The Ability to Withstand God’s Presence

This is the third time around for this material, but I’m repeating it because (a) we have new readers, and (b) there’s so much scripture in this it definitely bears repeating. This first appeared in 2013 and then in 2017.

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No One Can See God And Live

Occasionally I will read or hear conjecture as to what a “glorified body” will consist of when we leave this life and begin life in a New Earth governed by a new order. People speak of being able to transport instantly from one location to another in a manner reminiscent of Star Trek’s “beam me up.” Others wonder about food consumption, since scripture mentions a “marriage supper.” One discussion centered on clothing, because in God’s original order in the garden, the man and his wife were naked. (The conclusion was that yes, we will be, but our minds will be changed so we won’t think of it the same way.)

But I think the biggest change that will occur in those bodies will be that we will be able to withstand seeing God; we will be able to contain the impact of His presence. Have you ever heard that phrase, “No one can see God and live”? Where does that come from?

The reference is from Exodus 33:20. Here’s the story of a direct conversation — not a vision or dream — in context from the NLT with the key verse underlined:

Moses Sees the Lord’s Glory

12One day Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Take these people up to the Promised Land.’ But you haven’t told me whom you will send with me. You have told me, ‘I know you by name, and I look favorably on you.’ 13If it is true that you look favorably on me, let me know your ways so I may understand you more fully and continue to enjoy your favor. And remember that this nation is your very own people.”

14The Lord replied, “I will personally go with you, Moses, and I will give you rest—everything will be fine for you.”

15Then Moses said, “If you don’t personally go with us, don’t make us leave this place. 16How will anyone know that you look favorably on me—on me and on your people—if you don’t go with us? For your presence among us sets your people and me apart from all other people on the earth.”

17The Lord replied to Moses, “I will indeed do what you have asked, for I look favorably on you, and I know you by name.”

18Moses responded, “Then show me your glorious presence.”

19The Lord replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will call out my name, Yahweh,c before you. For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose. 20But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.” 21The Lord continued, “Look, stand near me on this rock. 22As my glorious presence passes by, I will hide you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23Then I will remove my hand and let you see me from behind. But my face will not be seen.”

(whole chapter)

This is reinforced in the New Testament:

John 1:18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

and

John 6:46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.

and

1 Timothy 6:16 12Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.13I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate,14that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,15which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,16who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.

(A parallel to that last passage is something familiar if you’ve sung the chorus How Great is Our God: Psalm 104:2 He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent. )

That doesn’t mean that some have not come close. We know that just a chapter later, when Moses received the “big ten” his face shone when he came down from the market.

The Radiant Face of Moses

29When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. 30When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. 31But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. 32Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai.

33When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. 34But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

This is confirmed in II Cor. 3:7 (ESV)

7Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?

This is also reminiscent of the familiar passage in Isaiah 6:

1It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. 2Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3They were calling out to each other,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies!
The whole earth is filled with his glory!”

4Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.

5Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”

Finally, we can’t begin to scratch the surface of this topic without considering the transfiguration in Matthew 17:

1After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Be sure to see also Revelation 10:1

Today’s reading was prepared using the online site, Bible Hub.

 

A Better Leader for a Messy World

Thinking Through the Early Chapters of Matthew

by Clarke Dixon

Things seem to be in a mess around the world and perhaps we should blame leadership. Political leaders make decisions that hurt people. Are regular Russians living their daily grind to be blamed for a war waged against the people of Ukraine? Spiritual leaders also can make decisions that hurt people. In fact there is growing talk of the need for recovering from religion. While I myself am religious, depending on how you define “religious,” I do understand that some people need to move out from what can be called spiritual abuse. We who are spiritual leaders, even if we think our hearts are in the right place, can and do inflict harm on people when our heads are not in the right place. While the experience of religion provides great hope and comfort for many, including myself, it brings trauma to many also. That does not happen without leaders.

Political and spiritual leaders can mess with people’s lives each in their own way but perhaps worst of all are those times political leaders and spiritual leaders work their mess making wonders together. Think Taliban. Think the war on Ukraine where the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has been publicly supportive of the war. When political leadership works hand in hand with spiritual leadership, truth and well being can take a hit. Normal people suffer.

This is not far removed from the world Jesus was born into. As we begin reading the Gospel of Matthew we might miss what is happening in the background. So what was happening in the background? Matthew lets us in on it.

The political leadership was awful.

We are barely into Matthew’s account of Jesus when we are introduced to Herod. History records that Herod the Great was not really that great. He was great at building things, like the temple, but he was also quite accomplished at ruining people’s lives. Matthew tells us about all the infants of Bethlehem being killed. What kind of leader does that? Matthew also reports that Herod’s son was not much better. Near the end of Matthew we are introduced to another political leader, Pilate. What Herod was incapable of doing, namely killing Jesus, Pilate carried out. Whether Romans, or one of their own, the political leadership standing over the people of God in that day was dreadful. At least being Jewish the people could depend on good spiritual leadership, right? Well…

The spiritual leadership also left much to be desired.

Let us consider a few examples.

In Matthew’s Christmas story, in contrast to the magi who were foreigners, and in contrast to Herod, the spiritual leaders took no initiative to find the one who could potentially be the Messiah. They were not even curious.

Matthew also tells us about how the spiritual leaders received harsh words from John the Baptist:

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee the coming wrath? Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God. Don’t just say to each other, ‘We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’ That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones. Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Matthew 3:7-10 (NLT)

Hardly a commendation of good leadership!

Matthew also tells us about how Jesus did not call rabbis, scribes, priests, or Pharisees to follow him closely, but fisherman. If Jesus had been born in our day it would be akin to Jesus bypassing Baptist pastors like myself and calling truck drivers like my brother instead.

We are not far into Matthew when we also get into Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” in chapters 5-7. Here we read:

But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!

Matthew 5:20 (NLT)

Some point out the very high standards of the teachers and Pharisees and so call upon Christians today to have super high standards in keeping the rules of our religion. However it is better to understand Jesus here to be taking a dig at the spiritual leaders of the day. Yes, they have high standards in following rules but they are missing the point. They are not becoming good people, nor are they helping others become good people. Jesus teaches us to reach for a better righteousness than what the spiritual leaders exemplify. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount could be summarized as teaching us how to catch the spirit of the law instead of the letter of the law, of how to have a good character that flows from a good heart than mere obedience to rules.

The Sermon on the Mount finishes with this:

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law.

Matthew 7:24-29 (NLT)

Reading between the lines; “listen to my teaching, not that of your spiritual leaders.” People were eager to do so as they recognized that he taught “with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law.”

We are not very far into the Gospel of Matthew when we realize that both the political and spiritual leadership were lacking.

Enter Jesus!

Matthew introduces the one who leads well.

There are hints and allusions, perhaps hard for us to see today, but which would have stood out to the readers in Matthew’s day, that Jesus is to be compared to a great leader of the past, Moses. Matthew alone records for us the flight of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to, and return from, Egypt. According to Bible scholars some of the language used in one particular sentence, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead” (Matthew 2:20 NRSV) is identical to the language used in a then popular Greek translation of Moses’ flight from, and return to, Egypt: “Go back to Egypt; for all those who were seeking your life are dead” (Exodus 4:19). Jesus is like Moses, a leader who brought about God’s purpose of leading the people to freedom.

Also, at the baptism of Jesus Matthew records a voice from heaven saying “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17 NRSV). This is a reminder of a thought that shows up a few times in Exodus:

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me.’”

Exodus 4:22-23 NRSV

What was said of Jesus, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” is something that ought to have been said of God’s people as a whole but their history was spotty, thanks in large part to their leadership. That Jesus identifies strongly with God’s people is further enhanced with the temptation of Jesus in the desert for forty days which is a bit like God’s people wandering in the wilderness for forty years, only Jesus does it better.

Then there is the first mention of the teaching of Jesus according to Matthew: “From then on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near’” (Matthew 4:17 NLT). The Kingdom of heaven was near because the true king is here!

Matthew then goes on to write about the healings and miracles of Jesus. Where political and spiritual leadership could often be described as life taking, Jesus was always life giving.

To sum up the opening chapters of Matthew, the political and spiritual leaders could not hold a candle next to Jesus. The end of the Matthew reflects this:

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 (NLT)

Much of the mess the world is in today is a result of poor political and spiritual leadership. Jesus is Lord, the leader who is leading us to a much better tomorrow. Jesus is Lord, who leads us to being better people today.

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Before they appear here, Canadian pastor Clarke Dixon’s condensed sermons appear at his blog, Thinking Through Scripture.

When Prayer Moves the Heart of God

It’s nearly a year, but we’re very grateful to HarperCollins Christian Products for their special permission to carry book excerpts from Thomas Nelson and Zondervan authors.

