January 19, 2023
It's not often we Mississippians get to see white falling from the sky or covering our roads and yards. "Ski Mississippi" shirts show winter athletes in a downhill tuck over the tops of cotton fields, not down mountains. I didn't see snow in Baton Rouge until sixth grade, and my youngest (Ezra) has often lamented our moving away from Cookeville, TN, when he was one year old, preventing him from living where it snowed fairly regularly. So in spite of the frigid cold and ominous threats of frozen pipes (as well as empty break and milk shelves at Kroger and southern drivers who aren't used to driving on icy roads), I always love when we get winter storms. So this week, as unsettling and abnormal as it's been, has been enjoyable to me as well.
The Bible is not silent about snow. While I haven't studied deeply the winter precipitation levels in ancient Israel, it's clear that the Biblical authors knew about and had seen snow. And they use it to drive home all sorts of spiritual realities.
Snow shows the sovereign power of God:
"God thunders with His voice wondrously, doing great things which we cannot comprehend. For to the snow He says, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the downpour and the rain, ‘Be strong'" (Job 37:5-6).
"He sends forth His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly. He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes. He casts forth His ice as fragments; who can stand before His cold? He sends forth His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow" (Psalm 147:15-18).
Snow shows the royal majesty and purity of God:
“I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His vesture was like white snow and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire" (Daniel 7:9).
". . . and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man . . . His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire" (Revelation 1:13-14).
Snow shows us the grace of God in the forgiveness of our sins.
"'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the LORD, 'Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool'" (Isaiah 1:18).
"Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7).
Jesus models for us in His teaching how we ought to use nature to meditate upon God and the grace of the gospel. So keep these verses handy, and the next time the Lord sends snow or ice, think of them again, and rejoice in your God of power, holiness, and mercy to sinners like yourself.
----------
Speaking of pictures of cleansing from sin, we celebrate the sacrament of initiation into the covenant community this Lord's Day: baptism. Baptism is a outward sign of an internal reality. By the washing of water, the cleansing blood of Jesus and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit are depicted for us. Of course, the sign itself is not the reality, does not in and of itself accomplish the reality, and does not always accompany the reality. It's possible to have the internal reality without having the external sign, and it's possible to have the external sign without having the internal reality - either at the moment of administration, or ever.
The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it succinctly and in a helpfully balanced manner, "Although it be a great sin to contemn [i.e., "heap contempt upon"] or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it; or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated" (WCF chapter 28).
As you witness the covenant sign and seal of baptism this coming Sunday, meditate upon how God the Father has cleansed you by grace through the blood of His Son and washing of His Spirit. We are all filthy sinners in desperate need of salvation; as the preacher in Moby Dick puts it, "Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." Yet there is cleansing for the worst of sinners in the gospel of Jesus Christ. "O precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow! No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus!"