The dense forest of the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve been there, we got out and walked, it’s incredible. I’ll try as best I can to describe a little bit. The dense forest of the Pacific Northwest hold unrivaled, and we use the word natural beauty, natural beauty, but they also hold danger.
They’re a maze of green deception to hikers, especially during the months of August and September. We walked among sword ferns growing higher than our heads. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Clothed in furrowed trunks, sweeping branches, and fragrant foliage, Western cedars, when you stand among them, feel like living statues, living columns. Old-growth firs exceed 200 feet tall.
Dark, layered hemlocks look like cathedrals. Incredible. All these cathedrals standing side by side. That’s what hemlocks look like. In the wet Pacific Northwest forest, bigleaf maples become gardens in themselves. Beneath those trees, dark berries accompany glossy evergreen leaves of the salal. And the mosses and lichens make everything there seem like everything’s alive. It’s all alive. But with such captivating beauty, there’s also unrivaled danger. Along coastal trails like Cape Scott or the Enchantments, August brings the infinite blinding sea fog known as Foggust. Visibility can drop to zero, zero. completely obscuring trail markers and cliff edges.
But the Sauk Mountain Trail in Washington carries dangers all in its own. The Sauk Mountain Trail is a highly popular steep route in the northern Cascades with 25 switchbacks. Many fatal incidents have occurred when hikers navigate just beyond the trail’s edge.
I don’t know if you read the newspaper, but a month ago, just a little over a month ago, on Thursday, September the 17th, Peter Kalapaka was hiking South Mountain with his family. Somewhere near the summit, he became separated from them. It was the last time they saw him alive. Rescuers found his body the next morning. They closed the trail for a day, and then they reopened it the following morning. And that very afternoon, tragedy struck again. Several hikers saw Gary Eidelberg go over the edge of a steep switchback. He fell 1,000 feet.
Within two days, two deaths on the same mountain where beauty, unrivaled beauty and inescapable danger and habit dwell on the same trail. The path marked out for hikers is not an unnecessary restriction to deprive hikers of the beauty of a mountain. The path enables hikers to enjoy the beauty safely.
There is all the difference in the world between where the path actually goes and where I think it should go. And that we must grasp. Where I think the path of God should go and where the path of God actually goes. And there’s nothing intuitive or natural that can discern the path of God. It must be revealed to the redeemed soul. It cannot otherwise be accepted or used as a guide except by a regenerated soul. a renewed soul, a soul renewed in the image of God. And so the more we make of the renewed image of God in our soul, the more we will love the beauty and the glory marked out for us in God’s revealed will.
Murray G. Brett, The moral law is a transcript or copy or revelation of the nature of God Himself
Surrounding Biblical Exposition:
The sermon begins by focusing on Ephesians 5:17, urging believers not to be senseless, but to understand the will of the Lord. The preacher explains that believers often struggle with loving God’s will as expressed in His moral law, sometimes viewing it as a stick used by God to beat them rather than a gracious rule guiding them in covenant love. When people start bargaining with God over what they will or will not obey, they have slipped back into a covenant of works. The preacher stresses that God’s law should not be abstracted from His Trinitarian nature; it is an imprint of who He is. Just as a regenerated soul is renewed in the image of God, the believer must see that God’s commandments are not arbitrary rules designed to frustrate us, but rather the path of life and safety.
The Illustration’s Point:
God’s commands and moral law are not arbitrary, restrictive switchbacks designed to frustrate us or deprive us of life; rather, like a marked trail on a dangerous mountain, His revealed will is the gracious path that enables us to safely experience and enjoy His beauty, glory, and covenant love.
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