Matthew 6:11

• Give us today our bread for the day (Weymouth)
• Give us today the food we need (NLT)
• Give us this day our bread sufficient for sustenance (Smith’s Literal)
  
• Give us this day the bread for our support (Anderson New Testament)

Today’s author has appeared here once previously. Tyler Staton was a pastor in New York City for many years before moving one coast to another where he became the lead pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, which was founded by John Mark Comer. He is the National Director of 24-7 Prayer Movement which makes it even better that his new book is Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer (Zondervan). (See links below.)

Daily Bread (chapter excerpt)

In Exodus 32, we get a glimpse into Moses’s prayer life. To set the stage, God is very unhappy with the Israelites, and his anger is well-founded. After freeing them from slavery, parting the Red Sea, feeding them with bread from the sky, and quenching their thirst with water from a rock, they’ve begun to worship another god. God voices his anger, and in response, Moses prays, essentially calling God back to his own character:

Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.” (Exodus 32:12-13)

Moses is holding God to his word. He’s reminding God who God is: “by your own self.” He’s not just pleading with God to give him what he wants. It’s more like he’s reminding God what God really wants.

And check out God’s response: “Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” Wait, what? Moses confronted God . . . and won? Yeah. Something like that.

The word relented is the translation of the Hebrew word naham, which can also be translated as “changed his mind” or even “repented.” God nahamed. God changed his mind. God repented. Really? That’s really what it says.

This doesn’t mean God was caught in sin and went to confession. Naham doesn’t mean God was in the wrong. It means God was moved emotionally. Moses’s prayer moved the Creator of the universe on an emotional level. That’s what the Bible teaches.

Aristotle famously called God the “unmoved mover.” The God Moses prayed to is more like the “moved mover.” He’s moving heaven and earth, but he’s also movable. He hears us. He actually listens and actually cares. He responds. This idea of God may seem pretty radical, but that’s only because many of us have a concept of God formed more by Aristotle than by Moses.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of mystery here. There are so many unanswered questions. Sure, that’s how it happened with Moses, but what about Malachi? He heard God say, “I the LORD do not change.” But then there’s Hosea, to whom God said, “My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.” How can both of these revelations of God be equally true? Because God is a relational being to know, not a formula to master.

When it comes to any relational being, we’re gonna have to get comfortable with mystery. We will never know anyone so thoroughly that there’s no mystery left. I will know and love my wife for the rest of my life, and I’ll never reach the end of her. I’ll never eliminate the mystery in my most intimate relationship.<

Of course, it would be dangerous to form an entire theology out of this one Moses prayer, but there is a definite biblical pattern supported by this passage: God responds to his own character. That’s his nature. John Mark Comer concludes, “God is more of a friend than a formula.”

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Excerpted with permission from pp125-6 in Praying Like Monks Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton ©2022 Tyler Staton. (link is to book’s page at zondervan.com)

Previously by Tyler Staton here at C201: Searching for Enough excerpt

Teaching at Bridgetown Church based on the book.

For an overall look at the book, Click here for my review.

Bible translations used in our introduction were from BibleHub.com (click ‘additional translations’ after search results)

Pharaoh’s Heart, and Yours (and Mine)

This is our second visit with Jason Smith who lives in Oregon, and writes at Lamp and Light. After looking at three most recent articles — they’re all good! — this one was chosen to share with you today. Click the title which follows to read this where it first appeared.

The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart

God clearly cares about our hearts. Throughout the Bible, we read about the significance of the heart. The heart is the seat of all human thought, emotion, and activity (Proverbs 4:23). God knows us so well, because His gaze pierces all the way through to our hearts (1 Samuel 16:7). The heart is often portrayed as the secret inner storehouse or the deep well of a person’s soul (Proverbs 20:5; Matthew 12:35; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Hebrews 4:12).

The words on our lips are usually good indicators of what’s brewing within. Jesus wisely said, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).

King Solomon urges us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5, ESV).

A heart that is right with God is a heart that gladly leans on Him as a child leans on her father’s chest. It is not too proud to trust in His grace.

Pharaoh’s Hard Heart

The Bible records God telling Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go” (Exodus 4:22, ESV).

This is the first time Pharaoh’s hard heart is mentioned. The Hebrew word chazaq literally means “to strengthen,” as in God strengthened Pharaoh’s heart in his rebellion. In 11 cases, chazaq is used to speak of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart (4:21; 9:2; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8) or more generally that Pharaoh’s heart “was hardened” (7:13, 22; 8:19; 9:35).

However, another word is also used to speak of Pharaoh’s hard heart – the Hebrew word kabad’, which literally means “to make heavy.” Three times, this word is used to speak of Pharaoh hardening his own heart (8:15, 32; 9:34), once with the general phrase “was hardened” (9:7), and twice to speak of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart (10:1; 14:4). It is a similar word to chazaq, but it has a special nuance worth noting.

Ancient Egyptians believed that in the afterlife a special ceremony took place called The Weighing of the Heart (pictured above). In this ceremony, overseen by the god Anubis, the heart of the deceased was placed on one side of a great scale and was weighed against the feather of truth. If someone had committed many sins, their heart would be weighed down, and they would be condemned to eternal restlessness. However, if they’d lived a virtuous life, one’s heart would be lighter than the feather. In this case, they would be granted safe passage to the Egyptian paradise, the fields of Aaru.

Because of this belief about one’s heart determining one’s eternal destiny, Egyptians would remove all the organs except the heart when burying their dead. Moses may be alluding to this ancient belief when he writes that Pharaoh’s heart was “made heavy” (Exodus 8:15, 32; 9:7, 34; 10:1; 14:4).

This is a reminder that in nearly every age and culture, people have been religious. God has given humanity a universal sense of right and wrong, and because of this, we all know we are supposed to be good. And we all sense the scales of justice by which our lives will be weighed.

Our Hard Hearts

It is interesting how often Scripture connects salvation to the state of one’s heart. The Bible says that we need to be saved from sin, and Jesus said that all sin ultimately springs from a defiled heart (Matthew 15:18-20). When He saw the prideful religiosity of the Pharisees, Jesus asked them, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” (9:4). Mark tells us He was “grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 5:3). Sometimes, even His disciples didn’t understand because “their hearts were hardened” (6:52).

But Jesus also said the greatest commandment was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

It’s popular today for people to say, “Just follow your heart.” It’s cliché and catchy. But in the Bible, that sounds like generally bad advice, like something the devil would urge you to do. Instead, we are warned about the inherent dangers of following one’s heart, which is so prone to self-deception. A heart that is not directed toward God is foolish and darkened (Genesis 3:1-6; Ephesians 4:22; Romans 1:21). The prophet Jeremiah quoted God on the matter:

“The heart is deceitful above all things
    and beyond cure.
    Who can understand it?
I the Lord search the heart
    and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
    according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10, NIV)

It’s good to know that God is just and will reward people according to what they deserve, but what hope of reward do we have? The Bible also says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:10-11, NIV). This sounds pretty bleak. Thankfully, this isn’t Scripture’s last word on the matter.

The New Heart We All Need

The prophet Ezekiel records a divine promise about those who would receive a new heart:

“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 be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.” (Ezekiel 36:26-29, NIV)

This means there is hope for those who have hard hearts like Pharaoh. But it’s not a matter of having a new commitment to live a good life; it’s a matter of becoming a new creation in Christ. This can only happen through faith in His finished work on the cross and subsequent resurrection. Speaking of that time when Jesus was on the cross, the prophet Isaiah says, “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, NIV).

Jesus took all that defiles our hearts onto Himself so that we could be redeemed from the sin that had enslaved us. Salvation is about God cleansing our hearts by grace through faith (see Acts 15:9; Hebrews 10:22; 13:9). A new heart is a forgiven heart, a liberated heart.

Through faith in Christ, the burden of guilt is lifted, and our hearts become lighter than a feather. Jesus comforted His disciples when He was about to die for them, saying, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me” (John 14:1). A heart cleansed by the shed blood of Jesus is a heart reconciled to God. “For with the heart one believes and is justified” (Romans 10:10, ESV).

A new heart is soft and fleshy (Ezekiel 36:26). It wants more of God, not less. It desires His name to be famous, not our own. It craves to be filled with His love and His Spirit, not the fleeting pleasures of sin. It seeks His leading and direction, rather than wanting its own way. Though the battle of opposing desires still rages today (Romans 7:15-25), only the fruit produced in the new heart will last into eternity (1 Corinthians 3:12-15).

And finally, Paul’s prayers for the church were continually about the state of their hearts, showing that the heart is a subject we should not neglect.

“May the Lord direct your hearts to God’s love and Christ’s endurance.” (2 Thessalonians 3:5, HCSB)

That is my prayer for you as well.

