No matter where we find ourselves today, whether we’ve had a fresh experience of intimacy with God, we’re struggling in the valleys, or we’re plodding through the plains, let’s never forget: God does not only meet us on the mountaintop. He is with us in the valleys and the plains, too. And God is with us, right now. If we are in Christ, he is lives within us (1 Corinthians 3:16). 

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with the mountaintop experience cliché. Inspired by Moses ascending the mountain at Sinai to meet with God (Exodus 19:3–25; 24:17–18), this concept is meant to describe a special awareness of God’s presence and love for us. A keener sense that he is with us than we might otherwise have.
I’m sure many of us have had this experience at one time or another. It is a good thing when we do. But we also need to be careful in what we assume about such experiences. Specifically, we need to recognize that, just as the sort of communion Moses enjoyed with God was unusual, that heightened sense of God’s presence is not our typical state of being.
Pursuing Something More Than a Spiritual High
To put it a bit more bluntly, life is not a series of mountaintop experiences to be chased after. Chasing after mountaintop experiences is essentially chasing after spiritual highs. We may not be looking for a deeper intimacy with God. We might be looking for a dopamine hit, something to make us feel good or happy. (And just so you know, despite being a late-Gen X/early-Xennial who prefers songs in minor keys, I am not anti-happiness.)
But when we start chasing after spiritual highs, we also start to define our faith by them. When we get that high, life is good. We feel as though we are gaining greater insights from Scripture. Our prayers are more focused (and possibly ornate). We’re ready to do big things for God and share the gospel with that friend who doesn’t know Jesus. But when the high starts to fade, our sense of intimacy and our resolve go with it.
Basically, we’re like kids after a week at a Christian summer camp. We’re amped up for a while, but by the time October rolls around, life is back to normal.
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But if God is sovereign, we can be confident in our salvation, confident that there is meaning in our suffering, confident that our evangelism will be effective, confident that we will remain in the faith, confident that Christ will return, confident in all God is, in all he does, in all he says, in all he has promised. 

Christians speak often of God’s sovereignty. Reformed Christians speak very often of God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty refers to his presence in this world, his authority over this world, and his control within this world. God owns and oversees his creation to such a degree that nothing happens apart from his knowledge, apart from his will, apart from his wisdom. There is nothing we are given that does not in some way pass through his hands.
As we speak of God’s sovereignty we have to ensure that we do not speak of it only theoretically, that we do not relegate it purely to the realm of the intellectual, for it is no mere abstract doctrine but one that is sweet and precious and ought to be close to the heart of every Christian. This is a doctrine that gives us hope in every sorrow, that lends meaning to every pain, that gives confidence in every circumstance.
Perhaps it is good to consider some of what would be true if God is not sovereign.
If God is not sovereign we cannot be confident in our salvation. We cannot trust that his gospel is the only true gospel, that his salvation is effective, that his way is the right way. For if he is not sovereign, the will of another being may supersede his, the plan of another may outrival his, the word of another may take precedence over his. Unless God is sovereign, our very salvation is in doubt.
If God is not sovereign we cannot be confident that there is meaning in our suffering.
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Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
The exodus of Israel from Egypt is to remind us of the anti-typical exodus that Jesus has already accomplished through His death and resurrection. What all mankind needs more than anything is to experience the true exodus from Satan, sin, and death.

The exodus is the great redemptive act of the Old Testament. There is no other act of God that so clearly captures the essence of the redeption that He provides for His people in the Old Testament. Yet, the exodus of Israel out of Egypt was typical of the greater exodus that the people of God have through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
Jesus spoke of His death as “ἔξοδον αὐτοῦ” (His exodus) “ἣν ἤμελλεν πληροῦν ἐν Ἰερουσαλήμ” (which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). As God delivered Israel out of the bondage of Pharoah and the Egyptians, so Jesus redeems His people from Satan, sin, and death. As Israel passed through the Red Sea on the dry land that appeared out of the waters (a picture of new creation), so Jesus brings about a new creation through His atoning sacrifice on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead (2 Cor. 5:17).
The exodus of Israel out of Egypt was typical of the ultimate spiritual exodus believers experience through the redeeming work of Christ; nevertheless, the relationship of the Old and the New Testaments are united in the redemptive purposes of God–from Genesis 3:15 to the fulfillment of all things in Christ. One can err in only seeing Israel’s exodus out of Egypt as a physical deliverance. Geerhardus Vos explained the spiritual nature of Israel’s typical exodus, when he wrote,
“Redemption is here portrayed as before everything else a deliverance from an objective realm of sin and evil. The favorite individualizing and internalizing of sin finds no support here. No people of God can spring into existence without being cut loose from a world opposed to God and to themselves in their very origin. The Egyptian power is in this respect as truly typical as the divine power that wrought the deliverance. Its attitude and activity were shaped with this in view. What held under the Hebrews was not mere political dependence, but harsh bondage. Their condition is represented as a condition of slavery. The Egyptians exploited them for selfish ends regardless of Israel’s own welfare. Ever since, redemption has attached to itself this imagery of enslavement to an alien power. John 8:33-36, as well as Rom. 8:20-21, reach back into these far origins.”
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