This multi-part expository study was preached at Flagstaff Christian Fellowship in 2018. Audio and manuscripts are available for each lesson.
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January 21, 2018
If you’ve ever been through boot camp, you’re familiar with the phrase, “Hurry up and wait!” They roust you out of bed at 5 a.m. and expect you to get ready and be in formation by 5:05. Then you stand there for 20-30 minutes before the drill instructor shows up and tells you what to do next. “Hurry up and wait!”
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you know what it means to wait on God. God’s ways are not our ways and His timing is often not our timing. But what if you waited on God your entire life without hearing from Him? And your kids and their kids and their kids keep waiting, but still no word from God. Centuries have gone by and things are getting worse, not better. You and your people are enslaved by a cruel dictator who is making life miserable. Then, to make matters worse, he orders that all of your male babies be slaughtered.
That’s the situation when the Book of Exodus opens. Under God’s direction, Jacob and his descendants had moved to Egypt to escape from a famine. Jacob’s son, Joseph, was second in charge in Egypt under Pharaoh. He promised to look after his extended family. But after that generation died, we read (Exod. 1:8), “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Fearing that the growing Israelite population could join with Egypt’s enemies in a time of war, the new Pharaoh forcefully enslaved them. Life became hard and bitter. That was the setting for the birth of Moses, who eighty years later would lead Israel out of slavery and toward the Promised Land.
Why should we study the life of Moses? Because arguably, he is the greatest man in the Old Testament. Abraham and David were both great men in God’s plan. But Moses was even greater. He led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, gave them the Law, and built the tabernacle according to the plan he received from God on the mountain. He wrote the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Throughout the Old Testament, the exodus is remembered as the main example of God’s salvation of His people. As the leader of the exodus, Moses prefigures the Savior who leads all who trust in and follow Him out of slavery to sin and into the fullness of God’s promise of eternal life. So we can learn much from the life of Moses.
His story begins in the Book of Exodus. Philip Ryken (Exodus [Crossway], p. 27) sums up the theme of Exodus as, “Saved for God’s glory.” The book falls into three main sections: Deliverance, showing God’s power (1-18); the Law, showing God’s holiness and the holiness He expects of His people (19-24); the Tabernacle, revealing God’s presence in worship (25-40). The entire book shows how God kept His covenant with Abraham by making a great nation of his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. It also shows how God took Israel from bondage to an evil tyrant to servitude to a loving God. At first, they are forced to construct buildings for Pharaoh; by the end, they gladly give to build a dwelling place for God (Tremper Longman III, How to Read Exodus [IVP], p. 48).
In the opening section that gives the history and current conditions surrounding the birth of Moses, the message is:
Because in His time God faithfully keeps His covenant promises, wait expectantly on Him.
This story is so familiar to most of us that we’re in danger of missing the human drama. You have to imagine the daily hardship of starting your work day at sunrise and working under the blazing sun until your whole body aches by sundown. Your task is to make bricks, build cities, and farm fields, not for your own betterment or to provide a better future for your children. Rather, it was all for the benefit of your oppressors. If you didn’t meet your quota, the cruel taskmasters had whips to prod you to work harder and faster. Every night you return to your family exhausted and without hope.
Then, to make matters worse, Pharaoh orders death for all of your newborn sons! You try to hide your son who, thanks to some faithful Hebrew midwives, escaped death at birth. But you realize that his every cry could bring the soldiers to plunge their swords into his little heart right in front of you.
So finally, after three agonizing months of hiding him, your wife concocts a plan (I’m assuming this, but it seems likely). She builds a little wicker basket, covers it with tar, and places your precious son in the river near where she knows that Pharaoh’s daughter bathes. Technically, you’re obeying Pharaoh’s order to cast your son into the Nile. But your hope and prayer is that Pharaoh’s daughter might spare his life. You plant his older sister nearby to see what will happen and you and your wife pray through tears like you’ve never prayed before.
Suddenly your daughter bursts through the door. The plan is working! Pharaoh’s daughter didn’t obey her father’s orders to throw the baby to the crocodiles. Instead, she was moved with compassion. Your daughter suggested a Hebrew nurse for the boy and Pharaoh’s daughter had agreed to the plan! So your wife gets to nurse your son for Pharaoh’s daughter and even get paid for doing it! Hallelujah!
But, the drama isn’t over. After the child is weaned, you and your wife have to give him to Pharaoh’s daughter as her son. Your precious little boy is taken from your arms to be raised by a pagan princess in the decadent palace environment. He will learn the Egyptian language and customs. Will he grow up to know, love, and follow the only true God or will he adopt the gods of the Egyptians? Will you ever be able to visit him and see how he is growing up? Will he remember and love you as his parents, or will his allegiance and love shift to this pagan princess? And, where is the God of Abraham in all of this? Can you trust that He will keep His covenant promises to Abraham and his descendants? But even if you trust Him, there is still the empty ache in your hearts because your son is no longer in your home.
So as we consider some lessons from this story, don’t lose sight of the emotions that Moses’ parents, Amram and Jochebed (Exod. 6:20), faced every day for years as their hearts ached for their son. They were people of faith (Heb. 11:23), but we have to remember that they didn’t know the end of the story when they placed their precious baby boy in that basket and then later had to entrust him to Pharaoh’s daughter. As they continued to live under Pharaoh’s oppression and cry out to God for deliverance, we don’t know whether they ever saw their son again in this life.
Maybe your emotions are all over the chart as you wait on God and cry out to Him through your tears. The lesson from the birth and early years of Moses is: Because in His time God faithfully keeps His covenant promises, wait expectantly on Him. Let’s break that down into three parts:
In Genesis 12:2, God promised to make Abraham, who had no children, into a great nation. When Abraham later despaired because he and his wife Sarah were getting up in years, God confirmed His covenant promise that Abraham’s descendants would be like the stars of heaven (Gen. 15:4-5). God reaffirmed it again and again (Gen. 17:4-5; 22:17). But while Abraham and Sarah finally had the son of the promise after they were physically beyond the age of having children, they didn’t live to see their descendants multiply into a great nation.
The Book of Exodus begins by mentioning that the sons of Israel who came to Egypt numbered seventy persons. But then we read (Exod. 1:7), “But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them.” Pharaoh feared that the Israelites would multiply even more (Exod. 1:10), so he afflicted them, “But” (Exod. 1:12), “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel.” Even after Pharaoh’s command to kill the Hebrew boys at birth we read (Exod. 1:20), “the people multiplied, and became very mighty” (NASB margin, “numerous”).
Why is there this emphasis on the Israelites multiplying? Moses is telling us that in spite of the efforts of the most powerful monarch on earth to thwart God’s covenant promise to Abraham, God is keeping His word! Even Pharaoh can’t stop Abraham’s descendants from becoming as numerous as the stars of the sky or the sand on the seashore! And through Moses and his successor Joshua, God will eventually bring them into the land that He had promised to Abraham. Just before he dies Joshua affirms to the Israelites (Josh. 23:14), “Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed.” So in Exodus 1, the repeated emphasis on the Israelites multiplying shows us that God is keeping His covenant promise to Abraham and his descendants.
Even so, no matter what our trials, even if we lived in a country where the dictator was persecuting believers as Pharaoh was oppressing the Israelites and killing their sons, we must trust that God’s promises will not fail. Even if we die as martyrs, we can trust that King Jesus will return in triumph. Then we will sing (Rev. 11:15): “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” Hallelujah! But …
After God promised Abraham a son at age 75, he and Sarah didn’t have Isaac until Abraham was 100. When Abraham died, the only real estate in Canaan that he owned was the burial cave that he had bought from the locals. Now it had been 400 years since God had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan (Gen. 15:13). It would be 80 more years until Moses led them out of Egypt, and another 40 years before they entered Canaan. After that, they still had to displace the Canaanites, which took another generation or two.
We want God to hurry up and answer our prayers, but His timing is often, “Hurry up and wait!” Once the New England preacher Phillips Brooks was obviously agitated. His friend asked, “What’s the trouble?” Brooks replied, “The trouble is that I’m in a hurry, but God isn’t.” With the Lord, a thousand years are as a day (Ps. 90:4), but with us a thousand years is, well, a thousand years! We’re like the grass and our flesh is like the flower of the grass (Isa. 40:8): “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”
As God declares (Isa. 55:8-9):
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Alfred Edersheim (Old Testament History [Eerdmans], p. 35) points out that God used the very measure by which Pharaoh tried to exterminate Israel as the means which eventually led to their deliverance. If Pharaoh hadn’t commanded that the Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile, his daughter wouldn’t have rescued Moses and he wouldn’t have been trained in all of the wisdom of Egypt (Acts 7:22), which prepared him for his calling. And without Pharaoh’s harsh treatment of the Israelites, they would have been comfortable to stay in Egypt indefinitely. Why go through the hardship of displacing the Canaanites when life was sweet in Egypt?
I’d have picked a competent, young leader. God chose a man whose life was almost extinguished at birth, who failed at 40 and spent 40 years on the sidelines before undertaking his mission at 80, when most men are well into retirement! I’d have picked a leader who would grow to adulthood in a godly home where he would be trained to know the Lord. I’d have spared Moses’ parents the heart-wrenching agony of giving their young son to be raised by a pagan woman. I’d have given Pharaoh a heart attack and put in a new leader who was sympathetic and kind to my chosen people. But God’s ways are not my ways.
If I wanted to make a man into a great nation, I’d give him and his wife a dozen kids and give all those kids and their descendants large families. God picked a barren couple and then waited until they were both past normal childbearing years to give them a son. Then He gave Abraham’s son Isaac a wife who couldn’t conceive for a long time and then finally only had twin sons. God rejected the older, more likeable son, and picked the younger one, a deceiver named Jacob.
When God planned to raise Joseph to second in Egypt under Pharaoh, He put him in prison for the better part of his twenties. When God planned to deliver Israel from Pharaoh’s bondage, He hardened, not softened, Pharaoh’s heart. You can trace the theme throughout the Bible: God’s ways are not our ways. So when He does something in your life that you think is upside down, even when evil seems to be winning, you can trust that He is at work, faithful to His ways. What should you do at such difficult times?
You may wonder, “Why does God make us wait? Why doesn’t He answer my prayers quickly? Why the delay?”
In Genesis 15:13-16 there is what I call a “window shade” text. The shade goes up for a brief moment, you look inside and see something amazing, and the shade goes back down:
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
Probably the “400 years” refers not to the total length of time Israel was enslaved in Egypt, but to the approximate time from God’s covenant with Abraham until the oppression would cease (Jason DeRouchie, How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament [P & R Publishing], p. 314). The fourth generation refers to those who lived in Egypt (Exod. 6:16-20): Levi was the first generation; Kohath, second; Amram, third; Moses and Aaron, fourth. But the eye-popping, “window shade” insight is the Lord’s explanation for why He would allow Israel to be enslaved for those centuries: “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete”!
God has abundant patience and mercy toward sinners, but it does not last forever. At some point which He alone knows and determines, the sins of a people is full and then judgment falls. In the case of the Amorites (Canaanites), Israel under Joshua was God’s means of judgment. Centuries later, after much patience and mercy, God brought judgment on the northern kingdom through the Assyrians and on the southern kingdom through the Babylonians. Centuries after that, God used Titus the Roman general to destroy Jerusalem, which had crucified her Messiah.
Writing to a suffering church that was being taunted by mockers who say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” Peter replied (2 Pet. 3:9): “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” God does not instantly destroy the wicked because of His patience and mercy.
While God was allowing the Amorites to fill up their sins before judging them, meanwhile, back in Egypt, God allowed an evil dictator to arise who had no regard for His chosen people. Pharaoh made life hard and bitter for the Israelites (Exod. 1:13-14). And then as if things weren’t already hard enough, God allowed this cruel tyrant to slaughter off the Hebrew baby boys. While some were spared through the heroic efforts of the midwives and Moses was spared by God’s providence, we can assume that many Hebrew families lost their newborn sons.
So keep in mind that while you wait on God to fulfill His covenant promises, He doesn’t put a shield around you to protect you from all trials. Often the trials increase while you wait. But …
God is not mentioned in Exodus until 1:17, 20, 21, with regard to the Hebrew midwives. He is not mentioned again until 2:23-25, which was years later in Moses’ life. But all the while He was silently, providentially working to bring about His purpose for His people as He had promised Abraham. Moses’ parents trusted God by protecting their son (Heb. 11:23). God protected Moses in the “ark” (the Hebrew word for “basket” in Exod. 2:3, 5 is used elsewhere only of Noah’s ark) and then caused Pharaoh’s daughter to be there at the right time and to have compassion on this Hebrew baby. He allowed Moses’ mother to nurse the child and even get paid for doing so! But He didn’t directly announce His work; it was all behind the scenes.
The same thing is true in the Book of Esther. God is never mentioned in that book, but His “fingerprints” are all over it! He was working providentially to protect His chosen people. And it’s usually that way in your life. You may not be aware of His direct involvement in your difficult circumstances. But you can trust that He is working all things together for your good (Rom. 8:28).
As I said earlier, if Israel had been content in Egypt, they wouldn’t have been open to going to Canaan, in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. If life is sweet, we don’t see our need for the Savior or cry out to Him for salvation. But, their difficult times did not negate God’s covenant promises. The trials that we go through should make our longing for heaven all the greater.
Just as Israel waited for centuries for a “savior” to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, so centuries later the faithful in Israel had been waiting for centuries for God’s promised Savior while they languished under Roman domination. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to the elderly husband of an elderly barren woman and promised to give them a son who would go before the Savior to prepare His way (Luke 1:5-17). When that son, John the Baptist, was born, his father praised the Lord for remembering His holy covenant, which He swore to Abraham (Luke 1:72-73).
Like Moses, that Savior, Jesus, was born under an evil dictator who sought to kill Him. He was delivered from death when Mary and Joseph escaped to Egypt. Like God’s son, Israel, God called His Son Jesus out of Egypt (Matt. 2:15; Hos. 11:1). Like the Israelites, who passed through the Red Sea, so Jesus underwent baptism. Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness; Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. Like Moses, through whom God provided manna, so Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. But, even greater than manna, which Israel ate in the wilderness and died, Jesus proclaimed (John 6:51), “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
Jesus’ death provides eternal salvation from God’s judgment for all who trust in Him. Have you done that? If so, wait on Him! He is faithful. He is coming to fulfill all His covenant promises!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (2)
January 28, 2018
A promising junior executive with IBM involved the company in a risky venture that resulted in a $10 million loss. When Tom Watson, IBM’s founder, called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, “I guess you want my resignation?” Watson replied, “You can’t be serious. We’ve just spent $10 million educating you!” (Christianity Today [8/9/85], p. 67)
God is in the business of using people who have failed. The Bible doesn’t paper over the failures of its heroes. Noah got drunk and exposed himself. Abraham lied twice about his wife being his sister. Isaac did the same. Jacob deceived his father and cheated his brother out of the birthright. David sinned with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered. The disciples all abandoned Jesus at His crucifixion and then doubted the resurrection. Peter denied Jesus and later waffled on the gospel out of fear of the Judaizers. Mark bailed out on the first missionary journey. And in our text, Moses murders an Egyptian, is rejected by his countrymen, flees for his life, and lives in the desert for the next forty years. This story gives us hope that God can use us even after we’ve failed.
D. L. Moody said, “Moses spent his first forty years thinking he was somebody. He spent his second forty years learning he was a nobody. He spent his third forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.” (Henrietta Mears, What the Bible is All About [Gospel Light], p. 33, in Charles Swindoll, Moses [Thomas Nelson], p. 20.) It is from Stephen’s testimony before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:23) that we learn that Moses was about forty when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster and that he spent forty years in the land of Midian before the encounter with the burning bush (Acts 7:30). We joke about students who cram a four-year degree program into five years. Moses stretched his education out to forty years!
Stephen also gives us some insight into what Moses was like when he went out to visit his brethren and killed the Egyptian taskmaster (Acts 7:22): “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.” Although it’s not inspired Scripture, the Jewish historian, Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews [Baker], 2:9:7), says that Moses was being groomed to be the next king, since Pharaoh didn’t have a son. Josephus also reports (ibid. 2:10) that Moses led a victorious Egyptian force against the Ethiopians. Perhaps that’s why Stephen calls Moses “a man of power in words and deeds.”
Why would Moses side with the Hebrew slaves and risk his place in the Egyptian court by killing this taskmaster? This action caused Pharaoh now to see Moses as a traitor who needed to be killed. Hebrews 11:24-26 tells us why Moses did this: “By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward.” (See my sermon, “Faith’s Choice,” 10/31/04.)
So Moses’ intentions were right when he went out to help his suffering Hebrew people. He had given up position, pleasure, and prosperity to take his stand with God’s people (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 62). But he went about his mission in the wrong way, resulting in a forty year detour. From a prince in the palace of Egypt, Moses became a shepherd in the barren wilderness of Midian. From being in the limelight of Pharaoh’s government, Moses went into isolation and obscurity. From being a “somebody,” he instantly became a “nobody.” The text does not tell us what he felt, but he must have battled depression and confusion. His first attempt at leadership had been a dismal failure.
Some believe that Moses was right to kill this Egyptian oppressor (see Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], on Exod. 2:12, p. 47). Calvin believed that Moses was not impelled by rash zeal, but rather acted because he knew that God had appointed him to be the deliverer of his nation (Acts 7:25). But I agree with the majority of scholars who believe that Moses’ action was not in submission to God’s will at that time. And even Calvin (p. 51) acknowledges that the forty years in the desert was God’s school to prepare Moses for his later more difficult assignment. This story teaches us that …
Our failures cannot thwart God’s gracious covenant faithfulness toward His people.
Our text breaks into three main sections:
Someone has observed that one reason life is so difficult is that unlike school, you get the test first and the lesson later. The board of directors at a bank recognized that a young cashier had the abilities they were looking for in a successor to the bank president, who was about to retire. One day this young man went to the president and said, “As you know, I’m to follow you as president of this bank. I’d be grateful for any advice you might have.”
The older man said, “Son, sit down. I’ve got two words for you: Right decisions!” The young man thought for a moment and replied, “That’s helpful, sir, but how does one go about making right decisions?” “One word—experience!” “That’s also helpful, sir, but how does one go about gaining experience?” “Two words,” said the older man, “wrong decisions.” (“Our Daily Bread,” 9/77)
There is only one kind of Christian: those who have failed God. We’ve all struck out, maybe at a crucial point in the game. Moses’ failure reveals six ways we fail:
As I explained, Moses’ choice to turn from the position he enjoyed as Pharaoh’s adopted grandson and from the pleasures and prosperity he enjoyed in the Egyptian palace was a commendable, courageous choice. I suppose that someone could have criticized him, arguing that if he had stayed in the place of power and influence, he could have helped the Israelites. But Hebrews 11:24 tells us that he made that choice by faith in spite of the hardship that he knew it would cost.
But as is often the case right after a person decides to follow God, Moses had zeal without wisdom. Seeing the injustice of the Egyptian beating this poor Hebrew slave made him angry. He rightly thought, “This is wrong!” Whether he landed one fatal blow, ran the Egyptian through with his sword, or what, we don’t know. But he acted on impulse, wrongly thinking that the time had come for him to liberate God’s enslaved people. Acting on impulse, even when it is based on a right principle, such as the desire for justice, is almost always wrong.
Moses’ action reminds me of when Peter pulled out his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and whacked off Malchus’ ear. He was trying to take off Malchus’ head, not his ear! His motive was to defend Jesus, even if he died trying (and he would have died trying to take on a Roman cohort!). But he was wrong. Or, we could compare Moses’ action to a zealous pro-life advocate who kills an abortion doctor. That doctor is murdering babies. It’s right to be angry about such injustice. But killing the doctor is not right.
Or, to give more positive examples, sometimes someone hears a powerful message about how Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of every person who will receive Him. The speaker uses stories that bring tears to your eyes. At his invitation, many get out of their seats and go forward as a moving song is sung. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, the person goes forward to receive Jesus. But, if that decision is based on emotions rather than on understanding the truth of the gospel, it won’t last. Like the seed sown on the rocky ground, when trials hit, the early joy of being a Christian will dry up fast (Mark 4:16-17).
The same could be said about a decision to serve as a missionary or a pastor. Those are good commitments if they’re based on a definite call of God that doesn’t go away after the emotions subside. But it takes far more than being moved by a sense of need or seeing the multitudes without Christ to sustain you in serving the Lord over a lifetime in difficult situations where you’re under attack, criticized, or not appreciated.
There is a huge difference between acting in our strength versus acting in the power of God. At first, like Gideon, whose 32,000 troops had to be reduced to 300 before God could use them, Moses was too strong for God. He was well-gifted and well-trained, but he had not yet learned that the battle does not depend on our skills, but on God’s Spirit. There is no indication in the text that Moses was trusting in God when he took this drastic action.
By way of contrast, on one occasion Nehemiah was before the pagan King Artaxerxes, who asked Nehemiah what he would like the king to do for him. Nehemiah reports (Neh. 2:4-5), “So I prayed to the God of heaven. I said to the king ….” It had to have been a quick, silent prayer! Nehemiah probably shot up, “Give me wisdom, Lord!” and then spoke to the king. But here there is no word about Moses praying or seeking God before he acted.
Chuck Swindoll (ibid. pp. 39-40) thinks that Scripture strongly implies that Moses had come to realize God’s call on his life by this time. He believes that God had already impressed on Moses that one day he would lead his people out of bondage. So he knew God’s will. “But,” Swindoll says (p. 40), “the problem was, he did not bother to seek God’s way and God’s timing.” So he was operating in human strength, not in the power of God’s Spirit.
Swindoll (p. 43) also points out that when you’re well-gifted and well-trained, you’re vulnerable. You’re confident of your ability to get the job done. After all, you had a course on it in seminary and you know the original Greek! Look out! I’m glad that I only got B’s in preaching classes in seminary and I never won any awards. I began as a pastor with a strong sense of inadequacy. I told the Lord that I’d try it for three years and see where I was at. By His grace, God has sustained me for 41 inadequate years now. I am more aware of my inadequacy now than when I started!
We read (Exod. 2:12), “So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” As many have pointed out, Moses looked this way and that, but he never looked up! He was more concerned about being caught by men than about pleasing the Lord. F. B. Meyer (Moses [Christian Literature Crusade], p. 30) observed, “Whenever men look this way and that to see what other men are doing or saying, you may be quite sure that they do not know certainly their Master’s plan; they are … acting from the prompting of their own self-will, though perhaps under the cover of religious zeal.”
C. H. Mackintosh (Genesis to Deuteronomy [Loizeaux Brothers], p 145) comments on Moses’ “looking this way and that”:
There is no need of this when a man is acting with and for God, and in the full intelligence of His mind …. If God’s time had really come, and if Moses was conscious of being divinely commissioned to execute judgment upon the Egyptian, and if he felt assured of the divine presence with him, he would not have “looked this way and that.”
To walk obediently before the Lord, you’ve got to care more about what He thinks than what other people may think. If Paul had been concerned about what others think, he never would have confronted Peter with his hypocrisy in withdrawing from the Gentile Christians in Antioch to please the Judaizers (Gal. 2:11-14). Sometimes people have told me that I was brave to speak out about some issue from the pulpit. Not really—I’m afraid not to speak the truth because I know that very soon I’ll be standing before the Lord to give an account. I don’t want to hear Him ask, “Why didn’t you tell people the truth of My Word?”
Whether God had already called Moses to deliver His people (Swindoll, pp. 39-40) or whether that call came later at the burning bush (Ryken, p. 66), all agree that Moses had no direct word from God at this time to take this drastic step of killing the Egyptian. He was running ahead of God.
Others in Scripture failed in a similar way. Abraham and Sarah were getting worried about their advancing age without having the son that God had promised, so he had relations with Hagar and produced Ishmael. The world is still experiencing the bad consequences of that impetuous mistake! King Saul got nervous that his people would desert him when Samuel didn’t come on schedule to offer the sacrifice. So he “forced himself” and offered it himself (1 Sam. 13:12). But he acted foolishly and as a result, God took the kingdom away from him and gave it to David.
On at least two occasions after David was anointed to be the next king, he had the opportunity to kill King Saul and claim the kingdom he had been promised. But he wisely waited to let the Lord remove Saul in His timing (1 Sam. 24:1-15; 26:5-25). As a rule, if you haven’t waited on the Lord in prayer and sensed that it is His time to take some major action, keep waiting on Him.
Moses buried the Egyptian’s body in the sand, but apparently there had been witnesses to what Moses had done. News like that spreads quickly. Although Moses had tried to cover up what he had done, he panicked as he realized (Exod. 2:14), “Surely the matter has become known.” Very soon, Pharaoh heard about it and Moses had to flee for his life.
Apparently Moses learned his lesson. Years later, he warned the tribes of Gad and Reuben, who wanted to settle across the Jordan, but promised to help the other tribes conquer Canaan, that if they did not keep their promise (Num. 32:23), “… be sure your sin will find you out.” We can’t hide anything from God!
Sometimes we try to hide our sin from ourselves by denying that it really was wrong. But God uses His Word to expose our sins. Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us,
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
Ever since Adam and Eve tried to hide their sin from God, our tendency is to do the same. But God knows everything. He wants us to confess our sins and turn from them. As Proverbs 28:13 tells us, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.”
Moses wrongly assumed that the Israelites would welcome his leadership (Acts 7:25). So the next day when he saw two Hebrews fighting he sought to intervene. “But the one who was injuring his neighbor pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’” (Acts 7:27). In their minds, Moses position in Pharaoh’s court didn’t qualify him to lead or judge them.
You can’t help save people who aren’t interested in salvation but who only want to justify their own sin. And you can’t help a Christian in sin who is not ready to repent. You can and should pray and then try to help. But if you do as Moses seems to have done here, to rush in and intervene assuming that the sinning person wants your help, you’re likely to fail.
Moses fled to the land of Midian, which was either on the far side of the Sinai Peninsula or perhaps across the Red Sea on the western side of Arabia. It is a barren wasteland. The contrast must have been jarring! From having every convenience and luxury in Pharaoh’s palace, with servants waiting on his every desire, Moses was now on his own out in the boondocks. From being surrounded by all of the important, educated, influential people in Egypt, now his only company was a nomadic shepherd family. After earning his Ph.D. in Egypt’s most prestigious university, now his job was to watch a flock of sheep that didn’t even belong to him.
After he helped defend Reuel’s seven daughters against the aggressive shepherds, he settled down to live there, eventually marrying Reuel’s daughter, Zipporah. During the forty years, he had two sons there: Gershom (Exod. 2:22, meaning, “a stranger there”); and, Eliezer (Exod. 18:3-4, “my God is help”). Moses’ forty years in the wilderness was better schooling than his education in all the learning of the Egyptians. He had a lot of time alone to spend with God. Between his family and his shepherding duties, God used those years to develop a servant’s heart in Moses. It prepared him for the next forty years to lead God’s people in the same desert. Failure opens our hearts to our need to learn from God how to overcome the next time. God uses failure to teach us our weaknesses so that in the future we trust in His strength.
Exodus 2:23-25 takes us back to Egypt. The Pharaoh who sought to kill Moses had died. But Israel was still suffering in bondage. Now, it is recorded for the first time that they cried out for help and their cry rose up to God. This is the first mention of God in Exodus 2. It shows that the forty additional years of suffering while Moses was hiding in the desert not only served to prepare Moses for God’s people; it also prepared God’s people for Moses.
Verses 24 & 25 mention God’s name and His action four times: God heard their groaning; God remembered His covenant; God saw the sons of Israel; and, God took notice of [lit. “knew”] them. Of course, these are human ways of speaking about God. He always hears, remembers, sees, and knows His people, as well as all things. But it’s a way of reminding God’s suffering people that He is not oblivious to their troubles. He is concerned and He is about to act on their behalf. (God repeats the same words to Moses at the burning bush, Exod. 3:7-9.) The important phrase is, “God remembered His covenant with Abraham.” That was the main point of chapter 1. God’s gracious faithfulness to His covenant promises is the basis for hope for His people when they are oppressed.
In our case, He doesn’t remember our sins and lawless deeds. He deals with us on the basis of the new covenant in Christ’s blood (Heb. 8:8-13). That doesn’t mean that we’re free to sin. Rather, we can know that our failures cannot thwart His covenant faithfulness.
Although Moses failed at first in his mission of delivering God’s people, Jesus, the prophet who was far greater than Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18), never failed. Like Moses, He was misunderstood and rejected by those He came to save. They challenged His right to rule over them (Luke 19:14). But Jesus always did the things that were pleasing to the Father (John 8:29). He came to offer Himself as the ransom for those who deserve God’s judgment, which is all of us. The question is, “Have you welcomed the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, into your life?” If so, even though you may fail Him, He will restore you and use you in His purpose because He is faithful to His covenant promises.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (3)
February 18, 2018
I love Jonah 3:1: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time ….” The word of the Lord had come to Jonah the first time saying (Jonah 1:2), “Arise, go to Ninevah the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah hated the Ninevites because they were enemies of Israel. And he knew that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness (Jonah 4:2). So he knew that if he went, God would probably pardon the sins of the people of Ninevah. But Jonah wanted no part of that! He wanted God to judge them!
So instead of obeying God’s command, Jonah booked a berth on a ship heading to Tarshish, away “from the presence of the Lord” (Jonah 1:3)—or so he thought! But God sent a fierce storm at sea and then a great fish to swallow Jonah and spit him out on the beach. You may be able to run from God, but you can’t hide! Then we read (Jonah 3:1): “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time ….” God is the God of second chances! And third, and fourth!
When he was forty years old, Moses thought that God was going to use him to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. He also assumed that God’s people were ready to be delivered. So when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, Moses took decisive action and killed the Egyptian. But the next day, when he tried to intervene between two Hebrews fighting with each other, they resisted his attempt at leadership. He realized that his murder of the Egyptian the day before was widely known. Pharaoh wanted to kill him, so Moses had to flee for his life.
He ended up in a remote place in the desert where he met a shepherd named Reuel, also known as Jethro (Exod. 2:18; 3:1), the priest of Midian, who had seven daughters. We don’t know for certain whether Jethro truly knew God at this point, although later he seems to have come to know Him (Exod. 18:1-11). Moses married Zipporah, one of the daughters, had two sons, and tended his father-in-law’s sheep for forty years. Probably as he watched that flock he replayed in his mind many times the events that had led to his being out there in the boondocks. He probably wondered why God had allowed him to go from the center of importance in Pharaoh’s court to this obscure, lonely, insignificant place of caring for a bunch of sheep. He struggled with why God hadn’t used him to deliver His people.
Then one day that began like every day for the past forty years, the old shepherd saw an unusual sight. He was in a region called Horeb, where Mount Sinai was located, when he saw a bush burning with fire but not burned up. He turned aside to check it out when the angel of the Lord called to him from the middle of the bush. The angel told Moses to return to Egypt to be God’s instrument in delivering the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh (Exod. 3:8, 10). In verses 4 & 6 this angel is identified as God Himself. I understand Him to be a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ. In that one instant, Moses’ life and the history of Israel were changed forever.
When we study a story like this, we need to remember that this is a historical account of God’s deliverance of suffering people from slavery and oppression. From that perspective, the story is relevant to many situations in the world today. God is concerned about injustice and the oppression of people by evil dictators. Yet at the same time, because the rest of the Bible refers to the exodus as a picture of God’s spiritual salvation of people enslaved to sin under the cruel dominion of Satan, we can apply this story on that level. It’s showing us how God saves His people:
Salvation is from the Lord for His chosen people through His chosen servants who know Him, know themselves, and know His power and promise for their mission.
In this message, I can only develop the first part: Salvation is from the Lord for His chosen people through His chosen servants who know Him.
After his previous setback Moses didn’t go to a career counselor who helped him devise a new plan to advance his career as the deliverer of Israel. The obvious “mover and shaker” in this story is not Moses, but the Lord who intends to save His chosen people.
God calls the Israelites “My people” (Exod. 3:7). In Deuteronomy 4:37, Moses says, “Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them.” So the Lord chose to set His love on Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. God also reminds Moses of His promise to Abraham to give his descendants the land of Canaan (Exod. 3:8, 17). Although Israel had been in bondage in Egypt now for over 200 years, God had not forgotten His chosen people or His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
This goes back over 400 years to when God first appeared to Abram in the pagan city, Ur of the Chaldees. Abram came from a line of idolaters (Josh. 24:2). God sovereignly chose Abram alone out of that city and commanded him to go to the land which He would show him. He promised to bless Abram, to make of him a great nation, to give his descendants the land of Canaan, and to bless all the nations through his descendants (Gen. 12:1-3; 15:7; 17:1-8). Abraham’s wife Sarah was barren, so they tried to produce the son of the promise through Sarah’s maid, Hagar. But God rejected Ishmael and gave them Isaac (Gen. 17:18-19). Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. God rejected Esau and chose Jacob. But the Lord prophesied to Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved and oppressed in a land that was not theirs before they returned to Canaan (Gen. 15:13-15).
Moses was born during that time of slavery. God spared his life from Pharaoh’s command to kill all the Hebrew male babies. He was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter as her own son. But, by faith he turned his back on his position and riches in Egypt to identify with God’s enslaved people (Heb. 11:24-26). God didn’t choose to save Egypt, but rather the enslaved descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob (Israel).
I’ve always found it ironic that Christians who oppose the doctrine of election because they think it’s unfair don’t have any problem with the fact that God chose the Jews. But by choosing to reveal Himself to Abram, God passed over everyone else in the world. By choosing Isaac, God excluded Ishmael and his descendants from the covenants of promise (Eph. 2:12). By choosing Jacob, God rejected Esau and his descendants. By choosing Jacob’s descendants, the Israelites, God rejected Egypt and all other nations in the world at that time (Deut. 7:7). The Bible is clear that as the holy Sovereign of the universe He created, God was not obligated to save any sinners. But He graciously chose some for salvation. But before God’s chosen people can appreciate or respond to His salvation, they have to feel their need for it.