Father of mercies, my heart is so prone to wander after worthless pursuits that seem so urgent or attractive today. Give me fresh desires from Your heart of love, that I might live the life You’ve called me to. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

As Ten Commandments Tablets Shatter

There’s a bad Sunday School joke that goes something like, “Who in the Bible broke all ten commandments?” The answer is Moses, when he returned from the mountain and exasperated over the sin of the people sent the tablets crashing to the ground.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

First of all, the giving of the commandments in a physical form does not mean that this is the first time God establishes moral and behavioral boundaries of the people of Israel. The website Life Hope and Truth states,

…The answer is found in a fascinating statement God made about Abraham, recorded in Genesis 26:5: “Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

This is significant because Abraham was born hundreds of years before Moses received the law on Mount Sinai!

In order for Abraham to obey God’s commandments, statutes and laws, he had to know what they were. This means that Abraham was taught the laws directly from God or from others (or possibly both). God was not giving Moses a brand-new law on Mount Sinai. He was merely giving a codified, or formal, version of His law so that it could be used to govern the emerging nation of Israel…

The article then goes on to illustrate instances of such laws existing prior to Moses.

Let’s pick up the store in Exodus 19 and Exodus 20

^NIV.Ex.19.20 The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up ²¹ and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. ²² Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”  …

^NIV.Ex.20.1 And God spoke all these words:

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³ “You shall have no other gods before^[a] me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.  …

It’s verses 4-6, which we call the second commandment — see the post from last month where we break them up into commandment 2a and 2b — where we want to focus. It’s reiterated in verse 22

²² Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites this: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: ²³ Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.

Then, for nearly a dozen chapters, God gives Moses instructions for worship, and also some amplification of the “big ten” commandments given. But then he tells Moses it’s time “get down to earth” because there’s trouble stirring.

^NIV.Ex.32.1  When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

² Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”…

^…7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt…

^…15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. ¹⁶ The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

¹⁷ When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”

¹⁸ Moses replied:

“It is not the sound of victory,
    it is not the sound of defeat;
    it is the sound of singing that I hear.”

¹⁹ When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.

Moses returns to see the people breaking the second commandment which was cited above. And he is livid. In his anger and frustration he shatters the “big ten,” which we’re told God Himself engraved.

It’s a very Moses thing to do. In his anger he will later strike a rock he is told to simply speak to, and that particular act of anger costs him entry into the promised land.

But here’s my point.

Before I started writing this, I gave it the title, “As Ten Commandments Tablets Shatter.” I was thinking about Moses and what the people did in his absence. But I was also thinking about pastors and church leaders today.

Depending on whose statistics you read, in North America 1,200 or 1,500 pastors resign (quit) from ministry each month. While conservatives are busy arguing about women in ministry, it’s probably a good thing some of those women are in place, because the mostly-men pastoral workforce is abandoning ministry in droves.

There are a number of reasons, but I’m sure one of them is frustration over the lack of spiritual dedication among the parishioners. Or, as Moses observed, a flagrant disregard for the will of God.

So figuratively, over a thousand each month are throwing the tablets up in the air and letting them crash to the ground while literally, they pack up of their church office library and dust off their resumés and begin to look for another career path.

Vocational ministry life can be frustrating. I write that even as a member of my immediate family prepares to enter into a greater level of vocational pastoral commitment. I am sure that like Moses, I would get exasperated by what I would see and would want to toss the tablets up in the air as well.

In North America, October is designated as “Pastor Appreciation Month,” however if people were serious about appreciating their pastor, they would, to use an archaic word, “harken” more to the things about the ways of God that he or she is trying to teach the congregation. Yes, they should live a certain way because it’s what God desires and what God requires, but there should also be a recognition that the very reason this person has been set apart for career ministry is to teach them such things with the expectation that they will follow.

Otherwise it’s all just empty words and meaningless worship.

Are there “ten commandments” violations that you see that would cause your pastor/rector/priest to want to toss the stone tablets in the air?

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Related:

• April, 2015 – How Christ Kept All Ten Commandments
• February, 2016 – The 613 Commandments
• February, 2019 – Will We Be Judged by The Ten Commandments Standard?
• March, 2020 – The Ten Commandments Expressed as Forms of Stealing (see especially the graphic image)
• September, 2021 – What Was the Law Prior to The Ten Commandments? (this is a different one from the link in the above article)

 

 

Mothers Prayers

Today something a bit different, as we look at mothers interceding for their children, both in scripture, and with contemporary examples.

Last week I met Canadian pastor Rev. Bruce Pero for the first time, who has just written Teachings from God’s Word. You can learn more about the book by clicking this link. Bruce graciously supplied us with a devotional to share with you today.

So many times, down through the ages, we have heard it said there is nothing like a mother’s prayer. That is so true, even today. Let’s take a look at situations where mothers’ prayers prevailed. We are going to talk about a number of mothers.

The first is Moses’ mother found in,

^{NIV.Exodus.2.1} Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, ² and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. ³ But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

⁵ Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ⁶ She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

⁷ Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

⁸ “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. ⁹ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰ When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

Can you just imagine the prayers that went up from Moses’ mother. The joy she felt as God took care of her son; not to mention, the plan God had for Moses in leading the children of Israel out of bondage.

A comparative example for today is John Hagee who also had a wonderful praying mother. For years John’s mother, a God-fearing, praying lady, had asked God for a minister among one of her sons, and she believed John was the one. So many times, as John would sneak in, after a late-night out with his friends, he would go past his mother’s bedroom door and hear her crying out to God for him; that God would watch over her son and make him the preacher, she knew, God wanted him to be.

John would often say to his mother, “If you are praying for me, stop because when I turn eighteen, all you will see is the dust from my feet, going down the street.” But when we have a praying mother and she will not quit, God has another plan. Just one week before John was to register at West Point, God, through his mother’s prayers, radically changed his direction, and just a short time later, he registered at Oral Roberts University.

That was over fifty years ago; all because of the prayers of a righteous mother.

Today, we know John as John Hagee Ministries from San Antonio Texas, one of the biggest ministries in the United States. John is the forty-seventh member of his family to be in ministry.

Another righteous mother we can think of is found in 1 Samuel.

^{NIV.1Samuel.1.20} So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”

²¹ When her husband Elkanah went up with all his family to offer the annual sacrifice to the Lord and to fulfill his vow, ²² Hannah did not go. She said to her husband, “After the boy is weaned, I will take him and present him before the Lord, and he will live there always.”

²³ “Do what seems best to you,” her husband Elkanah told her. “Stay here until you have weaned him; only may the Lord make good his word.” So the woman stayed at home and nursed her son until she had weaned him.

²⁴ After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. ²⁵ When the bull had been sacrificed, they brought the boy to Eli, ²⁶ and she said to him, “Pardon me, my lord. As surely as you live, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. ²⁷ I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. ²⁸ So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.

Another amazing and righteous lady that we can think of today, to compare to Samuel’s mother, is often referred to as Sister Hannah.

When some of you hear this name, you will know who I am referring to. But in her son’s own words, “Sister Hannah?…God’s gift to me.” Chuck Price told his story.

After dad died, I was sixteen and rebellious, so off I went and joined the CNR, working on a gang crew. We were stationed about three and one-half hours west of Toronto. I had not told a soul where I was going, but no worries, Mom prayed, and the Holy Spirit said, “Go.” directing her miraculously to the very street where we were clubbing it up. Long story short; she parked her car one block from the bar I walked out of. During that part of my life, Mom’s prayers protected me until I could run no further.

In ministry, she would call late Sunday evenings… “I knew you were up Chuck still wrestling through the preached word and lack of response. You know Chuck, when you preach, there is not always an immediate result. Let me pray with you and then, get some sleep.”

Even in death, Dec. 2009 Mom had dementia and could not always remember everything, but she could still pray. So thank God for a praying mom.

– Pastor Chuck Price

The fifth and final man that we will look at, with an amazing, fearless, praying mother and father, was a very gifted and talented singer.

He was also a very good athlete, excelling in baseball. When he was young, the Lord revealed the call that He had on his life. Like all God-fearing, praying mothers, his mom got a hold of this; like a dog with a bone, determined not to let go. When this young man was old enough, he left home to make his way with a music career. Just when he was about to sign a major recording contract, he became extremely ill. He returned home, where he spent some time in bed.

Quite often he would hear his mother praying for him. Then one evening as his dad entered the room to say goodnight, as he always did, his father had a vision from the Lord. God revealed to him that his son was to enter the ministry, and he saw hundreds of thousands of people being ministered to and giving their lives to Christ and many more getting healed.

Oral Roberts shared this with his son. Shortly thereafter, Richard Roberts signed up at Oral Roberts University, starting one of the largest ministries going today. Since this happened, Richard’s mother and father have passed, but until his mom died, she never stopped praying for her son, Richard Roberts. He took over his dad’s ministry with a double anointing on his life, and it all began with his mother’s prayers.

For those who may not understand what the anointing is, it is the power and wisdom that God put on our being through the Holy Spirit so we can accomplish The work we are to do. So a double anointing would give us twice the power to accomplish our work. So you see, through the ages, the strength of a mother’s prayers, your prayers, have been proven over and over again to defeat any situation that comes along.

