The Finger of God – Writing the Word (Part 1)

The Finger of God – Writing the Word (Part 1).

God leaves His fingerprints everywhere, because that finger of His is always working. God has a finger? Yes, it is now time to bring the Holy Spirit into the conversation. Scripture and Christian thinking ever since the early church supports the idea that the finger of God is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. God’s finger represents the power of the Holy Spirit, and in fact is the working member of the Godhead that demonstrates God’s power and accomplishes His will.

It’s easy to think about the Holy Spirit as like the wind or a breath, since spirit, wind and breath are the same word in Hebrew, “ruach.” God’s Spirit is often thought of as Divine Energy or Life Force as well, since He serves in that capacity in the world. But it stretches the imagination a bit to think of the Holy Spirit as the finger of God’s right hand. A finger is tactile, an actual physical object that we can imagine. The wind, breath and energy, though, are formless, without shape. We can hold onto a finger, but of course we can’t grasp the wind or a breath. To feel the wind in our hair or a breath on our face is a completely different experience than being tangibly touched by a finger. But as we will see, we can be inspired by, or literally inspirited by, the finger of God as well as a divine wind or life force. Don’t we all have a desire to be “touched” by the Spirit?

(1.) “When Yahweh finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God…And the tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and the other they were written. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets… And Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones, and I will write on those tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke.”  (Exodus 31:118; 32:15-16; 34:1). 

One wonders how God wrote the Ten Commandments with His finger on stone tablets. The finger of God was a symbol for the Holy Spirit, but then we still ask how this might have been done. There was fire over the entire mountain because of God’s glory, so perhaps the Pentecost tongue of fire inscribed God’s words on the rock? However it was literally done, there was spiritual work being accomplished by the Spirit of God which ended up producing a tangible product, the stone tablets inscribed with the Word of God. Unsurprisingly, the Holy Spirit was God’s tool of choice.

(2.) “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale, and he was so terrified that his knees knocked and his legs gave way.” (Daniel 5:5-6). 

Sometimes God likes a lot of drama to get our attention and make a point that will not be forgotten. Here in Daniel we find king Belshazzar, a distant relative, perhaps, of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, and Belshazzar evidently learned nothing from the royal archives about how to be a proper king of Babylon. These events occurred in 540 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar had died 22 years earlier. There were of course many Jewish exiles in Babylon, and the most highly esteemed Hebrew was Daniel. His reputation remained impressive as he enjoys the uppermost leadership in Babylon. The Babylonians said that Daniel had “light, understanding and wisdom, the wisdom of the Spirit of God.” Daniel was considered the wisest of the king’s wise counselors, and so he was brought to interpret the writing on the wall for the petrified king. Sure enough, Daniel said that God is judging the king for misusing the sacred vessels stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem, and for their idolatry at this notorious orgy of his. God has decided enough was enough, and wasn’t going to tolerate his blatant sacrilege, his deliberate misuse of what is holy and set apart for sacred use. And yes, Daniel’s interpretation held true. The king’s life was taken from him that very night, and his kingdom was overtaken by the Medes and Persians.

(3.) “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” “I will give you a new heart, and put a new Spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone, and give you  a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and obey my laws.”  (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:16-27).

The finger of God, the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit, will inscribe the Word of God on each individual heart. He will write God’s instructions in each believer’s heart and mind so we can follow Him and keep His commandments. The Holy Spirit will inspire each believer to obey God’s expectations for those who follow Him, because the Spirit of God has tattooed His thinking on each heart and mind. We can take His word everywhere we go, and His inscriptions will remind us of anything of God’s Word we have forgotten. It’s interesting that the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament paraphrased Jeremiah’s passage above (Hebrews 10:16) by saying that the Lord will write God’s words on our “minds” rather than the “hearts” mentioned by Jeremiah. “What is this law of God written in our hearts by God Himself, if not the very presence of the Holy Spirit who is the finger of God?” (Augustine). Heart and mind were seen together in many ways. This isn’t surprising, when taking a quick look at how the Hebrews viewed the heart:

Heart. “Kardia” = the center of a person’s knowledge, wisdom and understanding; the wellspring of a person’s mental and moral activity; that aspect of a person’s personality that controls the intellect, the emotion, and the will; the center of a person’s God-consciousness and spiritual life; the ‘control tower’ of a person’s whole being; the core in a person of what it means to be a human being.

The method of how the finger of God writes on our hearts is of course a mystery. But we can try to describe it without trying to define it. And this might help us as we think about how the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture.

(1.) He comes alongside us without overwhelming us;

(2.) He guides our thinking without making us mindless;

(3.) He fills us without changing our personality;

(4.) He speaks to us without dictating word for word as if we were robots;

(5.) He divinely influences us without taking away our God-given freedom;

(6.)  He directs us without dominating us;

(7.) He points the way without putting blinders on us.

Perhaps we can visit this again when we consider how the Holy Spirit, the finger of God, inspired the authors of Scripture. Surely the Holy Spirit works with the human mind and heart in similar ways, whether we are having God’s word written on our hearts or written on a page.