When Moses had tried to assert himself as a leader over the people forty years earlier, they rejected him. It was only after Moses had been hiding in the desert for some time that the people cried out to God for deliverance (Exod. 2:23). Then we read (Exod. 2:24-25), “So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of [lit. knew] them.”
As I pointed out in our last study, you can’t lead people to salvation who don’t feel any need to be saved. As Ray Comfort humorously illustrates, you can offer parachutes to people who are cruising along comfortably at 35,000 feet, but they’re not going to take them or put them on if the flight is going smoothly. Why put on an uncomfortable, heavy parachute when you don’t need it? Besides, everyone else on the flight will think you’re weird!
But all of that would change instantly if the pilot came on the intercom and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a crisis. This plane is going down. The stewardesses are coming by with parachutes.” Everyone suddenly would want one because they know that they’re doomed without one! The missing ingredient in much modern evangelism is the conviction of sin before the holy God that makes people realize, “My plane is going down!” When the Holy Spirit opens people’s eyes to the fact that they are condemned without Christ, then they’re more receptive to the news about the Savior. But the Bible makes it clear that salvation isn’t just to relieve people’s misery from being in bondage to sin and death.
In Exodus 3:12, God gives Moses a sign: after he has brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt, they will worship God at the mountain where Moses saw the burning bush. The Hebrew word translated “worship” also means, “to be a slave” or “to serve” (John Hannah, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], ed. by John Walvoord & Roy Zuck, 1:112). When Moses later asks Pharaoh to let Israel go, he repeats that it’s so that they may serve the Lord (Exod. 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 7-8, 11, 24, 26; 12:31). Either you’re a slave in Egypt or you’re a slave of God. Those are the only choices. As Bob Dylan sings, “You gotta serve somebody.” The point is, God doesn’t save us so that we can live happily for ourselves. He saves us so that we will worship and serve Him. Are you doing that? Salvation is from the Lord for His chosen people for His glory.
God could have sent His angel and in a single night killed all the Egyptian army and delivered His people (A. W. Pink, Gleanings in Exodus [Moody Press], p. 28). But rather He used His chosen servant Moses to deliver His chosen people. Some will ask, “If God has chosen to save His people, then why evangelize? They’ll get saved anyway, won’t they?” The answer is, we evangelize because God saves His chosen people through His servants who proclaim the gospel. Paul said (2 Tim. 2:10), “For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.” God’s sovereignty in saving people does not negate the need for His servants to be the agents through whom He works.
But, to be effective in serving the Lord, we need to know Him well. While it’s a lifelong process and you don’t need to have arrived before you begin serving, God’s dealings with Moses show that you need to be growing to know Him in at least five ways:
God could have revealed Himself and His plan for Moses in many ways, but He chose to do it through this bush that burned but was not consumed. Moses’ curiosity in seeing this novelty was quickly turned to reverent fear when the Lord spoke and told him to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. Sandals were put off before entering a place of worship so as not to bring the defilement of the outside into the holy place (Alfred Edersheim, Old Testament History [Eerdmans], p. 46). This is the first occurrence of the noun “holy” in the Bible. Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God (Exod. 3:6).
Fire in the Bible often represents God’s holy presence. God confirmed His covenant with Abraham with a smoking oven and flaming torch (Gen. 15:17). He later accompanied Israel in the wilderness with the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exod. 13:21-22). When Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire on the altar, “fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them” (Lev. 10:2). Later Moses told Israel (Deut. 4:24), “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” John the Baptist announced that Jesus would baptize people with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt. 3:11). When the Holy Spirit baptized the early disciples, tongues of fire rested on them (Acts 2:3). Thus the burning bush represented God’s holy presence.
John Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 62) thought that the burning bush represented God’s despised people and the fire represented their oppression which would have consumed them if God had not miraculously intervened. Alfred Edersheim (ibid., p. 47) thought that the bush pictured Israel, but the fire was God, the consuming fire in her midst.
But I think that because of the symbolism of fire and because God told Moses that he was on holy ground, the burning bush primarily points to God’s holy presence, not to Israel. The unquenchable fire may also have represented God’s power, glory, eternity, and self-sufficiency (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 81). But I think mainly it points to His holy presence.
To serve God rightly, it is vital that you understand that He is holy and He is present with you; therefore you must be holy (1 Pet. 1:16). Paul sums up the sin of unbelievers (Rom. 3:18), “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” But we who know and serve Him must have a holy fear of Him. Because we’re in Christ, we don’t need to fear His condemnation (Rom. 8:1), but we must (as Heb. 12:28-29 states) “offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”
Exodus 2:24 states, “God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Then in Exodus 3:6 God tells Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” In verse 8, God mentions His covenant promise to give Israel the land of the Canaanites. Again in verse 15, God tells Moses to tell the Israelites, “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” He repeats the same thing in verse 16 and then (v. 17) repeats the promise of the land. Why is there all of this repetition? It’s so that Israel (and we) would know that God keeps His covenant promises.
The gospel is God’s new covenant promise (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:25-28; Luke 22:20; Heb. 8:8-13). He promises to forgive all our sins through Jesus’ blood, to remove our heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, and to put His Spirit within us, all because of His sovereign grace. To proclaim the gospel with confidence, we need to understand that God is faithful to His promises.
In Exodus 2:24, we read that God heard the people’s groaning, He remembered His covenant, He saw the sons of Israel in their slavery, and He knew them. Then in Exodus 3:7, God tells Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings.” In case Moses missed it, God repeats (v. 9) that He has heard the people’s cry and seen their oppression.
Why did God wait hundreds of years while Israel suffered before He delivered them? As we’ve seen, one reason was God’s patience and mercy: the iniquity of the Amorite was not yet complete (Gen. 15:16). He allowed His people to suffer in bondage while He patiently withheld judgment on the corrupt Canaanites. There may have been other reasons that we don’t know. His timing is not our timing. But we should never conclude that God’s silence when we suffer implies that He doesn’t hear our cry for help or that He doesn’t care. As someone has said, “Never interpret God’s love by your circumstances. Rather, interpret your circumstances by His love.” We can’t serve God effectively if we doubt His goodness, love, and care for us and for others.
In verse 8, God rehearses how He intends to bless His people by delivering them from the Egyptians and bringing them to dwell in a land flowing with milk and honey, an expression for a bountiful land. The gospel is God’s free blessing for all sinners who deserve His judgment (Eph. 1:3). Although as His people we may suffer persecution or even martyrdom now, He promises eternal life with Him when He will take away all sorrow, pain, and death (Rev. 21:4). But even now in our trials, we need to see His grace, goodness, and love (Rom. 8:28-39).
Moses asks God (Exod. 3:13), “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God replies (Exod. 3:14), “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Here we join Moses on holy ground! This is one of the most profound and mysterious revelations of God in Scripture! “I am who I am” is related in Hebrew to the four consonants that are probably pronounced “Yahweh.” (Most modern translations use Lord in small caps.) This is God’s personal covenant name, which He used in establishing His covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15). God’s name represents His person, character, authority, power, and reputation (Walter Kaiser, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein, 2:321). He is the personal God of our salvation, with whom we can have a relationship. It refers to His absolute independence (C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament [Eerdmans], 1:75). He exists by Himself without the need of anyone else. It points to His absolute constancy and consistency (ibid.): He never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). It reveals His self-existence: He is uncaused; and to His eternality: there never has been a time when He was not and never will be a time when He ceases to be. F. B. Meyer wrote (Devotional Commentary on Exodus [Kregel], p. 53):
There is no was or will be with Him, but always the present tense. All that He was to the fathers, He is today; and all that He will be to their children, He is now. Nothing to learn: nothing to acquire: nothing to become. He alone is Reality, as contrasted with the vanities of heathen deities.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the great “I am.” He told some skeptical Jews (John 8:24), “Unless you believe that I am [the translators have inserted He], you will die in your sins.” He concluded His debate with them by saying (John 8:58), “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” They understood that He was claiming to be Yahweh, the “I am” of the burning bush, because they picked up stones to stone Him. He is God’s only way of salvation. If you don’t know Jesus as the Lord God who gave Himself for your sins, you aren’t saved.
If you do know Him, your aim every day should be to know Him more. About 25 years after he was saved, the apostle Paul said (Phil. 3:8), “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” He added (v. 10) that his aim was, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” He went on to explain that he had not yet arrived at that goal, but he pressed on toward it. That should be our goal, too, so that the Lord can use us as His instruments so that His chosen people “may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
February 25, 2018
Life of Moses (4)
John Calvin begins his classic Institutes of the Christian Religion (Ed. by John McNeill [Westminster Press], 1.1.1.) with this profound sentence: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Editor John McNeill (p. 36, note 3) comments, “These decisive words set the limits of Calvin’s theology and condition every subsequent statement.”
In our last study of Exodus 3, we saw that God saves His chosen people through His chosen servants who know Him. At the burning bush, Moses came to know more of God’s holiness. He was reminded of God’s covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He learned that God’s silence over the centuries did not imply indifference to the people’s suffering, but that God intended to bless His people. And through God’s revelation of Himself as Yahweh, “I am who I am,” Moses came to know more of who God truly is. All of this falls under Calvin’s opening statement that sound wisdom consists of knowing God.
But to be used in God’s plan of salvation, we also need to know ourselves. Exodus 3 reveals not only how Moses came to know God more deeply, but also how he grew to know himself, his call to God’s mission, and how it would be accomplished:
Salvation is from the Lord through His chosen servants who know themselves and know His presence, power, and promise for their mission.
Through this encounter at the burning bush, Moses came to know more about himself:
When Calvin mentioned knowing ourselves, he was not talking about knowing ourselves through looking inward or taking personality tests. Rather,
At this point, Moses did not have the Bible (it hadn’t yet been written!). But in Exodus 3, the Lord spoke directly to Moses at the burning bush. We can assume that during his forty years in the desert watching sheep, God also had revealed Himself directly to Moses. He was obviously aware of God’s covenant with his ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. 2:24; 3:6, 15, 16). He knew that God had promised to make a great nation from Abraham’s descendants (Exod. 1:12, 20) and to bless all nations through them. He knew about God’s promise to bring Jacob’s descendants back to the land of Canaan, as He had promised Abraham (Exod. 3:8, 17). He had already by faith made his decision not to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but rather to “endure ill-treatment with the people of God” because he considered “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward” (Heb. 11:26). So although Moses didn’t have a Bible, he knew a lot through direct revelation from God.
While personality tests may yield an insight or two about yourself that you were previously unaware of, God’s Word is the only reliable source for truly understanding yourself on the heart level. In Jeremiah 17:9 the Lord states, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” The answer, of course, is that only God can understand our hearts. Hebrews 4:12-13 states,
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
It’s rather intimidating to be laid bare at the deepest parts of your being, but that’s what walking with God entails. You can hide the thoughts and intentions of your heart from others, but you can’t hide from God. Walking in the Light as He Himself is in the Light (1 John 1:7) means walking with your heart exposed before Him. After meditating on God’s omniscience and omnipresence, David prayed (Ps. 139:23-24),
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
So as you read God’s Word (which you should do often), ask the Lord to reveal what sinful ways there may be lurking in your heart that you need to root out (the “old man” that you are to put off) and to reveal who you are in Christ (the “new man” that you are to put on; Eph. 4:17-24).
The Lord tells Moses (Exod. 3:10) that He is sending him to Pharaoh to bring His people out of Egypt. Moses’ immediate reaction is (Exod. 3:11), “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” Commentators are divided over whether Moses’ question reflects true humility, which he had gained after his initial failure to deliver Israel forty years earlier, or whether it was a faithless excuse.
I tend to agree with Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], pp. 69-70) that at this point, Moses’ question stemmed from genuine humility. Forty years earlier, “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, … a man of power in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22) he had attempted to deliver God’s people by slaying the Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave. But now he was a lowly nomadic shepherd, stripped of his position as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. His impressive education had sat on the shelf for forty years. As he heard God’s call to go to the most powerful monarch in the world with the task of freeing a couple of million slaves, Moses was overwhelmed with inadequacy.
As the story unfolds and God gives Moses repeated assurances of His presence and power, Moses’ humility devolved into a lack of faith in God. As R. A. Cole observes (Exodus [IVP], p. 68),
Self-distrust is good, but only if it leads to trust in God. Otherwise it ends as spiritual paralysis, inability and unwillingness to undertake any course of action.
The Lord taught this lesson to the apostle Paul when he prayed that the Lord would take away his “thorn in the flesh” (which could have been a physical weakness or perhaps the repeated problems with the Judaizers). When God said “no,” Paul concluded (2 Cor. 12:10), “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Contrary to a popular idea, we are not to believe in ourselves. Rather, knowing how weak you are drives you to the Lord to seek His strength (see Phil. 4:13).
After the China Inland Mission had grown and received much notoriety, a church leader once said to the founder, Hudson Taylor, “You must sometimes be tempted to be proud because of the wonderful way God has used you. I doubt if any man living has had greater honor.” “On the contrary,” Taylor replied, “I often think that God must have been looking for someone small enough and weak enough for Him to use, and that He found me.” (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret [Moody Press], pp. 201-202)
God chose Moses to know Him; then He called and equipped him to serve Him. It should be the same with us.
As we saw in our last study, God chose Abram out of all the people on earth. He chose Abraham’s son, Isaac, and Isaac’s son, Jacob. He promised to make their descendants into a great nation and to bless all nations through them. In the same way, God chose Moses to know Him. If God had not done so, Moses could have died as an infant under Pharaoh’s evil decree to slaughter the Hebrew male babies. If God had not revealed Himself to Moses, he would have been perfectly content to remain in Pharaoh’s court, perhaps to succeed Pharaoh in power, and live a life of fame and luxury. And if God had not chosen to reveal Himself to Moses at the burning bush, Moses probably would have lived out his days tending sheep in the desert of Midian. But God chose Moses.
Has He chosen you? Sometimes I’m asked, “How can I know whether God has chosen me?” The biblical answer is, have you repented of your sins and trusted in Christ as Savior and Lord? Has God changed your heart from indifference to Christ and His word to loving Him and His Word because He died to save you? If so, those changes didn’t come from you. They are evidence that God chose you in Christ and drew you to Him (Eph. 1:4-5; John 6:44, 65). You need to be sure that God has chosen you for salvation before you try to serve Him.
If God has chosen you for salvation, then He also has called you to serve Him. As 1 Peter 4:10-11 explains,
As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God; whoever serves is to do so as one who is serving by the strength which God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
If you have believed in Christ, God has given you a gift to use in serving Him in some capacity. The more difficult task is trying to figure out how and where He has called you to serve Him. Some are called to serve the Lord full time in the local church, in an evangelistic ministry, or in foreign missions. But if you don’t sense God’s call in those ways, you should feel just as called to serve in some way in a local church. We’re all called to serve the Lord according to our gifts.
Probably your calling to serve won’t be as dramatic as Moses’ calling at the burning bush or Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road! Those were unique situations. With me, in college God impressed me with a couple of verses that I just couldn’t shake: Jesus’ promise (Matt. 16:18), “I will build My church”; and, Paul’s word (Eph. 5:25), “Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” I thought, “If Christ has promised to build His church, then working for that cause is guaranteed to succeed. And, if Christ loved His church enough to give Himself for her and I love Christ, then I’ve got to love His church and give myself for her.”
As a college student, when I made some initial attempts to teach the Bible, I was surprised at how many people would tell me that my message had helped them. So I decided to go to seminary to further develop my gift in that area. Although I felt very inadequate when I began as a pastor just shy of my 30th birthday and still feel very inadequate, that’s how I became a pastor. Your story will be different, but if you know Christ, He has called you to serve Him in some way in line with your spiritual gifts.
I’m using the present tense, “is equipping,” because it’s a lifelong process. After 41 years of preaching, I still read books on how to do it better, because I still need to grow!
How does God equip us? Moses’ being “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians,” and being “a man of power in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22) did not qualify him to be the spiritual leader of God’s people. For that, he needed to know God better and know himself better. Part of his training was a course, “Humility 101,” where the curriculum took him from being an important man in Pharaoh’s court to being a lowly shepherd of someone else’s sheep out in the remote desert. And, remember, that shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians (Gen. 46:34)! However you serve the Lord, Humility 101, along with advanced courses in the same subject, is mandatory training!
God uses many other things to equip us to serve Him better. Failure 101 and advanced courses go along with Humility 101. Moses, Elijah, Peter, and Mark all took that course. Positively, there is no substitute for spending daily time alone with God in His Word and prayer. Along with that, read some good books that help ground you theologically. Read Christian biographies to learn about how men of God from the past served Him. Reading about John Calvin, John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton, William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Charles Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, George Muller, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and many other men of God has helped me immensely. Read books on discipleship and evangelism. Often you learn just by serving. Maybe you’ll try several areas before you land on one that you really enjoy doing and you’re able to do reasonably well. To serve God rightly, you have to know that He has chosen, called, and equipped you to serve Him.
In Exodus 3:8, God tells Moses what He (God) intends to do: “So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.” God did that literally for the Israelites who had been enslaved in Egypt for centuries.
But He does that spiritually for those who are enslaved to sin. As Paul says (Col. 1:13-14), “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” That’s the best news in the world! And, God’s mission is our mission!
In verse 8, God told Moses that He (God) would deliver His people from the power of the Egyptians. Then (v. 10) He tells Moses, “Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.” God’s mission is to deliver His people, but He does it through His servant Moses. When Moses protests that he is not adequate for the task (v. 11), God replies (v. 12), “Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.”
The Lord didn’t build up Moses’ self-confidence, but rather promised to be with him. He promised the same thing to Joshua when he took over after Moses’ death (Josh. 1:9): “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Years later with Gideon, who was overwhelmed with his inability to deliver Israel from the Midianite hordes, the angel of the Lord appeared and said to him (Judges 6:12), “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.” When Gideon still protested, the Lord repeated (v. 16), “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.” So it’s not surprising that when the Lord Jesus sent out His disciples to preach the gospel to all the nations, He promised (Matt. 28:20), “and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
David Livingstone, who took the gospel into the heart of Africa in the mid-1800’s, and John Paton, who went to the cannibals of the New Hebrides Islands, both relied on the Lord’s promise to be with them as they took the gospel to the ends of the earth. Livingstone said (cited in A Frank Boreham Treasury [Moody Press], compiled by Peter Gunther, pp. 106-107),
For would you like me to tell you what supported me through all the years of exile among people whose language I could not understand, and whose attitude towards me was always uncertain and often hostile? It was this: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world!” On those words I staked everything, and they never failed!”
John Paton’s son said of his father (ibid. p. 124), “My father was constantly quoting the words, Lo, I am with you alway, as the inspiration of his quietness and confidence in time of danger, and of his hope in the face of human impossibilities.”
God granted Moses the power to perform miracles to deliver Israel from Egypt (Exod. 3:20). Contrary to popular thought, miracles are not uniformly scattered throughout the Bible. There is a cluster of miracles around the Exodus; another in the needy times of Elijah and Elisha; and, some in Daniel’s time. The rest are concentrated around the time of Christ and the apostles, to authenticate the gospel. This doesn’t mean that God does not do miracles in our day, but it does mean that they are relatively rare.
But, as we go about our mission of delivering people from Satan’s domain of darkness, God does perform the miracle of imparting new life to those who were dead in their sins (Eph. 1:19-20; 2:1-6). While we should be wise and persuasive in how we present the gospel to unbelievers, we should never rely on slick methods or sales techniques to get people to make a decision for Christ. Salvation is not a matter of a human decision, but rather of God powerfully raising dead sinners to new life in the Lord Jesus.
Like Moses’ mission of delivering God’s people physically from Egyptian power, our mission of delivering people spiritually from Satan’s power is not easy. His first attempt failed. Now, God tells him that the elders of Israel will listen to him (Exod. 3:18). But the Lord warns Moses that at first, Pharaoh will not let Israel go. Later, Moses would face numerous hardships in the desert with a fickle, disobedient people who threatened to mutiny and return to Egypt. When you serve the Lord, expect difficulties and discouragement. Expect opposition not only from the world, but also from those in the church who profess to follow the Lord.
But the Lord promised Moses that this time, he would succeed. After God struck Egypt with the plagues, finally Pharaoh would let Israel go. And they wouldn’t go out emptyhanded. Every woman would ask of her neighbor articles of silver, gold, and clothing, so that Israel would “plunder the Egyptians” (Exod. 3:22). This was exactly what God had promised Abraham (Gen. 15:14), “But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.”
We don’t know whether those we speak to about Christ will respond or not, although we should pray that God will open their eyes to His truth. When Paul was afraid in Corinth and ready to leave town, the Lord appeared to him one night and said (Acts 18:9-10), “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” Note the familiar promise: “I am with you.” And God knew what Paul didn’t, that He had many people in that city who would respond to the gospel. Let’s believe God for the same thing in Flagstaff!
If you know Christ as your Savior, He wants to use you as His servant to bring deliverance to those who are captive to the enemy of souls. You can do that as you grow to know Him, know yourself, and know His presence, power, and promise for your mission.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
March 4, 2018
Life of Moses (5)
I recently read David McCullough’s massive biography of President Harry Truman. He was a somewhat common man from the Midwest who unexpectedly became a U.S. Senator. Then, also unexpectedly, for his fourth term in office President Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman to be his running mate. Then, less than three months after Truman became Vice President, Roosevelt died. Truman took office with no briefings from the President, whom Truman hardly knew. The Japanese had not yet surrendered and Truman faced the history-changing decision of dropping the atomic bomb to end the war. Then he faced the Korean Conflict, which required many agonizing decisions. Whether you agree with Truman’s political views or not, he did an admirable job with the overwhelming role thrust on him.
That’s what happened to Moses. By faith he had relinquished being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, “choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God” (Heb. 11:25). But his first attempt assume to leadership and rescue them from oppression had been a miserable failure. He had to flee for his life to the remote desert of Midian, where he settled down for forty years tending sheep, getting married, and fathering two sons. But then God appeared to him at the burning bush and called him to return to Egypt to deliver God’s people from their slavery.
It was an overwhelming task for this eighty-year-old shepherd, who had lived in obscurity for the past forty years. He would have to confront the most powerful monarch in the world and demand that he release about two million slaves, whose cheap labor was essential to the Egyptian economy. Although the Pharaoh and his men who had sought to kill Moses were now dead (Exod. 4:19), it still was an impossible assignment. Even if he eventually succeeded in freeing Israel from slavery, he still had to lead this enormous group of men, women, children, and animals across a barren desert with no food or water, where they would face hostile enemies.
Thankfully God doesn’t call any of us to a task that challenging! But He does call all of us who know Him to serve Him in some way. And usually He calls you to serve in a situation that is beyond your natural abilities so that you are forced to depend on His strength. For example, we’re all called to evangelize the lost and disciple the saved. Those tasks are rather daunting, even if you’ve had some training! Moses’ story in Exodus 4 gives us some lessons in how to serve God effectively:
To serve God effectively, depend on His presence and strength, be ready for difficulty, be obedient to His commands, and work with willing people.
Why do we need to depend on God’s presence and strength?
If you’re able to serve the Lord without leaning hard on Him, maybe you’re not in the right ministry! The apostle Paul wrote (2 Cor. 1:8-9): “For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.” Two chapters later, he explained (2 Cor. 3:5), “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.”
Even so, the Lord often has to teach us that if we don’t rely on His presence and His strength, we can’t do anything (John 15:5). Either He calls us to do something that is far beyond our natural abilities or, like Paul and Moses, He shows us our inadequacy so that we must rely on His presence and strength.
In Exodus 3:18, the Lord told Moses that the elders of Israel would pay heed to him when he told them that the Lord had appeared to him and promised to bring them into the land of Canaan. But now (Exod. 4:1) Moses asks the Lord, “What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say?” And, there are more doubtful questions to come! But the Lord graciously answers them all.
How would you feel if you told your kids, “Next month we’re going to go to Disneyland,” and then they challenged you repeatedly, “But what if you don’t take us to Disneyland?” They’d be questioning your integrity: “You promised, but will you really keep your word?” That’s what Moses did with his questions (in 4:1).
In his defense, it had been about 400 years since any Israelite had heard a word from God. Perhaps because of that God graciously gave Moses three signs to bolster his weak faith. First, the Lord asked (Exod. 4:2), “What is that in your hand?” (Remember, God never asks questions because He lacks information!) Moses probably shrugged as he answered, “A staff.” The Lord told him (Exod. 4:3), “Throw it on the ground.” It became a snake and Moses fled from it. Then the Lord told Moses to grab it by the tail. Generally, you don’t want to do that with a snake! But Moses obeyed and the snake became a staff in his hand again.
What did this sign mean? The cobra was a symbol of Egyptian power that was on the headdress of their kings. By miraculously changing Moses’ staff into a snake and back again into a staff, the Lord was showing Moses that as he, the lowly shepherd, obediently depended on God’s power, he would have dominion over even this fearful Egyptian tyrant. And, of course, the serpent goes back to the garden as the enemy of God and those made in His image. Ultimately, the seed of the woman (Christ) would crush the head of the serpent, who would bruise Him on the heel (Gen. 3:15).
The shepherd’s staff also showed Moses that that which is common and impotent in itself becomes powerful when yielded in obedience to the Lord. This is a foundational lesson for all who serve the Lord. He taught it to the disciples in the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. After giving the disciples the impossible command, “You give them something to eat!” (Mark 6:37), Jesus asked them (Mark 6:38), “How many loaves do you have?” That’s parallel to the Lord’s question to Moses, “What is that in your hand?” After telling Jesus that they had five barley loaves and two fish, Andrew asked the obvious question (John 6:9), “But what are these for so many people?” The point is, the ordinary and impotent becomes sufficient and powerful when we yield it in obedience to the Lord.
Over forty-five years ago, I read Watchman Nee’s powerful sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, “Expecting the Lord’s Blessing” (Twelve Baskets Full [Hong Kong Church Book Room], 2:48-64), where he makes the point (p. 48), “The meeting of need is not dependent on the supply in hand, but on the blessing of the Lord resting on the supply.” He observes that the Lord’s ability to feed the multitude does not depend on us or our resources, but on His blessing resting on us and our resources. The truth of that message has sustained me in four decades of ministry as I have often felt inadequate and overwhelmed as I try to serve the Lord.
The second sign consisted of the Lord telling Moses to put his hand into his bosom. When he took it out it was leprous. Then the Lord told him to put it back in his bosom, and it came out restored. This form of leprosy was not the same as the disease we know as Hansen’s disease. But it was a dreaded condition with no known cure that required the sufferer to be quarantined (Lev. 13:45-46). By this sign, God probably meant for Moses to learn that God could impose and relieve the severest judgments (Alfred Edersheim, Old Testament History [Eerdmans], p. 51). Just as He had removed Moses from the place of power in Pharaoh’s court, so now He would restore him. Just as His people Israel had been in bondage in Egypt for hundreds of years, so now through Moses God would relieve their suffering.
If the elders were still unwilling to believe Moses, God graciously gave him a third sign. He was to take water from the Nile and pour it out on dry ground where it would turn to blood (Exod. 4:9). The Nile was the life blood of Egypt, the main source of water for their crops in that barren desert. Later, one of the plagues would be to turn the Nile and all the waters of Egypt temporarily into blood to show the Egyptians that Moses’ God is the only true God (Exod. 7:14-24). Performing this miracle in front of the Israelite elders showed them that the mighty power of Egypt was no match for their God.
You may think, “This is all very interesting, but God hasn’t done any miracles for me. How can I know that He will use me when I haven’t seen such miracles?” Well, in the first place, He has given us this inspired account of these miracles to show us His power. And, secondly, He has given us reliable testimony of the most powerful miracle in history, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That testimony is so certain that Paul was willing to rest the entire Christian faith on the truth that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead (1 Cor. 15:12-19). When people in bondage to sin and Satan believe that Jesus is the Lord who died for their sins and is risen from the grave, they will be saved (Rom. 10:9-10)! The only reason that any of us can serve the Lord and proclaim the gospel is His abundant grace to us in Jesus Christ. But …
At this point, Moses moves from humility to unbelief. God has given Moses abundant confirmation that if he trusts in God’s power, even the mighty Pharaoh will not be able to stand against him. But Moses raises a further objection (Exod. 4:10): “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
It’s an odd comment, in that forty years earlier, Moses had been “a man of power in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). Perhaps forty years of tending sheep had impaired his speaking ability or dimmed his confidence. The Lord reminded Moses that it is He who makes a man’s mouth and even makes people mute or deaf, seeing or blind. Then the Lord promised (Exod. 4:12), “Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say.” This is on top of God’s earlier promise (Exod. 3:12), “Certainly I will be with you ….” But in spite of this, Moses begs off by saying in effect, “Here am I Lord; send someone else!”
At this point, the Lord burned with anger against Moses and agreed to let his brother Aaron become the main spokesman. The messages would come from God to Moses to Aaron to the people (Exod. 4:15-16). Then the Lord reminded Moses (Exod. 4:17), “You shall take in your hand this staff, with which you shall perform the signs.” In other words, “Moses, you’re not off the hook! You’re My man and in spite of all your excuses, by My power, as represented in this shepherd’s staff, I will work through you.”
The point is, when the Lord calls you to do something beyond your ability, His presence and power are sufficient. Don’t make up excuses for why you can’t serve Him.
There are three difficulties here:
Moses went back from the burning bush and asked permission from his father-in-law to return to his brethren in Egypt to see if they were still alive. It seems odd that he didn’t mention the burning bush or the Lord’s commission for him to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage. Maybe he sensed that Jethro either would not believe him or would think that he was having delusions of grandeur. But Jethro kindly granted him permission, although it meant saying goodbye to his daughter and grandsons.
Jethro was both Moses’ father-in-law and his employer, and so it was right for Moses to treat him with respect. Sometimes young people sense God’s call to serve Him in missions, but they don’t use tact and respect in announcing it to their parents. While Jesus calls us to love Him even more than our families (Luke 14:26), that does not mean being rude or insensitive to their feelings. Sometimes a person needs to go against his or her parents’ wishes, but we should always show them respect and love.
God then informed Moses that those who were seeking his life were dead. So Moses put his wife and his sons on a donkey and returned to Egypt. Verse 20 adds, “Moses also took the staff of God in his hand.” Earlier it was Moses’ shepherd’s staff; now it had become “the staff of God.” Philip Ryken (Exodus [Crossway], p. 127) points out that what that rod represented—God’s saving power—is now available to us in the cross of Christ. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe (Rom. 1:16).
The Lord tells Moses to go back and perform before Pharaoh all the wonders He has given Moses to do. But God warns him that He is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he won’t let the people go. I’ll say more in a future message about God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Suffice it here to say that in about half of the references, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, but in the other half, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. You ask, “Which is it?” It’s both! God sovereignly decreed that Pharaoh would harden his heart and that Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus, but those evil men, not God, were responsible for their sin.
But my point here is that serving the Lord puts you into battle with the enemy and battles are difficult and often result in casualties. As Moses will discover after Israel leaves Egypt, the difficulties come from within the camp, too. You’ll catch more criticism and opposition from those in the church than from those outside. Be prepared!
God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh (Exod. 4:22), “Israel is My son, My firstborn.” And, God warned, if Pharaoh refused to let His son go, He would kill Pharaoh’s son. That was a direct slap in Pharaoh’s face, because he claimed that he was a son of the gods (Walter Kaiser, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:331)! But Moses is saying, “No, you’re not God’s son. This lowly bunch of slaves whom you are abusing are God’s son.” The firstborn meant that they were the heirs of God.
God says (Hos. 11:1), “Out of Egypt I called My son.” Matthew 2:15 links that to Jesus’ childhood sojourn in Egypt to escape Herod’s attempt to kill Him. Proud people don’t want to hear the message that the crucified Jesus is God’s eternal Son, the only way to be reconciled to God. They want to think that they’re able to save themselves by their good works. But we have to tell them the difficult message: Your good works are like filthy rags in God’s holy sight. You can be saved only by abandoning your good works and trusting in Jesus crucified for your sins.
Here we encounter a strange incident. As Moses headed back to Egypt, the Lord met him on the way and sought to put him to death! Moses’ wife Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised one of their sons, throwing the foreskin at Moses’ feet, saying (Exod. 4:25), “You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me.” So God let Moses alone.
We have to read some things between the lines here. Apparently Moses, in deference to Zipporah’s objections, had not circumcised their second son in obedience to God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17). Now, whether it was the angel of the Lord with His sword drawn, or through a sudden illness, God threatened to kill Moses. I think Zipporah circumcised their son and spoke in anger, perhaps because she thought that if she didn’t do it, her son would be next to die after her husband. Through this incident, God was teaching Moses that if he was going to serve the Lord, he had to obey His commandments, even over the objections of those closest to him. Some think that at this time Moses may have sent his wife and sons back to Midian (Exod. 18:2). But at the least, Moses learned that to serve God effectively, you’ve got to obey Him, even if it means going against your loved ones.
As we saw earlier, loving Christ more than your family doesn’t mean being rude or insensitive to them. But sometimes it does mean saying to them with kindness, “I love you, but I love Jesus even more, and I must obey Him against your wishes.”
Moses went on to meet Aaron near Mount Sinai and the two brothers caught up on the past forty years, but especially on what the Lord had said to Moses about delivering Israel from Egypt. They went together back to Egypt and Aaron spoke the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses, who then performed the signs. Then we read (Exod. 4:31), “So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction, then they bowed low and worshiped.”