I am sure, that every time a mother gets down on her knees for her children or any situation, the Devil is cringing in his boots because nothing can win over against a mother’s prayers.

I even asked my mother if she ever thought, when we were growing up, she would have any of her children in ministry; not to mention, by this June, in 2011, she will have five in the ministry. She said she, “had always prayed for one to make it but never dreamed five would make it.”

So mothers, don’t ever give up praying for your children, grandchildren, husbands, or anything you need in your life. God will not let your prayers return to you void. Amen.

 

Making Rest an Act of Worship

Today a new writer to introduce, but with a twist. Shannon Birney is actually someone who lives locally to us, and with whom I’ve had a number of personal interactions. (We’re even friends on Facebook, where I first read today’s thoughts.) She describes herself, “I’m just a twenty-something who loves God and wants to share what I’m learning and what He’s teaching me during my time on earth!” She writes occasionally at Simply Shannon. You can also get there by clicking the link in the header below.

The Worship of Rest

“God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord.  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them. 

 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

 “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’”

Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.“
[Exodus 6:2-9]

As I was reading this I was struck by verse 9 – “They did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor.”

It really must have seemed too good to be true, that God might deliver on His promises – in the previous chapter Moses had gone to pharaoh and though the Israelites were already slaves they were suddenly being worked even harder and life had become truly exhausting.

They didn’t have the energy to consider listening, it was one more thing on top of the ‘daily grind’.

I don’t blame them, I’ve had days and weeks like that myself – where I’m just too tired physically, mentally or emotionally to be in a position to want to hear from God.

And so it’s especially beautiful that after God has lead them up out of Egypt and given Moses the 10 commandments that He makes one of those commandments to have a sabbath day – right after the first three commandments [To not have any gods before him, make idols, or misuse the name of God] He asks His people to make sure they have a day of rest.

God knows if his people don’t have time for rest – freedom/respite from their labor – they won’t have the time or energy to listen to God – just as when they were in Egypt.

And so rest has become an act of worship! 

By the time of Jesus’s ministry in Israel the Pharisee’s had turned the sabbath day into a regimented day of restrictions (which doesn’t sound very relaxing), they had lost the heart of the sabbath day and condemned Jesus for healing on that day [Matthew 12:11-12]. 

To be able to take a break, and just make time to enjoy and delight in the presence of God – that is the point of worship.  This example comes to mind from the New Testament:

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.

She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 

 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.
Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”” 

[Luke 10:38-41]

Martha’s preparations and work were an act of worship (not necessarily a bad thing) – although Mary chose better – she took a break to sit at Jesus’s feet and just listen – her resting was an act of worship, and what was really needed.

Not only did God make rest to be an act of worship but it was something God himself did, after he made the heavens and earth He rested [Genesis 2:2-3].

It’s something people are made to feel almost guilty about in Western culture especially, to hustle until we crash and burn is not something God intended.

The heart of the fourth commandment still stands: Have a sabbath day – it might not be Sunday, and it might look different for everyone.

Some may take it quite literally and have a nap, it might be a walk out in nature, enjoying a book, spending some time laughing with friends, painting something beautiful, playing around on the guitar, baking or gardening – while none of these are particularly spiritual practices in themselves they are refreshing to the soul and activities in which God can be invited into and space to hear from Him what He wants to speak to you.

That’s the worship of rest; and the rest of worship follows when we are refreshed and ready to listen. 

The Most Important Decision We Face

Thinking Through Deuteronomy 30:15-20

by Clarke Dixon

We live in an era of seemingly unlimited choices. This means we are confronted with so many decisions, perhaps too many. There is such a thing as decision fatigue as we are bombarded with having to make a multitude of decisions daily. This might explain why I start each day with the exact same breakfast, porridge. That is one less decision on my plate!

The other, and greater, problem, is that with all the decisions we make in a day, a week, a year, a lifetime, the most important decision we face gets lost. What is that decision? Let us go to Deuteronomy 30:15-20 for a hint.

The Book of Deuteronomy captures what Moses said to God’s people as they prepared to enter the Promised Land. This was an important new beginning for the people who had spent the last forty years in the wilderness following their rescue from slavery in Egypt. As they stood at the edge of the Promised Land, Moses called the people to make a decision:

“Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster.

Deuteronomy 30:15 (NLT)

While it sounds like the people are to choose between life and good, or death and bad, that is not the real decision that is to be made. Those are the consequences of the decision that must be made:

For I command you this day to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, . . .

Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life.

Deuteronomy 30:16-17,19,20 (NLT emphasis added)

The decision is whether to be in a love relationship with God, or not.

God had already called this one people into a special relationship through the call of Abraham. God brought them out of slavery in Egypt and provided for them in the wilderness. God gave them the law and made promises about the future. In other words, the people were called to decide whether or not to be in a love relationship with the God Who had already decided to be in a love relationship with them. God had already made his choice. He chose this people, Israel, to be a special people through whom He would work out His purposes for the world. Now it was their turn to commit to the relationship.

There were consequences to their decision. It was as if God was saying “I choose you, we can do this life together, or you can be on your own. Of course, being on your own will not go well, for there are big bad nations out there who will want your land for resources and security, and your people as slaves. But if you want to do life with me, I will be with you, and protect you.”

Today, God offers to be in a love relationship with each one of us through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

We each face a decision on whether or not be in that love relationship God offers. God has already made His choice, and that choice was made clear at the cross. God chooses a love relationship with us. Do we choose to be in that love relationship? There are consequences to what we choose. God will either be in our future, or not. That is our decision to make. Has a lifetime of decision-making pushed this, the biggest decision of our lives, onto the back-burner?

This one big decision, to be in a love relationship with God, will be reflected in every little decision.

The call to love God was accompanied with a call to follow God’s ways: “love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways” (verse 16). This would affect all of life’s decisions. God’s people could not be in a love relationship with God and live like the Egyptians, or the Assyrians, or the Canaanites, or anyone else. Choosing to be in a love relationship with God meant being different, marching to the beat of a different drummer.

Some may think of God’s law negatively, like it was a straight jacket and all about control. It was, however, really about becoming a better people and a more just society. We might read the Old Testament law and think, “what, they didn’t get to eat bacon?!” The Canaanites might think “what, they don’t need to set their children on fire?!”

Through the law, God’s people had the opportunity to be freed from foolish and evil practices, from the injustices that plague unjust societies. Reading the Old Testament prophets, the concept of justice comes up often. They often mention how the Israelites failed to follow God’s ways, failing to take care of the most vulnerable of their society. Through following God’s ways the people would be salt and light in a tasteless and dark world. In choosing to be in a love relationship with God, and in allowing that one decision to shape all their decisions, God’s people would be taking steps toward the Kingdom of God.

Today, a love relationship with God will be reflected in every choice we make.

Spirituality is not something we fit into a time slot each day. Spirituality is at the centre of our being, affecting every decision.

Let’s not assume that the way we allow our decision to be in a love relationship with God shape all our decisions is by listing every rule we find in the Bible. We are not old covenant people, so to blindly apply every rule we find in Deuteronomy would be to miss the moment that we live in, the love relationship with God that we are offered. We are new covenant people, with a focus on Jesus, his teaching and example. Through following Jesus we take steps toward the Kingdom of God.

The Christian walk is more about heart work than keeping a set of rules. Developing character is hard work and takes a lifetime. It also takes God’s Spirit.

To choose a love relationship with God is to choose God every time over everything else that would want our allegiance.

But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

Deuteronomy 30:17-18 (NLT emphasis added)

When we read the Old Testament prophets, we discover that God’s people were often likened to a faithless spouse. Sometimes they did worship other gods, which meant that sometimes they did live according to the lifestyles and standards of other nations. Sometimes they did end up sacrificing their children. Seemingly the Canaanite god Molech liked that kind of thing. The God Who led the people out of Egypt did not. GOD offered them a love relationship, but GOD must be their only God.

Today, there are many gods looking for our allegiance.

Money can accomplish great things. However the love of money can turn it into a god, the worship of which affects so many other decisions. Sex is a wonderful gift of God. However the love of sex can turn it into a god, the worship of which affects other decisions. Similar things can be said of power, image, fame, family, celebrity, alcohol, influence, politics and so much more. These things and more can become like gods to us, negatively impacting our capacity to make godly and wise decisions. For a society that has largely rejected God and the supernatural, we sure do have many gods.

In conclusion.

We live in an era of seemingly unlimited choices, we are therefore confronted with so many decisions. There is one decision we face that is greater than any other. It is making a choice that is more important than choosing vocation, location, or even marriage partner: What are we going to do with God’s offer of a love relationship?

If we choose to be in a love relationship with God, all our decisions will be shaped by that one decision. If we choose to be in a love relationship with God, we will make the effort to identity and cease the worship of any gods that may be affecting our decisions.

