BLACK ICE
Deut. 32:35 To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
We had a recent bout in Southeastern Louisiana with a very unfamiliar situation for us known as black ice. Southerners rarely deal with winter type weather and when it happens it can get quite ugly. I remember my first driving encounter with black ice. I was living in New Jersey and I was seventeen years old driving my father’s 1968 Dodge Charger. Need I say more? I hit the ice at the top of a hill and spun out into our neighbor’s front yard. Luckily, the only casualty was the neighbor’s mailbox.
In a similar way, all of mankind is living their life on a spiritual version of black ice. Everything looks okay, but at any moment he could slip into eternal destruction. The Lord has put us in slippery circumstances. Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, from this passage about slippery places. Check this out.
“Their foot shall slide in due time,” seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction that these wicked Israelites were exposed to.
1. That they were always exposed to destruction, as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction’s coming upon them, being represented by their foot’s sliding.
2. It implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall; he can’t foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without warning.
3. Another thing implied is that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another. As he that stands or walks on slippery ground, needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.
4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and don’t fall now, is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, “their foot shall slide.” Then they shall be left to fall as they are inclined by their own weight. God won’t hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands in such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit that he can’t stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.”
Our only place of safety from this spiritual black ice is to be hidden away in Christ. He is our refuge and our only place of safety. Are you roaming the streets of life away from God? Come home today to your place of refuge found only in Christ.