The elders’ response was the fulfillment of what the Lord had already promised Moses (Exod. 3:18). Nothing had changed yet for Israel. They were still slaves in Egypt and there would be a difficult road ahead of them. But now God worked in their hearts to make them responsive in a way that they hadn’t been forty years earlier. So they believed God’s promise through Moses and bowed in worship of God because of His concern for their affliction.
The lesson here is that you can’t serve God effectively by yourself. The Lord wants to build His church, which means working with others. As Moses will soon learn (Exod. 5:21), that’s often a difficult, frustrating process. But, it’s God’s way. Sometimes, as Jeremiah experienced, you labor for decades but meet resistance and hardness of heart. But more often, God graciously gives you some faithful people to work with. Work with them to help build the Lord’s church.
In The Tapestry ([Word], pp. 60-62), Edith Schaeffer tells of the early morning when Fran, then a teenager, came downstairs to leave for college. As a new Christian, he had stated to his unbelieving father his intention of becoming a pastor, but now he was leaving. His father gave Fran a hard look and said, “I don’t want a son who is a minister, and—I don’t want you to go.” After a moment of awkward silence, Fran said, “Pop, give me a few minutes to go down in the cellar and pray.”
While he later would not advise this, he was desperate for guidance. So through his tears, he flipped a coin! Three times the coin came up indicating that he should go against his father’s wishes. So he went upstairs and said, “Dad, I’ve got to go.” His dad looked hard at him and went out to slam the door. But before the door hit the frame, his voice came through, “I’ll pay for the first half year.” Many years later, Fran’s dad came to faith in Christ, but Fran thought that that moment was the basis of his salvation.
Have you made that commitment to trust in Christ as Savior and serve Him however He may lead? It won’t be easy, but you can serve Him effectively as you depend on His presence and strength, are ready for difficulty, obey Him even when difficult, and work with willing people.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
March 11, 2018
Life of Moses (6)
Many Christians think that if they’re serving the Lord in some way, the Lord will bless them and life will be sweet. After all, they’re seeking first God’s kingdom. They’re doing His work. Won’t the Lord bless those who do His work?
That depends on how you define blessing. If you define blessing as hardship, sleepless nights, daily pressure, weaknesses, insults, distresses, persecutions, and other difficulties, yes, you’ll be blessed. Those are just some of the things that Paul endured as he served the Lord (2 Cor. 11:23-28; 12:10). But if you define blessing as everyone loving what you’re doing, no one ever criticizing you, and everything always going well in your life and ministry, I’d ask, “Have you ever read the Bible or church history?” There would be no such thing as persecution or martyrdom if God protected all of His servants from difficult trials.
The fact is, when you begin to serve the Lord, you’ve joined the infantry. The prince of darkness begins gunning for you. Often things don’t become easier or go more smoothly in your life. Things get more difficult.
Moses quickly learned this when the Lord called him to go back to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let the Israelite slaves go three days’ journey into the wilderness so that they might sacrifice to the Lord (Exod. 3:18; 5:3). Scholars debate why the Lord told Moses to ask for a three days’ journey when the real objective was to leave Egypt permanently. Some liberals accuse God of being dishonest or deceptive!
Probably this was an initial test to expose Pharaoh’s hardness of heart. Moses was asking a reasonable request: “May we go for three days to worship our God?” There were precedents for such requests. A manuscript and a limestone tablet dating to the time of the ancient pharaohs indicates that Egyptian slaves were sometimes given time off to worship their gods (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], pp. 140-141). So Pharaoh’s refusal to let Israel do this simple request, coupled with his command to increase their workload exposed his hard heart. His priority was to keep the Egyptian economy moving, not to listen to the request of a bunch of slaves to worship a God Pharaoh didn’t know or believe in.
So when Moses began to obey God’s calling to serve Him, things didn’t get better—they got much worse! Pharaoh demanded that the Hebrew slaves gather their own straw to make bricks while keeping their quotas the same. He ordered the Hebrew foremen to be beaten when the quotas weren’t met. And the Israelite leaders, who at first had believed that God would deliver them from their affliction (Exod. 4:31), now angrily turned against Moses for making the Israelites odious in Pharaoh’s sight. Clearly, the plan wasn’t working as Moses had hoped it would! We learn that …
Because the Lord is the Lord and He is faithful to His covenant promises, serve Him faithfully even in the face of opposition and setbacks.
God could have taken out Pharaoh by a heart attack, but He chose to harden his heart and use Moses to perform the miraculous plagues to display God’s power and glory more brightly (Exod. 9:16; Rom. 9:17). These chapters and those that follow show the strength of opposition that Israel was up against: Those who do not know God and are opposed to Him are hardhearted and often cruel towards His people. But even His chosen people can fall into complaining and faithlessness when they are suffering. Even Moses, God’s chosen leader, reveals his lack of faith at this point. He questions why God sent him, complains that God hasn’t delivered His people at all, and repeats his excuse about being unskilled in speech (Exod. 5:22-23; 6:12, 30). (Some of the above is from John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 112.) So clearly, if Israel is going to be delivered, it has to be the Lord who does it.
These are vital lessons at the outset when you serve the Lord: to recognize the strength of the enemy, the helpless, desperate condition of the people you’re serving, and your own weakness and inability for the task so that you don’t rely on human schemes or methods, but on the Lord Himself and the promises of His Word.
Moses and Aaron were coming off a spiritual high. The people had accepted their testimony and believed that the Lord was concerned about their affliction (Exod. 4:31). Moses, Aaron, and the Israelite elders all had worshiped the Lord. Probably the spiritual high made them forget that the Lord had said that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart and that he wouldn’t let Israel go except under compulsion (Exod. 3:19; 4:21). So Moses and Aaron marched boldly into Pharaoh’s presence, but hit a brick wall. Pharaoh wasn’t sympathetic in the slightest. In fact, he made things more difficult than they already were for the Hebrew slaves.
Has that ever happened to you when you tried to serve the Lord or obey His calling for your life? When Marla and I moved to Dallas so that I could finish my seminary degree, we had a very hard time finding an apartment. We finally found one we could afford and moved in just before classes started. Three days later, we were mugged at gunpoint as we walked from the carport to our door. I tore my hand open on the gunsight of the mugger’s gun and had to get four stitches. Then, a couple of weeks later, I slipped on a muddy sidewalk and cut my finger badly on a Thermos I was carrying. So I started classes living in an apartment that was maybe in an unsafe neighborhood, and with both hands bandaged! At such times, it’s easy to wonder, “Did I miss God’s will for my life? Maybe I was supposed to take an off-ramp a couple of miles back!”
But don’t assume that encountering difficulties means that you’re not in God’s will. Often, God uses the difficulties to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we trust totally in Him (2 Cor. 1:8-9). Chuck Swindoll (Moses [Thomas Nelson], p. 162) observes, “The best framework for the Lord God to do His most ideal work is when things are absolutely impossible and we feel totally unqualified to handle it.” Note three lessons here:
Moses’ first opposition came from the scoffing Pharaoh. We don’t know how Moses and Aaron managed to get an interview with him, but the meeting didn’t go well! You can understand why he didn’t want to let two million slaves go free when they were the cheap labor force for the Egyptian economy. But as I just explained, God graciously gave Pharaoh an easier request at first: Rather than demanding that he immediately free all of the slaves, Moses simply asked for a three-day break so that they could worship God. But Pharaoh brazenly replied (Exod. 5:2), “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.”
Pharaoh was not impressed with this God whom Moses identified as “the Lord God of Israel” and “the God of the Hebrews” (Exod. 5:1, 3). He probably scoffed to his aides, “Some god that is who lets his people be our slaves for hundreds of years! Why should we obey a god like that?”
Even so, today some may scoff, “Why should I bow before a crucified Savior? What kind of God would allow His Son to be killed in such a horrible way?” In fact, one leader in the emergent church called Jesus’ death on the cross “cosmic child abuse”!
But Pharaoh’s question is the crucial question for every person to answer: “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?” Jesus asked His disciples (Matt. 16:13), “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They replied (Matt. 16:14), “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asked them the crucial question (Matt. 16:15), “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responded with his well-known confession, (Matt. 16:16), “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Everything in this life and for eternity depends on answering that crucial question correctly!
When you encounter opposition from those outside the faith, try to keep the conversation focused on the crucial question: “Who do you say that Jesus Christ is? Are you open to examine the evidence?” Invariably, a skeptic will bring up many objections, just as Pharaoh could have objected to obeying a God who let His people remain in slavery for hundreds of years. (I have two sermons on the church website that explain how to answer the most common objections.) But almost always, the underlying reason a person is hostile toward Christ is not intellectual; it’s moral. Pharaoh didn’t want to damage the economy and he didn’t want to obey any god! The skeptic does not want to submit to Jesus as Lord because he loves his sin. But just as Moses eventually had to warn Pharaoh of the consequences if he did not obey the Lord, we gently need to warn hostile skeptics of the judgment to come that they will face if they don’t submit their lives to Jesus as Lord.
But, Moses not only faced opposition from without. He also incurred the wrath of those within. When Pharaoh increased the workload on the Hebrew slaves, their foremen complained, only to find Pharaoh unsympathetic. He accused them and their people of laziness. When they left that encounter, they met Moses and Aaron and angrily said (Exod. 5:21), “May the Lord look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
At this point, the Hebrew leaders were more concerned about relieving their harsh conditions while remaining enslaved than they were about being freed from slavery. They still identified themselves as Pharaoh’s servants (Exod. 5:15, 16), not as servants of the living God. But they were God’s people whom Moses had come to redeem. But Moses was not their favorite guy at this point, to say the least!
When you serve the Lord, you expect opposition from those outside the faith. After all, they’re in Satan’s domain of darkness and they do not know the Lord. They buy into this world’s values, so when you confront them with sin, righteousness, and judgment, they don’t like it. But you don’t usually expect opposition from the Lord’s people. We’re all on the same team, aren’t we? We’re supposed to love one another, aren’t we?
But in my experience, the most painful attacks you’ll get when you serve the Lord don’t come from outside the camp, but from within. You shouldn’t immediately conclude that your critics are tools of the devil and dismiss all of their criticisms. Maybe they have some valid points, even if they’re expressing them in a hostile manner. After listening, you may need to try to help them learn how to state their concerns in a better way. But, be prepared! When you serve the Lord, you will encounter opposition both from without and even from within!
After the Hebrew foremen angrily confronted Moses, he complained to the Lord (Exod. 5:22-23), “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people? Why did You ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all.” Later, when the Lord told him to return to Pharaoh and demand that he let Israel go, Moses pessimistically replied (Exod. 6:12), “Behold, the sons of Israel have not listened to me; how then will Pharaoh listen to me, for I am unskilled in speech?” He was overwhelmed with his inability to speak well or to get through either to the Israelites or to Pharaoh. He had forgotten that it was God, not he, who would deliver Israel from Pharaoh’s hand (Exod. 3:8).
And, Moses was not remembering that the Lord has reasons for His delays, even if we don’t know what those reasons are. The more Pharaoh resisted the Lord’s appeals through Moses to let Israel go, the more it revealed God’s patience and His righteous justice when He finally judged him. Also, Israel needed further humbling under Pharaoh’s harsh treatment so that they would appreciate the Lord’s deliverance when it came (A. W. Pink, Gleanings in Exodus [Moody Press], pp. 46-47). And, Moses needed to learn more about patiently waiting on the Lord. He needed to recognize that when deliverance finally came, it wasn’t primarily due to him or his gifts, but to the Lord’s sovereign grace toward His people.
Setbacks in serving the Lord do not necessarily mean that you’re on the wrong path, but rather that the Lord has further lessons to teach you and to teach those you’re trying to serve. So what should you do when you encounter setbacks?
The Hebrew foremen went to Pharaoh for relief instead of going to the Lord (Pink, p. 45). But Pharaoh wouldn’t save them; only God could and would save them. But Moses did the right thing: He returned to the Lord and poured out his heart to Him (Exod. 5:22-23; 6:12). Often prayer is our last resort: “We’ve done all we can do; now, all we can do is pray!” But prayer should be our first resort. You may be able to do something after you pray, but you shouldn’t do anything before you pray!
But, be careful how you approach the Lord! Some say that we should imitate Moses’ example here in being honest before the Lord, even if it means wrongly accusing Him. Rather than admitting that he doesn’t understand and humbly asking for wisdom, Moses accuses the Lord of not delivering His people as He had promised to do.
While I agree that we should be honest with the Lord (He already knows how you feel!), there is a right and wrong way to talk to the Almighty Lord! When my kids were young and they felt that I had disappointed them in some way, I wanted them to feel free to come to me with their complaints. But their attitude was crucial! If they came defiantly, accusing me of being unfair or uncaring, the accusation may have been legitimate (I wasn’t a perfect father!), but their defiance was wrong. So I would say, “You’re free to complain, but you need to talk to me in a respectful way; then I’ll listen and try to help.”
So, if you face setbacks in serving the Lord, go to Him and pour out your complaint, but do it submissively, fearing Him. Acknowledge that you don’t understand why He isn’t working as you thought He should, but don’t imply that you know better than He what needs to be done! He is the Lord and you’re not! You may not understand the setbacks or delays, but He has His reasons and He’s not under obligation to share those reasons. But we still need to keep serving Him. Why?
In the Lord’s reply to Moses (Exod.6:2-8), “I am the Lord” (“Yahweh”) occurs four times (plus again in 6:29). We need to know that He is the great “I AM,” only living and true God. He is the only self-existent One, who has neither beginning nor end. He is the covenant-keeping God, whom we can know personally. Sometimes it is through our failures and setbacks that we come to know Him more deeply. We come to realize that He is the only one who can really do something about impossible problems. We need to fix our eyes on who it is that we serve. We need to let skeptics know that they are defying the only living and true God.
But the Lord makes a puzzling comment to Moses (Exod. 6:3): “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, Lord, I did not make Myself known to them.” Yet, when you go back to Genesis, God is often referred to as Lord (Yahweh; see, Gen. 15:7). So what does the Lord mean?
Probably, He means that He didn’t reveal the fullness of His name, Yahweh, to the patriarchs as He had just revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush and would further reveal Himself to Israel. The patriarchs had received the promises, but had died without seeing their fulfillment. But now, the Lord would deliver Israel from bondage in Egypt, adopt them as His special people, and guide them into the Promised Land, where they would conquer the evil nations there that he would judge (C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament [Eerdmans], p. 468). As Philip Ryken (p. 169) explains, “This is the difference between Genesis and Exodus. Abraham knew God as a promise-maker; Moses came to know him as a promise-keeper.”
So, even when you face opposition and setbacks, don’t give up. You’re serving none other than the Lord, the faithful, covenant-keeping God. That’s the final thing here:
John Sailhamer (The Pentateuch as Narrative [Zondervan], p. 251) says that Exodus 6:2-8 sketches out the argument of the whole Pentateuch. He says, “The die is cast for the remainder of the events narrated in the Pentateuch.” God rehearses His gracious covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and what that means for the Israelites of Moses’ time. But they were so overwhelmed with their difficult circumstances that they didn’t want to hear it (v. 9).
Moses had been looking at what he couldn’t do; God reminds him of what He will do (v. 1). In verses 6-8, God repeats “I will” seven more times to emphasize that He is the covenant-keeping God. The seven “I will’s” cluster around three areas: deliverance and redemption from bondage; personal relationship (“I will be your God”); and, future possession of the land. Those three areas mirror the promises of the new covenant that we enjoy in Christ (Heb. 8:10-12): God delivers us from our sins through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. He promises that He will be our God and we will be His people; and He promises every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3)!
In light of the unbelief of both Israel and Moses at this point, God’s promises in verses 6-8 show His sovereign grace. Our blessings in Christ do not depend on our performance, but on God’s gracious promises. Roger Ellsworth puts it (Moses [Evangelical Press], p. 46), “When the ‘I AM’ says ‘I will,’ there can be no room for doubt or discouragement.” It’s a done deal! Salvation isn’t a matter of us doing something for God but rather of recognizing what He has done for us through our Savior, who gave Himself to save us. As Paul put it (Phil. 1:6), “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
Some of you may not yet know Christ as your Savior and Redeemer. You can’t serve Him until you know Him. Jesus promised (John 5:24), “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” That promise is for you!
Others of you may know Christ but you’re not serving Him. Maybe you tried and got burned. Maybe you’ve drifted into living for yourself and collecting this world’s stuff. You’ve lost your focus. Paul told Timothy (2 Tim. 2:3-4): “Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.” Serving as a soldier can be dangerous. Soldiers suffer casualties at times. But that’s our calling: faithfully to serve our faithful, covenant-keeping Lord even in the face of opposition and setbacks. He enlisted you; now make it your aim to please Him.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
March 18, 2018
Life of Moses (7)
I think that sometimes we forget the mighty power of God that is required to deliver souls from Satan’s domain of darkness. We receive training in how to present the gospel effectively to the lost and for the most part, such training is helpful. Every Christian should be able to give a simple gospel presentation with appropriate Bible verses. Every Christian should be prepared to answer common questions and objections that unbelievers raise.
But even after good training, seeing lost people repent and believe the gospel does not depend on our methods or persuasive skills in presenting the gospel. Saving a soul from eternal judgment requires nothing less than God’s mighty power that raised Jesus from the dead (Eph. 1:19-20). God must impart new life to one who is dead in his sins (Eph. 2:1-6). If God doesn’t do that, you may be able to get a person to pray the sinner’s prayer or to make a profession of faith. But if God does not impart new life to that walking spiritual corpse, there will be no genuine conversion. Salvation is not a matter of a person walking the aisle or making a decision to invite Jesus into his heart. It’s a matter of God raising the dead through His mighty power to save. We are simply the instruments through whom He works to deliver souls from bondage.
Exodus 7 reports the beginning of ten miraculous plagues that the Lord brought on Egypt through Moses, culminating in Pharaoh’s releasing Israel from centuries of slavery. It’s a literal story of God’s people being freed from an evil tyrant so that eventually they could conquer the land which the Lord had promised to give to Abraham’s descendants. But it’s also a picture of how God delivers sinners from slavery to Satan’s cruel domain. As such, the main lesson for us is:
Delivering people from bondage to sin is God’s work, dependent on His power over the forces of darkness.
Scholars point out that the first nine plagues fall into three sets of three in an ascending order of severity (Walter Kaiser, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:348-349). The first plague in each set has a purpose clause where God states His rationale and aim for the plague (Exod. 7:17; 8:22; 9:14). The overall purpose for the plagues is (Exod. 7:5): “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.” God’s purpose in these plagues was to show His supreme power and exalt His name over all the earth (Exod. 9:16; Rom. 9:17). And He wanted to show His people that He is the Lord (Exod. 6:1-2).
Some scholars argue that the ten plagues directly confronted Egypt’s many gods and showed the superiority of the God of Israel over them. For example, the Egyptians had a god of the Nile, who was confounded by God’s turning that mighty river into blood. They worshiped the sun god, whose power was defeated by the ninth plague of darkness. Different gods had multiple functions, such as gods of fertility, crops, storms, and health. Many of the gods were worshiped in different locations and assimilated by other gods over time (see John Hannah, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], ed. by John F. Walvoord & Roy Zuck, 1:120). But the overall point of the plagues was to show the superiority of the one true God over Egypt’s many gods and idols and to show His power over Pharaoh, who claimed to be a god.
Also, some scholars argue that the plagues can be explained as natural catastrophes. For example, each year the Nile is flooded from waters upstream that carry red sediments into it, making it look like blood. Also, a type of algae comes from the swamps in the upper Nile that produce a stench and cause many of the fish to die from a lack of oxygen (Kaiser, 2:350). But, this explanation doesn’t account for the sudden, miraculous change that came over the river when Aaron stretched his staff over the water and struck it (Exod. 7:19-20). And the text does not say that the river looked like blood, but rather that it became blood, along with the water in reservoirs and storage vessels. So I understand that God’s miraculous power was on display through the plagues. There are two main spiritual lessons for us:
It’s obvious in the opening verses that God is in charge here. He appeared to Moses at the burning bush and commissioned him to return to Egypt to deliver His people. When Moses became discouraged because of initial setbacks, the Lord again told him to go to Pharaoh and speak the words that the Lord would give him (Exod. 6:28-30). The Lord announced beforehand what would happen and what He would do. Then He did “just as He said” (Exod. 7:3, 13b, 22b; 8:15, 19; 9:12).
Moses and Aaron were merely His instruments and spokesmen: Moses would be as God to Pharaoh and Aaron would be his prophet (Exod. 7:1). Moses wasn’t God, of course, but he was a type of the one who would come as both God and man to save His people from their sins. God has always chosen to use human instruments to accomplish His sovereign plans (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 195). Since Pharaoh viewed himself as a god, through the plagues, the Lord was putting him in his place. There are three lessons here about how God delivers people from bondage to sin:
These miraculous events follow immediately after Moses has again protested his own inability (Exod. 6:30). Perhaps Moses’ and Aaron’s ages are given (Exod. 7:7) to show that these two old men did not have the natural ability to deliver Israel. Only God could do that through them. Picture the scene: Two old men, one of them in simple shepherd’s clothing, with no weapons, no armor, and nothing impressive about their appearance, stand before this powerful monarch in his opulent palace, surrounded by powerful armed guards and well-dressed attendants. Pharaoh would not have been impressed with Moses and Aaron. They had to trust in God’s supernatural power. They let Pharaoh know that they were not acting on their own, but rather that “the Lord God of the Hebrews” had sent them (Exod. 7:16).
Before the first plague, the Lord directed Moses and Aaron to throw Aaron’s staff on the ground, where it became a snake. Pharaoh called his magicians, who were able to do the same trick (more on that in a moment). But God displayed His superiority over Pharaoh’s magicians when Aaron’s staff turned snake swallowed the magicians’ staffs. God used a common shepherd’s staff to swallow the staffs of Pharaoh’s powerful magicians.
Have you ever thought about the fact that God’s method for reaching the world with the gospel is incredibly inefficient? He could have sent His angels to every people group on the planet with the good news about Jesus’ death and resurrection on behalf of sinners. The angels wouldn’t have had to learn the many languages in the world. They wouldn’t have needed to raise support before they went. If they had faced persecution, they could have struck their opponents dumb or dead. They wouldn’t have needed to learn how to communicate the gospel in a way that each culture could understand. The job would have been finished in a matter of days, instead of the two thousand years that it’s taken. And we still have many people groups that have not heard!
But just as God chose to use Abraham’s often-disobedient, faithless descendants to be His channel of blessing the nations, so He has chosen His church to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Each of us is God’s spokesperson to the world. Like Moses, we may often feel tongue-tied and inadequate for the task. But the gospel is like Moses’ staff, powerful to deliver people from bondage (Rom. 1:16). And His promise to Moses, “I will be with you,” is also His promise to us (Exod. 3:12; 4:12; Matt. 28:20).
In Moses’ case, because of his faithless protest that he could not speak well, God condescended to let Aaron be Moses’ mouthpiece to Pharaoh (Exod. 4:14-16; 7:1-2). But, they weren’t free to come up with a feel-good message that Pharaoh might like. God told Moses (Exod. 7:2), “You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.” That wasn’t a message that Pharaoh wanted to hear, but it was the very word of God that he needed to hear. As difficult as it would have been for these two old men to tell Pharaoh God’s words, we read (Exod. 7:10), “So Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, and thus they did just as the Lord had commanded.” And again (Exod. 7:20), “So Moses and Aaron did even as the Lord had commanded.”
When God commanded Aaron to throw down his staff, which became a serpent, he was directly challenging and demeaning Pharaoh’s authority. The cobra was the symbol of Pharaoh’s power, depicted on his crown. The Egyptians had a temple for the snake god. So when Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh, Philip Ryken explains (p. 207), “He was taking the symbol of the king’s majesty and making it crawl in the dust. This was a direct assault on Pharaoh’s sovereignty; indeed, it was an attack on Egypt’s entire belief system.”
Ryken applies this (ibid.): “One of the best ways to convince people of their need for Christ is to find out what they are counting on, and then show them why it cannot be trusted.” If they think that their good works will get them into heaven, ask them, “How many good works will you need to qualify you to stand in the presence of the holy God? How can your good works atone for your many sins?” Show them that even Mother Teresa could not earn heaven by good works, “because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3:20).
If they’re trusting in money, show them how fleeting and insecure riches are, even for the super-rich. If they’re living for pleasure and the good life, show them how quickly it can be taken away through an accident or terminal illness. Tell them about Jesus’ parable about the rich man who planned to build bigger barns to contain all of his crops, only to have God say to him (Luke 12:20), “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?”
There are many false prophets today who give people a feel-good “gospel,” which is not the saving gospel of God. They tell people that they’re wonderful and that God loves them just as they are, but they never confront sin. They’re like the false prophets of Jeremiah’s time, who healed people’s brokenness superficially, saying, “Peace, peace,” but there was no peace (Jer. 6:14; 8:11). God’s only way of peace is to come to Him as a guilty sinner and lay hold of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. That’s not a popular message, but it’s the one we obediently and faithfully have to proclaim.
God clearly states His purpose for hardening Pharaoh’s heart (Exod. 7:3): “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.” He adds (Exod. 7:5), “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.” And, when Moses and Aaron directly confront Pharaoh before the first plague, God tells them to say (Exod. 7:17), “Thus says the Lord, ‘By this you shall know that I am the Lord ….’”
It’s clear that with regard to Pharaoh, God’s purpose was not that Pharaoh would come to a saving knowledge of the Lord, but rather that God would be glorified through Pharaoh’s defeat. As Paul states (Rom. 9:17-18),
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
With regard to the Egyptians, Dr. Kaiser (ibid. 2:345) suggests that some of them may have become believers through the plagues and were the “mixed multitude” that left with Israel in the exodus (Exod. 12:38). But the point is (as Paul further elaborates in Rom. 9:20-23), as the divine potter God is free to make some vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and other vessels of mercy prepared for glory. The same gospel that God uses to save some hardens others (Matt. 13:14-16; Luke 10:21-22; 2 Cor. 2:15-16). God will be glorified both in judging the wicked and in saving His elect. So while the gospel brings both temporal and eternal joy to all who are saved, God’s primary purpose in saving us is His glory because He is central; our happiness is secondary, because we are not central.
Thus delivering people from bondage to sin is God’s work. Thus, it follows that …
Our text brings out four lessons here:
Pharaoh asked for a miracle to show God’s power (Exod. 7:9), only to shrug it off when his magicians were able to do the same thing. This is typical of unbelievers, who ask for proof of the gospel, but then explain it away when you give it to them because they love their sin and don’t want to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ (John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 144).
When Moses and Aaron performed the miracle of the staff turned into a serpent, they probably did not expect Pharaoh’s wise men and sorcerers to be able to do the same. They were probably also surprised when Pharaoh’s magicians matched the miracle of turning the water into blood. I think that their power was demonic. With God’s permission, Satan can perform impressive miracles (Deut. 13:1-3). He sent lightning to destroy Job’s shepherds and flocks, he sent a tornado to destroy the home where Job’s children were to kill them, and he struck Job with painful boils (Job 1:16, 18-19; 2:7). Jesus warned about false prophets in the end times who will show great signs and wonders (Matt. 24:24). The antichrist will deceive many through signs and false wonders (2 Thess. 2:9-12; Rev. 13:12-15). So, don’t believe everyone who is able to perform impressive miracles!
But Satan’s power is always subject to and inferior to God’s power. Aaron’s staff that became a serpent swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s magicians that had become serpents. Pharaoh’s magicians could turn water into blood, but they couldn’t turn the blood into water. Later, they could make frogs come up on the land of Egypt, but they couldn’t get rid of the frogs (Exod. 8:7). Satan is always a counterfeiter, disguising himself as an angel of light to look like God (2 Cor. 11:14). But, in God’s timing he will be eternally defeated (Rev. 20:10).
These miracles confirmed the faith of Moses, Aaron, and the Israelites (Exod. 4:28-31), but Pharaoh saw the same miracles and hardened his heart. Skeptics often will sneer, “Show me a miracle and I’ll believe!” Jesus’ critics often asked Him for a sign, but He replied (Matt. 16:4), “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” He was referring to His resurrection from the dead (Matt. 12:40). The Lord doesn’t perform miracles to impress skeptics. He has given them eyewitness testimony of the greatest miracle in history, namely, His resurrection from the dead. If they don’t believe the abundant biblical evidence for His resurrection, they won’t believe a miracle done before their eyes (Luke 16:31). Impressive miracles are not the antidote for unbelief. Pharaoh saw a bunch of them! Miracles can confirm the faith of those whose hearts God has opened, but they only serve to increase judgment for proud skeptics who refuse to repent.
Egypt’s gods had failed them, so for a week the Egyptians had to dig in the sand around the Nile to try to find potable water (Exod. 7:24). Pharaoh didn’t want to release the Hebrew slaves because he wanted to save the Egyptian economy. But by the time the plagues were over, Pharaoh’s stubborn opposition to God had ruined their economy! The crops were destroyed, livestock had died, and finally all in Egypt who did not put blood on their doorposts lost their firstborn sons.
God ordained government authority to protect and bless those under authority, but Satan perverts that authority to kill and destroy (John 10:10). For exhibit A in our day, look at North Korea or some of the other nations where corrupt leaders live in luxury while their people suffer in horrific conditions.
The same is true about spiritual authority. God ordains elders to oversee local churches and husbands to lead in their homes to protect and bless those under their care. But when elders or husbands promote false doctrines or use their authority for selfish purposes, those under their authority suffer. It’s especially tragic when abuse happens in supposedly Christian churches and homes. Leaders who themselves are in bondage to sin can’t deliver their people who are in bondage to sin. Satan robs people of the protection and blessing of godly authority by using abusive authority to discredit the concept of godly authority.
Four times this chapter calls attention to Pharaoh’s hard heart (Exod. 7:3, 13, 14, 22). All people are born with spiritual hardness of heart because of Adam’s sin (Eph. 4:18). Unbelief is a matter of the heart and God must give a person a soft heart for him to repent and believe (Ezek. 36:26). He must open deaf ears and blind eyes (Matt. 13:14-16; Luke 10:21-22) and impart spiritual life to those who are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1-7). Delivering people from bondage to sin is God’s work, dependent on His power over the forces of darkness. While we should be wise and persuasive in how we present the gospel, in the final outcome, delivering sinners from Satan’s domain of darkness depends on God’s mighty power (Col. 1:13; 2:13-15).
Two concluding applications:
(1) Get some training in how to present the gospel, but don’t trust in your training. Trust in the Lord! You need to know how to present the gospel clearly and succinctly. Memorize key verses. In a nutshell, the gospel is: All people have sinned and need a Savior: Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” God sent His eternal Son Jesus to pay the penalty that sinners deserve: Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We receive God’s gift of eternal life by faith in Christ alone: Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
(2) Since delivering people from bondage to sin is God’s work, dependent on His power, put on God’s armor and pray for opportunities and boldness. After telling us to put on God’s armor so that we will be able to stand firm against the spiritual forces of darkness (Eph. 6:10-17), Paul concludes by asking for prayer (Eph. 6:19-20): “Pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” In Colossians 4:3, he asks for prayer “that God will open up to us a door for the word,” so that he could preach the gospel.
Let’s trust God to use us to deliver people from their bondage to the spiritual forces of darkness!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
March 25, 2018
Life of Moses (8)
“Frank and Ernest” (cartoon by Bob Thaves, 10/4/95) are standing before a scowling St. Peter at the gate into heaven. Clueless Ernie has on a T-shirt that reads, “Question Authority.” Frank whispers to him, “If I were you, I’d change my shirt, Ernie.”
Good advice! At times we may challenge some human authority, but when it comes to the Almighty Lord God, who spoke the universe into existence by His word alone, who will judge the thoughts and intentions of all the living and dead, it’s not wise to oppose Him! There is no one anywhere like the Lord God (Exod. 8:10; 9:14). The whole earth belongs to Him (Exod. 9:29). He is able to command everything from the smallest bacteria to powerful hailstorms to blacking out the sun. The plagues that God brought on Egypt because of Pharaoh’s hard heart teach us:
Because the sovereign Lord God will be exalted over all, it is foolish to harden your heart against Him.
The Lord tells Moses to tell Pharaoh why He is inflicting these plagues on Egypt (Exod. 9:16-17), “But, indeed, for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. Still you exalt yourself against My people by not letting them go.” There are two main lessons:
The plagues reveal God’s sovereignty in three broad areas:
The Egyptians, like all idolaters, worshiped the creation but not the Creator. They had gods that supposedly had influence over different aspects of life. So in the plagues, God challenged Egypt’s gods, showing His absolute superiority and sovereignty over them. Last week we looked at the first plague, turning the Nile into blood, which confronted the Egyptian god of the Nile. God is the sovereign over the Nile.
The Egyptians had a goddess of birth that had a frog head. So in the second plague, God brought frogs to the land. From a distance, this plague is humorous, but it wouldn’t have been funny to be invaded by swarms of frogs. There were frogs in all the houses (including Pharaoh’s palace), frogs in bedrooms and on beds, and frogs in kitchens. As a woman went to make bread, frogs were hopping into the dough! When she went to put the dough in the oven, frogs were in the oven! Wherever you walked, you stepped on frogs. You couldn’t get away from the slimy, croaking creatures! And the Egyptians couldn’t kill them because they were gods! But the point is, God is sovereign over frogs. Pharaoh’s demonically-powered magicians could bring forth frogs, but they couldn’t get rid of them. Only God could do that. But then there were stinking dead frogs everywhere!