GOD has already made His choice. Have you?

Are You Glass Half-Full or Glass Half-Empty?

Thinking Through Exodus 15

by Clarke Dixon

Are you a glass half-full kind of person or a glass half-empty kind of person? If you are not sure, your friends and family can probably tell you! In the Bible we come across a people who could be described as neither, but in a manner which might describe us even better.

Let us consider God’s people in the moments after they had just crossed the Sea and escaped the Egyptians:

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD:
“I will sing to the LORD,
for he has triumphed gloriously;
he has hurled both horse and rider
into the sea.
The LORD is my strength and my song;
he has given me victory.
This is my God, and I will praise him—
my father’s God, and I will exalt him!
The LORD is a warrior;
Yahweh is his name! . . . .

Exodus 15:1-3 (NLT)

And on the song continues with praise to God for the incredible rescue. And of course this is entirely appropriate, for God has pulled through for a tiny people in the face of a large powerful oppressor. Let us remember that they had been slaves for hundreds of years, they were not trained for battle, they were not prepared for battle, and yet here they were, with their backs up against the wall, or rather a sea, with a big trained professional army eager to follow orders to destroy them. Any bystander would know how this is going to pan out. Except that they wouldn’t, for God’s people had a secret weapon; God.

“The enemy boasted, ‘I will chase them
and catch up with them.
I will plunder them
and consume them.
I will flash my sword;
my powerful hand will destroy them.’
But you blew with your breath,
and the sea covered them.
They sank like lead
in the mighty waters.
“Who is like you among the gods, O LORD—
glorious in holiness,
awesome in splendor,
performing great wonders?
You raised your right hand,
and the earth swallowed our enemies.

Exodus 15:9-12 (NLT)

The Hebrew people walked safely through the Sea, young and old alike, while the big bad army on the other hand, were sunk. This song was a “WOW” moment for God’s people, a moment of praise and thanksgiving for what God had just done.

While they stood and reflected on the miracle they had just experienced, they also looked forward:

“With your unfailing love you lead
the people you have redeemed.
In your might, you guide them
to your sacred home.
The peoples hear and tremble;
anguish grips those who live in Philistia.
The leaders of Edom are terrified;
the nobles of Moab tremble.
All who live in Canaan melt away;
terror and dread fall upon them.
The power of your arm
makes them lifeless as stone
until your people pass by, O LORD,
until the people you purchased pass by.
You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain—
the place, O LORD, reserved for your own dwelling,
the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established.

Exodus 15:13-17 (NLT)

The song began with what God had just done, but closes looking forward to what God promised to do. The miracle at the Sea was a “WOW” moment, and the promises are “WOW” promises.

So are God’s people glass half-empty kind of people, or glass half-full kind of people? God’s people as we find them in Exodus 15 are something else altogether, they are a glass quite-full kind of people!

For three days . . .

Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without finding any water. When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means “bitter”).
Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded

Exodus 15:22-24 (NLT)

Then a little later, and a little further into the wilderness,

Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elim and journeyed into the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the fifteenth day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt. There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron.
“If only the LORD had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

Exodus 16:1-3 (NLT)

In no time at all, God’s people went from glass quite-full kind of people to glass knocked-over kind of people.

Perhaps that might be a good description for us. We may be neither glass half-full nor glass half-empty kind of people, but glass knocked-over kind of people. Our moods, thoughts, and attitudes may be all over the place and depend on situations and circumstances. We might be going along quite well with our glasses quite-full, life being good, then we get focused on the problems at hand, or the people in our face, and over the glass goes. We go from hopeful about the future to anxious, from confident in the present to nervous, from relaxed about life to stressed out, from ready to take on the world to unprepared to even get out of bed. From glass quite-full to glass quite-empty in the time it takes for a glass to fall over.

Is there a better way?

How might things have turned out if God’s people kept singing that song from chapter 15 while in the wilderness? What if that song was not a top-of-the-pop-charts-for-just-one-day kind of song, but one they sang every day in the wilderness?

When they ran out of water, if they were singing about how God helped them in the past despite the odds being seemingly stacked against them, maybe they would think to seek God in the present. If God can deal with the army problem, God can do something about the water problem.

When they ran out of food, if they were singing about God’s promises for the future, maybe they would think to seek God in the present. Since God had rescued them in the past and made promises about their future, then just maybe they could trust him with today instead of assuming the worst?

What about us?

Are we singing songs of praise and thanksgiving enough? Are we remembering God in our lives, that when trouble hits, God is our first thought and not our last resort, that when life gets rough, trust in God is something we just do, and not something we must try to muster up? Are we continually getting our hearts and minds in tune, ready for what is next, whether good or bad?

If God’s people could sing of being rescued from Egypt in Exodus 15, we have an even greater rescue to sing about. The Lord has rescued us from all that separates us from Him. The Lord has rescued us from death, though Jesus.

If God’s people could sing about the promised land, we can sing about even bigger promises now. The Lord has promised to be present with us. The Lord has promised eternal life with Him through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The Lord has promised us His Kingdom coming, and leads us to move toward it in the here and now.

Thinking of our tag-line at Calvary Baptist Church of “helping people walk with Jesus,” it can feel like an uphill battle trying to get people excited about the possibility of walking with Jesus. It should be harder to convince Jesus to want to walk with us. But Jesus takes no convincing, on the contrary, Jesus “took the nails”. That’s God’s love, that’s God doing what God does because God is love.

That’s a song worth singing, a tune to get stuck in our heads! So when trouble strikes, and it will, we know God is going to get us through it, because God is not some idea we contemplate from time to time, but One with Whom we walk every day in a trust relationship.

Thanksgiving may be just one day in the year, but gratitude is a song we can sing daily, bringing focus on the reality of God walking with us in the past, future, and present, bringing focus to the reality of God and the reality of God’s love. Praise and thanksgiving remind us that we can trust God. When we live a life of gratitude to God, trust will be something we do daily and will not be something we must muster up when hard times hit.

Perhaps this is worth an experiment. What if for a week, or a month, each morning we think of something God has done for us in the past, plus something God has promised for our future? We might want a Bible and a notebook handy! What if we start each day with a “song” of praise and gratitude?

A life lived in praise and gratitude is a life anchored to the reality of God’s love for us. When we are anchored to the reality of God’s love for us we won’t be glass half-empty or glass half-full kind of people, we won’t be full glass-knocked-over kind of people, we will be cup-runneth-over kind of people.

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Clarke Dixon is a pastor in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. This devotional is based on a sermon which can be seen here.

Our True Home, Our Refuge from Change

Thinking Through the Life of Moses

by Clarke Dixon

Home is the one place where we are sheltered from the onslaught of change, right?

Everything else changes, our world changes, our society changes, people change, we change. Recently upon standing and seeing my hair on the floor I wondered why my barber has started only cutting the grey hairs. We change and we may not like it. We may not like any change.

Home is a refuge from all that change, it is the most stable thing in our lives, the one thing we can depend upon to not change, right?

Unless you are Moses.

Actually, unless you are most of us!

Let’s think about Moses’ sense of home for a moment. If we could ask Moses what he considered “home” what would he say? He might say it was his family and people of origin, among whom he was born. Or he might say that home is where he had his first memories, among the Egyptians that he grew up with. He might say that home is in Midian where he settled down with a wife and family from yet another people, having fled Egypt. Yet God called him from that new home, and that new people, to be at home among his clan of birth, God’s people, who had made a home in Egypt, to lead them to a new home, the Promised Land, a new home that Moses would never step foot in. Instead Moses spent the last forty years of his life leading the people around the wilderness.

You could say that Moses spent most of his life pitching tents, and never really settled in one home. His life was a journey to his true home.

How would Moses have answered that question “where is your true home? Where does your sense of stability come from?”

There was one constant in Moses’ life, one thing that remained the same throughout, and remains the same for Moses even now; God.

One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”
When the LORD saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

Exodus 3:1-4 (NLT)

God first appeared to Moses in a bush which was burning, but not consumed by the fire. Is there anything in our lives that cannot be consumed by fire? Take a look around, in the event of a massive fire, would anything be left untouched and unchanged? There is a hint here, that everything in our lives can be taken from us or destroyed, but only with the presence of God can there be any hope of something that endures. Only with God can we find a home that cannot be destroyed or taken from us.

But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?”
God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.”

Exodus 3:13-14 (NLT)

As we read through the Old Testament we often see the word “LORD,” written with all capitals, but not many people know why. It stands in for God’s divine name, which in Jewish tradition, would not be pronounced out of respect. When coming across the divine name in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish people say the word for “Lord” instead. We more or less carry on that tradition as Christians. The point is, God’s name has the idea of existence built right into it.

