God whose face shines on us

God in the Psalms No.6

Psa 4:6 Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD

Here is an interesting phrase to meditate upon, ‘the face of the Lord’. This raises various questions about God. What do we know of Him? The Scriptures refer to his arm (e.g. Num 11:23), His eyes (e.g. Gen 6:8), and His face, but in every case we are given the impression that this is personification, ascribing to God human characteristics so that we may understand His activity. After all, all we are really told about God in respect of His entity, apart from the amazing revelations to the prophets (e.g. Ezek 1:27,28, Rev 4:3) which really don’t tell us much, is Jesus’ assertion that “God is Spirit” (Jn 4:24).

Sometimes we find the Lord saying, “I will set my face against that person” indicating a sense of rejection (e.g. Lev 17:10 , 20:3, 26:15-17). Similarly He says, “I will hide my face from them,” meaning He will distance Himself and not be found (e.g. Deut 31:17, Job 34:29, Psa 13:1). More positively there are calls to “seek His face”, e.g. 2 Sam 21:1, 1 Chron 16:11, 2 Chron 7:14, Psa 24:6. And now we find, the light of your face” (also Psa 4:6, 31:16, 44:3, 67:1 etc.).

What we can say is that often, when there are references to God, there are also references to His glory, or the brightness that shines from His presence. Yes, when His presence is expressed in our earthly world, it seems that it was accompanied by this amazing brightness or glory. Israel first encountered this glory at Sinai (Ex 24:16,17) and after Moses met with God, when he came down the mountain, his face shone with the same glory (Ex 34:29). In fact every time he went into the tent to the Lord’s presence his face shone (Ex 34:34,35).

Thus for God’s glory to shine on someone, they had to be in His presence, so when David uses this expression, Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD, it was a call for the presence of God to be revealed to him. It was like David was saying, please Lord, turn to me, come to me, make yourself known to me, come close to me please.

Why? Well in this psalm David seems to give indications of difficulties that they were experiencing. For example, Give me relief from my distress (v.1) indicating his anguish, How long will you love delusions and seek false gods (v.2) indicating that others were seeking other answers to their distress, and Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?” (v.6) indicating they were in trouble and looking for help that did not seem to be coming. The actual nature of the trouble is not spelled out. The fact is they were in difficulties and they weren’t getting help because until now the people have not turned to God. David knows the answer is the Lord’s Presence. They need to know the glorious presence of God in their midst as they had done in the past, because David knew from what had been passed down to him that Israel had a history with God that revealed that when God turned up to help, they were helped!

Thus again here, we find an indirect testimony to the goodness of God, the God who does not stand at a distance, but a God who can be relied upon to draw near to His people and bless them. Of course there is also significance in ‘light’. As we have previously noted, Paul said we have been rescued from a dominion of darkness and lifted into the kingdom of the Son (Col 1:13) which, by implication, is a kingdom of light. Light shows us the way, reveals what is. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12). Do we need him to shine on our circumstances today?