The third plague of gnats (or mosquitoes or lice) came without warning. Whatever they were, they were all over people and animals (Exod. 8:17). They were in people’s eyes, noses, and ears. The closest Marla and I have come to anything like this was hiking in Alaska. We had nets over our faces and our entire bodies covered, but the mosquito swarms were so thick that you couldn’t think about anything else. This plague may have been an assault on Pharaoh, whom Egyptians believed had the power to maintain the cosmic order (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 241). Or, it may have been directed against the Egyptian priests, who prided themselves on purity with frequent washings, shavings, and linen robes (John Hannah, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, ed. by John F. Walvoord & Roy Zuck [Victor Books], 2:123). Here, Pharaoh’s magicians were stymied. They had to acknowledge (Exod. 8:19), “This is the finger of God.” He is sovereign over tiny insects.
The fourth plague was flies (Exod. 8:21). The Hebrew term could refer to several different kinds of flying insects. They may have been blood-sucking flies, like the black flies that we have encountered on backpacking trips. But whatever they were, they were all over Egypt. But in this plague, God protected the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived (Exod. 8:22-23). This plague may have shown God’s superiority over the Egyptian god Baalzebub, which means, “lord of the flies” (Ryken, pp. 249-250). He was supposed to protect the land from such infestations. But God is sovereign over such false gods.
The fifth plague killed the Egyptian livestock, striking a blow at many Egyptian gods and goddesses, depicted as cows. The bull was worshiped as a fertility god. Isis, the queen of the gods, was depicted with horns on her head (Ryken, pp. 262-263). But God created all livestock and is sovereign over them. Some ask how, if God killed all the livestock in this plague, there were still livestock to protect from the hail (Exod. 9:19). Either the word “all” (Exod. 9:6) means, “a great number,” or the plague killed all the animals in the fields (Exod. 9:3), but not those who were in shelters.
The sixth plague reveals God’s sovereignty over bacteria and disease: He struck the Egyptians and their surviving animals with painful boils (Exod. 9:8-12). The symbolic action of Moses and Aaron throwing soot from a kiln into the air may have pictured Israel’s bondage as brick-makers as the reason for Egypt’s plagues (Walter Kaiser, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:359). The boils may have been skin anthrax (Ryken, p. 270), but whatever it was, it involved painful skin sores. This plague demonstrated God’s superiority over several Egyptian gods of healing. Pharaoh’s magicians were incapable of overcoming this plague because they themselves were infected with boils.
The seventh plague consisted of the worst hailstorm in Egyptian history (Exod. 9:18-26). Again, the area where the Israelites dwelled was spared. Some of Pharaoh’s servants were getting the message! They feared the Lord and brought their people and animals inside (Exod. 9:20). But along with many human and animal deaths, most of Egypt’s crops were destroyed. God demonstrated His sovereignty over the Egyptian storm gods.
The eighth plague brought locusts so thick that no one could see the land (Exod. 10:5). They ate everything that the hail hadn’t destroyed. This humiliated Egypt’s god of the crops and the fields, as well as the god of the sky. Years ago, a locust swarm 1,200 miles wide was seen over the ocean flying from West Africa to Great Britain. In one photo taken from the air, you couldn’t see any piece of open ground in an area 2,000 miles square (Charles Swindoll, Moses [Thomas Nelson], p. 186). A recent locust infestation in Dagestan, Russia, covered 270,000 square miles. God is sovereign over all of His creation!
The ninth plague consisted of dense darkness over the land, described as “darkness which may be felt” (Exod. 10:21). This plague showed God’s sovereignty over the Egyptian sun god. Many ancient Egyptian texts identified Pharaoh with the sun god (Ryken, p. 304). Some commentators think that the darkness was caused by a severe dust storm, but the description seems to go beyond this. The Egyptians couldn’t see one another or go outside, but the Israelites had light (Exod. 10:23). This plague had obvious spiritual significance: darkness represents the sin and spiritual blindness of those in Satan’s domain, whereas light represents God’s holiness and the spiritual sight granted to those who know Him (John 3:19-21; 8:12; Eph. 4:18; 5:8-13; Col. 1:13; 1 John 1:5-7).
So the main point of all the plagues is that God is sovereign over His creation. He controls everything from the tiniest germs and bugs to thunderstorm and the sun. He rules His creation!
God hardens whom He desires and shows mercy to whom He desires (Rom. 9:18). But we need to understand that He wasn’t hardening the heart of someone who otherwise would have believed. Even John Calvin, noted for his emphasis on God’s sovereign election, states that God didn’t harden a heart otherwise given to obedience; rather, He hardened a reprobate who was willfully devoted to his own destruction (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 210). This is a mystery that no one can understand completely, but we must hold two truths in tension: God is sovereign over all; and, people are responsible for their sin. If you let go of either truth, you’re out of balance.
This tension is clearly seen in the death of Jesus Christ. God predestined Christ to die for our sins before the foundation of the world. This means that God ordained that Judas would betray Jesus, the sinful Jewish leaders would arrest and abuse Him, and Pilate would give Him over to be crucified. But even though these things were foreordained, the wicked people who killed Jesus were responsible for their horrible crimes. As Peter preached (Acts 2:23), “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” Or, as the early church prayed (Acts 4:27-28), “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.” Jesus was predestined to die, but those who did it were evil men, responsible for their sin.
In the plagues on Egypt, God sovereignly determined to spare Israel at least in the plagues of flies (Exod. 8:22-23), the death of livestock (Exod. 9:4-6), the hail (Exod. 9:26), the darkness (Exod. 10:23), and finally in the death of the firstborn (Exod. 11:7). Why did He do this? Clearly, it wasn’t because Israel deserved His favor, while Egypt deserved His judgment. Everyone deserves God’s judgment for their sins! God isn’t obligated to spare anyone. But, in mercy, He chooses to save some. If He has saved you, be thankful, be in awe, and worship Him!
These ten plagues on Egypt are a merciful warning to everyone who hears about them that God is holy and He will bring terrifying, final judgment on all who harden their hearts in rebellion against Him. In Revelation 6:12-14, John describes the cataclysmic destruction when the sixth seal was broken: a great earthquake, the sun became black, the moon became like blood, the stars fell to the earth, the sky was split apart, and mountains and islands were moved out of their places. Then everyone from great kings to lowly slaves cried out to the mountains and to the rocks (Rev. 6:16-17), “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
The Book of Revelation reveals that many of these same plagues that were inflicted on Egypt will be poured out on the earth during the great tribulation: Water will be turned to blood (Rev. 8:8; 16:4-5). There will be frogs (Rev. 16:13); locusts (Rev. 9:3); boils (Rev. 16:2); hail (Rev. 8:7); and darkness (Rev. 9:2; 16:10). God’s righteousness will be glorified by His judging the wicked and His grace by saving His people. Thus,
There are four truths to consider here:
If you wonder, “How can I be saved?” the Bible promises (Rom. 10:13), “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” It promises (John 3:16), “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Don’t trust in yourself or your good deeds. Trust in Jesus Christ’s death on the cross as the sufficient and final payment for your sins. As Paul states (Rom. 4:5), “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.”
In these plagues, Pharaoh’s hardened heart caused him repeatedly to promise to let Israel go, only to go back on his word. But in spite of this, Moses repeatedly asked God to lift the plagues and He mercifully did each time, except for the final plague of the death of the firstborn. That is a picture of God’s mercy to rebellious sinners. Perhaps they promise Him, “Get me out of this problem and I’ll serve You,” only to renege on their pledge. Again and again He spares them from judgment. But, someday the final plague of death will come. Hebrews 9:27 warns, “It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” Since you don’t know when you’ll die, it’s not wise to delay. “Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation’” (2 Cor. 6:2).
At first, the arrogant Pharaoh said to Moses (Exod. 5:2), “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord ….” But through the plagues, he was getting to know something about the Lord, even though he never came to know Him personally. Pharaoh was still a polytheist, but as God dominated and humiliated Egypt’s various gods through the plagues, at least Pharaoh knew that the Lord is more powerful than all of his gods. By God’s relieving each of the first nine plagues in response to his pleas, Pharaoh knew that God is both powerful and merciful to those who call out to Him.
So Pharaoh knew about God and he even professed repentance more than once. After the plague of hail, Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron and said (Exod. 9:27), “I have sinned this time; the Lord is the righteous one, and I and my people are the wicked ones.” But after the plague was lifted, we read (Exod. 9:34), “But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.” After the plague of locusts, Pharaoh again professed repentance (Exod. 10:16-17), “I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now therefore, please forgive my sin only this once, and make supplication to the Lord your God, that He would only remove this death from me.” But his heart was still hardened so that he didn’t let Israel go (Exod. 10:20, 27).
One clue that Pharaoh’s repentance was superficial is that he wanted to work out a deal with God’s demand to let Israel go. First, he told Moses (Exod. 8:25), “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” “Don’t go far away” (Exod. 8:28). In other words, “You can worship your God; just remain my slaves!” Then, after the locust plague, Pharaoh told Moses that the men could go if they left their wives and children in Egypt (Exod. 10:10-11). That way, he knew that the men would come back under his rule. After the plague of darkness, Pharaoh agreed to let Israel go, even with their children, but only if they left their flocks and herds behind (Exod. 10:24). He acknowledged that he had sinned, but he was bargaining with God. He wanted relief from the consequences of his sin, but when he got relief, he went back to his sin. That’s superficial repentance.
Moses nailed Pharaoh’s problem when he said (Exod. 9:30), “But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” Genuine repentance stems from fearing God. It’s a matter of the heart, not of outward profession when you’re just trying to get out of a jam. Since God knows every thought and intention of your heart, you can’t fake repentance. It can’t be partial or for selfish purposes. It has to be total surrender to the Lord, where you turn from your sin and seek to obey Him from the heart. Pharaoh’s superficial repentance also shows that …
Pharaoh was the most powerful monarch on earth and Egypt was a prosperous nation, but they weren’t a match for the Lord God. The Lord told Moses (Exod. 10:1-2) that He hardened Pharaoh’s heart and his servants’ hearts to make a mockery of him. That reminds me of Psalm 2, where the kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and His Messiah. But God’s response is (Ps. 2:4), “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.”
The Bible is replete with stories of those who proudly tried to win against the sovereign, exalted Lord God, but who lost in the end. Read the Book of Revelation. Just before judgment falls, the world’s rulers and business leaders are living in luxury, seemingly prospering without God. But then in one hour their great wealth is laid waste (Rev. 18:16-19). God always wins big time in the end. If you fight against Him, you may do well for a while, but in the end, you will lose everything forever!
Thus, the sovereign, exalted Lord God will answer the prayers of those who sincerely call upon Him. He knows your heart, so beware of superficial repentance. If you fight against Him, you will lose every time. So the best plan is to submit your heart to Him.
Moses repeatedly tells Pharaoh that he should let Israel go so that they could serve the Lord (Exod. 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 24-26). The Lord told Moses that one reason for these plagues was (Exod. 10:2), “that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.”
To lead God’s people out of Egypt so that they could serve and worship the Lord, Moses had to resist Pharaoh’s repeated attempts to get him to compromise. Pharaoh wanted Israel to sacrifice in the land, which would not have allowed them to be separate from Egypt (Exod. 8:25). Satan is all for religion as long as it accepts other religions and doesn’t insist that Jesus is the only way to God. Pharaoh would allow Israel to go, but not far away (Exod. 8:28). In other words, Satan says, “You can go worship your God, but you’re still my slave. You can be a Christian, but don’t be too different from the world!” Moses also had to resist Pharaoh’s proposal that the men go, but leave their wives and children behind (Exod. 10:8-11). The enemy loves to divide families.
Finally, Moses had to resist Pharaoh’s ploy to let Israel go, but not take their animals for sacrifice (Exod. 10:24). The enemy if okay if we “worship God,” but just without that blood sacrifice stuff: “You don’t need the blood of Jesus. Just follow His moral teaching and example of love.” But without the cross of Christ and His resurrection from the dead, there is no salvation. Thankfully, Moses was uncompromising with Pharaoh (Exod. 10:26): “not a hoof shall be left behind.” The goal of submitting to the sovereign, exalted Lord God is that you and your children and your grandchildren might worship and serve Him. To do that, you can’t compromise with the world. You must follow the Lord totally.
Hopefully, God has not inflicted anything comparable to these horrible plagues on you, but everyone goes through trials. Some face severe trials. How should you respond? First, don’t respond as Pharaoh did when he brazenly said (Exod. 5:2, paraphrased), “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice? I don’t know the Lord, and I’m not going to obey!” And, don’t imitate Pharaoh with superficial “repentance” just to get out of the trial, but then go back to your old ways. Fighting against God is foolish, because He is going to win big time in the end! God brings trials into our lives so that we will grow in faith and holiness as we submit to His mighty hand (Heb. 12:9-11; 1 Pet. 5:6-11).
Just as God sent Moses to deliver Israel from physical slavery, He sent Jesus to deliver us from slavery to sin. Jesus said (John 8:34), “Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” He invites everyone enslaved to sin (Matt. 11:28), “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” He can set us free from sin (John 8:36). Don’t ignore or reject His loving, gracious offer!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (9)
April 15, 2018
I think that sometimes we toss around biblical terms without thinking carefully about what they mean. Take the word, “salvation.” It’s a good biblical word, but we say it so often that maybe we’re glossing over what it really means.
For example, let me ask: Does God’s killing all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt strike you as overly harsh, extreme, or unfair of God? Killing Pharaoh’s firstborn might have been appropriate, since he had oppressed Israel and refused to let them go. But if you think that to kill all the firstborn seems harsh, then maybe you need to think more deeply about salvation.
To understand salvation, we need to back up and understand who God is and who we are. God is the infinitely holy sovereign of the universe. He spoke the universe into existence for His glory. He made man as male and female in His image to reflect His glory. But that first couple listened to Satan and disobeyed God’s direct command. Because of their disobedience, God imposed His threatened penalty (Gen. 2:17): “In the day that you eat from [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die.”
While God graciously didn’t strike Adam and Eve dead on the spot, the instant they ate they experienced spiritual death (separation from God) and the process of physical death set in. As a result of their sin, everyone since then is born separated from God and under His just curse of death. And in addition to being born in sin, we’ve all piled up plenty of our own sins against the Holy One.
God is not obligated to save any sinner from His just penalty of eternal separation from Him. We all deserve His judgment. But because of His sovereign love and mercy, He has graciously provided a way of salvation. He sent His own eternal Son, the second member of the trinity, to bear the penalty we all deserve. Because the sinless Son of God paid that price, God now can (Rom. 3:26), “be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” That’s the meaning of salvation.
God’s final plague on Egypt and His providing a way for Israel to be saved from that plague and delivered from slavery in Egypt is a picture of how He saves sinners spiritually. Just as Moses warned Pharaoh that the penalty if he refused to let Israel go would be the death of his firstborn, so God has warned all (Rom. 6:23), “the wages of sin is death.” Just as God gave Pharaoh nine plagues to warn him of His power and that He would do just as He had warned, so God has warned sinners of the impending consequences if they refuse to obey Him. We see that all people die. We see how frail we are. Even when we’re young and healthy, death is a daily possibility. We need a Savior from eternal death! Just as God provided the Passover Lamb, so He sent His Son to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of everyone who believes in Him (John 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7). Thus …
God’s means of saving His people is the blood of an acceptable sacrifice, applied by obedient faith.
We see in this inspired story the people who need salvation, the penalty for ignoring God’s means of salvation, the provision for God’s salvation, and the application of God’s salvation.
The Israelites were literal slaves under a cruel tyrant. Their parents and grandparents had been slaves for as far back as anyone knew. During the time of Moses’ birth, Pharaoh had given orders to kill all Israelite baby boys. Years later, when Moses went to Pharaoh to demand that he let Israel go, Israel’s misery as slaves got worse. Pharaoh commanded that they had to gather their own straw to make bricks, while keeping their quotas the same. So the Israelites knew their miserable condition as slaves. They knew that they needed deliverance from their bondage.
Israel’s literal condition as slaves was a picture of the universal human condition: We all are born in slavery to sin, captives in Satan’s domain of darkness (Col. 1:13; 2 Tim. 2:26). Jesus said (John 8:34), “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” Paul also describes our condition outside of Christ as being “slaves of sin” (Rom. 6:17).
But the problem is, many who are captives of Satan, enslaved to sin, don’t realize their true condition. They’re not walking around in chains, listening to a brutal slave-driver yell at them to get their quotas of bricks made. They don’t feel his lash on their backs. Rather, they’re doing rather well. Life is good. They have comfortable homes, two or more cars, plenty to eat, paid vacations, and good retirement plans. They don’t look like slaves or feel like slaves.
And so they don’t see their need for salvation. Salvation may be nice for religious types, but they want the freedom to run their own lives. They like to have their weekends free, rather than feeling obligated to go to church. They like to keep their money for personal pleasure, not feel like they need to give to the church. In their minds, if anyone is enslaved, it’s the religious crowd. Who needs that?
So, how do we tell people the good news about salvation when they think that they’re doing just fine as they are, thank you? That’s like trying to sell an ice-maker to an Eskimo! What is needed is the ministry of the Holy Spirit, concerning whom Jesus said (John 16:8-11), “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.”
“Convict” means “to convince,” as in a court of law. The Holy Spirit has to convince those in slavery to sin about their true condition. He has to convince them of their sin of unbelief. He must convince them that they fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness, as seen in Jesus Christ. He has to convince them about the coming judgment. So we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would open the eyes of those we know who are slaves of sin to their true condition. But be careful! He might use you to be the one to tell them!
One effective way to help people see that they are slaves to sin who need the Savior is Ray Comfort’s method (“The Way of the Master”) of going over the law before you tell people about God’s love and grace. He walks people through the Ten Commandments to show that they’ve broken every single one. They’re guilty before the Holy God! If you can’t remember all ten, you can say, “Jesus summed up God’s commandments by saying that we are to love God with our entire being and to love others as much as we love ourselves. Have you done that?” Or, you can go to Matthew 5, where Jesus says that if you’ve ever been angry with someone, you’ve committed murder in God’s sight. If you’ve ever lusted, you’ve committed adultery. It’s only when the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to see their condition as slaves of sin that they might be open to their need for salvation.
Exodus 11:1 should probably be translated, “Now the Lord had said to Moses ….” (Walter Kaiser, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:369). So verse 4 continues Moses’ remarks that he began in Exodus 10:29. He warns Pharaoh of God’s threat of the death of all Egypt’s firstborn, both of people and of cattle. But because of Pharaoh’s hard heart and the awful consequences that Moses could see coming, Moses “went out from Pharaoh in hot anger” (Exod. 11:8).
You may think, however, that it was unfair of God to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exod. 11:10) or to take the firstborn of “the slave girl … behind the millstones” (Exod. 11:5), who probably hadn’t even heard about the encounters between Moses and Pharaoh and who wouldn’t have known about the requirement to put the blood of a sacrificial lamb on her doorposts.
Regarding Pharaoh, there is a mystery that we cannot fully fathom, but we must accept if we believe in the Bible as God’s Word (Rom. 9:18): “So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” At the same time, people are responsible for their sins. And, we aren’t free to challenge God on this. When Paul raises this issue, he anticipates our objection (Rom. 9:19), “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” Paul’s answer is (Rom. 9:20): “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” In other words, “Sit down and shut up! God is God and you’re not God!”
Regarding the slave girl who had no knowledge of God’s impending judgment and yet suffered the loss of her firstborn, I admit that this is difficult to understand. I realize that like all of us, she was a sinner who deserved God’s judgment. But she didn’t seem to have a chance to hear about and apply God’s remedy. True, she had the witness of creation, as all people have (Rom. 1:18-21). But that’s only enough to condemn, not enough to save. The only verse I know of that addresses this is when Paul tells the people of Lystra (Acts 14:16), “In the generations gone by He [God] permitted all the nations to go their own ways.” God has permitted many to live and die without hearing the gospel. I know that God is perfectly just and fair. He knows every thought and deed of every person. No one will be judged unfairly. So I have to leave that difficult question there.
But we need to see clearly that the issue in salvation is life or death. In the exodus, God made a distinction between Egypt and Israel (Exod. 11:5-7). His salvation of Israel meant life for them. His judgment on Egypt meant death for them. C. H. Mackintosh observed (Notes on the Pentateuch [Loizeaux Brothers], p. 185), “How little do men think of this! They imagine that ‘real life’ ends when a man becomes a Christian … whereas God’s Word teaches us that it is only then we can see life and taste true happiness.” He cites 1 John 5:12, “He who has the Son has the life.” Also, John 3:36, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Thus, the people who need salvation are slaves. The penalty for rejecting God’s means of salvation is death.
In Exodus 12, God gives Moses specific directions for Israel regarding the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which immediately followed. There is far more than I can cover thoroughly here, but note the following:
First, the lamb (or goat) needed to be sufficient for each person in each family (Exod. 12:4). This pictures that salvation must be applied by each individual. Being a member of a Christian family or a Christian church is not enough. You must personally apply God’s means of salvation.
Also, the lamb was to be “an unblemished male a year old” (Exod. 12:5). This pictures Christ, our Passover Lamb (John 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7), who was without sin (John 8:46; 1 Pet. 2:22). If Jesus had been a sinner, He would have had to offer sacrifices for Himself, as the Jewish priests had to do. But as Hebrews 7:26-27 explains, “For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.”
Further, the lamb was to be selected on the tenth of the month, but not sacrificed until the fourteenth (Exod. 12:2, 6). This pictures that Christ was marked out for death before He was actually slain. As 1 Peter 1:19-21 states, we were redeemed “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
John Sailhamer (The Pentateuch as Narrative [Zondervan], p. 260) makes the interesting suggestion that in Peter’s reckoning, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years (2 Pet. 3:8). He adds, “If Peter worked within the traditional chronology of the Bible, which reckons the coming of Christ at four thousand years after Creation, then his concept of Christ, the Passover lamb ‘chosen before the creation of the world,’ would fit the requirement of the lamb chosen four days before the Passover.”
Scholars debate the exact time that the lamb was to be slain, (Exod. 12:6) but some believe that Jesus died on the cross at the same time that the Passover lambs were being killed at the temple. Then the Israelites were to put some of the blood on the two doorposts and the lintel of their houses. They were to roast the lamb with fire and eat it that night along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (Exod. 12:8). The fire may represent the fact that God’s true Passover Lamb had to endure the fire of God’s wrath on the cross (Mackintosh, p. 192). The bitter herbs were a reminder of the bitterness of Israel’s centuries of slavery in Egypt. The unleavened bread reminded them of the purity required of those whom God delivered from slavery. And eating bread in the Bible also points to fellowship. Thus we partake of the communion bread as a symbol of fellowship with the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ.
The Passover was to mark the beginning of the New Year for Israel (Exod. 12:2). This is a reminder that God’s salvation by the application of Christ’s blood marks the beginning of new life for the believer. God promised that when He saw the blood on the doorposts and lintels of the Israelite homes, He would pass over them and not strike down their firstborn. All who were under the blood would be safe. This leads to the truth that …
Paul uses the phrase, “the obedience of faith,” in Romans 1:5 & 16:26. Obedient faith is opposed to the dead faith that James 2:17 warns against. Note five things:
To kill the lamb, eat it in the prescribed manner, and put the blood on the doorposts and lintel, required taking God at His word. Their obedience was evidence of their underlying faith. As Hebrews 11:28 says, “By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.” Exodus 12:28 underscores the point: “Then the sons of Israel went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.”
If an Israelite questioned or doubted God’s word to Moses by saying, “This doesn’t make sense,” or, “Why do I need blood? That’s gross!” his firstborn would have died. If he said, “I’m vegan and believe in animal rights; I’m not going to kill and eat a lamb!” his firstborn would have died. Obedient faith takes God at His word and acts on it.
To say, “I really respect Moses and Aaron and I believe what they say,” but not to have applied the blood would have meant that your firstborn died. James and Paul were not at odds. Both believed that genuine saving faith obeys God’s word. Paul wrote the familiar Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” But don’t forget verse 10: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Genuine saving faith necessarily results in the obedience of good works. This is what James meant when he wrote that faith without works cannot save, because it is dead (James 2:14-17). Obedient faith is the only genuine faith.
This is pictured in the unleavened bread. C. H. Mackintosh (p. 192) observed, “The Israelite did not put away leaven in order to be saved, but because he was saved.” He then points out that the penalty for eating leavened bread was to be cut off from the congregation of Israel (Exod. 12:19), which answers to the church putting out of their fellowship those who persist in known sin. The Passover with its application of the blood of the lamb pictured our salvation, when by faith we apply Christ’s shed blood to our hearts. But the Passover was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, picturing the fact that those who are saved must clean out the leaven of sin and be set apart unto God, who is holy (1 Cor. 5:7-8).
The Lord instructs Israel (Exod. 12:24-27) that in later generations when they lived in the land which the Lord would give them and their children asked the meaning of the Passover, the fathers were to say, “Go ask your mother!” No! They were to explain the meaning of God’s salvation to their children. In the same way, Christian parents should explain to their children the message of salvation as pictured in water baptism and communion. To be baptized and partake of the Lord’s Supper, children should be old enough to understand the gospel clearly and give some evidence that they have personally believed in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. They should be able to grasp the basic meaning of both ordinances, which picture the reality of saving faith.
It is mentioned and repeated (Exod. 11:2-3; 12:35-36) that the Israelites asked the Egyptians for articles of silver, gold, and clothing, and that God granted them favor so that the Egyptians complied. I don’t know whether the Egyptians were thinking, “Take this and get out of here before another disaster strikes!” or that they gave because they highly esteemed Moses (Exod. 11:3). But it was God’s way of providing Israel with necessary provisions for their time in the wilderness, and also the materials that they later needed to build the tabernacle.
The application for the church today is that when we obey the Great Commission, God blesses us with the wealth of the nations—not material wealth, but rather people from every tongue, tribe, and nation worshiping around God’s throne.
A prominent soap manufacturer and a Christian were once walking along a city street as the Christian was explaining the gospel to the businessman. But the businessman objected: “If what you say is true, why is there so much evil in the world?” The Christian was struggling with how to answer when he saw a little boy sitting on the curb. His face, hands, and clothes were filthy. The Christian asked, “I thought that you manufactured soap.” “I do,” said the man. “If that is so, why is this boy so dirty?” The businessman replied, “The soap must be applied.” “Exactly,” said the Christian. “The work of Christ on the cross must be applied.”
The crucial question is, “Have you applied the sacrificial blood of Jesus to your heart?” Believing in general that Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins is not enough. You must recognize your desperate condition as a slave to sin, under God’s just condemnation. But then you must exercise obedient faith by putting your trust in Christ as your substitutionary Lamb. And if your faith is genuine, you will then seek to grow in holiness.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (10)
April 22, 2018
We live in a culture obsessed with time-saving devices. I get breaking news alerts from around the world on my phone the minute they happen. A wealth of information is instantly available at our fingertips. I can ask, “Hey, Siri, what’s the population of Paris?” and instantly she tells me. Just a little over a century ago, it took Hudson Taylor four months to travel from England to China and the same to send mail back to England. Now I can text or Facetime with my daughter half way around the world and instantly know how she’s doing.
So naturally, we expect God to work in the same way. I read books on time management and how to get things done more efficiently. Life is short, so I want God to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s unimaginable that He would be slow or inefficient in accomplishing His purpose!
Of course, from His eternal perspective, God is not inefficient or slow. He knows what He’s doing and He accomplishes His purpose right on schedule (Isa. 46:10). But from our time-bound perspective, God’s ways often seem incredibly wasteful, inefficient, and slow. To be faithful to the Lord and His cause, we need to divest ourselves of the modern way of viewing things and understand how God works. We need to know His ways, which are not our ways (Isa. 55:8-9).
This is important because many Christians claim that God wants you to be instantly healthy, wealthy, and spiritually victorious. They deny that sickness, suffering, pain, or poverty ever come from the Lord’s hand. If you’re sick, they say, don’t admit it—that’s a negative confession. Rather, claim your healing by faith! If you’re poor, envision living in a mansion and claim that by faith! If you struggle with problems, that’s not God’s will! Get slain in the Spirit or speak in tongues, and you will have instant spiritual victory! And, by the way, if you’ll send a nice check to the TV preacher making these claims, he’ll send you a special prayer cloth that you can use to get miraculous answers to your prayers.
That false teaching appeals to the flesh. Who doesn’t want instant success and instant solutions to difficult problems? If you had your choice between instant spiritual victory or fifty years of a slow, difficult battle, who wouldn’t choose the instant route?
Well, God would not! He had just delivered His people from 400 years in Egypt, much of it spent in horrible slavery. He delivered them right on schedule, according to His word to Abraham (Gen. 15:13-14), but that meant that many generations of Israelites lived and died crying out to God for deliverance, but without any indication that He heard their prayers.
Now, the Lord’s plan was to lead Israel to the Promised Land. If Moses had looked at a map, he would have seen that the shortest route from Egypt to Palestine with no rivers or sea to cross is to go straight north through Gaza into the land. But rather than go that way, God led His people around by way of the wilderness to the Red Sea (or, Sea of Reeds; Exod. 13:17-18). He had His reasons (Exod. 13:17): “The people might change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.” Ironically, they soon would need to engage in war (Exod. 17:8-13). But God knew that initially, they weren’t ready, so He led them on this somewhat circuitous route that I’m calling, “the scenic route to the Promised Land.” I’ve never been to the Sinai Peninsula, but the photos I’ve seen don’t make me want to go there! But it was God’s way for His people. The lesson for us is:
God’s way of dealing with us is to take us on “the scenic route,” because His purpose is to teach us to trust and glorify Him.
First we’ll look at God’s way and then at His purpose.
When we used to live in Southern California and wanted to get to the Bay area, if we had the extra time we enjoyed taking the more scenic route up Highway 1 along the coast. The fastest way there is Interstate 5 which goes right up the middle of the State. But it’s hot and boring, so we preferred the scenic route. But there are four things about that scenic route that are also true of God’s “scenic route”:
It takes much longer to get to the Bay area up Highway 1 with its two-lane highway and many curves than to shoot up I-5. In Israel’s case, it would have taken less than two weeks to go directly from Egypt to Canaan, but God’s “scenic route” through the wilderness took them forty years!
The Bible is clear that God does not seem to be in the big hurry that we’re in. He takes His time. For example, God called Abraham when he was 75 and promised to give him a son. But that son wasn’t born until Abraham was 100 and his wife was 90, well past her childbearing years. Keep in mind that God’s promise to Abraham was to make from him a great nation (Gen. 12:2). But God only gave him one son through whom to fulfill that promise.
Well then, surely Abraham’s son Isaac must have had a large family, right? No, in fact at first, Isaac’s wife Rebekah was barren (Gen. 25:21). After Isaac prayed, the Lord gave them twin sons, Esau and Jacob. But God rejected Esau and chose Jacob. Jacob deceived his father out of the birthright and had to flee from the Promised Land because his brother wanted to kill him. He worked there for his uncle Laban for seven years to gain Laban’s daughter Rachel as his wife, only to be deceived so that he had to work seven more years.
Eventually, he returned to the land of promise, but had a slew of problems there. His ten oldest sons sold their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt. He spent the better part of his twenties in an Egyptian jail before God elevated him to the second position in the land under Pharaoh. Finally, God led Jacob and his sons and their families down to Egypt, where we find them 400 years later when Moses’ story begins. That’s not exactly a fast track to fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham to give him the land of Canaan and make of him a great nation!
As we’ve seen, the route to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt wasn’t the quick way either. Moses was “educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and a man of power in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). He sure seemed ready to go. But when he set about at age 40 to deliver God’s chosen people, he failed miserably, fled for his life, and spent the next 40 years in the desert. Meanwhile, God’s people languished in slavery.
You see a similar pattern in the life of David. He was anointed as king as a teenager, but he spent his twenties running from the mad King Saul. He finally became king at age 30.
After the 70-year exile of God’s people in Babylon and their return to the land, 400 long years went by with no word from God. Finally, John the Baptist appeared on the scene, announcing the coming of the Messiah. Surely the Lord Jesus, who was without sin, would be ready to go by age 20! But, no, He was about 30 when He began His public ministry (Luke 3:23) and then it only lasted about three years before He was crucified.
You see the same thing with the apostle Paul. He was converted in his early thirties, but then spent two or three years in Arabia (Gal. 1:17-18) and another six to eight years in Tarsus before he began teaching at the church in Antioch. Later, when Paul seemingly could have had maximum impact for the gospel through his missionary efforts, God left him confined in Caesarea for two years because of a greedy governor who was hoping for a bribe (Acts 24:26-27). Then, rather than being released, he was transferred to Rome, where he spent more time in confinement.
And, if you’ve read any history of the church or missionary biographies, you know that the spread of the gospel has not been quick. The scenic route to fulfilling the Great Commission has taken much longer than if God had hired a time management expert back in the first century!
The scenic route doesn’t always make sense to us. Why didn’t God choose Abraham when he was 25 and give him Isaac when he was 30? Think of all those “wasted” years! Why leave Joseph in that Egyptian dungeon for all those years? Surely, the cupbearer could have told Pharaoh about Joseph much sooner, but the cupbearer forgot (Gen. 40:23). And God could have given Pharaoh the dream that led to Joseph’s release after two weeks or two months. But we read (Gen. 41:1), “Now it happened at the end of two full years that Pharaoh had a dream ….”
Why leave Moses out in the desert for 40 years while the Israelites continued to make bricks under the cruel Egyptian taskmasters? Wouldn’t a couple of years of training have sufficed? Then, why not lead Israel directly into the Promised Land and save 40 years? God could have struck the Canaanites with a deadly plague and spared Israel the difficulty of conquering the land.
Why not get rid of the faithless King Saul and put the man after God’s heart in power much sooner? Why not send the forerunner and the Messiah shortly after the exiles returned to the land? Why not have the Lord Jesus begin His ministry at 20 and let it go until He was 60? Think of how much more He would have accomplished! Why not have Paul released from the corrupt Roman governor so that he could take the gospel to Spain, as he wanted to do? From our point of view, the scenic route is not very efficient!