Only God has existence as part of His essence. God just is. Everything else and everyone else has been created. Everything that is created can also be destroyed. God cannot be destroyed because existence is part of God’s essence.

What is the the one thing we can depend on, the one thing that is not subject to change or can be destroyed, or taken from us? Only God can be our true home, the one constant in our lives.

God was, and continues to be even now, the one constant along Moses’ journey, his true home. Everything else was pitching tents. We may think we are building a home, some might even think they are building, or buying, a “forever” home, but we are always just pitching tents. Whatever home we think we are building will only last for the a season of life, for however long that lasts.

Being at home with God means that this life is a journey home. Being on a journey means saying goodbye, a lot. 

Being on a journey home means saying goodbye to places. Having lived in eighteen different dwellings I am amazed when I meet someone who still lives in the home they were born in. This is now the longest I have lived in any one dwelling, at nine years. Yet whether nine months, nine years, or ninety years, these are nothing compared to being at home with God forevermore. This raises the question, how much do we really want to invest our lives in something we will be saying goodbye to? How much more do we want to invest our lives in being at home with God?

Being on a journey home means saying goodbye to possessions. I have seen pictures of a motorcyclist being buried on his motorcycle. He won’t be riding that where he is going! We have possessions that may be very meaningful to us now, but when we stand before the Lord in the hereafter, when we realize how meaningful Christ is to us, the significance of much we invest in and concern ourselves with now will fall away. How much do we want our lives wrapped up in things we will say goodbye to? How much do we want our lives to be wrapped up in Christ?

Being on a journey home means saying goodbye to people. People come in and out of our lives. Saying goodbye can be very difficult when close relationships are involved. Saying goodbye can be particularly painful when those goodbyes are unexpected and happen far too early. Grief is something we can depend upon experiencing in our journey. Let us learn how to manage it and lean into God through it.

Being on a journey home means saying goodbye to particular ways of thinking.  To give an example, some people are raised, or come to Christianity, with the understanding that every word of the Bible should be taken as historically and literally true. However this does not give space to the fact that there are different genres of writing found in the Bible. Different genres require different approaches in understanding. To give an example, there are those who see a big gap between science and faith based on a very literal and historical understanding of Genesis chapter 1. Some of us, however, have an interpretation of Genesis 1 which sees no war between faith and science (please see this post from the past for more on that). While we make space for those who think differently, a life of faith is a journey of understanding, which means sometimes saying goodbye to ways of understanding that we may have treasured in the past. That can be difficult.

Being on a journey home means saying goodbye to this life as we know it, these poor old bodies as we know them. There are those who get to the point of “goodbye and good riddance.” I remember one dear elderly saint who often said “I’d give anything for a slice of toast.” She lost her home, her health, her independence, and even the ability to eat. She was ready to say goodbye and told me so.

The apostle Paul was also ready to say goodbye:

So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. 

2 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NLT)

When we think of our home being with God in the here and now, we have courage for the journey, even that final journey home in the hereafter.

In conclusion,

Knowing that our home is with God means being on a journey, and a journey entails much change and many goodbyes. So let us hold onto everything lightly. Let us grasp onto God tightly, knowing that in Christ and through His Holy Spirit, God has a firm grasp of us.

Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

Hebrews 11:13-16 (MSG)

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Clarke Dixon is a pastor in Ontario, Canada. This sermon can be seen preached here.

 

What Was “The Law” Prior to “The Ten Commandments?”

The forum site Reddit has a number of Christianity-related interest areas or what are called “sub-Reddits.” One of these is Ask a Christian. That’s where this question appeared.

Before Moses acquired the 10 commandments and the other specific laws from God, how did people know what God’s “laws and statutes” were?

The above is also a link to read the discussion for yourself. I thought we’d highlight the scripture passages here. Since I have no idea what translations were being quoted, I’m offering everything here in NIV.

The first quoted was Exodus 15:26:

He said, “If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”

That was the basis for the original question:

I noticed Moses hasn’t even received the stone tablets or anything like that yet for the people to know gods laws to begin with.

Were there some pre-existing commands and decrees that I might have missed that the Israelites would have already known about? Were the commandments already existent in some form before this and the Moses tablets were simply a ceremonial “commemorative” edition of what already existed?

The first respondent quoted Genesis 26:5

because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions.”

noting that,

It seems that even before the laws and commandments were written down by Moses, God had given them to others (Abraham and Isaac, and therefore their posterity) orally (up to 700 years earlier), and they were known and kept until Moses wrote them down.

The original questioner (whose Reddit user name I won’t repeat here) said,

Thanks that makes more sense. It’s still strange to me if he expected all mankind to obey and worship him that he didn’t give these instructions and commands to all mankind and not just Abraham.

That brought another response from (…okay another stranger user name):

It’s potentially implied in Genesis that God did exactly that. The extent is uncertain because it’s not specifically recorded, but it’s at least clear that there was some kind of awareness of the God of the Bible outside of what’s recorded in scripture. The most significant example is Melchizedek, who is evidently a priest of the most high God operating in Salem, completely separate from and prior to Abraham.

Less concretely, if the Biblical narrative is broadly correct and all humanity came from Eden, then humanity would all have started from a point of awareness of God. The extent to which he laid out his commands following Eden is not clear, but the text seems to imply that at some point they were known before people fell away. For instance, Cain and Abel go to make sacrifices to the Lord – but the sacrificial law hasn’t been recorded at this point. So evidently it was already known in some capacity even before the sacrificial laws were given to the nation of Israel…

The original question (which I only quoted in part) had also mentioned Melchizedek. Is he key to this question? Maybe.

Another person commented,

The first law God ever gave was “Thou shall not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” All through Genesis He establishes laws and practices.

The original poster seemed to be looking for a more complete set of instructions, replying

Where in Genesis? Did I miss it? So far I’ve not seen anything indicative of god giving commandments and laws to mankind as a whole until Exodus (which even then it’s clear its laws are exclusive to Hebrews, no Canaanites. Ammonites, Jebusites etc etc allowed). Prior to that God simply directs individual Hebrew people in specific activities, like Noah building an ark. Or announcements regarding the future as in God telling Abraham he will be the forefather of a large nation which will experience slavery and eventual conquest etc. God telling Jacob not to be afraid to move his family into Egypt. And so on. Again if I missed something in Genesis akin to a Moses like declaration of the law for all people, please kindly direct me to the passage.

He/she seems to be looking for a specific example of a codified set of laws.

But if not, I guess my confusion is, how did god expect mankind to obey him before he provided a clear set of commands to be followed as he did with Moses? And further, how could he therefore see it fit to destroy people for disobeying laws they know nothing about? Instances like Sodom/Gomorrah, the tower of Babel, the “wickedness” prior to the flood. How did any of those people know anything about this god or his expectations if prior to Moses god didn’t yet make himself and his expectations clear?

So someone else provides an example:

Here is one — Genesis 17:10 — This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised;

At that point the discussion got a bit unruly. Social media tends to that, doesn’t it? At no point was anyone suggesting that the circumcision commandment was the only commandment.

But then it got back on track:

Moses is also not the first fella to write stuff down. There’s Enoch way before him, pre-Flood, that was considered a ‘scribe’ of sort, and walked with God. I’m sure he wrote down interesting stuff too..

In the end some Laws are just simply hardwired in our being with conscience, thus written ‘inside’ of us.

That last sentence would foreshadow the answer that would follow:

Paul tells us the law of God is written on our hearts in Romans 2. [Ed. note: See below for full citation] While the Israelites didn’t have a formalized legal system, there was still a knowledge of right and wrong. That knowledge was something they failed to live up to, just as we did, and their faith was counted as righteousness just like our faith is. The formalized legal system was not meant to be the means by which they obeyed God. It was only meant to be the means by which God more directly exposed their failures.

At that point the debate continued mostly over the above comment’s suggestion that, “The formalized legal system was not meant to be the means by which they obeyed God;” a statement which, while I would agree with it, only becomes clear after New Testament revelation; in other words, after we transition from acceptance from God through obedience to acceptance from God through grace.

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The context of Romans 2 concerns those [Gentiles] who did not have the law, but I can also see why it was quoted in the above discussion. Here is the full text of vs. 12-16:

¹² All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. ¹³ For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. ¹⁴ (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. ¹⁵ They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) ¹⁶ This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

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The original question (2nd paragraph of this article) is also the link to the discussion.

If you’re interested in the “Ask a Christian” sub-Reddit more generally, go to this link. If you’re using a PC or laptop, you don’t need to sign up or get the app to read, but you do need to join in order to leave comments. I observed for about a year before joining, but then one day, there was a question I simply had to jump in and ask. There are also other Christianity-related sub-Reddits.

One last verse from the discussion; Genesis 4:7:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

Time Apart

Today we’re back again at Devotions by Chris and a short devotional by Chris Hendrix. Clicking the header which follows will get you there directly.

