moses and the elders of Israel go partway up mount Sinai, and are given the privilege of seeing God,

Normally when we speak or write we draw attention to things that we see, and things that happen; I might say "I went to class yesterday, and the professor gave a review for the upcoming midterm." (True story.) We do not usually draw attention to things that do not happen.  If I were to say: "I went to class yesterday, and the professor did not push me in the face," (also a true story,) you might look at me funny, because professors are not generally in the habit of punching their students in the face, and it is not particularly noteworthy that my professor did not punch me in the face.  Yet this passage draws special attention to the fact that God does not reach out and destroy these people.  "Yet He did not stretch out His hand against [them]."  It is being portrayed as surprising on some level that God did not smite these people from his presence.  This is why the phrase jumped out at me.  The picture we get is of an Awesome, (just look at the pavement under his feet, it is made up of a jewel beyond our powers of imagination,) and Holy God.  That in his presence people are totally unworthy, and should probably be stuck down with the wrath of such a holy God.  He is displayed in verse 17 as a consuming fire on the top of the mountain, Yet he did not stretch out His hand!  God could have, and if he were treating them as they deserved would have reached out and destroyed them all with one touch, "Yet He did not stretch out His hand."

Not only does he not strike these people down, but he reveals himself to them.  In some form, these people had the awesome privilege of seeing God with their eyes.  "And they ate and drank."  Not only do they not not get struck down, not only do they get to see God with their eyes, they also sit down and have a meal in the visible presence of God.  Think about that, these people essentially got to go out to dinner with God.  So the mercy of God not only extends to granting these people their life, but it overflows to great privileges above and beyond what any mere mortal could ever wish to beg for.

Forgive me for jumping around, I''m going to draw some application from all this in a minute, but first I'm going to jump to the next passage that I read today in the book of Job.  Ok, so actually I'm going to cheat, I'm going to go back a few chapters before the one from today.  Just for background, earlier in the book of Job, God allows Satan to do a whole bunch of horrible things to Job.  Essentially, everything Job has is taken away, all of his possessions (which were pretty significant) are stolen or destroyed, all of his Children are killed, he is given extremely painful sores.  Pretty much the only thing left to him is his wife, and I'm pretty sure that she was only left around to torment him and try to get him to turn away from God.  ("Curse God and die" and all that).  the next 35 chapters are Job and a few of his (very self righteous) friends trying to reason with each other as to why God allowed this to happen.  (I know that is a massive oversimplification, but that doesn't matter for today).  Anyway, at this point God comes around and basically spends 4 chapters reminding Job how big and powerful he (God) is, and how small and insignificant Job is.  I'll give you a bit of a taste:
       "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,
         Who is this that darkens council
         By words without knowledge?
         Now gird up your loins like a man
         And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!
         Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
         Tell Me, if you have understanding,
         Who set its measurements? Since you know.
         Or who stretched the line on it?
         On what were its bases sunk?
         Or who laid its cornerstone,
         When the morning stars sang together
         And all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
         (Job 38:1-7, NASB)
And again
       "Will the faultfinder contend with the almighty?
         Let him who reproves God answer it."
       "Now gird up your loins like a man;
         I will ask you and you instruct me.
         Will you really annul My judgement?
         Will you condemn me that you may be justified?
         Or do you have an arm like God,
         And can you thunder with a voice like his?

         Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity,
         And clothe yourself with honor and majesty.
         Pour out the overflowings of your anger,
         And look on everyone who is proud, and make him low.
         Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him,
         And tread down the wicked where they stand.
         Hide them in the dust together;
         Bind them in the hidden place.
         Then I will also confess to you,
         That your own right hand can save you."
         (Job 40:2, 7-14, NASB)
Rough translation: "Job, I am God, you are a human, I am all powerful, you are small and weak.  When you can do everything that I have done, and when you are as powerful as I am, then you can come criticize the way I do things, and you can take ownership of your own destiny.  But you are not like me, and never will be, so stop acting as if you know what should and shouldn't happen."

I'm going to jump one more place before tying things together.  John 3: 16-17:
       "For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  (NASB)  God could have sent his Son into the world to Judge the world.  We deserved it big time.  If he had sent his Son to judge the world, we could not have said that anything unfair or unjust had happened.  "Yet He did not stretch out His hand against [us]"  God chose instead to send his Son into the world to save it, not to judge it.

To tie all this together, there are three main points I am trying to get across.
1) The Holiness and Majesty of God,
2) Our complete unworthiness,
3) Gods immense mercy and blessings,
We have a never ending tendency to view things from our own perspective.  We forget how big and powerful and holy and awesome God is.  We forget how small and insignificant and weak and unholy and unworthy we are, and because of this we overlook the great vastness of his mercy toward us.

In the passage in Exodus, we get a picture of the beauty and holiness of God.  All of us humans are completely unworthy to be alive.  But God in his amazing mercy and generosity, overlooked the unworthiness gave of the elders of Israel and gave them the chance to see him with their eyes, and to spend time in his presence.  We, through Christ have been given the chance to see something greater.  We can see the exact moral nature of God, we get to see who God is, through the person of Christ.  He has overlooked our unworthiness, and lets us live with the presence of God within ourselves.

Too often like Job, we try to reason with ourselves as to what God should do, or why we shouldn't be going through whatever we are going through, or we try to create a righteousness for ourselves.  We constantly need to be reminded of who God is, and who we are.  We need to see our own insignificance, and see his holiness.  We need to say with Job "I know that you can do all things, And that no purpose of yours can be thwarted... Therefore I declare that which I did not know... I will ask You, and You instruct me.  I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes."  (Job 42:2-6)

Finally, God had even right send his Son to stretch out his hand to judge the world.  Instead he sent his Son to stretch out both his hands on the cross to save the world, to be judged for the world.  We need to recognize the greatness of his mercy toward us, first in the simple fact that he gives us life and allows us to live, and then in the overwhelming blessings of salvation, and of knowing him.  When we have that perspective, it will be much easier to accept whatever he gives us as a blessing, rather than try to go our own way.
"For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."  (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)