Sometimes when we used to drive up Highway 1, the road had been covered by mudslides. I recently saw on the news that it was completely closed because of a huge mudslide. But even when it’s open, there are all those curves! Last summer we were in Maui, where the most scenic road is the road to Hana. I saw a T-shirt that read, “The Road to Hana: Turn left, turn right, repeat 620 times!” It wasn’t exaggerating! Plus there are 59 one-lane bridges in 52 miles! It’s called “the Divorce Highway” because of the strain it can put on your marriage to drive it! But everyone agrees that it’s the most scenic route on Maui!
As we’ve seen, God’s scenic route was not the easiest way to get to the Promised Land. It would have been much easier if God had promised Abraham a son and six months later Sarah announced that she was pregnant. It would have been easier if Jacob had told Laban, “I’ll work seven years for Rachel,” and Laban had said, “Seven weeks is enough.” It would have been easier for Joseph if after he resisted the seductive attempts of Potiphar’s wife, he had been rewarded with the number two job in the land, rather than with years in an Egyptian dungeon. The same could be said for Moses, David, Paul, and other servants of the Lord. Why didn’t these men claim their deliverance by faith and get on with enjoying the victorious life? God’s scenic route takes longer, it’s not the most efficient way, and it’s the most difficult route.
That’s why we take it! It’s worth the longer time, the inefficiency, and the difficult hassles because in the long run, nothing is as beautiful. In California, straight, four-lane, 70 mile-per-hour I-5 just doesn’t compare with Highway 1 up the coast!
The reason that God’s scenic route for His saints is the most beautiful in the long run is because God is with you and there is nothing to compare with a life lived with Him. If Israel had traveled straight north into Canaan, even if God had taken out the Canaanites, they would have settled into a comfortable life in the land. As it was, they spent forty years camping with God and His people in the barren wilderness where they saw Him miraculously provide manna each morning and water from the rock. They had the pillar and the cloud of God’s presence protecting and guiding them.
The logistics of providing for two million people in the barren desert were overwhelming! If you lined them up at 50 abreast, they would have stretched forty miles into the desert! To provide for that many people would have required 30 boxcars of food and 300 tank cars of water every day of their journey! But which in the long run would have been the more beautiful way of life: to be a part of that great company in the wilderness, seeing God provide for all your needs, leading you by the pillar of cloud and fire, and knowing that you were the objects of His loving care? Or, to settle down in suburban Jerusalem in a nice house with a two-donkey garage?
So, God’s way is to take us on the longer, inefficient, difficult scenic route, which in the long run is the most beautiful. But, why? What is His purpose for taking us that way?
The basic aim of the fallen human race is independence from God. We want to save ourselves or at least to have a hand in the process. We want to direct our own lives, perhaps with a little help from God, so that we can share the credit. But we don’t like being totally dependent on God.
It all boils down to, who gets the glory? If I can help God in the process of salvation, then I can share some of His glory. If I can live the Christian life by my strength, then I can take the credit. But God says (Isa. 42:8), “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another ….” And so He takes us on the scenic route to break us of our self-dependence so that we put our trust in Him and glorify Him. Note three things about trusting in the Lord:
As we’ll see next time (Exod. 14:1-4), the Lord specifically directed Moses to take Israel to a place where a large body of water was in front of them and the Egyptian army was bearing down behind them. They were trapped. Why would God do that? So that Israel would see their own utter weakness along with God’s power and provision when He parted the sea and delivered them from Pharaoh’s army.
So, they learned their lesson, right? In Exodus 15:22, after the miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea, Israel went three days into the wilderness and found no water. Surely they knew that if they trusted God, He could provide water, right? But instead they grumbled. They hadn’t yet learned to trust in the Lord. In chapter 16, the people complained about being in the wilderness with no food and threatened to return to Egypt. But God provided manna. In chapter 17, again they needed water. But rather than trusting the Lord who had already miraculously delivered them and provided water and food, they grumbled. Then (Exod. 17:8), Amalek fought against Israel.
Why were they having all these problems? Weren’t they God’s chosen people? Weren’t they the ones through whom God’s promise to Abraham and His purpose would be fulfilled? Wasn’t God leading them? Then why did He allow all of these problems? Because God’s way is to take His people on the scenic route because His purpose is to build a people who trust in Him for His glory. But we don’t trust Him as we should until we see our weakness and His faithful power and provision.
We read (Exod. 13:19): “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, ‘God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones from here with you.’” I chuckle whenever I read that verse. You know how hectic it is to leave for a family camping trip. You have to pack your suitcases and get the car packed with all the camping gear. There’s always so much stuff! I wonder, “How am I going to get everything to fit into the car?”
So picture Moses getting ready to lead two million people out of Egypt and into the wilderness. I’m sure that their wagons didn’t have a lot of extra room. They’re just cinching down the pile of stuff when Moses says, “We forgot Joseph’s bones! We’ve got to make room for Joseph’s bones!” Actually, it was his mummy! With all of their household goods and kids and animals and food and water for the trip, they had to find room for Joseph’s bones! Why did Moses take Joseph’s bones? Genesis 50:24-25 tells us:
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely take care of you, and you shall carry my bones up from here.”
Carrying Joseph’s almost 400-year-old mummy back to Canaan was a visible proof that God always keeps His loving promises. Every time they broke camp and moved to a new location in the wilderness over those 40 years (at least 41 different camps, Num. 33:5-49), Moses had to load and unload Joseph’s bones! Perhaps some of the kids saw this old man loading and unloading that coffin and asked their parents, “Why is he doing that?” If the parents knew what was happening they would have replied, “Taking that coffin back to the Promised Land shows that God is keeping His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
You can’t trust someone who doesn’t keep his word. But if that person always keeps his word, you can trust that he will do it the next time. But remember, God doesn’t operate on our timetable! It was 400 years before Joseph’s bones made it out of Egypt! It would still be another 1,400 years before God sent the promised Savior. Now it’s been almost 2,000 years since the crucified and risen Savior ascended with the promise (Acts 1:11), “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.” But because God has always kept His promises, you can trust that He will keep that one, too!
The familiar Ephesians 2:8-9 makes this point: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” In its entirety, being saved from God’s judgment is a free gift of His grace (see, 1 Cor. 1:26-31). That way, He gets all the glory, which He alone deserves. But what do we get? We get the blessing of His salvation! We get every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:3). When we trust in the Lord, He gets the glory and we get the blessings.
When God’s eternal Son came to this earth and took on human flesh, God led Him on “the scenic route.” It was the most difficult way imaginable, the way of the cross. When Jesus began to tell the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the Jewish leaders and be killed and raised up on the third day, they thought that He had lost it! Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him (Matt. 16:22)! But Jesus rebuked Peter (Matt. 16:23): “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
God’s way is “the scenic route.” If the route is long and hard, it’s so that you will learn more deeply to trust and glorify our gracious Lord!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (11)
April 29, 2018
After an extensive tour of the United States, the late German pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke was asked what he saw as the greatest defect among American Christians. He replied, “They have an inadequate view of suffering.” (Cited by Philip Yancey, Where is God When it Hurts? [Zondervan, 1977], p. 15.)
It’s vitally important to have a biblical understanding of suffering because the enemy of our souls uses trials to try to devour Christians. Peter wrote to a suffering church (1 Pet. 5:8-11):
Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Note how Peter emphasizes the sovereignty of God: He has eternal dominion and He is using our trials to perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish our faith. Without that understanding of God’s sovereignty over trials, your options are that Satan has equal or greater power than God (dualism) or that God doesn’t concern Himself with the things that happen to us (deism). A slightly different option is the more recent “open theism,” which claims that God feels bad about your trials, but He doesn’t know or control the future. All of those views attempt to get God “off the hook” for bad things that happen. But they’re all heretical because they deny who God is as revealed in His Word.
In Exodus 14, after Pharaoh had driven Israel out of Egypt after the tenth plague, when God killed all the firstborn in Egypt, Pharaoh and his servants had a change of heart. It wasn’t a change where they repented of their sins and cried out to God for His mercy. Rather, they decided that they had made a mistake to let the enslaved Jews go. So they sent the army to pursue Israel with the aim of bringing them back to Egypt as slaves. God directed Moses to lead Israel to turn back and camp in a place that was a military trap. God had a definite plan to glorify Himself by delivering helpless Israel and destroying Pharaoh’s army. The parting of the Red Sea is one of the most familiar stories in the Old Testament. Its application for us is that …
God ordains trials in our lives so that we will trust Him and honor Him when He delivers us.
It was shortly after God had delivered Israel from bondage that Pharaoh went after them. In the same way, Satan likes to go after new believers who haven’t yet learned what God’s Word teaches about suffering. So it’s especially important if you’re a new Christian or if you’re working with new Christians to learn the lessons of this chapter. There are three main truths:
Not just the “open theists,” but also many in the Pentecostal movement, claim that God doesn’t ordain trials. They usually ascribe trials to the devil, not to God. While the Book of Job is clear that Satan can inflict awful trials on the Lord’s people, it is also clear that he can only go as far as God allows. God uses demonic forces to accomplish His holy purposes (e.g. Paul’s thorn in the flesh, 2 Cor. 12:7), but they are subject to His commands. Thus …
In Exodus 14, the Lord told Moses to tell the Israelites to turn back and camp in a spot by the sea, where they had no route of escape when Pharaoh’s army came upon them. Scholars debate the exact location for the exodus. Some translate “the Red Sea” as “the Sea of Reeds,” since the Hebrew word means “reeds.” The problem is that papyrus reeds do not grow in the deeper waters of the Red Sea, but only in the shallower marshlands of northern Egypt. Thus these scholars say that Israel crossed at one of the lakes or marshlands north of the modern Gulf of Suez.
But there are some problems with this view (see, Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], pp. 391-392). First, there are other places in the Bible where this Hebrew word clearly refers to what we know as the Red Sea (Num. 14:25; 21:4; 1 Kings 9:26; Jer. 49:21). Second, the depth of water that Israel passed through, which God then sent back to drown the Egyptian army, is greater than a shallow marshland or lake. Twice (Exod. 14:22, 29) the parting of the sea is described as a wall of water on the right hand and left. While God used a mighty wind to dry the seabed and part the waters (Exod. 14:21), it was clearly miraculous that the water stacked up like a wall on both sides.
More recent scholarship has shown that in former times the Red Sea extended farther north than it does today. It may even have been connected to the Bitter Lakes in the north, in which case there could have been papyrus reeds growing along its shore (Ryken, p. 392). While we cannot know for certain where the exodus took place, we can trust the biblical account that reports the mighty miracle that God did to deliver Israel through a deep body of water that subsequently drowned the pursuing Egyptian army.
But the significant point in Exodus 14:1-4 is that God specifically directed Moses to lead the Israelites to turn around and camp where they were trapped by the sea, which was suicidal from a military point of view. Pharaoh got a report of this and thought, “They’re sitting ducks! They can’t escape!” But the entire situation was orchestrated by God for His sovereign purposes.
Those who deny God’s sovereignty over the horrible trials that we see around us are trying to protect God from the charge of being responsible for evil. But the Bible affirms that God uses demons and evil people to accomplish His holy purposes, but He is not responsible for their evil actions (1 Kings 22:19-23; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28). If you deny God’s sovereignty over trials, you rob people of God’s comfort. A godly woman from our church who died of cancer in her fifties (after already losing her husband to an early death) told me shortly before she died that if she didn’t believe in God’s sovereignty over her cancer, she would have despaired. Knowing that He is sovereign gave her great comfort.
Romans 8:28 is a familiar verse that brings great comfort when we go through trials: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” While we should not glibly lay that verse on a suffering person, saints who suffer should lay hold of it as an anchor for their souls.
Hebrews 12, which describes God’s discipline to train believers, assures us (Heb. 12:10b-11), “He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Psalm 119:67 states, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” It continues (Ps. 119:75), “I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.”
I’m not minimizing the trauma and pain of the difficult trials that many of God’s saints have endured. But the only comfort in that suffering is to view it as Joseph viewed his brothers’ selling him into slavery (Gen. 50:20): “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” Note also …
God repeatedly lets Moses know that Pharaoh’s change of heart came about because God hardened his heart (Exod. 14:4, 8, 17). Proverbs 21:1 affirms, “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.”
As you see evil dictators around the world committing atrocities against people, you may wonder, “Where is God in all this? Why doesn’t He do something?” The psalmists often utter similar cries (e.g. Ps. 2:1-3; 13:1-4; 94:2-7). But they take great comfort in remembering that (Ps. 2:4), “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.” God promises (Deut. 32:35), “Vengeance is Mine, and retribution, in due time their foot will slip.” The Book of Revelation reveals the persecution that the antichrist will inflict on the saints, but it assures us that after he has inadvertently served God’s purposes, God will destroy him and vindicate His saints.
So, the first lesson is that God is sovereign over all things, including the trials that come into our lives. But, the question remains, “Why does He ordain these trials?”
There are three lessons here about trusting God:
God does this on different levels. Often, He brings trials into our lives before we have trusted in Christ as Savior to show us our need for Him. Countless testimonies run along the lines, “I was a happy unbeliever when suddenly I got hit with some overwhelming trials that showed me that I needed God. About that time, a Christian friend told me that Jesus died on the cross for all my sins and offers me eternal life as a free gift if I would trust in Him. I realized that I needed Christ and trusted Him at that time.”
I love the story of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). If he had not been blind, he probably wouldn’t have been as desperate to meet Jesus. But as it was, when he heard that Jesus was passing by, he cried out (Mark 10:47), “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many tried to silence him, but he yelled all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus heard him, stopped, and called him to come. Jesus asked (Mark 10:51), “What do you want Me to do for you?” He wanted Bartimaeus to acknowledge his need and his faith. Bartimaeus said, “Rabboni, I want to regain my sight!” Jesus healed him instantly, saying (Mark 10:52), “Go; your faith has made you well.” Bartimaeus’ blindness drove him in faith to the only One who could help. If you’ve never trusted in Christ as your Savior, let your trials drive you to faith in Him!
But also, God ordains trials for us as believers so that we will trust Him more deeply. The apostle Paul was not weak in faith. But even he needed to trust God more. He wrote (2 Cor. 1:8-10), “For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us.”
But we need to be careful so that our cry to God in a time of need is genuine. In Exodus 14:10, as Pharaoh and his army drew near to the trapped Israelites, we read that they cried out to the Lord. But then they immediately (Exod. 14:11-12) accuse Moses of bringing them out of Egypt so that they could die in the wilderness. They remind him that they had said when they were back in Egypt that it would be better to remain slaves in Egypt than to die in the wilderness. Their accusation assumed that they knew better than either Moses or God about what would be best for them! So their cry to God was just a cry of panic, not of genuine faith. Genuine faith submits to God’s mighty hand in trials, casting all cares on Him (1 Pet. 5:6-7). Complaining or accusing God of harming you is evidence of a lack of genuine faith.
The angel of God and the pillar of cloud that had been going in front of Israel to direct their way moved behind them to provide a barrier between Israel and the Egyptian army (Exod. 14:19). It served as darkness for the Egyptians, but as light for Israel (cf. 2 Cor. 2:15-16). C. H. Mackintosh (Notes on the Pentateuch [Loizeaux Brothers], p. 205) observed, “He has placed Himself between us and our sins; and it is our happy privilege to find Him between us and every one and every thing that could be against us.” He also notes, “The same waters which formed a wall for God’s redeemed, formed a grave for Pharaoh.” The point is that God has infinite resources to provide deliverance for us. As Isaiah 54:17 promises, “No weapon that is formed against you will prosper.…”
Exodus 14:13-14 reflects Moses’ great trust in the Lord:
But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.”
This is a great picture of our salvation. We can’t do anything to help God out in the process. All we can do is receive God’s salvation by faith. But even saving faith and repentance must come from God (Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8-9; 2 Tim. 2:25-26).
Some object, “How can God command sinners to repent and believe in Christ if they’re incapable of repenting and believing?” But the Bible shows that with the command, God grants faith and repentance to those He sovereignly ordains to save (Acts 5:31; 11:18). Mark 3 reports that in the synagogue Jesus saw a man with a withered hand. He couldn’t move it. But Jesus called the man in front of everyone and commanded (Mark 3:5), “Stretch out your hand.” Was Jesus mocking him? He wasn’t able to stretch out his hand! But with the command, Jesus imparted the power to obey. The man stretched out his hand and was healed.
Here (Exod. 14:15), God gives Israel the impossible command, “Go forward.” That was a good idea, but there was this little problem of the Red Sea preventing them from going forward! But when Moses trusted God and lifted his staff over the sea, it parted so that the Israelites could obey God’s command.
There are a few other instances in the Bible where God commanded His people to do nothing except to trust Him and He brought a miraculous deliverance (2 Chron. 20:15-17). But God’s usual method is for us first to trust Him and then to use appropriate means to deal with the trial at hand: Pray for a job, but then do all you can to secure that job. Pray for healing, but get proper medical attention. Pray for problems in your marriage, but obey biblical commands that apply to your marriage.
Thus, God is sovereign over all things, including the trials that come into our lives. He ordains those trials so that we will trust Him to deliver us. But why does He do that?
In Exodus 14:4, God explains His reason for these events, “Thus I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them; and I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.” He repeats (Exod. 14:18), “Then the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen.” Philip Ryken (the subtitle of his book) says that the theme of Exodus is “saved for God’s glory.” He further explains (p. 396) that everything that God has ever done, is doing now, or will do is for His glory. That is clearly the reason for Israel’s deliverance through the Red Sea. God is glorified both when He judges the wicked and when He saves His elect. Thus,
This applies both to your salvation through the gospel and to His delivering you from a trial. In Psalm 50:15 God commands, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” Pharaoh’s army, with its hundreds of chariots, was the most powerful war machine of its day, but it was no match for God’s power. He divided the sea to let Israel cross and to lure the Egyptian army to pursue them. Once Israel was on the other side, God commanded Moses to stretch out his hand so that the sea returned to its normal state, drowning all of the Egyptian soldiers. As a result (Exod. 14:31), Israel feared the Lord and believed in Him, as well as in His servant Moses (although temporarily).
If you’re going through a difficult trial, I encourage you to read the triumphant words of Romans 8, especially the crescendo at the end, where Paul declares (Rom. 8:31), “If God is for us, who is against us?” He goes on to list every conceivable trial, including being slaughtered as sheep for God’s sake. But then he adds (Rom. 8:37), “In all these things we overwhelming conquer through Him who loved us.” But that raises a final question: “What if God doesn’t deliver you?” What should you do then?
Many of God’s saints trusted in Him but died prematurely from disease or were killed for their faith. The great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, records the many victories that God’s people obtained by faith. But after stating that women received back their dead by resurrection, the author continues (Heb. 11:35-38):
… and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.
The same faith in God had very different results! I love the boldness of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego when the arrogant King Nebuchadnezzar threatened to throw them into the furnace if they didn’t bow to his idol (Dan. 3:17-18):
“If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
They were ready to glorify God whether He delivered them or whether they burned to death!
At the cross, Satan and all of God’s enemies thought that they had gained final victory by killing Jesus. But through the cross, God disarmed and triumphed over the forces of darkness, securing our salvation (Col. 2:15). God raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him above all rule and authority (Eph. 1:20-22). So even if we suffer martyrs’ deaths, God will be glorified by raising us from the dead and having us rule with Him throughout eternity!
The 1563 Heidelberg Catechism begins with the question, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” It answers:
That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Honor God by letting that be your only comfort in life and death!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (12)
May 6, 2018
We all have our lists of sins that we think are really bad, going down to those that we tend to shrug off as hardly sins at all. We’d all agree that killing innocent people or even murdering an enemy are really bad sins. Raping women and molesting little children are really bad. Robbery or burglary are bad, but not as bad as murder or rape, assuming that no one gets hurt.
And so we work our way down the list. We’re usually careful not to put any of our own sins very high on the list. We think, “Sure, I have my faults, but I’d never commit any of those really bad sins!” I might admit that I have a tendency to grumble now and then, but I’d dismiss that as a relatively minor fault. In fact, I might not call it a sin at all—until, that is, I read God’s Word!
God had just miraculously delivered Israel from Pharaoh’s pursuing army by parting the Red Sea for Israel’s escape and then bringing the sea back over the Egyptian army. Then Israel had a joyful time of worship, singing to the Lord (Exod. 15:1-21). Next, we read that Israel went three days into the wilderness and found no water. Then they came to Marah, where there was water, but it was bitter and undrinkable. But rather than trusting in the Lord, who had led and provided for them thus far, Israel grumbled.
It’s easy for me to sit in my comfortable house, shake my head, and think, “What’s wrong with those people, anyway? Didn’t they know that the God who miraculously delivered them from Egypt could easily provide water? Why didn’t they just trust the Lord?” And yet, when I encounter minor trials, I’m often quick to grumble rather than thankfully to trust in the Lord who has graciously saved me from Satan’s domain of darkness!
The Spirit of God inspired Moses to put together the jubilant song of Moses followed immediately by the grumbling of the people at Marah. I could have separated these stories by preaching different sermons on each one. But I think there’s a lesson from looking at both of these incidents together:
If God has saved you, joyfully sing His praises, but avoid the terrible sin of grumbling.
First, let’s look at the song; then, the sin:
Scholars suggest different ways of analyzing this song, but I think the easiest is to see verses 1-12 as rejoicing in what God had done in delivering Israel from Egypt, while verses 13-18 rejoice by faith in what God is going to do when He gives Israel the land of Canaan. Verses 13-15 use the past tense; verse 16 uses the present, while verses 17 & 18 are in the future tense. But it all describes by faith how God will fulfill His promise to Abraham to give his descendants the land. Verse 19 recaps the great deliverance described in chapter 14, while verses 20 & 21 tell how Miriam led the women in singing this song and dancing. There are three main lessons:
This is the first recorded song in the Bible and its mood is decidedly joyful, as seen in the women playing the timbrel (like a tambourine) and dancing. You get the impression that these people were happy about something! The singing was both congregational (v. 1, “Moses and the sons of Israel”) and personal (v. 1, “I will sing to the Lord”). Worship should be both: if God has saved you, you should joyfully sing because you personally have experienced His great salvation. But, also, you should join with others who have experienced His salvation so that the corporate singing magnifies your experience by a factor of how many hundreds or thousands of saved people are combining their voices in praise.
Note also that there is not a word in this song (except for the title, which is mentioned in Rev. 15:3, not here) about what Moses did to lead Israel out of slavery, but only about what God did. There is no mention of the people’s faith in putting the blood on their doorposts. Everything is about the Lord and directed to Him. They “sang this song to the Lord, and said, ‘I will sing to the Lord …” (Exod. 15:1, emphasis mine). There is a proper place for teaching and admonishing one another through corporate singing, but even then we should sing to the Lord (Col. 3:16, emphasis mine): “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Israel, of course, was joyful over God’s delivering them from hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt and from Pharaoh’s threatening army. But the exodus is the greatest picture in the Old Testament of God saving His chosen people from bondage to Satan and sin. And that is something worth getting excited about over and over again! Don’t ever allow yourself to get bored over the wonderful, eternally joyous truth that God has saved you by His grace! That’s why Jesus told us to celebrate His supper often in remembrance of Him. We tend to get busy with other less important things and forget what He did for us on the cross and where we’d be at if He hadn’t done that. So think often about God’s saving you. And if it doesn’t move your heart to think about what the Savior did for you on the cross, then confess it and ask Him to help you recover your first love for Him (Rev. 2:4-5).
John Stott (Christianity Today [6/12/81], p. 19) told about a Salvation Army drummer who was beating his drum so hard that the band leader had to tell him to tone it down a bit. In his cockney accent the drummer replied, “God bless you, sire, since oi’ve been converted, oi’m so ’appy, oi could bust the bloomin’ drum!”
I’m not talking about pumping up your emotions or having our worship teams play songs that pump up everyone’s emotions. Rather, I’m saying, “Think about what God has done in saving you and then joyfully sing His praises in response!” In Jesus’ words, worship the Father in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).
That first generation of Israelites remembered all too well their horrible past. Some of the older ones remembered how Pharaoh had commanded them to kill their baby boys. They remembered the meaningless daily grind of making bricks from sunrise to sunset in the hot Egyptian sun. Many remembered the lashes of the cruel taskmasters when they couldn’t produce their quotas. In verse 9, they rehearse Pharaoh’s more recent evil intent:
The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my desire shall be gratified against them;
I will draw out my sword, my hand will destroy them.”
The problem was, subsequent generations may not remember the terrible past of that first generation that God delivered through the exodus. And that can be a problem if you’re a second or third generation Christian. You may think, “I was raised in the church. I don’t have a terrible past to be saved from.”
But that’s not true! I used to have a friend named Glenn who was saved while he was in prison for drug dealing. He would boldly witness to every stranger he met, handing them a tract with his testimony as he said, “I was in prison when God saved me. Here’s my story.” He often told me, “I was forgiven much, so I love Jesus much!” But I used to think, where does that leave me? I was raised in the church. I’ve never been drunk or used illegal drugs. I’ve never been arrested. So how can I say, “I was forgiven much, so I love Jesus much”?
But then I was meditating on the story in Luke 7 where Jesus uses that phrase to describe the sinful woman who anointed His feet with perfume and her tears. The point of that story is that Simon, the proud Pharisee, who wondered how Jesus could allow this sinful woman to touch him, needed to be forgiven just as much, if not more, than this woman. But his self-righteousness blinded him to his sinful pride. And all of us, including us who may outwardly be pretty good people, needed to be forgiven much. If the Lord had not intervened to save me, I’d be heading for God’s righteous judgment. So when we think about our terrible past when we were slaves in Satan’s domain of darkness, we should exalt the Lord who saved us. But also ...
In verses 13-17, Moses looks ahead to what God will do and describes this glorious future as if it’s a done deal. God would bring His people to His holy habitation. He would cause the inhabitants of the land to tremble in fear and anguish. He would plant His people in the mountain of His inheritance, where He would dwell in His sanctuary. All of this looked beyond the next 40 years in the wilderness and the battles to conquer the land under Joshua’s leadership. But by faith Moses views it as done. Verse 18 states the reason he could do this: “The Lord shall reign forever and ever.”
While the Bible plainly and repeatedly describes the many trials and hardships that the Lord’s people will go through (Acts 14:22; Rom. 8:35-36; 2 Tim. 3:12), it also promises that Jesus will return and we will be with Him forever in a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no crying, pain, or death (John 14:1-3; Rev. 21:4)! As we think on the many gracious promises that the Lord has given to us about our eternal future, we should exalt Him with joyful singing.
This song is filled with God’s attributes: He is highly exalted (v. 1). He is Yahweh (11 times in the song), the self-existent, eternal One, as He revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush. He is the only God (v. 11). He is powerful (vv. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10); holy (v. 11); loving (v. 13); and, sovereign over all (v. 18). God’s inspired Word is our only source for knowing His awesome attributes. Don’t just read your favorite passages, but read the whole Bible to get a balanced view of who God is.
He has become our salvation (v. 2). He is the covenant-keeping God of Abraham (v. 2). He is a warrior, who hurled Pharaoh’s mighty warriors and their horses into the sea (v. 1, 3). His burning anger consumes rebellious sinners who are enemies of His people (vv. 7, 14-16). He works wonders (v. 11). He guides the people whom He has redeemed to His holy habitation (vv. 13, 16). He gives them an inheritance (v. 17). He dwells with His people (v. 17). He reigns forever (v. 18)!
When you consider all of the reasons we have to exalt and praise our gracious God, the grumbling of the next section is jarring! It teaches us:
God’s Spirit put verses 22-27 here to show how prone we are to go from the heights of praise to the depths of self-pity and grumbling. You may think, “The text here never calls grumbling a terrible sin.” But there are over a dozen passages in the Pentateuch where Israel grumbled against the Lord (R. Alan Cole, Exodus [IVP], p. 128). Psalm 95:8-11 brings up Israel’s grumbling as the reason God swore in His anger that this generation would not enter His rest. Hebrews 3:7-11 cites Psalm 95 and then applies it (Heb. 3:12): “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.” Paul (1 Cor. 10:5-10) says that Israel’s experiences in the wilderness are an example for our instruction. He warns us not to grumble as some of them did, incurring God’s judgment. Note four things:
Not all of the Jews who came out of Egypt with Moses were born again spiritually (Rom. 9:6-8; Gal. 3:7). Many perished because of their unbelief (1 Cor. 10:5-10). But corporately they were God’s people, who “all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2). And yet, in spite of experiencing God’s gracious deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they immediately and repeatedly fell into this sin of grumbling. Thus after relating Israel’s wilderness experience, Paul warns us (1 Cor. 10:12), “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”
I think that most of the Jews thought that being freed from slavery in Egypt would result in a direct route to the Promised Land, where God would quickly subdue their enemies and give them all the blessings He had promised to Abraham. But, as we’ve seen, God took them on “the scenic route” to the Promised Land. And now Moses led them three days into this barren wilderness, where first they found no water, and then the water they found was bitter. It wasn’t the program they thought they had signed up for!
Sometimes new believers naively think that once they’re saved, everything will go smoothly from there on out. After all, now they’re under God’s loving care! But God led His people He had delivered through the wilderness first to no water, and then to bitter water. He disciplines us as His children “for our good, so that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:10). Paul instructed new converts (Acts 14:22), “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Don’t expect a trouble-free life so that you don’t fall into grumbling!
The people grumbled against Moses (Exod. 15:24), but their complaint implicitly was against God, who had led them by the cloud to this barren wilderness. C. H. Spurgeon (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Pilgrim Publications], 17:234) observed that usually we aren’t honest enough to grumble directly against God, so we aim it at others. We grumble about people who irritate us or about our circumstances. But since God is sovereign over every hair that falls from our heads, He has ordained all of the difficult people and circumstances in our lives for our ultimate good.
Grumbling implies that God doesn’t care about us and that we know better than God what would be right for us. There is a proper way submissively to bring our complaints to God (as in the Psalms), but grumblers don’t come to God submissively, trusting in His goodness and love. Rather, they malign Him, while at the same time they reveal their own bitterness. Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 265) pointed out that God easily could have led Israel straight to fresh water, but instead, He led them to bitter water to reveal the bitterness in their hearts. Moses says that God did this to test them (Exod. 15:25).
God also gave them bitter water to teach them that if they would trust Him and call upon Him, He can make bitter water sweet. Moses cried out to the Lord, who showed him a tree. When Moses threw it into the water, it became sweet. There were no miraculous powers in the tree itself; the power was from God. But in this case, He chose to use the means of this tree, just as Jesus sometimes used means to effect His miraculous cures (Mark 7:33; John 9:6). He wants us to learn that He has sufficient resources to meet our every need if we will trust in Him.
In the Garden of Eden, there was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was forbidden, and the tree of life, which God barred the couple from eating of once they had sinned (Gen. 2:17; 3:22). But in the New Jerusalem, there will be a tree of life for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2). Eating of that tree, which symbolizes Christ and the cross, turns the bitterness of sin into the sweet water of eternal life.
Note Exodus 15:26-27:
And He said, “If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer.” Then they came to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and they camped there beside the waters.
Obedience is not the means of salvation—God had already delivered Israel from Egypt. But it is the means of experiencing His blessings after we’re saved. Disobedience, including the sin of grumbling, brings His corrective discipline to our lives. This was not a promise to heal everyone in Israel from all diseases if they would obey Him. Even the obedient in Israel got sick and died, as we all do. Rather, it was a promise that if Israel obeyed, God would not bring on them the plagues which He had brought on Egypt. And, it points to the truth that God is able to heal our diseases when it is His will to do so.
The fact that Jesus went around preaching the gospel and healing people reveals Him to be the Savior. He can heal our bodies when it is His will to do so. But even more importantly, He can heal our souls from the eternally deadly consequences of sin. When He brings us to the place of bitter waters, He wants us to learn His sufficiency for our every need, whether it is physical, emotional, or spiritual.
The final verse of the chapter illustrates God’s abundant grace, even for those who have grumbled against Him. He led Israel from Marah to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water (one for each tribe) and seventy date palms (one for each of Israel’s elders, Exod. 24:9). There wasn’t any grumbling there, although I wonder if some grumbled when they set out from Elim and went again into the wilderness (Exod. 16:1-2).
Why didn’t Israel just settle in Elim, where there seemed to be plenty? Because God had something better for them in Canaan. We can enjoy the comforts that God gives us here, but keep in mind that all of His gracious blessings here are only a foretaste of the blessings He has stored up for us in heaven (Rev. 22:1-5).
I remember how God convicted me of grumbling 48 years ago. I was in seminary in Dallas and it was hot and humid. I was taking a bath one day and grumbling to myself because my apartment didn’t have air conditioning or a shower. It only had a bathtub. I didn’t hear a voice from God, but the Lord impressed on me that the Vietnam War was going on, and I could be over there in a sweltering jungle with bullets flying at me! I quickly repented! But I still have to fight grumbling all the time!
Thankfulness is the antidote to grumbling. Paul commands us (1 Thess. 5:18), “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” To obey that command, you must be able to say of the Lord Jesus what Moses said (Exod. 15:2), “This is my God, and I will praise Him.” You must enter into a personal relationship with Christ through faith in His sacrifice for you on the cross. Then you can begin practicing for heaven, where we all will sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (Rev. 15:3), “Great and marvelous are Your works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are Your ways, King of the nations!”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (13)
May 13, 2018
Ed Bulkley begins his book, Why Christians Can’t Trust Psychology [Harvest House, 1993] with a fictional story of a young pastor who delivers a zinger of a sermon based on 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which says that Scripture equips us for every good work, and 2 Peter 1:3-4, which promises that through the promises in His Word, God has given us all that we need for life and godliness. Everyone in the church congratulated him for such a powerful message.