Alone With God

I was talking with a friend recently about how technology has been both a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side, we have so much information, entertainment and communication in the palm of our hand. Never before in the history of the world have we had such access, but along with that comes the curse. We’ve lost the ability to be alone to think deeply and to pray. We’re constantly interrupted by it going off, lighting up or us using it out of habit. In times past, people had the ability to process, break down and understand the information they had because they had the ability to truly be alone with their thoughts. That ability also provided them with opportunities to be alone with God.

Exodus 3:1 says, “Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro (Reuel) his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb (Sinai), the mountain of God” (AMP). Notice how Moses was in the wilderness alone. It was then that he noticed the burning bush. Verse 3-4 says, “So Moses said, ‘I must turn away [from the flock] and see this great sight—why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he turned away [from the flock] to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’” Moses turned away from his distraction, and when he did, God called out to him and met with him.

You will even find this pattern with Jesus. Luke 5:16 says, “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray [in seclusion].” How often do you slip away into seclusion, away from all distractions, and pray? It’s difficult in today’s world.

We must be intentional about it. Our minds will give us the fear of missing out or of being out of connection with others, but the truth is that those fears have made us miss out on encounters with God and out of connection with Him. Jesus made it a practice to break away from the crowd and noise of life to be alone with God. With all of our connectedness today, we must be even more intentional about it.

God is waiting to meet you, but you must turn away from the things that distract you first and get alone with Him.

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On a similar theme:

This a short excerpt taken from a larger look at spiritual disciplines from the blog, Running to Him. The author’s name is not listed. Clicking the header which follows will take you there directly.

All In – Spiritual Disciplines

…[L]et’s bring Solitude into the picture. This one is often overlooked among the Spiritual Disciplines, even in my own life. There’s so much noise in the world around us that we don’t take time to be silent with no background noise. A book titled The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry has a whole chapter on Silence and Solitude.

The big question is how can we expect to hear from God if we don’t put in the time to listen to Him? How can we say He’s not speaking if we’re not actively listening to Him? A great way to start putting solitude in your life is to start with one minute of silence. Try not to think about anything. Try not to say anything. Most importantly, try not to have any background noise. Just silence and see how God speaks!

The next spiritual disciple that I want to highlight is another often overlooked discipline. In a world of burnout, stress, anxiety, and overworking, Rest has become increasingly countercultural. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus calls the weary souls to come to Him for rest. Jesus wants us to have rest! He doesn’t want us to be burnt out and stressed all of the time.

A great (and incredibly counter cultural) way to have rest and take Jesus’ light yoke upon us is to have a Sabbath, this was another chapter from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Sabbath is a day of rest and stopping. In the creation story, God worked for six days and stopped on the Sabbath. If God took a day of rest, how much more do we need rest?

This has been a hard truth for me to realize and a hard discipline to put into place… A key way to fight back against this is to see the Sabbath as a gift and not a limitation. Instead of seeing it as “I have to rest today,” view the Sabbath as “I get to rest today.” In Mark 2:27, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath wasn’t made to limit us, it was made as a gift FOR us…

Taking the Land

^{NIV.Johsua.14.6a&7-9} Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him… “…I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly. So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.

A year ago at this time we introduced you to Leiah who writes at Yellow Diamond Blog. Why the name? Her hope is, “that you will discover that you are far more precious and valuable than even a rare yellow diamond.” Her recent writing has been a mix of testimony and Bible study. Click the title to read at source.

You Can’t Take Everyone with You

You can’t take everyone with you.

For nearly a year now I’ve know that the Lord was getting ready to make a shift in my life. I had absolutely no idea how or when it was going to play out. I just knew he was moving me into a long awaited promised land.

I’ve spent hours and hours just imagining what it would be like. I had so many ideas and things I was just really certain about. And finally one day I knew it was time to move forward and take the land. So naturally I summoned others to come too. But as I moved forward, they regressed. Bittersweet isn’t a strong enough word to describe the conflicted feelings I have about this journey so far. I never planned to do it alone. And yet here I am. But you can’t take everyone with you.

I look back on the children of Israel, and I see the difference in the people that crossed over into the promised land, and the ones who didn’t.

The ones who crossed over were willing to face their greatest fears, to face the unknown, and go after the promise of the Lord unapologetically no matter what or who they had to leave behind. They trusted that if the Lord brought them there, He would indeed take care of them there. They knew that even though it looked impossible for them to enjoy the fruits of the land they were entering into, that the Lord intended good for them. They knew that he would heal their hearts of the brokenness they had encountered in the wilderness. They knew that the joy of the promised land would be greater than the sorrow of the wilderness. They knew that there would be an adjustment period, in which they had to go from the “survival of the wilderness” to “thrive in the promised land” mentality. They also knew that maintaining the promised land would require following the Lords instructions meticulously.

I am still in the process of taking the land. I know there will be days I feel defeated, insecure, and want to run back into the wilderness I’ve known for so long. However, I will not turn back. I will set my eyes on Jesus and walk hand in hand with Him towards the life He has for me. I will deal with the trauma of the wilderness. I will not carry those survival mindsets into this new place. I will embrace the goodness of the Lord and all that He has planned for me. I will work hard to embrace this new life. I will open my heart to new adventures with the Lord, and trust that he has equipped me for whatever is ahead.

It makes me sad to think that some people will never experience the promised land in their life. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see fear hold them back. I get it.

It’s terrifying to face the giants in the land.

It’s intimidating to look at all the things in your life that are keeping you from Gods best and tackle them head on.

It’s hard work.

It’s exhausting.

It’s painful and emotional, and confrontational.

It’s all the things I hate.

The process can be long and grueling.

It can take days, months, or even years.

It can take setting boundaries with others,

separating your self from relationships,

saying no to things you’ve always said yes to,

changing your way of thinking,

breaking habits,

being disciplined.

Some days it requires crying until you can’t any more.

Some days you just have to go against everything you’ve ever known and do something different.

It requires taking responsibility for your actions, but at the same time allowing the Lord to reveal the broken places leading you to those actions, and allowing him to heal them.

It takes showing yourself love and compassion while accepting and correcting your biggest failures.

It takes learning who the Lord created you to be, believing what He says about you, and confidently living as that person.

It’s going to require a lot of me to enter into my promised land. It already has in the first few steps towards it. It will require a lot of you too. You won’t want to move towards it some days, in fear of what or who it will require of you next. But remember, it’s YOUR promised land!!! It is the good the Lord intended for YOU!!! He knows who can thrive there with you, and who can’t. TRUST HIM!!! Look at all the times His children took people with them when they weren’t supposed to, and those people cost them their promised land every single time.

Leaving people behind for your promised land is terrifying and heart wrenching. It seems harmless to try and take them with you when the Lord says you shouldn’t. But remember, people don’t value something that isn’t meant for them.

Step out. Move forward. Fight for your promised land with no regrets. The Lord is with you, and for you. He will not let you down. Follow His lead. Hear His voice. Do whatever it takes to defeat those giants keeping you from the fullness of the Lord in your life.

It’s time child. The Lord says you’re ready. Take heart, take courage, take your promised land. ❤️

“but my brothers who went with me frightened the people from entering the Promised Land. For my part, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.”

Joshua 14:8 NLT

 

Before and After: The Veil and the Big Reveal

This week a friend put me on to a 50-minute YouTube podcast of Mike Winger teaching on the prophetic nature of four verses in Proverbs 30 that ended with the passage in 2 Corinthians 3 which follows. I’ve linked to the podcast at the end of today’s reading for those who want to go deeper.

^{NIV.2.Cor.3.13} We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. ¹⁴ But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵ Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. ¹⁶ But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

BibleRef.com sets the stage:

Paul has been comparing the glory of the old covenant between God and Israel and the new covenant of God’s grace for all who come to Him through faith in Christ. The glory of the revelation of God through the old covenant was always fading away and being brought to an end. The glory of God’s revelation of Himself through Christ is eternal. Through faith in Christ, God receives Jesus’ death on the cross as payment for sin and gives credit for Jesus’ sinless, righteous life in return.

The result for him, Paul has written, is boldness and confidence while representing God to others. He has nothing to fear, because his standing before God is not based on his own performance. It is all based on Christ’s righteousness.

Moses, on the other hand, could not be so bold in representing God to the Israelites. Paul is referencing Exodus 34. Moses returned to the people after being with God visibly changed in his appearance. His face reflected God’s glory so powerfully that the people were afraid to come near him (Exodus 34:30). The glory of God was painful to them in their sinfulness. Moses covered his face to protect them from God’s glory. He could not boldly reveal it to them as Paul revealed God’s glory in the person of Jesus.

The Bridgeway Bible Commentary suggests that the veil itself is both literal and symbolic:

After Moses had been away from the presence of God for a while, the brightness of his face faded, but the veil over his face prevented Israelites from seeing this fading brightness. To Paul, this fading brightness symbolized the fading away and eventual end of the old covenant. The permanence of the new covenant, by contrast, gives Paul confidence in all that he says and does (12-13).

At Authentic Christianity, Ray Stedman comes closest to the type of approach I heard in the podcast, even going so far as to title his commentary, “Who is This Masked Man?” (He refers to the veil as a mask, which, you gotta admit, is somewhat timely!)

God loves to teach with symbols. His favorite teaching method is to use a visual aid, a kind of symbol of truth which he holds up before us to instruct us. The “mask,” or veil, which Moses wore is a symbol of the old covenant, that is, the Law, the Ten Commandments, with their demand upon us for a certain standard of behavior. Also, it is a symbol of our natural, typical response to the Law — to try to obey it, either to the point of convincing ourselves that we have achieved it, or to the point of giving up and rebelling against it.

Stedman also gets into the possible motivation for Moses’ motivation for wearing the veil. It may not have been because his face was shining with the glory of God, but that the glory was fading. Just stop and think about that for a minute:

Moses, perhaps, did not understand all this when he put the veil over his face. It is somewhat difficult for us to guess what his motive may have been. Some commentators suggest that he felt that if the people saw that the glory was fading away, they would not pay any attention to the Law, they would disregard it and go on living as they wanted. Others have suggested that, perhaps, he was trying to preserve his own status symbol as a special mediator with God. That is the position I have taken in my book, Authentic Christianity, which deals with this passage. I think that Moses, like many of us, was trying to preserve the reputation he had with the people and he did not want them to see that when he came out from God’s presence the glory began to fade — as many of us do not like people to see what is really going on inside of us. We want to preserve an image of being spiritual giants when actually we are not at all. Our family knows it, but we do not want our friends or anyone else to know. That may be what Moses’ motive was.

The Bridgeway Commentary looks at what happens when someone steeped in the old covenant (i.e. the Jews) places themselves under the new covenant:

In a sense there is still a veil that belongs to the old covenant. It is the veil that covers the minds of the Jews, for they read the Old Testament but refuse to see Christ as its fulfilment. Consequently, they cannot properly understand it (14-15). When Moses went in before the Lord he removed the veil. Similarly, when Jews turn to Jesus Christ, the veil is removed. Through the work of the Spirit, Christ sets them free from the bondage of sin and the law (16-17). Christians also must make sure that there is no veil between them and their Lord. The better they know Christ personally, the more they will be changed so that they become increasingly like him (18).

As Stedman continues, we see the challenge of what we’re doing here, going back and forth between two commentaries where the interpretation of what the veil represents, and its practical applications, differs.

Notice what that is saying. The apostle is very clear that the nature of the darkness, the blindness that lay over the minds of the Jews of his day, which he calls a “veil,” is the same veil that Moses put over his face. Now, obviously, the veil on Moses’ face was a material veil; it was made of cloth. Paul is not suggesting that the Jews walk around with cloth veils on their faces.

Stedman sees the fading taking place as “the terrible end of self-effort,”

… They do not see that the end of all their efforts to try to live a righteous life by their own human resources is going to end in death and condemnation and emptiness and a total sense of futility and waste. But yet, that is what happens.

Paul also calls it a “hardening,” by which he means it becomes a continual condition. It is a state of mind that they enter into. Now, the amazing thing is that, in our day, 2000 years after Paul, this is still true. You can see it in the Jews today. In Orthodox Judaism, and much of Reformed Judaism, and certainly in Liberal Judaism, they are still trying to make it before God on the basis of how they behave.

Again, it’s a longer selection, but if you’re going to read one of the links here to better understand the passage, I would choose either taking the 50 minutes to listen to the podcast link, or read Ray Stedman.

BibleRef returns us to the historical context:

Now Paul adds that the minds of the Israelites were hardened by sin. Even as Moses was receiving the commandments from God, Israel built an idol to worship instead of worshipping the Lord. This disobedience and betrayal of God resulted not just in punishment from Him but in a hardening of their minds to see His glory. The glory was revealed in God’s Word to them, but they could not, would not, see it.

Nobody can see God’s glory, Paul adds, because of this veil created by sin. It keeps us from understanding what is true until it is removed through Christ. In other words, only those who come to God through faith in Christ are freed from the veil and given the ability to begin to receive God’s glory. Why? Because in Christ, their sin is forgiven and replaced with Jesus’ righteousness.

On a later page, it adds,

We cannot remove this veil ourselves no matter how sincerely we want to or how diligently we study or how desperately we try to obey.

I held back verse 18 to the end so it might be our final thought:

^{NLT.2.Cor.3.18} So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

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Here is the link to the podcast by Mike Winger that got me interested in this text: Jesus is Prophesied in the Book of Proverbs. (The Corinthians passage comes up close to the end.)

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Teaching the text — advice to pastors at WorkingPreacher.org from Karl Jacobson:

…[I]t may be necessary to say a quick word about the inter-testamental tension here. There may be a tendency, and perhaps even a temptation, to read this allegory of Paul’s as an outright rejection of the Old Testament. Phrases like “not like Moses,” and “their minds were hardened,” and even simply the “old covenant,” may seem to suggest that Paul is doing exactly this, rejecting “Moses” and his obscured, clouded, veiled word. But for Paul, there is no true disconnect between the Torah and the Testament to Christ. As the second reading from last week showed the gospel (or as 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 has it, the truth) is very much in keeping with the Old Testament, with the scriptures of the tradition.

At stake here are questions of antinomianism, of supersessionism, of simplistic ideas of “Old Testament = Law, bad and New Testament = Gospel, good.” Along with these often goes “Christian believer = good, Jewish believer = bad.” This is not, finally, what Paul is about. Paul does not dismiss the Old Testament.

At the same time the essential claim for Christ is an essential claim, it is particular, and quite uncompromising. While Paul does not reject the Old Testament, the old covenant, he does argue for a particular reading of it, one that is possible only in the Spirit, who brings freedom from blindness, and veiled minds (3:17)…

Looking at the Face of God

If we compiled a list of the five authors we’ve featured here most often, Elsie Montgomery would be in that list.  She has been faithfully writing daily at Practical Faith since 2006.

For 2021, she decided to do something different, and use the alphabet to provide word prompts for themes. “God directed my thoughts to the alphabet and 2×26 equals the weeks in a year, and that He can be described by many English words beginning with those 26 letters.” (Never say you can’t think of anything to write!)

As always, please support our contributing writers by clicking through (it send them traffic) and reading this on her site. Click the article title which follows.

Seeing God?

During their wilderness travel, the Israelites sinned and Moses interceded for them. In that conversation, he asked God to “Please show me your glory” but God said to him:

(Exodus 33:19–23) “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

I picked FACE as a word about God for today. In Hebrew, FACE is a plural noun. It means “the presence or proximity of someone understood in terms of the face; with the implication of being before or in front of them.” This supports the idea that much can be known about someone by the look on their face.

However, God says no one can see His face and live. Then other passages speak of seeing the face of God. This stumped me. I found an article in a theological word book about this Hebrew term. The section is long but the content is helpful. Here are a few main points:

The face identifies the person and reflects their attitude and sentiments, much the same as we talk about how another person feels according to their facial expression. In the Bible, “face” can also refer to behavioral patterns as well as revealing human emotions, moods, and dispositions.

For instance, a “hard” face indicates defiance, impudence, ruthlessness. A “shining” face is evidence of joy while a “shamed” face points to defeat, frustration, humiliation. A “fallen” face indicates very strong anger or displeasure. The phrase “to hide one’s face” means to show aversion or disgust and “to turn away the face” is to reject.

There are more examples, many of which are applied to God. God’s face “shines” as a sign of favor and good will, or “falls” in anger. He also may “hide” his face. The phrase “to see God’s face” probably indicates someone is visiting the sanctuary to worship. It includes “to see” or “to appear” suggesting the idea of “appearing before” God rather than seeing His face even though it is said that Jacob and Moses saw God “face to face.” Even so, Moses, Elijah covered their faces in God’s presence. These who saw Him were overwhelmed with astonishment and gratitude and awe.

In the New Testament God is manifested in Jesus. John 6:46 says “Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.” He is not only the Word through whom God is heard but also the image through whom God is seen.

(Hebrews 1:3) He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . . .”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. My eyes cannot ‘see’ the face of God nor do I get a full look at the face of Jesus Christ, yet when He walked on earth He was ‘seeable’ — His disciples could say, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) and “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)

Their testimony helps me see the face of my God and Savior. It also makes sense of the reason why the Bible tells me to keep my focus on Jesus because by seeing Him, I am transformed to be like Him. This is the blessing in this pandemic isolation — for it has given me the time and motivation to draw near and see Him more clearly, not so much His face but the wonderful qualities of who He is.

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What can be known about God? For starters we can know he exists. Here’s a bonus article from the same writer, The Fundamental Truth.