But that week, a woman about 30 years old who had visited the church for the first time, came to see him. She proceeded to tell him her troubled history of being sexually abused by her father and by other men when she was a child. The trauma of her upbringing was affecting all of her life and threatening her marriage.
The pastor explained to her that he was not trained to counsel such difficult cases, but he would refer her to a professional Christian counselor who could help her. She replied that she had been to numerous Christian psychologists and psychiatrists who had recommended various therapies and prescribed various drugs. But none of this had helped. When she heard his sermon, she was hopeful that he could show her how the Bible could help her. But he didn’t know what to say. She left his office without hope.
Pastor Bulkley goes on to show how Scripture really is able to do what it promises: to equip believers for every good deed and to provide us with all that we need for life and godliness. He refutes the modern myth that it requires a trained, licensed psychotherapist to give competent counsel to troubled believers.
I believe that that story illustrates the main point of the story of God raining bread from heaven to feed His people in the wilderness for 40 years:
God has infinite supplies of grace in Christ to meet all your needs, but you must daily make the effort to lay hold of Him.
The manna which God supplied for Israel clearly points to Jesus Christ, who said (John 6:35), “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” Either that claim is true or it is a nice “spiritual” thought that has no application to how we actually live.
But the Bible repeatedly claims to provide what Francis Schaeffer called “substantial healing” for psychological problems and for the total person (True Spirituality [Tyndale House], chapters 10 & 11). Or, as John MacArthur argued (Our Sufficiency in Christ [Word Publishing], 1991, p. 20):
“My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord said to the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:9). The average Christian in our culture cynically views that kind of counsel as simplistic, unsophisticated, and naïve. Can you imagine one of today’s professional radio counselors simply telling a hurting caller that God’s grace is enough to meet the need? … Many Christians seeking a sense of fulfillment have turned away from the rich resources of God’s all-sufficient grace and are engrossed instead in a fruitless search for contentment in hollow human teachings.
Exodus 16 provides four main truths for us:
Note Exodus 16:1-2:
Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
At Elim, Israel enjoyed twelve springs of water and seventy date palms (Exod. 15:27). The Bible does not report any grumbling there, but Israel wasn’t in need there, so they didn’t need to trust God. But as soon as they headed out into the wilderness of Sin (the Hebrew word has nothing to do with the English word “sin”), the whole congregation grumbled again. This time their need was not water, but food. They accused Moses of bringing them into the wilderness to kill them with hunger. Note four practical truths:
Clearly, God led Israel into this wilderness where there was no food, just as He had been leading them at every step since their departure from Egypt (Exod. 13:17, 18, 21; 14:15). But the Israelites blamed Moses of bringing them into the wilderness (v. 3). So he told them (v. 6) that when God met their need for food that evening, they would know that it was the Lord, not Moses, who led them out of Egypt.
When we face a need in our lives, we can blame some person or circumstance for our problem, just as Israel blamed Moses. Or, we can acknowledge that the Lord brought us into this situation of need and go to Him in thankful prayer, asking Him to be our sufficiency in meeting our need.
Many of you know that when I first began serving this church, I faced a difficult time where some elders were trying to fire me because I opposed one of them for his pro-choice position on abortion. As I walked toward the church door for a showdown meeting that would determine my future here, I was praying for God’s peace, but I was still anxious in spite of a gracious confirmation that the Lord had given me that He would take care of me.
I was silently reciting Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Two words in verse 6 jumped out at me: “with thanksgiving.” The Lord pointed out, “I haven’t heard you thank Me for this trial!” I paused and thanked the Lord for this opportunity to trust Him to supply my needs. At that meeting, all four of the elders who opposed me resigned and left the church. So when we face a need, whether major or minor, our only choices are to grumble or to go to the Lord in thankful prayer.
If you’ve got a cup full of coffee and the cup gets bumped, what spills out? Coffee! If you’ve got a heart full of discontentment and a difficult person or situation bumps your life, what comes out? Discontentment, or grumbling. In other words, your grumbling is symptomatic of a deeper issue, namely, that you’re not learning how to be content whether you’re being filled or going hungry (Phil. 4:11-12). George Muller used to say that the first business of every morning should be to secure happiness in God (A. T. Pierson, George Muller of Bristol [Revell], p. 314-315). A grumbling heart reveals that you’re not doing that!
Verse 2 says that “the whole congregation” grumbled against Moses and Aaron. That doesn’t mean that every person was grumbling, but it does mean that most of them were. Grumbling has a way of spreading among God’s people. Someone shares a gripe about something in the church and it reminds you of something else that you don’t like. You pass on to someone else the first person’s complaint and then add yours to it. Pretty soon the complaints snowball and the whole church is grumbling.
Although grumbling is usually against some individual or especially against the leaders, it really is against the Lord (Exod. 16:2, 7, 8), who hears it all (four times: Exod. 16:7, 8, 9, 12). Of course, there is a proper way to bring legitimate concerns to church leaders. We’re not perfect leaders and this isn’t a perfect church, so if there is a problem, we need to know about it. But grumblers, as I said, reveal the state of their hearts. They aren’t looking for solutions; they’re just venting. In Exodus 15, their complaint was bitter water. God met that need. In chapter 16, it’s no food. The Lord rained bread from heaven. In chapter 17, it will again be no water. The Lord provides water from the rock. But the people kept on grumbling. So if you’re tempted to grumble, check your heart and be on guard because it spreads and contaminates many.
The grumblers compared their lack of food in the wilderness with the pots of meat and bread to the full that they enjoyed in Egypt (Exod. 16:3). Hello? They were slaves in Egypt, but they make it sound as if things were great back then! But life wasn’t as idyllic as they’re making it sound!
But, let’s assume for the sake of argument, that life was smoother when you were an unbeliever. Maybe your job was going well, but when you became a Christian, you got fired and now are in a crummy job or no job. Maybe your romantic life was satisfying, but now you can’t find a suitable Christian girl or guy to date. Maybe your relationship with your parents was okay back then, but now it’s strained. You feel like life was a lot better back then and you’re tempted to “go back to Egypt”!
Does the Bible address that situation? Read Psalm 73! The psalmist was despairing as he saw the prosperity of the wicked, while he was encountering new problems every day since he had begun to follow the Lord. He says that he almost stumbled, until he went into the sanctuary of God. There he gained the eternal focus: He realized that God would cast down the wicked to destruction, but He would receive the psalmist into eternal glory. So if you’re grumbling and tempted to go back to the world, get to “the sanctuary.” Get alone with God and His Word and regain the eternal perspective! God leads you into places of need so that you will look to Him to meet those needs.
The Lord responded to the people’s grumbling with His amazing grace: He promised to rain bread from heaven on them and to provide meat that evening (Exod. 16:4, 6, 8). Then as Aaron spoke to the congregation, they all looked toward the wilderness and saw the glory of the Lord in the cloud (Exod. 16:10). The Lord told Moses to tell the people that at twilight they would eat meat and in the morning they would be filled with bread. And the point of this was not merely to meet their need for food. Rather (Exod. 16:12), it was so that “you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Greater than your need for food is the need to know that the Lord is your God.
God’s meeting the needs of this grumbling congregation without their even asking Him shows the importance of knowing experientially that He deals with you in His grace. Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:1), “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” To be strong in His grace, you must be clear and stand firmly on the gospel of God’s grace: that He freely gives us eternal life apart from anything we are or anything we do. It is not merited. In fact, God gives His grace to undeserving, ungodly enemies (Rom. 4:5; 5:6-10; 1 Tim. 1:13-15)! And you must live daily in His grace, not falling into the trap of legalism, where you base your relationship with God on your outward performance of manmade rules.
But God was not only incredibly gracious to these grumbling people, He also showed them His glory (Exod. 16:10). This was probably a light in the cloud, brighter than the usual light that shone from it. God’s glory was a revelation of His greatness and power. Whenever in the Bible people got a glimpse of God’s glory, the uniform response was fear. When Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, “they fell face down to the ground and were terrified” (Matt. 17:6). When John later saw the risen Savior in His glory, he reports (Rev. 1:17), “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” In his Gospel, he wrote (John 1:14), “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus reveals God’s grace and glory to us. When we see all that He is for us, it’s enough. We have in Him all that we need.
Exodus 16 repeatedly emphasizes the sufficiency of God’s provision for these needy, grumbling people. He would rain bread from heaven on them (v. 4). He would give them “bread to the full” (v. 8). They would be “filled with bread” (v. 12). They were to gather “every man as much as he should eat” (v. 16). “Every man gathered as much as he should eat” (v. 18). Morning by morning every man gathered “as much as he should eat” (v. 21). Apparently, the manna was nutritionally sufficient, like breast milk for an infant. The quail only came twice, but the manna met their nutritional needs for 40 years (v. 35).
This repeated emphasis shows that God is not stingy with His resources. He “is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20)! He “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3)! “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3).
Also, Moses tells us what the manna tasted like (Exod.16:31): “wafers with honey.” That description satisfies our curiosity, but also it teaches us an important lesson: Psalm 19:10 says that God’s Word is “sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.” Psalm 34:8 puts it, “O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” Or (Ps. 119:103), “How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Moses later explained (Deut. 8:3), “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” He went on to promise them that the Lord would bring them into a good land of abundance, where they would eat and be satisfied. God’s word is sufficient and satisfying for life and godliness!
So the manna teaches us that we are to look to the Lord to satisfy our every need and that when we taste of His grace and glory, we are satisfied with His goodness. This is because …
After Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, John 6 reports that the Jews challenged Jesus to give them a sign so that they might believe in Him (as if He hadn’t given them a great enough sign already!). Referring to Exodus 16, they said (John 6:31), “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’” Jesus replied (John 6:32-33):
“Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.”
For the wrong reason they replied (John 6:34), “Lord, always give us this bread.” Jesus responded (John 6:35), “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”
Don’t miss the staggering magnitude of that claim! Whoever comes to Jesus will not hunger and the one who believes in Him will never thirst! No mere man could make such an amazing claim! He will satisfy all who come to Him and believe on Him! But the Jews responded by grumbling. Jesus rebuked them and added (John 6:48-51):
“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
He was not talking about eating the communion bread, but rather about personally trusting in Him and His death on the cross for eternal life. And He was pointing to the truth that as we truly feed on Him for all of our daily needs, we enjoy sweet, nourishing bread even as we walk in a barren wilderness. Do you know the satisfaction of daily feeding on Jesus as your bread of life?
Thus, God leads you into places of need so that you will look to Him to meet those needs. When you look to the Lord, you see His grace and glory to be your sufficiency. The manna points to Jesus Christ, the true bread of life that comes down out of heaven to satisfy your soul. Finally,
The manna didn’t just float down into everyone’s mouth. It was free and abundant, but the people had to get up and gather it every day before the sun melted it. It was a test of faith to see whether they would obey God or not (Exod. 16:4, 19-20, 27-29). They were to gather about two liters each every morning, but on Friday morning, they were to gather four liters so that they didn’t need to gather any on the Sabbath. This wasn’t the full instruction regarding the Sabbath that would follow later, but it was a test to see if Israel would obey God’s command and trust Him to provide each day and twice as much for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was God’s gift so that the people could rest that day (Exod. 16:29-30).
We’re not under the Old Testament Sabbath laws, but there is a principle that we would be wise to follow: set aside one day each week to gather with God’s people for worship and edification (Heb. 10:24-25). God commanded Moses to put some of the manna in a jar in front of the Ark of the Testimony after the Tabernacle was constructed so that later generations would be reminded of how He fed them with the manna (Exod. 16:32-34). Of course, the people couldn’t go into the holy of holies and see the jar of manna, but the high priest could tell them that it was there. The Ark was where the atoning blood was sprinkled. In a similar way, we are to come before the Lord often to remember His provision for us at the cross as we eat the bread representing His body and drink the wine representing His shed blood.
Also, I can’t think of a more important habit for you to develop than daily to feed on the Lord Jesus Christ through His Word. As Peter exhorted (1 Pet. 2:2-3), “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” Make the effort every day to feed on the Lord Jesus Christ, the living bread.
John MacArthur states (ibid.):
Evangelicalism is infatuated with psychotherapy. Emotional and psychological disorders supposedly requiring prolonged analysis have become almost fashionable… Virtually everywhere you look in the evangelical subculture, you can find evidence that Christians are becoming more and more dependent on therapists, support groups and other similar groups.
This shift in the church’s focus did not grow out of some new insight gained from Scripture. Rather, it has seeped into the church from the world. It is an attack at the most basic level, challenging Christians’ confidence in the sufficiency of Christ.
Or, as Philip Ryken puts it (Exodus [Crossway], p. 430), “The meaning of the manna is that all we need is Jesus.” God has unlimited supplies of grace in Christ, but you must daily make the effort to lay hold of Him.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (14)
May 27, 2018
A standing joke among pastors is that the ministry would be great if it weren’t for the people! But, of course, the ministry is people. Since all people are fallen sinners and even the saints are not perfectly sanctified, if you’ve got people, you’ve got problems. And since Satan is opposed to Christ’s church, we can expect problems from within and problems from without.
In Exodus 17, Moses has to deal with problems from both fronts. Within the camp, the people quarreled with him because of no water. Their anger was so severe that Moses was concerned that they might even stone him (v. 4)! As if the internal problems were not enough, Amalek came from without and fought against Israel. In other words, “Welcome to the ministry, Moses!” This chapter teaches us that …
God’s people and His leaders should drink from Christ to deal with problems from within and problems from without.
The people’s grumbling against Moses is similar to the incident in Numbers 20:1-13, but there are enough differences to conclude that they are not the same. In both incidents, the people grumbled about no water and the place was named Meribah (“quarrel”). In both places, God gave the people water from the rock through Moses’ action. But, Exodus 17 occurs near the beginning of Israel’s time in the wilderness; Numbers 20 occurs near the end of the forty years. In Exodus 17, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with his staff and Moses obeyed. In Numbers 20 the Lord told Moses to speak to the rock, but in his anger with the people, he struck the rock. Because he disobeyed, the Lord prohibited Moses from leading Israel into the Promised Land.
There are four lessons here for God’s people and His leaders:
If the problem of grumbling sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because we’ve already met it in Exodus 14, 15, and 16. These stories are repeated because we need to learn their lessons! As we’ve seen, grumbling is not a minor sin. In 1 Corinthians 10:10, Paul says that because of Israel’s grumbling, some were destroyed by the destroyer. Then he warns (1 Cor. 10:11), “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.”
The first thing we need to recognize here is that the Lord directly led Israel to Rephidim (“resting place”) where there was no water. Verse 1 states that they journeyed “according to the command of the Lord.” They weren’t lost! So you have to ask, “Why did God directly lead Israel to another place of no water?” The answer is: For the same reason He brings us into places of need: so that we will call upon Him in our weakness and He will be glorified when He delivers us. The Lord says (Ps. 50:15), “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.” So if you’re in a place of trouble, before you do anything else, call upon the Lord. If you’ve been grumbling, confess that to the Lord and ask Him to be glorified through the trial that you’re in.
This incident of Israel’s grumbling at Massah (“test”) and Meribah (“quarrel”) is mentioned in Psalm 95:7-11:
Today, if you would hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
As in the day of Massah in the wilderness,
“When your fathers tested Me,
They tried Me, though they had seen My work.
“For forty years I loathed that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
“Therefore I swore in My anger,
Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
Hebrews 3:7-11 cites those verses and adds (Heb. 3:12), “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.” Grumbling stems from “an evil, unbelieving heart.” Unbelief tests or tries the Lord (Exod. 17:7; Ps. 95:9). In spite of His many mercies, when problems arise, unbelief challenges God by asking (Exod. 17:7), “Is the Lord among us, or not?” In other words, unbelief asks, “If God is really here and cares about me, how can He let this happen?” Unbelief doubts God’s sovereignty, His power, His wisdom, and His love. It removes God from His rightful place as judge and puts Him on trial, while I judge Him, questioning His ways of dealing with me! It stems from the pride of thinking that I know better than God what would be best for me. Be on guard against grumbling against the Lord!
Grumbling against the Lord often comes out as grumbling against spiritual leaders who are seeking to direct you to the place of God’s blessing. Even though Moses was one of the greatest leaders in history, the grumblers accused him of bringing them and their children into the wilderness to kill them (v. 3)! Actually, in obedience to the Lord he was trying to lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey.
Even the greatest Christian leaders do not share Moses’ intimacy with God or his leadership gifts. But even so, Hebrews 13:17 exhorts the church, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.” Paul commanded Titus (2:15), “These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” He instructed Timothy (1 Tim. 5:17), “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.” “Double honor” refers both to respect and financial support (see v. 18) for those who preach the Word. But you can’t be in submission to a leader or honor him while at the same time you’re grumbling about him to others. Often, if people don’t like God’s message, they express it by attacking His messenger.
This does not mean that you can’t voice concerns about a church leader or a church problem. Paul goes on to tell Timothy how to deal with a sinning elder (1 Tim. 5:19-20): “Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning.”
If your complaint is something other than a sin issue, then after praying about it and checking your attitude, go directly to the leader and share your concerns. If he doesn’t listen and it’s an important enough matter, take two or three with you and try again. But don’t go in anger just to vent. Don’t question the leader’s motives, as Israel here accused Moses of trying to kill them (Exod. 17:3). Your aim should be to glorify God by helping the leader and the church. But be careful, because as Moses pointed out (v. 2), by quarreling with him, the Israelites were really testing the Lord.
Moses instantly recognized his own inadequacy to provide water in the desert for two million people, so he cried out to the Lord (v. 4). Even if our problem is not that big, we should immediately recognize with Paul (2 Cor. 3:5), “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.” As F. B. Meyer observed (Moses [Christian Literature Crusade], p. 103), “And when we have reached the end of self, we have got to the beginning of God.”
Moses’ staff (v. 5) was the symbol of God’s power. It was the same staff with which he had struck the Nile and divided the Red Sea. He will use it again to help the Israelite army prevail against Amalek (v. 9). It showed both the elders and the people that the power was not in Moses, but came from the Lord. Moses was just the man whom God used.
God instructed Moses not to go it alone, but to take with him some of the elders of Israel (v. 5). We’re not told whether the elders were trusting God along with Moses or griping along with the people, but the text emphasizes twice that Moses did this miracle with the elders (vv. 5, 6). God’s purpose may have been to teach the elders to trust in His sufficiency, to teach the people that Moses was not acting by himself, and to protect Moses from being killed.
The New Testament teaches that the local church is to be governed by a plurality of elders, also called pastors or overseers (Acts 14:23; 15:2; 20:17, 28; Eph. 4:11; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:5, 7; 1 Pet. 5:1-4). It should never be a one-man show. When there is a problem, the elders should come together in prayer, seeking God’s wisdom through His Word, and then act together for the good of the church. It should be evident that they are relying on the Lord’s sufficiency, not on human methods or schemes.
God’s provision of water from the rock demonstrates His grace toward His grumbling people. In Exodus 16:3-4, when the people complained about no food in the wilderness, without rebuke God graciously promised to rain bread from heaven on them. Here, again without rebuke, He instructs Moses to strike the rock so that water would come out to satisfy the people’s thirst. His grace was rebuke enough for their grumbling. When the Lord told Moses (v. 6) that He would stand before him on the rock, we don’t know whether the entire congregation saw a visible manifestation of the Lord or not, but if they did, it was a further rebuke of their challenge (v. 7), “Is the Lord among us, or not?” But either way, the water suddenly gushing from a rock in that barren desert was gracious proof that the Lord was in fact among them.
In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul makes a surprising comment on this incident: “and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.” He means that the rock that supplied the living water for Israel was a type of Christ, who provides living water for all who thirst and ask Him for it (John 4:10-14). When he says that the rock followed them, I think Paul was using a manner of speaking to say that Christ went with Israel through the desert and that at His word, any rock became a fountain of water to satisfy their thirst. Just as the manna was spiritual in that it came from God and taught a spiritual lesson, so the rock was spiritual in that at God’s word, it brought forth abundant water and also showed the sustenance and refreshment that we find in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the rock did not bring forth water until Moses struck it in obedience to God’s command. In the same way, Christ provided the living water of salvation only by being struck down for us at the Father’s command. Isaiah 53:4-6 wonderfully prophesied of Jesus:
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
At the very end of the Bible is this wonderful invitation (Rev. 22:17), “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” Are you spiritually thirsty? Three times the Spirit and the bride (the church) invite you to come to Jesus, the water of life. And, it applies also to the church and her leaders who are dealing with problems in the church: Come and drink more deeply from Jesus, our Rock who provides abundant living water for thirsty souls!
Thus, God’s people and God’s leaders should drink from Christ to deal with problems from within (Exod. 17:1-7).
It was only after God supplied Israel’s need for water from the rock that they then had to face their first enemy from without, a desert tribe called Amalek. Until now, God has done everything for Israel: He struck the Egyptians with the ten plagues; He divided the Red Sea; He destroyed Pharaoh’s army in the sea. He graciously has provided both water and food in the barren desert. All of this pictures our salvation, in which God does it all. We receive salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, apart from works, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9).
But now, having received God’s salvation, Israel faces an external enemy and they have to take up the sword and fight. This pictures our sanctification, where we must fight the enemy through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul stated (Phil. 2:12-13), “So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” In other words, we are passive in our salvation, which comes from God’s sovereign grace alone; but we must be active in our sanctification, relying on the Lord as we use the means He has provided. There are lessons here both for God’s people and for His leaders:
Amalek was a grandson of Esau through a concubine of his son Eliphaz (Gen. 36:12). Esau was a worldly man who despised his birthright for a bowl of stew. He succeeded in the world, but he didn’t know the God of his fathers. Centuries after Moses, God commanded Israel’s first king, Saul, to destroy Amalek because of this attack on Israel in the wilderness (1 Sam. 15:2-3). But Saul compromised, sparing Agag, the Amalekite king, and some of the best sheep and oxen. Because of Saul’s disobedience, God removed him as king and replaced him with David.
Later, some Amalekites raided Ziklag, taking captive the families of David and his men (1 Sam. 30). He was able by God’s direction to slaughter many of them and recover their families and belongings. But the Amalekites plagued Israel even into Hezekiah’s time, three centuries after David. And three centuries after that, Haman, a descendant of the Amalekite King Agag, attempted to annihilate the Jews in Esther’s time. So they were perpetual enemies of Israel (Jud. 6:33; Ps. 83:4, 7).
Several devotional writers say that Amalek represents the flesh that believers must constantly battle. They may be right, but since the flesh is an enemy from within and Amalek was an enemy from without, I think that Amalek represents our broader threefold enemy: the world, the flesh, and the devil. We’re engaged in perpetual spiritual warfare against these enemies of our souls. If you compromise with such aggressive enemies, they will eventually dominate your life and destroy you. First, Israel had to drink from the rock, which is Christ. But then, they had to take up their swords and actively fight this enemy. The point is, the Christian life is not an easy stroll in the park; it’s a daily battle against powerful forces of evil that threaten to destroy us. How do we fight the battle?
Some object to the interpretation of Moses’ uplifted hand holding his staff as prayer, since the text does not say that he was praying. True, but his staff represented God’s authority and strength. By holding it up, Moses was clearly appealing to God for His help in the battle. When he held it up, Israel prevailed. When he let it down, Amalek prevailed. So it seems to be a picture of prevailing prayer that lays hold of God’s strength.
This interpretation may be supported by a difficult phrase in verse 16. The NASB translates, “The Lord has sworn,” but the literal translation is, “a hand upon the throne of the Lord.” The difficulty is, “Whose hand is upon the throne?” If it is the Lord’s hand, then He is raising His hand to swear perpetual battle against His enemy, represented by Amalek. It could refer to Amalek’s hand against the Lord’s throne. But more likely, it is Moses’ hand, which pictures his hand lifted to God’s throne in prayer (see Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 461.) This view fits with Ephesians 6, where after describing our need to put on the full armor of God to do battle against the spiritual forces of darkness, Paul adds (Eph. 6:18), “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.” We prevail against the world, the flesh, and the devil through prayer that lays hold of God’s riches in Christ.
Moses prayed, but Joshua had to choose men and go out and fight with their swords against this enemy. This is the first mention of Moses’ successor, Joshua, in the Bible. Under his leadership, Israel would conquer the Canaanites. In the same way, we must pray, but also we must use the means that God has given us for spiritual victory (Eph. 6:14-17): girding our loins with truth; putting on the breastplate of righteousness; having shod our feet with the gospel of peace; taking up the shield of faith; taking the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. There are other means, also, such as worship and fellowship with others in the body of Christ. The point is, you can’t win most battles against our spiritual enemy by prayer alone; also, you must fight, using the means that God has provided.
God directed Moses to write in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua that He would utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Then Moses built an altar and named it, “The Lord is My Banner.” It was to remind Israel, “The Lord will have war against Amalek from generation to generation.” And it was to remind them of how He provided victory in this first battle. A banner is a military insignia raised on a pole during the battle. As long as it’s still flying, the soldiers know that the battle is not lost (Ryken, p. 466). The Lord Himself was Israel’s banner.
Jesus Christ and His cross are our banner. He was lifted up to die for our sins. He was raised up in victory over the enemy of our souls (John 12:31; Col. 2:15). When we fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, we can look to Christ crucified and know that we can conquer in His mighty name.
Someone has said, “The only person with all his problems behind him is probably a school bus driver.” If a church has people, it will have problems. But whatever the problems, whether from within or without, we also have Christ, the living water, always available to us in this wilderness. He promised the sinful woman at the well (John 4:14), “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” Make sure that you stay hydrated! Drink often from Jesus, the living water!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (15)
June 3, 2018
Have you ever had a “mountaintop experience” with God? That familiar expression probably comes from the fact that many godly men in the Bible had significant experiences with God on a mountain. God gave His covenant to Noah on Mount Ararat after the ark came to rest there after the flood. God provided a ram for Abraham as a substitute for Isaac on Mount Moriah. Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Jesus Himself was transfigured on a mountain, where Moses and Elijah joined him as Peter, James, and John looked on with awe. And in our text, Moses has an amazing meeting with God on Mount Sinai, where (in Exodus 20) he receives the Ten Commandments.
The famous evangelist Billy Graham had a life-changing encounter with the Lord at Forest Home Christian Conference Center, where you can see the rock where he knelt and committed himself to preach the Bible as God’s Word. Young people often have life-changing encounters with the Lord at Christian camps in the mountains. I remember as a fifth-grader committing myself to follow the Lord at Camp Seely in Crestline, California. Little did I know that someday I’d come back there to serve as a pastor for 15 years! So mountaintop experiences can be good.
But what do you do after a mountaintop experience with God? Is it just a momentary high or does it result in lifelong changes? We’re not left to wonder how Moses’ mountaintop experience with God is supposed to result in ongoing action for the Lord’s people. God reveals here His purpose for His people. It applied first to Israel as God’s chosen people, but it also applies to the church:
Our response to God’s gracious salvation should be obedience and reverence so that as His channel for blessing the nations we proclaim His glory.
In Exodus 19, we come to the second main division of the book. The theme of Exodus 1-18 is salvation, revealing God’s power. In Exodus 19-24 the theme is the Law, revealing God’s holiness and the holiness He expects from His people. In Exodus 25-40 the theme is the Tabernacle, revealing God’s presence in worship. The entire book shows how God kept His covenant with Abraham by delivering his descendants from slavery and making them into a great nation.
Exodus 19 begins by telling us that three months (lit., “moons”) to the day after Israel went out of Egypt they came into the wilderness of Sinai and camped “in front of the mountain.” Verse 3 states, “Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain.” “The mountain” refers to Mount Sinai, which is near where God met Moses at the burning bush. It was also called, “Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exod. 3:2). At that encounter, God promised Moses (Exod. 3:12), “Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.” Now God has kept that promise. The first lesson is that …
God’s message through Moses to Israel was (Exod. 19:4-6):
“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.
God tells Moses to remind Israel of what He had done for them. While they were still enslaved in Egypt, God raised up Moses and sent him to Pharaoh to demand their release. When Pharaoh refused, God brought the ten plagues on Egypt. He parted the Red Sea for Israel to cross and destroyed Pharaoh’s pursuing army in the sea. The exodus is a great illustration of our salvation when the Lord delivered us from bondage to Satan’s domain of darkness.
Then God bore Israel on eagles’ wings. The picture is of a mother eagle, who pushes the baby eagles out of the nest so that they learn to fly. When they fall, she swoops under them, lifting them on her wings back to safety. It’s a beautiful picture of God’s love and grace in dealing with us, especially when we’re new believers. Israel deserved judgment for their grumbling over no food or water, but God graciously rained bread from heaven and brought water from the rock. He graciously deals with us as a mother tenderly cares for her young children (1 Thess. 2:7).
The Lord adds (Exod. 19:4), “I … brought you to Myself.” Salvation is always personal. It’s not a “fire insurance policy” that you file away for future use if needed. Salvation means entering a personal relationship with a gracious Father through the provision He has made through His “Passover Lamb,” the Lord Jesus Christ. First Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God ….”
Almost 40 years later Moses reminded Israel of God’s words in our text (Deut. 7:6-8):
“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum (God’s Kingdom through God’s Covenants [Crossway], p. 141), point out that the old covenant was based upon grace, just as the new covenant is, and grace motivates the keeping of the covenant. God doesn’t choose anyone because He foresees something good in them, such as faith or obedience. If He did, grace would not be grace (Rom. 11:6). He chooses us simply because of His sovereign grace and love, apart from any merit in us. And He does it to bring us into a relationship with Himself!
Scholars point out that Exodus 19:3-8 follows the pattern of ancient Near Eastern covenants between a king and a vassal people (Walter Kaiser, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:415). There is a preamble summons by God (v. 3), followed by a historical prologue (v. 4). Then there are the stipulations of the covenant (v. 5a), blessings for obedience (vv. 5b-6), and acceptance in a solemn assembly (vv. 7-8).
Jason DeRouchie (How to Understand and Apply the Old Testament [P & R Publishing], p. 211) points out that the Mosaic covenant accomplished the first part of God’s covenant to Abram (Gen. 12:1-3), where God promised to make a great nation of Abram’s descendants and give them the land of Canaan; but the second part, to bless all the nations through Abram’s seed, is only accomplished through Jesus Christ in the new covenant. Thus,
A mediator stands between the holy God and His sinful people, to bring the two together. Unlike many pagan gods, the one true God did not dwell on the mountaintop. He had to come down to Mount Sinai to meet with Moses (Exod. 19:20). Psalm 113:6 declares that God has to humble Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth! There is no way that sinful creatures can connect with God unless He comes down to us. And even then, we need a mediator to go between Him and us.
Moses served in that role for Israel when God introduced the old covenant. He instructed the people on how to get ready to meet with God: Washing their garments (v. 10) pictured making sure that their hearts were clean before they approached Him. Abstaining from marital relations (v. 15) did not imply that sex in marriage is sinful, but under the old covenant, it did render people ceremonially unclean (Lev. 15:18). This stood in contrast to many pagan religions, which included ritual sex in their “worship.”
But, if God wanted Israel to be brought to Himself, then why did He place all of these restrictions and warnings on them? If they or their animals touched the border of the mountain, they were to be put to death (vv. 12-13). If they broke through the barrier to gaze upon God when He appeared to Moses, they would perish (vv. 21, 24). God did this to teach Israel that He is holy and that there is an uncrossable chasm between Him and sinners. He is in heaven and we are on earth. He is immortal, the giver of life; we are mortal because of our sins. Through eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve wrongly sought to know what God had forbidden. Even so, we should not intrude on secrets that God has chosen not to reveal (Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible [Revell], 1:357). Thus under the old covenant, Moses was the mediator.
The old covenant was limited to Israel, mediated through Moses. But the new covenant in Christ extends to all people. After exhorting us to pray for all men, Paul added (1 Tim. 2:3-5):
This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant (Heb. 9:15; 12:24). DeRouchie (ibid. pp. 425-426) explains three ways in which Jesus’ work fulfilled Exodus 19:4-6:
First, the initial exodus typologically anticipated a greater, more universal second exodus that Jesus himself embodies…. Second, Christ fulfilled the charge of this text as the perfect royal priest, bringing us to God and empowering us to serve him…. Third, Christ represented the nation of Israel, succeeding where it failed and by this magnifying God (see esp. Isa. 49:1-6)…. As the holy king-priest, Jesus perfectly represented Israel and reflected God’s holiness.
Don’t miss the point: You need a God-appointed mediator to approach Him! God is absolutely holy and we are sinful. Any attempt to approach God by your own merits or good deeds will end with your perishing on the Day of Judgment, just as the Israelites would have perished if they had tried to break through to God on the mountain without a mediator. Jesus is the mediator God has provided. You can draw near to God by putting your trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection on your behalf.
Thus, God’s salvation is completely by His grace, not by our merits. It brings us into an exclusive covenant relationship with Him through Jesus the only mediator.
God’s purpose was for Israel to be (Exod. 19:5-6), “My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Peter applies this old covenant promise to Israel to the church, made up of Jews and Gentiles (1 Pet. 2:9): “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
“My own possession” means “‘special treasure’ belonging privately to a king (1 Chron. 29:3). This implies special value as well as special relationship” (R. A. Cole, Exodus [IVP], p. 144). God owns the entire earth (Exod. 19:5), but He especially owns the people whom He has chosen to be His. We are not our own; we’ve been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20). What an amazing privilege to be God’s special treasure!
“Kingdom of priests” and “holy nation” both expand on the meaning of, “My own possession” (Gentry and Wellum, p. 143). “Kingdom of priests” does not occur anywhere else in the Old Testament (but, see Isa. 61:6, “you will be called priests of the Lord”). Priests mediate between God and people. We are to mediate the blessings of Abraham through Christ to the nations. Revelation 1:6 declares, “And He [Jesus Christ] has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” One of the great truths recovered during the Reformation is that there is no special class of priests now. Rather, all who believe in Jesus are priests, with access to come directly into God’s presence through the blood of Christ. Again, what an amazing privilege!
To be holy means to be set apart and devoted unto God, separate from all moral pollution. God calls His people to holiness because He Himself is holy (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pet. 1:15-16). This means that there must be a distinction between the people of the world and the people of God. If we’re not distinct in our thinking and behavior, we have nothing to offer the world because we are just like they are. Israel’s elaborate laws of cleansing were meant to distinguish between them and other nations. As the church, we’re in the world, but not of the world, because God’s word of truth sets us apart (John 17:14-17; also, 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1).
So God has graciously saved us so that we will be His own possession, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
God states the condition of the covenant as (Exod. 19:5), “if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant.” Moses tells the people these words and they reply (v. 8), “All that the Lord has spoken we will do!” Some claim that Israel went astray at this point by putting themselves under the Law. But in Deuteronomy 5:28-29, God approved of their promise to obey. The problem was, even before they left the camp at Mount Sinai, Israel fell into idolatry with the golden calf (Exod. 32). So I agree with Calvin (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 320) who says, “that, without any intention of deceiving God, they were carried away by a kind of headlong zeal, and deceived themselves.” The lesson is that it’s easy to promise obedience, but another matter to do it!
But we need to understand that obedience to God’s commands is not at odds with living under His grace. I’ve had people accuse me of being legalistic because I preach obedience. But they don’t understand God’s grace. Paul said (Titus 2:11-12) that the grace of God instructs us “to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.” Jesus said (John 14:21), “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.” Obedience is the only proper response to God’s gracious salvation.
The word “awesome” gets tossed around a lot, but Moses’ experience with God on the mountain was truly awesome! Verse 16 says, “… there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.” The people were so afraid that they begged that no further word be spoken unto them and even Moses trembled with fear (Heb. 12:19, 21). The Lord descended on Mount Sinai in fire; smoke like the smoke of a furnace ascended, while the whole mountain quaked violently (Exod. 19:18). The trumpet blasts grew louder and louder. Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder (v. 19). The people were in dread that if they even touched the mountain, they would die.
After referring to this incident, Hebrews 12:28-29 concludes, “Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”
John Calvin begins his classic Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. by John McNeill [Westminster Press], 1:1:1) by emphasizing that “we cannot seriously aspire to [God] before we begin to become displeased with ourselves.” As long as we’re ignorant of our sinful condition before God, we’ll be content with ourselves. Then he adds (1:2:1), “Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” He points out (1:3:1) how with “dread and wonder” the saints were “stricken and overcome whenever they felt the presence of God.”
I think that we would benefit from a greater vision of what Calvin often refers to as God’s majesty. Yes, through faith in Christ, He is our loving Father. Yes, we are invited to come confidently to His throne of grace. But, we need also to come “with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.” Remember, one characteristic of unbelievers is (Rom. 3:18), “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Those who truly know God fear Him!
First Peter 2:9 says that as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and a people for God’s own possession, we are to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” As believer priests, we are to mediate God to people and bring people to God through proclaiming the glory of our high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the “seed of Abraham” through whom all the nations will be blessed through faith in Him (Gen. 12:3; Gal. 3:8, 16).
God didn’t save us so that we could bottle up His blessings for ourselves. We’re to be funnels, not bottles! We’re to be channels through whom the blessings of Abraham flow to the whole world (Gal. 3:14). The heart of that blessing is (Gal. 3:6), “Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” The good news is that we’re not reconciled to God and given eternal life based on our obedience to God’s Law, but rather by faith in what Christ did for us on the cross.
In the context of discussing Abraham’s relationship to God, Paul says (Rom. 4:4-5), “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.” First, we must believe that good news: God justifies the ungodly by faith, not works. Then, we are to glorify God by proclaiming it to the lost!
You must decide whether you want to meet God at Mount Sinai or Mount Zion (Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 520). If you try to approach God based on your good works, you’ll be like those who touched the blazing mountain or broke through to gaze upon God without a mediator—you will perish! No amount of works can bridge the chasm between your sins and God’s holiness.
But if you trust in Christ and His death on the cross on your behalf, you still come to God with reverence and awe, but also with the confidence of knowing that His grace welcomes you into His presence through Jesus, your great high priest (Heb. 4:14-16).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (16)
June 10, 2018
In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that reading the Bible and reciting the Lord’s Prayer in public schools violates the U.S. Constitution. Then in 1980, the Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for public schools to post the Ten Commandments on classroom walls. The Court’s 5-4 majority reasoned (cited by Kent Hughes, Disciplines of Grace [Crossway], p. 11):
If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.
In other words, we dare not post the Ten Commandments because some students might actually read and obey them! They might actually read, “You shall not murder”! But we can’t seem to figure out why so many students are shooting their classmates and teachers!
As Christians, we rightly decry our national slide into immorality and violence, and yet many Christians can’t even name half of the Ten Commandments! There is a lot of debate and confusion among evangelicals as to whether we are required to obey the Ten Commandments. In part, this is due to the influence of moral relativism in the church. It’s also due to a widespread misunderstanding of what it means to live under grace. Many think that any call to obey God’s commandments is legalism. They think that grace means hang-loose living, where we don’t need to be concerned about obeying God. After all, if we mess up, He will forgive!
But don’t forget the setting in which God gave these commands (Exod. 19)! The Lord descended on Mount Sinai in fire and smoke. The whole mountain quaked. There were thunder, lightning flashes, and loud blasts on a trumpet. If the people got too near the mountain, they would die. Both the people and Moses were terrified. Yes, God is gracious to sinners who repent, but even His redeemed people are to offer Him worship “with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28-29). We dare not presume on His grace by disobeying Him (Rom. 6:1-2)!
I admit that the issue of how Old Testament laws apply to New Testament believers is one of the most difficult theological matters to sort out. I’ve read several books and many articles on the subject. I cannot begin to explain all of these matters in this message. But since all Ten Commandments except for the Sabbath command (I’ll say more on that command later) are repeated in the New Testament to believers under grace, I’m going to apply Exodus 20 to us as follows:
Because we have experienced God’s grace in salvation, we should joyfully obey His commandments for His glory and our good.
First, we’ll look at God’s grace as the basis for obeying His commandments. Then we’ll consider why we should joyfully obey His commandments. Finally, I’ll give a very brief overview of the Ten Commandments.
Most people think that they can get right with God by keeping the Ten Commandments. But that doesn’t work! James 2:10 states, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” The law is like a chain: one broken link means the entire chain is broken. Paul states (Rom. 3:20), “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight.” When you consider that God not only judges us by our outward behavior, but also by the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Heb. 4:12-13), you can see why it’s futile to try to commend yourself to God by claiming that you have kept His commandments.
God had already delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt before He gave them the Ten Commandments. So He reminds them (Exod. 20:2), “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” As we’ve seen, the exodus is the great illustration in the Old Testament of our deliverance from bondage to Satan’s domain of darkness. So God didn’t give these commandments for the purpose of saving His people, but after He already had graciously saved them.
So, why did God give Israel the Law? For several reasons. First, as Paul explains (Rom. 3:20), “for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (see, also, Rom. 7:7). The Law is like a mirror. Before you look in the mirror, you might have a vague sense that you’ve got dirt on your face. But when you look in the mirror and see it, you know that you’re dirty! All people know that they have violated their own consciences (see Romans 2). But when you hear the specific commands of God’s Law, you know you’re guilty!
In addition, God’s Law shows us our inability to keep it so that we will abandon all attempts to get right with God through keeping His Law and be driven to faith in Christ. As Paul states (Gal. 3:24), “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” Also, God’s Law reveals His holiness. In specific, concrete terms, it shows us what God is like and how we are to live to please Him.
But the crucial matter to understand is that God didn’t give His Law to save us. We are saved (delivered from God’s judgment) by His undeserved favor through faith in Christ and His death on our behalf (Eph. 2:8-9). He paid the penalty that we deserved. When we trust in Christ, God puts our sin on Christ and imputes Christ’s righteousness to us. Only after putting your trust in Christ and receiving His indwelling Holy Spirit can you begin to obey His Law. But why should you do that?
Many erroneously think that God is like a mean father, who gives us His commandments to spoil our fun. Also, we see all of the famous, successful people in the world who disobey God but seem to be having a great life. But ever since you started obeying God, life has been one trial after another. Your unbelieving, immoral girlfriends have good-looking hunks for boyfriends, while you sit home alone ever since you committed yourself to obey the Lord! The guy at work who is dishonest got the promotion, while you got passed over, even though you’re honest and hard-working (see Psalm 73).
But the Bible consistently shows that God gives us His commandments for our good, to bless us when we keep them. Moses tells Israel (Deut. 10:12-13): “Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?” (See, also, Deut. 4:1; 8:1.) God’s commands are like those of a loving father who tells his children, “Under no circumstances are you to go out on that busy street!” He’s not giving that command to take away their fun, but rather to protect them from danger and death.
Even so, God promises His lovingkindness to those who love Him and keep His commandments (Exod. 20:6, 12). But He also threatens punishment on those who disobey (Exod. 20:5, 7). Often children and grandchildren suffer the results of the parents’ sins. Sin always promises quick pleasure, but in the long run it damages the sinner and many others. So we should joyfully obey God’s commandments for our own good and the good of our families and all society.
But the ultimate reason we should obey God is for His glory. God’s name is tied up with His people. When we disobey God, it gives occasion to His enemies to blaspheme His holy name (2 Sam. 12:14). They can shrug off our testimony of God’s salvation by saying, “Those Christians are just a bunch of religious hypocrites!” Our disobedience makes God look bad, when our chief aim in life should be to glorify Him.
Thus, experiencing God’s grace in salvation is essential before you seek to obey His commandments. We should joyfully obey God’s commandments for His glory and our good. Now let’s take a very brief glance at the Ten Commandments:
When a hostile lawyer challenged Jesus, “Which is the great commandment in the Law?” Jesus answered (Matt. 22:37-40):
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
God says that those who disobey Him hate Him, while those who obey Him love Him (Exod. 20:5, 6). Jesus said (John 14:21), “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” The apostle John wrote (1 John 5:3): “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome.” So we need to view the Ten Commandments relationally. They tell us how we can love God and love one another.
We know that there are Ten Commandments because Moses refers to them (in Hebrew) as “the ten words” (Exodus 34:28; Deut. 4:13 & 10:4). But, there are different ways of numbering the ten. The Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, and some other scholars combine the first two commandments and divide the last commandment into two. I’m following the usual Reformed way of numbering them.
Scholars debate the meaning of the Hebrew preposition translated “before.” It is literally, “to My face,” or in modern colloquialism, “in My face.” God tolerates no rivals! It links with God’s statement (Exod. 20:5), “I am a jealous God.” Just as a loving husband will not tolerate his wife having other lovers, so God does not tolerate His people having other gods.
All people, including atheists, have their gods. Philip Ryken (Exodus [Crossway], p. 564) says that you can determine your own gods by two tests: First, What do you love? This focuses on our desires. Because of our fallen nature, we all must fight against the love of self and the love of the world. We’re prone to love success, money, and sex outside of marriage because we love self and the world. We can even use God to try to fulfill self in the hopes that He will give us what we want. At the core of it all is that we put self before God.
The second test is, What do you trust? Do you trust in your wisdom or ingenuity to get out of problems? Do you trust in your investments or wealth to meet your needs? Do you trust in your good works to get into heaven? Or, is your trust in the Lord alone (Ps. 20:7; 33:13-22)?
This command does not forbid all art or sculpture. Even the tabernacle had the cherubim hovering over the Ark of the Covenant. Christians have disagreed over whether it’s permissible to use pictures of Jesus to teach children about Him or for artists to make paintings or statues to depict Him. But verse 5 clarifies the meaning of this command: “You shall not worship them or serve them.” Praying to a statue or picture of Jesus or Mary violates the second commandment. As we will see (Exod. 32), Israel quickly disobeyed this commandment when they made the golden calf.
Also, those who reject God as He is revealed in Scripture and worship “God as they conceive Him to be” are violating the second commandment. Some claim to be Christians, but they say, “My God is a God of love, not of wrath and judgment!” They’re worshiping an idol that they made up, not the God of the Bible. (See my message [6/18/06], “Knowing This, Guard Yourself.”)
The Lord’s name refers to His person—all that He is. To use His name in vain includes using it in sorcery or divination, in false prophecy, and in taking false oaths (Ryken, p.580). It also means to use God’s name lightly, for no purpose, whether in exclamation, surprise, or anger. The current exclamation, “Oh my God!” uses His name in vain, unless the person is truly calling on the Lord in heartfelt prayer. Also, to exclaim, “Oh, Jeez!” is to use Jesus’ name in vain. This command does not prohibit taking legitimate oaths, since Deuteronomy 6:13 commands, “You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.” (See, also, Ps. 63:11; Rom. 1:9; Rev. 10:5-6.)
This is the most debated command among evangelical Christians. As I said, it’s the only one of the ten not repeated in the New Testament. In fact, Paul seems to nullify it rather than affirm it (Rom. 14:5-6; Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16)! While books have been written on this (and I have read several), I can only comment briefly.
My understanding is that Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath. The command to Israel involved both work on six days and rest on the seventh, including giving rest to their servants and animals. There is no mention of participating in worship services. There were severe penalties, including death, for violating this command (Num. 15:32-36)! It was a serious matter to violate the Sabbath!
In my experience, sincere Christians who attempt to impose this command on the church invariably end up mired in legalism. They come up with lists of what you can and cannot do on Sundays. Some even say that you have sinned if you talk or even think about anything other than spiritual matters on Sunday!
I believe that we are not under the Old Testament Sabbath commandment. It was fulfilled in Christ, who is our true rest (Col. 2:16-17; Heb. 3-4). At the same time, there is a valid principle that carries over to New Testament believers: Set aside the Lord’s Day to rest from your normal work and to gather with God’s people for worship, instruction, fellowship, and prayer. (See my message [8/20/17], “How to Spend the Lord’s Day.”)
(I’m continuing the numbering after commands 1-4):
Children who are still at home should respect and obey their parents. Parents should teach their children when they are very young that they are not permitted to defy their parents, hit their parents, or say that they hate them. The command also applies to adult children showing honor and taking care of their elderly parents. It establishes the family as the foundation of society.
I recognize that it is extremely difficult to apply this command if your parents have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive. It is difficult for a believing young person to honor parents who attack his or her faith in Christ. In such cases, get godly counsel on how to show respect while protecting yourself from abuse. It may be necessary to report abusive parents to civil authorities. (See my message, [5/12/96], “Keeping the Fifth.”)
Most of us are prone to think, “Well, at least there’s one that I’ve kept!” But then we read (Matt. 5:21-22) how Jesus extended this command to include anger, and we realize that we’re guilty of breaking this commandment! Jesus taught that outward sins such as murder, adultery, fornication, theft, lying, and slander all originate in the heart (Matt. 15:18-19). Sinful actions always begin with unchecked sinful thoughts. Thus while most of us think that we are incapable of murdering someone, if we don’t deal with bitterness and anger, we’re feeding the root that grows into murder. (See my message [5/4/08], “Taming Your Temper.”)
This command does not prohibit nations from armed conflicts or wars to protect their citizens from outside aggression. It does not prohibit governments imposing capital punishment for serious crimes after a fair trial with conclusive evidence. It does not forbid law enforcement officers from using deadly force when necessary to protect the innocent. And, it does not forbid self-defense or defense of one’s family or of innocent victims if law enforcement officers are not on the scene. It does prohibit killing babies in the womb unless the physical life of the mother is at stake. (See my messages [1/25/04], “What the Bible Says About Abortion”; and [4/21/96], “The Sanctity of Human Life.”)
“Adultery” includes any sexual activity outside of lifelong heterosexual marriage. As with murder, Jesus extended this command to our thought life when He said that to lust after a woman is to commit adultery with her in your heart (Matt. 5:27-28). This is not to say that mental lust is as serious or harmful as physical adultery. But it is to say that if you look at pornography or lustfully check out women, you are guilty of adultery in God’s sight. God requires moral purity on the thought level. (See my message, [6/1/97], “Moral Purity in a Polluted World.”)
This command acknowledges the right to own private property. It forbids all theft, robbery, extortion, embezzlement, and taking bribes. It prohibits cheating on your income taxes, as well as welfare and Medicare fraud. You violate this command if you steal intellectual property through plagiarism or copyright violations. It’s wrong to steal office supplies or equipment, or to steal time from your employer. It’s sin to incur debt that you know you are unable to pay back. While sometimes bankruptcy is unavoidable, Christians should do their best to pay creditors what is owed. (See my message [4/6/08], “To Cure a Thief.”)
This is another sin that Jesus said originates in the heart (Matt. 15:19). The command primarily focuses on bearing false witness against your neighbor in a legal setting, where lying or misrepresenting something about him would damage him or wrongly be to your advantage. But it also extends to lying to or about someone or spreading half truths about him in any setting. God is the God of truth who cannot lie (Isa. 65:16; Titus 1:2). Jesus is the truth (John 14:6). To be like Him, we must be people who speak the truth and do not bear false witness.
This doesn’t mean that we are required to tell everything we know about a situation. And, sometimes to be brutally honest is not the loving thing to do. We are to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Love seeks the highest good of the other person. To bear false witness undermines your integrity, undermines relationships, and damages or destroys the other person. (See my message [3/16/08], “To Tell the Truth.”)
This commandment deals with heart motives. You are not to desire so as to try to obtain for yourself your neighbor’s house, his wife, or anything that belongs to him. It stems from being discontented with what the Lord has given you. This commandment links back to the first commandment: to covet other persons or things puts something other than God in first place in your life (Christopher J. H. Wright, How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth [Zondervan]., p. 172). (See my message [10/29/95], “The Secret of Contentment.”)
A “Frank and Earnest” cartoon [5/8/98] pictured Moses on the mountain before God, holding the Ten Commandments. He tells God, “It’s your call but I still think ‘The Ten Habits of Highly Effective People’ is a catchier title.”
But they’re not “ten habits of highly effective people” or “ten suggestions for a happy life”! They’re Ten Commandments from the holy God, given for His glory and your good. If you think seriously about them, you’ve broken every one on the heart or thought level. That’s why you need a Savior who died to forgive your sins! When you trust in the Lord Jesus to save you, He gives you the Holy Spirit to indwell you and enable you joyfully to obey His commandments out of love for Him!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (17)
June 17, 2018
Exodus 32 is one of the scariest chapters in the Bible. It ranks up there with 2 Samuel 11, where David, the man after God’s heart, fell into adultery and murder; and with the Gospel accounts of the apostle Peter’s denials of Christ.
It’s scary because prior to Exodus 32, Aaron had some spiritual experiences that far exceed anything that any of us have ever had. He had seen God bring the ten plagues on Egypt. He watched God part the Red Sea for Israel and then bring it back over the pursuing Egyptian army. He saw the pillar of fire and the cloud that God provided for Israel’s protection in the wilderness. He had eaten the daily manna and had drunk water from the rock. At God’s invitation, Aaron, along with his sons and the elders of Israel had gone up on the mountain to see the God of Israel and to eat and drink in His presence (Exod. 24:9-11).
But then, after all of these displays of God’s glory and power, while Moses was on the mountain meeting with God, Aaron quickly yielded to the people’s request and fashioned the golden calf for Israel to worship. My initial reaction is to ask, “How could he do that? How could a man who had had these amazing encounters with God have so easily fallen into idolatry?”
But then I read 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul cites Exodus 32 and other sins of Israel in the wilderness. Then he applies it to us (1 Cor. 10:11-12): “Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.” In other words, if I think that I could never do what Aaron did here, then I’d better think again! I’m vulnerable to Aaron’s sin, and so are you!
The sin of making and worshiping around the golden calf, as I understand it, was not total apostasy. Israel was not, in their minds, totally rejecting God to follow pagan idols. Rather, it was syncretism. They were tweaking the worship of the true God so that it fit more in line with their liking. After Aaron made the golden calf, the people proclaimed (Exod. 32:4), “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Their sin was not total apostasy, but rather spiritual compromise. They wanted their “god” to look more like the gods of other nations. They didn’t like the scary, unseen God of Exodus 19, who came down on Mount Sinai in fire, smoke, lightning, thunder, earthquake, and loud trumpet blasts. They wanted a more user-friendly god like other nations had. So they came up with a compromise god. Had it not been for Moses’ strong leadership, selfless prayer, and spiritual discipline, God would have disowned Israel and started over with a new people. Thus we learn:
To avoid spiritual compromise, God’s people need strong leaders who do not compromise the truth, who pray selflessly, and who exercise necessary spiritual discipline.
Aaron’s weak leadership allowed Israel to fall into this horrible compromise. If he had stood firm and confronted the people’s demand to make a god for them, this whole incident might have been avoided. To correct Aaron’s compromise and get Israel back on track, Moses had to take bold action. Exodus 32 reveals at least seven ways that spiritual compromise can seep into a congregation of God’s people if the leaders are weak:
The people began their request to Aaron by attributing their deliverance from Egypt to Moses. They call him (Exod. 32:1), “the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt.” In Exodus 16, the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron because they lacked food. God graciously promised to rain bread from heaven on them and to give them meat to eat. As a result, Moses said (Exod. 16:6), “At evening you will know that the Lord has brought you out of the land of Egypt.” But they didn’t learn the lesson. So now they attribute their deliverance from Egypt to Moses.
But it gets worse. In verse 4, referring to the golden calf, they say, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” Psalm 106:19-22 describes this travesty:
They made a calf in Horeb
And worshiped a molten image.
Thus they exchanged their glory
For the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God their Savior,
Who had done great things in Egypt,
Wonders in the land of Ham
And awesome things by the Red Sea.
The Bible consistently proclaims that salvation is not the work of a great leader, like Moses or Paul, much less a manmade idol! Spiritual leaders are just instruments through whom God works (1 Cor. 3:5). Salvation requires God’s mighty power to impart life to those who were dead in their sins. As Paul put it (Eph. 2:4-5), “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) …” Or (Jonah 2:9), “Salvation is of the Lord.”
You would think that Aaron, brother of Moses, would have been strong enough to resist the pressure to make this golden calf. But in the New Testament Paul had to confront Peter when he quit eating with the Gentiles to placate the Judaizers. Even Barnabas got carried away with their hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-13). If men of the spiritual stature of Peter and Barnabas could compromise the gospel under pressure, then we all need to be on guard!
This is one reason the local church should be governed by a plurality of elders. It’s not a foolproof system, in that sometimes all of the elders get swept into error because an influential pastor veers off course and they follow him. Paul warned the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:28-31):
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
Paul warned Timothy (1 Tim. 4:16), “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching.” None of us are immune to spiritual compromise and so we must always be on guard.
Moses spent forty days on the mountain with the Lord and the people got tired of waiting. They said (Exod. 32:1), “as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” They knew that he had gone up into the fire, smoke, lightning, and thunder on the mountain to meet with God. Maybe they thought that he had died up there, but no one was about to go up there to find out! So even though they were eating the manna every day, drinking water from the rock, and under the protective cloud, they wanted God to move faster. So they asked Aaron to make a god to go before them.
When you get in a hurry and demand a quick fix to issues that may take time, you expose yourself to spiritual error. Waiting on God is hard. There are plenty of religious hucksters selling spiritual snake oil with the promise of instantly solving your problems. Almost always they are false teachers. The biblical way of growth is slower (1 Tim. 4:7): “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.” And, “Wait for the Lord” (Ps. 27:14). Spiritual shortcuts almost always lead to spiritual compromise.
Aaron was a more dynamic speaker than Moses, which is why God appointed him to be Moses’ spokesman. But apparently, he was a “nice” man who didn’t like confrontation. So when the people asked him to make a god who would go before them, he compliantly went along with their demand. When he heard them proclaim this idol to be their god who brought them up from Egypt, rather than confronting them, he built an altar and proclaimed a feast unto the Lord (v. 5). Maybe he was hoping for a compromise that wouldn’t upset the people: “You can have your idol, but bring your burnt offerings and peace offerings and let’s have a feast to the Lord! You can have it both ways!”
But rather than helping the people turn back to the Lord, this compromise quickly degenerated into a drunken orgy, including sexual immorality (the Hebrew words imply this). The King James Version translates “out of control” (v. 25) as “the people were naked.” It was like an unrestrained pagan rock concert! That’s how quickly things can go downhill when spiritual leaders are people-pleasers rather than God-pleasers.
The God whom Israel had encountered before Moses went up on the mountain was downright scary! You can’t negotiate with or manipulate a God like that to get what you want. You can’t work out better terms for the covenant, where things are a little more equal. All you can do is submit to such awesome power!
R. C. Spoul observed (Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology [Baker], pp. 19-20, cited by Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 977):
The cow gave no law and demanded no obedience. It had no wrath or justice or holiness to be feared. It was deaf, dumb, and impotent. But at least it could not intrude on their fun and call them to judgment.
A golden calf is a safer, more user-friendly god! You can use a god like that to get what you want. If he doesn’t come through, then set him aside and make another god. Sooner or later you’ll find one you like! But when you aren’t happy with God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture and you remake Him to be more user-friendly, you’re compromising the true faith in Christ Jesus.
Verse 4 reports how Aaron took the gold earrings from the people and fashioned it with a graving tool to make a molten calf. But when Moses angrily confronted him, Aaron lamely replied (v. 24), “I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” That’s funny, but very sad! He makes it sound as if he just threw the gold into the fire and a miracle took place: Out came this carefully crafted calf! It’s like the arguments for evolution: In spite of the fact that the human body is obviously intricately designed, nobody actually formed it! Take it by faith: Out came this body!
Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, sinners have tried to pass off the blame for their sin on others. Adam blamed Eve and even God for giving him Eve. She blamed the serpent. On and on it goes! “Hey, I was just an innocent bystander when this calf popped out of the oven. What could I do?” As Matthew Henry observed (Matthew Henry’s Commentary [Revell], 1:414), “Sin is a brat that nobody is willing to own.”
God told Moses (Exod. 32:9), “I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.” Literally, “they are a stiff-necked people.” Like a stubborn animal that refuses to submit to the yoke, stiff-necked people refuse to submit to the Lord and His ways with them. They think that their ways are right and everyone else, including God, is wrong. Israel’s “stiff necks” are seen in their repeated grumbling against the Lord, in spite of His repeated, gracious dealings with them.
You’re especially vulnerable to spiritual compromise when the Lord’s way with you involves difficult trials. As we’ve seen, waiting on the Lord is hard. We want to go straight to the Promised Land, not wander around in the hot, barren wilderness. To avoid spiritual compromise, you’ve got to submit to God’s ways (1 Pet. 5:6-11).
So, Aaron’s weak leadership and his aversion to confrontation and conflict allowed Israel to jump into idolatry before they even left the camp at the base of Mount Sinai. To get them back on course, God used Moses’ strong leadership, including his prayer:
God told Moses (Exod. 32:10): “Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation.” That’s an interesting verse, because if Moses had obeyed God’s command, he would have sinned! Instead, God’s command drove Moses to prayer. As a result (Exod. 32:14), “the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.” The King James Version reads, “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” (I have a sermon on Moses’ prayer, “The Man Who Caused God to Repent,” [5/26/02], where I develop more thoroughly the following three points plus one more.)
Suffice it to say here that God’s “repentance” looks at things from our point of view. It seems to us as if God changed His mind in response to our prayers, when actually His purpose has been ordained from eternity. He never changes. But in ways we cannot understand, He uses our prayers to accomplish His sovereign will. To be strong leaders who get God’s compromised people back on track, we should pray as Moses did here.
In verse 7, the Lord tells Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.” Then He tells Moses (v. 10) that He will destroy Israel and make a great nation out of Moses. In fact, God even offered to make a mightier and greater nation out of Moses (Deut. 9:14). Why did God do this? I believe that it was a test to prove Moses’ character as the leader of the nation and the mediator of the covenant of the Law. If Moses had agreed to God’s “Plan B,” it would have revealed Moses’ desire for personal glory.
But Moses passed the test with flying colors! God referred to Israel as your people whom you brought up from Egypt. But when Moses prayed, he turned it around (Exod. 32:11): “O Lord, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” He goes on to base his prayer on God’s reputation with the Egyptians. He says, in effect, “If You destroy Your people, You’ll look bad to the Egyptians!” In other words, Moses prayed that God’s person would be exalted through His people.
God’s glory should drive our prayers, especially when we’re concerned about His people who have fallen into sin or compromise with the world. When Christian marriages are in trouble, pray for healing, not just so that everyone will be happy, but so that God’s person will be exalted.
Moses (v. 13) reminds God of His covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob). We need to be careful to interpret God’s promises in their context and in light of the full revelation of Scripture. And we need to remember that just because God promised to do something does not mean that He will to do it the instant we ask. Moses did not live to see the fulfillment of God’s promise to give Abraham’s descendants the land of Canaan. But, pray God’s promises back to Him: “Lord, you promised that You will build Your church. I ask you to build Your church in this difficult situation!”
Moses’ prayer (vv. 11-13) was after God told him what the people had done, but before he went down and saw it for himself. After he saw how bad things really were, he went back up the mountain to see if he could make atonement for their sin (v. 30). He then prayed (Exod. 32:31-32), “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”
That’s an amazing prayer, similar to what Paul prayed (Rom. 9:3) when he said that he was willing to be accursed if it would have resulted in the salvation of Israel! I cannot honestly say that I’d volunteer to give up my salvation for the salvation of others! But Moses wanted that badly for God’s people to be established. Our heartfelt prayers should be for God’s kingdom to come and His will to be done in His church for His glory.
Thus to avoid spiritual compromise, God’s people need strong leaders who will not compromise the truth and who will pray selflessly for God’s glory through His people. Finally,
Moses cared so deeply for these sinning people that he was willing to be blotted out of God’s book if that’s what it took for them to be restored. And yet at the same time, he was the righteously angry avenger of the sinners. He smashed the stone tablets, signifying that Israel had broken God’s covenant. Then he burned the calf, ground it to powder and made the Israelites drink it. This showed that the manmade calf had not led Israel out of Egypt. And it showed the people that they must suffer the consequences of their sin. Then he confronted Aaron and issued a challenge (Exod. 32:26): “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me!” There are only two sides: the Lord’s side and the devil’s side. Spiritual compromise puts us against the Lord. When we’ve fallen into compromise, the way back is to turn from our sin and stand on the Lord’s side.
Then (v. 27) Moses charged the Levites who joined him to go through the camp and kill everyone, including close friends and relatives, who wouldn’t repent of worshiping the golden calf (implied). You wonder, “Why didn’t Moses execute Aaron?” We know that the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but Moses prayed for Aaron and God graciously spared him (Deut. 9:20). Perhaps the Lord knew that Moses needed Aaron’s continued help. Perhaps Aaron repented. He later became the high priest who made annual atonement for Israel’s sins.
Thankfully, we are never required to take such drastic measures to discipline sinning Christians! But we are required to confront believers who fall into sin and if they refuse to repent after we’ve gone through the biblical process, to remove them from the church (Matt. 18:15-17; 1 Cor. 5). If we fail to exercise necessary discipline, the leaven of sin and compromise will spread through the church and God’s name will be dishonored.
Moses’ death on behalf of Israel could not have atoned for their sins, because Moses had sins of his own. But God sent One whose death could atone for sinful people: the Lord Jesus Christ. He never sinned, but on the cross He bore God’s wrath against sinners. Paul wrote (2 Cor. 5:21), “He [God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” That is God’s gracious, free gift to you if you will trust in Jesus Christ.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (18)
June 24, 2018
Most of us rightly think of God as our loving Father. He loves us more than any earthly father ever could. But do you ever think of God as dangerous? Apparently, C. S. Lewis did. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Susan and Lucy ask about Aslan the lion (who represents Jesus Christ), “Is he safe?” Beaver replies, “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Lewis continues, “People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly. . . .” (Cited by David Mathis, desiringgod.org/articles/the-secret-of-aslan.)
In our quest to know the living and true God, it’s important to know Him as He has revealed Himself in the totality of His Word. If we just pick and choose the parts about God that we like, such as His love and grace, and ignore the rest, we miss something important that we need to know about God for our spiritual growth. For example, when people say, “I don’t believe in the judgmental God of the Old Testament; I believe in the loving God of the New Testament,” they’re revealing that they don’t know much about the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. He is both loving and judgmental against all sin. As Paul exclaims (Rom. 11:22), “Behold then the kindness and severity of God!” So people who believe in a God of love, but not a God of judgment, are making a golden calf. They’re not submitting to God’s revelation in the Bible, but setting themselves up as judge over the Bible.
Exodus 33 is the aftermath of Israel’s terrible sin with the golden calf. In Exodus 33:1, God tells Moses to move on, along with “the people whom you have brought up from the land of Egypt.” He doesn’t call them “My people whom I brought up,” but “the people whom you have brought up.” He promises to send His angel with them to take them to the Promised Land, but God says that He Himself won’t go up with them so that He doesn’t destroy them on the way because of their stiff necks (Exod. 33:3). Moses, however, prays and says in effect, “God, if You don’t go with us, then let us stay right here in this barren desert.” The desert with God is better than the Promised Land without God! We learn …
God’s presence is dangerous, but essential for His people.
God is omnipresent, present everywhere at all times. But here I’m talking about His immediate presence, or experiencing His presence. His presence is dangerous, because He is holy and not to be trifled with! Uzzah found that out when he reached out to steady the ark (the symbol of God’s presence) so that it wouldn’t fall off the cart. God struck him dead on the spot (2 Sam. 6:6-7)! In the “non-judgmental” New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira found that out when they lied about a donation to the church and they both died in front of Peter (Acts 5:1-11). Don’t mess with God’s presence! He’s dangerous!
But God’s presence is essential because without Him, we’re destitute. Without Him, we can look like a thriving church with a huge church campus and programs for every age group. We can have a multimillion dollar budget that supports missionaries all over the world. We can be written up in all the church growth magazines. On the personal level, you can be successful in business, live in a mansion, send your kids to the best universities, and serve in the church. But without God’s presence, it’s all hollow and in vain.
God’s presence is dangerous, but essential. Commenting on our text, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote (Revival, 157-158): “Men and women, when they are truly awakened, begin to realise that there is nothing so serious as to be without the presence of God.” The text reveals the peril, privilege, priority, and promise of God’s presence.
God’s refusal to go personally with Israel into the Promised Land stemmed from their persistent grumbling and their quickly turning from Him to worship the golden calf. Even though in response to Moses’ prayer God relented and agreed to go with Israel, He eventually did destroy many because of their sins. The ten spies who brought back a negative report on the land died in a plague (Num. 14:36). Those involved in Korah’s rebellion died when the earth swallowed them alive (Num. 16:31-33). Later, when the people again grumbled, God sent “fiery” serpents among them so that many died (Num. 21:5-6). Still later, when Israel joined themselves to Moab in idolatry and immorality, God killed 24,000 (Num. 25:1-9). Eventually, the entire generation that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness because of their unbelief (Num. 14:22-23).
Of course, when God kills people because of their sins, it’s not that He has an anger problem (see Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 1018)! His wrath is His settled opposition to all sin. His holiness requires that He must judge all sin. Sometimes, for reasons that we cannot always know, He brings temporal judgment on sinners through war, plagues, or natural disasters. When that happens, the godly suffer along with the ungodly. At other times, in mercy He allows sinful people to continue in their ways, withholding judgment until after they die. But all sin will be judged.
This means that either you will pay for your own sins at the judgment or you trust in Jesus, who died on the cross to pay the penalty you deserve. If your trust is in Christ and His death for you, then you don’t need to fear God’s judgment. Your sins are paid in full! But, you do need to fear God’s discipline. There’s a difference between punishment and discipline. Punishment means that the sinner pays for his sins. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Sinners will incur the second death, which is eternal separation from God in hell (Rev. 20:11-15). But, discipline comes from God’s fatherly hand to train His children in righteousness (Heb. 12:5-11). It is corrective rather than punitive.
When we sin, the Lord calls us to repent. Exodus 33:4-6 records one of the few times that stiff-necked Israel repented (v. 4): “When the people heard this sad word, they went into mourning, and none of them put on his ornaments.” And it was not just a momentary gesture, but ongoing (v. 6). The people’s ornaments had been the occasion for them to sin with the golden calf (Exod. 32:2). But now, in response to God’s command (Exod. 33:5), they took off their remaining ornaments. Later (Exod. 35:22), they will bring those ornaments as an offering to help build the tabernacle. That which had been the cause of their sin later was transformed into a source for their worship.
That’s a good description of genuine repentance. If money was your idol, turn it into good by giving it to the Lord’s work (Eph. 4:28). As Philip Ryken says (ibid. p. 1021), “When the Holy Spirit convicts us of any sin, we need to take off whatever is leading us into sin and never put it on again.”
True repentance also involves mourning over your sins (Exod. 33:4; 2 Cor. 7:10). Jesus said (Matt. 5:4), “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” God is present with us so that we can have a relationship with Him. Sin interrupts that relationship and puts distance between Him and us. That rupture in our fellowship with a loving Father should cause us to mourn over our sins and turn back to God in ongoing, heartfelt repentance. The peril of God’s presence is that He is not safe if we are not submissive.
In verse 3, God offered to bless the people with the Promised Land, but without His presence. That’s exactly what many people want (Ryken, p. 1020). They want God to give them whatever they need for a happy life, but they really don’t care about a daily walk in fellowship with Him.
Think about it: Could that describe you? You want happiness, inner peace, loving relationships, a fulfilling job, and a good church to attend. But as long as you have those things, life is good. You don’t really care about a daily relationship with God.
Thankfully, in this situation, it wasn’t good enough for Israel or for Moses. Israel mourned the news that God would not go with them and showed their repentance by stripping off their ornaments. Moses sought the Lord and prayed (Exod. 33:13), “Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people.” He went on to add (Exod. 33:15), “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” God’s presence was even more cherished than the blessing of the Promised Land!
Verses 7-11 seem to interrupt the flow of the narrative, but I think they’re here to show how Moses enjoyed intimate fellowship with the Lord. The tent here was not the tabernacle, which was yet to be built. The tabernacle would be placed in the center of the camp and even Moses could not enter the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle. Only Aaron, the high priest, could go in there and just once a year, to make atonement for Israel’s sins.
Moses called this tent “the tent of meeting” (v. 7): “And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” But it seems as if not everyone could enter the tent. They had to go through Moses, their mediator. When he went out to the tent, everyone would stand at the door of their own tents, watch, and worship (vv. 8, 10). The pillar of cloud would descend as Moses entered the tent and the Lord would speak with Moses (v. 9).
The people must have wondered what took place inside that tent! Verse 11 tells us: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.” Apparently Joshua stayed there to guard the tent from any intruders. When it says that the Lord spoke with Moses “face to face,” it does not mean literally, since no man can see God’s face and live (Exod. 33:20). It means that Moses enjoyed intimate fellowship with God there. It was a sacred place where Moses met with God.
Three brief applications: First, there are different levels of intimacy with God. Moses knew God in a way that even Aaron and their sister, Miriam, did not (Num. 12:1-8). Only Peter, James, and John saw Jesus transfigured into His glory and they were not permitted to speak of what they saw until after Jesus was risen (Matt. 17:1-13). Paul had the unique experience of being caught up to the third heaven where he heard things that he was not permitted to speak (2 Cor. 12:4). All the rest of us can do is read about these extraordinary experiences and let them motivate us to seek to know God more deeply than we already do.
Second, those who seek the Lord must go through the Mediator. The Israelites who sought the Lord would go outside the camp to the tent and go through Moses. It involved some deliberate effort to go out there. Maybe they had to wait in line, since Moses could only handle a few requests at a time. But we have a Mediator who can handle all our requests at once! Paul says (Eph. 2:18), “for through Him we both [Jews and Gentiles] have our access in one Spirit to the Father.” Hebrews 13:13 exhorts, “So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.”
Third, it’s helpful to have a specific place and time where you meet with God. If you can, have a designated spot where you can get alone with God to fellowship with Him through His Word and prayer. As you read His Word, ask Him to teach you His ways so that you may know Him (Exod. 33:13; Ps. 25:4). God’s ways are how He deals with people, and His ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8). He commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son, providing the ram at the last minute, as an illustration of how He would sacrifice His own Son (Gen. 22:1-14). He put Joseph in an Egyptian dungeon after he obeyed God by resisting the advances of Potiphar’s wife. His way with Joseph was puzzling at the time, but later God used him to provide for His people during a famine (Ps. 105:16-19; Gen. 50:20).
So make sure to obey Psalm 105:4: “Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face continually.” Seek to have daily fellowship with the living God.
As God’s people, we are to be in the world, but not of the world (John 17:15-16). In his excellent book, The Presence of God [Crossway], Ryan Lister argues (p. 25) that the objective of redemption is that “God is working to establish a people and a place for his presence.” He shows that this major theme ties the whole Bible together. God’s presence was lost in the Garden when Adam and Eve sinned. But God’s ultimate objective is the New Jerusalem, where (Rev. 21:3), “The tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.”
In verses 1-3, God distanced Himself from the people because of their sin with the golden calf. But Moses, through his prayer, sought to secure God’s presence again with His people. In verse 13, after asking to know God’s ways and find favor in His sight, Moses reminds the Lord, “Consider too, that this nation is Your people.” In verse 14, the Lord responds using a singular pronoun: “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” But Moses wasn’t content with that. So he went on (vv. 15, 16) to ask for God’s presence to lead the people from there and to go with them all. God’s presence would distinguish Israel from all the other people who were on the face of the earth (v. 16).
We should experience God’s presence not just individually, but also corporately. Paul asks (1 Cor. 3:16), “Do you not know that you [plural] are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you [plural]?” The church is now the temple where God dwells. Unbelievers who come into our church gatherings should sense that God is in our midst (1 Cor. 14:25). But for that to happen, we have to be distinct from the world. In 2 Corinthians 6:16, Paul again states that the church is the temple of God and that God dwells in our midst. Then he commands (2 Cor. 6:17), “Therefore, ‘Come out from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord.” Paul concludes (2 Cor. 7:1), “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” Ryan Lister (ibid. p. 312) sums up,
These “temple” texts reveal that the Holy Spirit, who resides in the church community, is at work to create a community defined by the presence of God. That presence, once confined to the temple, is now fulfilled by the Holy Spirit in the church. According to the New Testament, the gathering of the church is, in some sense, a new temple for God’s presence in this world to continue the work of redemption and make way for the new heaven and new earth.
Thus, the peril of God’s presence is that He is not safe if we are not submissive. The privilege of God’s presence is that we might have personal fellowship with the invisible God so that we might be distinct from all other people.
You would think that an angel of God would have been sufficient. The angels are impressive beings with the power to strike the men of Sodom blind and then bring down brimstone on their city! But Moses was not satisfied with the angel’s presence. He prays (Exod. 33:15), “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.” In other words, “Angels won’t do! Without Your presence, God, we’re done!”
By praying that, Moses was acknowledging his own insufficiency and His need for God’s all-sufficiency. We need God’s presence for joy (Ps. 16:11): “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” We need His presence for protection (Ps. 31:20): “You hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the conspiracies of man.” We need His presence to deliver us from despair (Ps. 42:5): “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.” We need His presence for our good (Ps. 73:28): “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good.”
But, it’s obvious that experiencing God’s presence is not automatic. With Moses, we need to seek God’s presence, both personally and as a church. Finally,
Just as God is omnipresent, so He is omniscient: He knows everything and everyone. But Moses reminds God that He has said (Exod. 33:12), “I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.” The Lord affirms (v. 17), “I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.”
For God to know you by name is a special privilege. It implies a special intimacy with God, unhindered by sin. It’s similar to Paul’s prayer (Eph. 3:17), “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Doesn’t Christ dwell in every believer’s heart? Yes, but there is a special sense of Christ dwelling in those who find favor in His sight, whom He knows by name. As Jesus said (John 14:23), “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” The promise of God’s presence is for those who love and obey Jesus. He knows them by name.
Experiencing God’s presence will help you to walk more carefully in this corrupt world. In one of his books, Watchman Nee uses the illustration that if you have a few coins in your pocket, you can walk down the street in a rather light-hearted, carefree manner. But if you’ve just been to the bank and have thousands of dollars in your pocket, you’ll walk differently. You may still whistle a tune, but you’ll walk more carefully. Every once in a while, you’ll stop and put your hand in your pocket, just to make sure that the treasure is still there.
Even so, an awareness of God’s presence will keep you from sin. How can you sin if you are aware that God is present with you? You don’t want to lose the experience of His presence (Ps. 51:11). Our Lord has promised (Matt. 28:20), “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” But experiencing His presence is not automatic. We need to walk in holiness, enjoying daily fellowship with Him. His presence is dangerous, but essential!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (19)
July 1, 2018
Although newlyweds may not understand this, those of us who have been married for a few decades realize that romance is not totally effortless. To keep the romantic fires burning over the years requires deliberate forethought and attention.
It’s the same spiritually. To keep your relationship with the Lord fresh and vital over the long haul is not automatic. It requires forethought, effort, and constant attention. It’s easy to be lulled into complacency in your Christian life. Things, even good things, become routine: Did my quiet time (check). Went to church (check). Gave money to missionaries (check). But you’ve drifted into not actively pursuing to know God more deeply.
When the apostle Paul wrote Philippians, he had been a Christian for about 25 years. God had used him to perform many mighty miracles. He had several encounters with the risen Lord, including being caught up into the third heaven. But he didn’t rest in those experiences. He said that he wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. Then he added (Phil. 3:12-14):
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
He goes on to say that we all should have that same attitude. We all need to fight against spiritual complacency. We see the same thing in Moses’ experience in our text. The lesson is:
No matter where you’re at spiritually, you should desire to go deeper with God.
Since God is infinite, we can always know Him more deeply. So press on! I can’t deal with everything in this amazing text, so I’m limiting myself to five ways to go deeper with God.
There is a sense in which we should be content with the Lord (Ps. 23:1): “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We have all that we need for life and godliness in Him (2 Pet. 1:3). But, there are unfathomable riches in Him that we need to explore (Eph. 3:8). So, with Moses we should pray (Exod. 33:13), “Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight.” The Lord assured Moses that He would grant this request (v. 17). But Moses wasn’t content with that. So he continued (Exod. 33:18), “I pray You, show me Your glory!” This was not a prayer for material comforts or health. It wasn’t a prayer for success in ministry. It was a prayer to know God more deeply.
I want to ask, “Moses, what more could you want? You’re the man who talked with God at the burning bush! You saw God do mighty miracles in Egypt! You saw Him part the Red Sea! You’ve seen manna and water from the rock. You saw God’s glory when you and the 70 elders of Israel went up on the mountain and ate and drank in God’s presence (Exod. 24:15-18). You spent 40 days on the quaking, cloud-covered mountain, where you met personally with God and received the Ten Commandments! God often spoke with you face to face at the tent of meeting (Exod. 33:9-11). Isn’t that enough, Moses?” “No,” Moses replies, “I want to see the glory of God in a deeper way.”
A. W. Pink observed (Gleanings in Exodus [Moody Press], p. 340), “This is both the longing of the redeemed and the goal of their redemption—to behold the glory of God!” In Revelation 21:22-23, the apostle John wrote,
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.
In reply to Moses’ request, the Lord answered (Exod. 33:19), “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” The Lord’s name refers to all that He is and all that He does. It is the sum of His attributes and His actions. But then the Lord qualified His reply (Exod. 33:20): “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” Then He told Moses (Exod. 33:21-23):
“Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
The Lord promised both to cover Moses with His hand (so that he would survive the experience!) and to reveal part of His glory to Moses. (“Face” and “back” are human terms applied to God.) Augustus Toplady’s hymn, “Rock of Ages,” and Fanny Crosby’s, “He Hideth My Soul,” come from these verses. Christ is the rock that followed Israel through the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:4). While that refers to Christ as the rock from which the water flowed, it may still be valid to see God hiding Moses in Christ. From that vantage point, he got a glimpse of God’s glory.
John 1:14 declares, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word “dwelt” literally is, “tabernacled.” Jesus was God’s tabernacle pitched among us so that we could behold His glory. And, as Jesus explained to Philip when he asked to see the Father (John 14:9), “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
So by coming to know Jesus more deeply, we see more of God’s glory. As you feed daily on God’s Word, ask Him to reveal more and more of Christ to your soul. No matter how long you’ve been a Christian, with Paul and Moses have a holy dissatisfaction with where you’re at so that you press on for more: “Lord, show me Your glory!”
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, the Lord did not give him a vision of His throne room with the impressive seraphim, as He later gave Isaiah (Isa. 6); or of the four scary living creatures, with fire and lightning and spinning wheels, as He did with Ezekiel (Ezek. 1). Rather, the Lord gave Moses propositional statements about His attributes. He says, in effect, “Okay, if you want to know Me and see My glory, let Me show you some of My attributes, especially as they relate to saving sinners.” (Paraphrasing Philip Ryken, Exodus [Crossway], p. 1040.)
So, first the Lord said (Exod. 33:19), “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you ….” God’s goodness is an attribute that underlies all that He is in His person and all that He does toward His creation. Out of His good essence flow good actions. In his two-volume, The Existence and Attributes of God [Baker], Stephen Charnock devotes 146 pages to the goodness of God. With regard to God’s relation to His creatures, Charnock says (2:219), the goodness of God “is that perfection of God whereby he delights in his works, and is beneficial to them.”
In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s first ploy was to tempt Eve to doubt God’s goodness. The serpent said (Gen. 3:1), “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” He continued (Gen. 3:5), “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” In other words, “God is trying to restrict you. His commandments are denying something that would be for your good.” Eve took the bait and Satan has been using the same tactic ever since. If he can get you to doubt God’s goodness, you won’t trust God. You’ll keep your distance, because who wants to be close to a god who is not good?
Satan especially uses this tactic when you’re going through a difficult trial. He whispers, “If God were really good, He wouldn’t allow you to go through this! What kind of God would put His children through such a thing?” That’s why Peter, writing to suffering churches, warns (1 Pet. 5:8-9a), “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith ….” He goes on to point us to the eternal glory that we will share with Christ. Or, as Paul says (2 Cor. 4:17), “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” So when you’re going through trials, by faith resist the devil’s temptation to doubt the goodness of God.
When the Lord passed by Moses as he was hidden in the cleft of the rock, He further proclaimed His goodness (Exod. 34:6-7): “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.’” Those verses are cited frequently in the Old Testament as a basic revelation of who God is (Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; 145:7-8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; [alluded to in 2 Chron. 30:9; Ps. 111:4; 116:5; Isa. 63:7; Nah. 1:3]).
God’s goodness includes His compassion. In Psalm 103:8, David cites Exodus 33:6 and then adds (Ps. 103:13-14),
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.
The picture is that of a father who recognizes that his three-year-old has reached his limit. His difficult behavior is because he is only three and he’s tired and hungry. So, rather than lashing out at his son, the father tenderly says, “I know that you’re tired and hungry. We’re going to meet your needs, but meanwhile, you need to be more cooperative.” God deals with us as a compassionate father (1 Thess. 2:11).
God’s goodness also includes His grace. More on this in a moment, but for now I’ll say that His grace means that He shows us undeserved favor. We deserved His judgment for our sins, but He gives us forgiveness because of Christ’s death on our behalf. Israel deserved that God disown them as His people, but now He graciously restores them in His covenant by re-issuing the Ten Commandments to Moses (Exod. 34:1-5, 10-28).
God’s goodness means that He is slow to anger. He is patient. He doesn’t yell at us every time we mess up. It doesn’t say that God is never angry, but rather that He is slow to anger. Many times in the Bible God’s anger burned against His people, but it was only when they repeatedly sinned after many warnings.
God’s goodness also means that He is abounding in lovingkindness and truth. “Lovingkindness” refers to God’s loyal, steadfast love, which is everlasting (Ps. 136). “Truth” may also mean “faithfulness.” God is the standard of what is true and He never varies from that standard. He is always faithful to keep His word. (I’ll comment on His forgiveness in a moment.)
It is significant that when God revealed this glimpse of His glory to Moses, the first thing he said was (Exod. 33:19), “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” He didn’t say, as some think He said, “I will be gracious to everyone and compassionate to everyone.” Rather, as the Sovereign Lord, He gives grace to whom He wills and compassion to whom He wills. And this is of first importance in knowing who God is.
The apostle Paul cites Exodus 33:19 in Romans 9:15 and then explains (Rom. 9:16-18),
So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
He is sovereign in dispensing His grace and compassion. Martyn Lloyd-Jones comments (Revival [Crossway], pp. 233-234),
This is as much a part of God as everything else and you must not leave it out. It means that our salvation is entirely, and altogether, by the grace of God. It is not in any sense dependent on anything in us. It is, indeed, in spite of us. It is entirely of God’s own will. He is not under an obligation to anybody.
He goes on to acknowledge that we all do not like this or understand it; we tend to fight against it. But he adds (p. 234),
Be careful what you are doing, my friend. You are entirely in God’s hands. You know nothing about him apart from that which he has graciously been pleased to reveal. And this is what he has revealed.
Don’t dodge the truth of God’s sovereign grace or you’ll miss a fundamental aspect of who He is. And you won’t adequately understand the salvation that He has freely granted us in Jesus Christ. His sovereign grace is all about His glory (Eph. 1:3-14). And it’s at the heart of your assurance of salvation (Rom. 8:29-39).
The Lord said (Exod. 34:7) that He “forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” The Hebrew words translated, “iniquity, transgression and sin,” have slightly different nuances. “Iniquity” means to turn aside from what is right. “Transgression” is a more defiant violating of God’s covenant. “Sin” is a general term for any moral failure (the above from Ryken, ibid. p. 1043). But the Lord piled up the three terms to show that no matter how great our sin may be, His grace is greater. He is willing to forgive the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15) if he will repent and trust in Jesus Christ.
Probably, most of us would like for the verse to stop there. But that’s only the first part of what God said. He adds, “yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” This reflects God’s holiness and justice. But, remember, this is also a part of God’s goodness (Exod. 33:19)! He would not be good if He were not absolutely holy. And He would be neither good nor holy if He were not just. He must impose the just payment on every sin.
We recognize this even with fallible human judges. Suppose that a criminal killed your mother and stole her purse to support his drug habit and the judge said, “This poor man! He’s had a rough childhood. We need to be nice to him. The penalty is a week of community service. Try hard not to do this again.” You would be outraged! You’d rightly say, “This judge is not good and he is not just!”
As the absolutely holy, just Judge of every person, God says (Rom. 6:23), “The wages of sin is death.” He means, eternal separation from Him in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:11-15). While it is a difficult doctrine to embrace, Jesus spoke more about eternal punishment in hell than anyone else in the Bible. To follow Him means submitting to His teaching about holiness, forgiveness, and justice.
But what about the last part of that verse? Is it unfair of God to visit the sins of the parents on children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations? To ask the question is to answer it: God is never unfair to anyone! He is perfectly just. Every person will be punished for his or her own sins (Ezek. 18:20).
But it’s a simple fact of living in this fallen world that our sins do affect others, especially those who are closest to us. The sins of corrupt, evil rulers affect their people and often other nations (when the evil ruler aggressively tries to conquer others). The sins of abusive parents inflict deep wounds on their children, who often pass those wounds on to their children. This shows us how serious sin is! It has ongoing consequences!
Sometimes critics will say, “If God is loving, how can He allow little children to suffer abuse?” But the answer is not to remove God from the equation. That only removes all hope! The answer is to offer both sinful parents and sinful children the hope of the gospel. God freely forgives sinners who repent and trust in Christ! “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). God “keeps lovingkindness for thousands” (Exod. 34:7). Come to Christ to receive mercy, healing, and hope!
Thus to go deeper with God, you need a holy dissatisfaction with where you’re at. You need to understand His abundant goodness, sovereign grace, holiness, forgiveness, and justice. Finally,
When Moses prayed to see God’s glory, it was not a self-centered prayer. He wasn’t praying, “I don’t care if all these complaining idol-worshipers die in the wilderness; just show me Your glory.” Rather, he was praying as the mediator of God’s covenant with Israel. We’ve already seen how Moses was willing to be blotted out of God’s book of life if God wouldn’t forgive the people’s sin with the golden calf (Exod. 32:32). So here, he prays (Exod. 34:9), “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession.” He was thinking about others, not himself only.
Going deeper with God is not just so that you will have a deeper experience with Him. Your desire to go deeper with God should be so that He can use you more effectively in helping others experience His abundant grace and know Him more deeply.
Moses’ response to God’s revelation of His glory was (Exod. 34:8) to make “haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.” And that should be our response, too. The point of going deeper with God is not so that we can know more theology or win theological debates or brag about our knowledge. The point is that we will worship our sovereign, gracious God more deeply! Moses’ response reminds me of Paul’s response after describing God’s sovereign grace in Romans 9-11. He exclaimed (Rom. 11:33-36):
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
No matter where you’re at with the Lord, I encourage you to make the necessary changes in your schedule so that this week you begin the process of going deeper with God.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (20)
July 8, 2018
I’ve never met the Queen of England (and probably never will), but I understand that before you meet the Queen, you need to learn some rules of proper etiquette of what to do or not do and say in her presence. The basic rule is not to be chummy and overly familiar. Respect and proper formality are essential. Even Prince Charles bows to his mother and calls her “ma’am.” (sandradodd. com/ideas/etiquette1) In America, we don’t have royalty, so we’re probably a bit too chummy on how we might greet our leaders.
But the far more important question is, how do you enter God’s holy presence? Is He your Good Buddy in the sky? Can you just barge into His presence and ask whatever favors you need? Or, is there a right and wrong way to enter the presence of the King of kings? The truth is, one day we all will stand in God’s glorious presence, either for commendation (“Well done”) or for condemnation (“Depart from Me”). The difference will be determined by whether in this life you have come into His holy presence through the way that He has provided.
The Old Testament tabernacle was designed to teach Israel how to enter the presence of the Holy One. It’s been pointed out that the Bible has only two chapters to how God created the universe, but it devotes 50 chapters to the tabernacle (Stephen Olford, The Tabernacle: Camping with God [Loizeaux Brothers], p. 22). In fact, more space is devoted to the tabernacle than to any other single subject in Scripture (A. W. Pink, Gleanings in Exodus [Moody Press], p. 180)! But I’m guessing that if you’re honest, you’d have to admit that when you read the Bible, you either skip or skim the chapters that describe this structure that Israel built and carried through their wilderness journeys. If you’re really honest, you might even admit that you sort of dread coming to these chapters!
The late M. R. DeHaan said (cited by Olford, p. 15), “There is no portion of Scripture richer in meaning, or more perfect in its teaching of the plan of redemption, than this divinely designed building.” A. B. Simpson wrote (Christ in the Tabernacle [Christian Publications], pp. 5-6),
The Tabernacle is the grandest of all the Old Testament types of Christ…. In its wonderful furniture, priesthood, and worship, we see, with a vividness that we find nowhere else, the glory and grace of Jesus, and the privileges of His redeemed people.
Since books have been written on the tabernacle, I can only skim the surface in this message. But in studying the life of Moses, I thought that I should give an overview of this central feature of Israel’s worship that God directed Moses to construct. Applied to us, the message is:
To enter God’s holy presence you must come through the only way that He has provided.
If you try to approach God in any other way, the consequences could be severe. Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s two sons who were priests, got creative and offered “strange fire,” which God had not commanded. Immediately (Lev. 10:2), “Fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.” You may think, “But that was the Old Testament!” But, if you try to come into God’s holy presence by your own way rather than God’s way, one day you will be eternally shut out of God’s presence (Matt. 25:10-12). So it’s important to get this right!
In Exodus 25:8-9, God commanded Moses, “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I am going to show you, as the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furniture, just so you shall construct it.” Thus, by God’s command, the tabernacle was to be His dwelling place among Israel. When you get to the New Testament, you read (John 1:14), “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The word “dwelt” is literally, “tabernacled.” Just as God’s glory was revealed in the Old Testament tabernacle, so He revealed His glory in our tabernacle, the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, James, and John saw that glory revealed on the mountain when Jesus was transfigured before them, with Moses and Elijah present (Matt. 17:1-13).
The glory of God’s love, holiness, justice, and grace was also displayed supremely at the cross. Jesus, the perfect and final high priest, through offering Himself as the Lamb of God, opened the way into God’s presence for all who come through Him! When He died, the veil in the temple separating the holy place from the holy of holies was torn from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51) The Old Testament tabernacle pictured Jesus and His sacrificial death as the only way we can enter God’s holy presence. In fact, this is where God is taking all of history. In Revelation 21:1-3, John wrote,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.”
Because the tabernacle is such an amazingly accurate type of the Lord Jesus Christ, written about 1,400 years before He was born, it serves as strong evidence for the divine inspiration of Scripture and proof that Jesus is God’s Messiah. It could not be coincidental that Jesus fulfilled so many aspects of the tabernacle, some of which I’ll mention as we walk through it!
In Exodus 39 & 40, which describe the construction of the priestly garments and the tabernacle, the phrase, “just as the Lord had commanded Moses,” occurs 17 times (Exod. 39:1, 5, 7, 21, 26, 29, 31, 42, 43; Exod. 40:16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32; cf. 25:8-9)! Seven times in the Bible we are told that Moses made the tabernacle after the pattern that was shown to him on the mountain (Exod. 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8; Num. 8:4; Acts 7:44; Heb. 8:5). Again, this shows the detailed inspiration of Scripture! The tabernacle wasn’t Moses’ brilliant idea. It came directly from God to Moses to Israel and us as a portrait of the Savior who would provide the way for all people to enter His holy presence.
The tabernacle, called “the tent of meeting,” was first set up one year to the day from when Israel came out of Egypt (Exod. 40:2). For the next 39 years, it would be set up and taken down every time that Israel moved to a new place in the desert (at least 31 different camps after Mount Sinai, Num. 33:5-49!). If you’ve ever camped with your family, you know how time-consuming it is to set up and then take down everything in your camp. This would have been far more complicated! The tabernacle measured 45 feet long by 15 feet wide and was covered by three layers of animal skins. Here’s a brief sketch of it, based on Exodus 40:
The ark (Exod. 40:3, 20, 21), placed in the holy of holies, was made of wood overlaid with gold, representing Christ’s humanity and deity. It measured about 4x2x2 feet, with golden rings for carrying. It contained the Ten Commandments, a jar of manna, and (later, Num. 17:1-10) Aaron’s rod that budded. The Ten Commandments represented God’s holy law for His people. Jesus kept God’s law perfectly. His atoning blood on the mercy seat stands between us and God’s holy presence. The jar of manna reminded Israel of God’s daily sustenance of them in the wilderness, just as Christ sustains us daily. Aaron’s rod that budded pictured Jesus as God’s chosen high priest, who alone possesses life in Himself.
The pure gold mercy seat on top of the ark was where the high priest sprinkled the blood once a year to atone for Israel’s sins. Two cherubim hovered over the ark with their faces toward the mercy seat and their wings touching above. The holy of holies where the tabernacle was housed, was a perfect cube, as the new Jerusalem will be. The only light came from the Shekinah glory, also true in the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23).
The blue, purple, and scarlet veil (Exod. 26:31-32; 40:21), made of woven linen with cherubim on it, separated the holy of holies from the holy place. Tradition says that it was a handbreadth thick. It was miraculous when the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died! Only the high priest, only once a year, could go beyond the veil to make atonement for the people.
Moving into the holy place, the table of showbread on the north side (Exod. 25:23-30; 37:10-16; 40:22-23) was about 3 feet long, 18 inches wide, and 27 inches high. It was made of acacia wood covered with gold, with gold rings attached for carrying it. On top of the table the priests placed twelve loaves of bread, one for each tribe, and replaced them with fresh loaves each week. There were also vessels for the drink offerings of wine.
The table itself, as with the ark, made of wood covered with gold, pictures Jesus in His perfect humanity and undiminished deity. The bread was called “the bread of the presence” (Exod. 25:30). Along with the wine, the bread pictured Jesus as the Bread of Life, whose flesh is true food and whose blood is true drink (John 6:55). He is Immanuel (Matt. 1:23), God present with us. He provides spiritual food and sustenance to all who feed on Him.
The lampstand was made of one talent (about 75 pounds) of pure gold and put in the holy place on the south side, opposite the table of showbread (Exod. 25:31-40; 37:17-24; 40:24). It consisted of one stem or branch in the center, with three branches coming out on each side. The pure gold pictures Jesus in His deity as the one who reveals the Father to us (John 14:9). The seven lamps picture Jesus as the perfect revelation of the Father to us. The lampstand was the only source of light in the holy place. Jesus is our only source for true wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3; Prov. 21:30). The lamps burned pure olive oil, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did everything in His earthly ministry in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:1). In the same way, the Holy Spirit reveals the wisdom of God in Christ to us (1 Cor. 2:6-13).
Jesus proclaimed of Himself (John 8:12), “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” No one but God in human flesh could legitimately make such a claim! Of the new Jerusalem, we read (Rev. 21:23), “And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.”
The altar of incense (Exod. 30:1-10; 37:25-28; 40:26-27) was three feet long, 18 inches wide, and 24 inches high, with gold rings to carry it by. It was made of acacia wood covered with pure gold, again picturing Christ in His humanity and deity. It was placed just outside of the veil that separated the holy of holies from the holy place. Every morning when Aaron trimmed the lamps he was to offer fragrant incense on this altar (Exod. 30:7). Once a year he sprinkled it with the blood of the sin offering.
This altar and the burning incense pictured Jesus Christ as our high priest, who now is at the Father’s right hand, praying for us (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). And, since we are now believer-priests, the incense also represents the prayers of the saints (Rev. 5:8; 8:3, 4).
Moving out of the holy place and into the courtyard, the altar of burnt offering (Exod. 27:1-8; 38:1-7; 40:29) was the first item that a priest or worshiper would encounter after entering the compound. It was wood covered with bronze, a symbol of judgment, and was seven feet square and four and a half feet high, with horns on the four corners and rings for carrying. It taught Israel that the only way into God’s holy presence was through the proper sacrifices (described in Leviticus 1-7, 16; Numbers 19). God ordained blood sacrifices because the life of the flesh is in the blood (Lev. 17:11) and the penalty for our sin is death. God accepted these substitute sacrifices in place of the guilty sinner. But all of the Old Testament sacrifices pointed ahead to Jesus, God’s perfect and final sacrifice for our sins (Heb. 9:11-14; 10:1-18). Now there is no further need for animal sacrifices.
Between the altar of burnt offering and the entrance to the holy place was the laver, or basin for washing (Exod. 30:17-21; 38:8; 40:30-32). It also was made of bronze, made from the mirrors of the women who served at the doorway of the tabernacle. The priests had to wash their hands and feet at this laver before they entered the holy place and when they approached the altar to offer burnt offerings. It pictured Jesus as the one who cleanses us from all defilement and sin through the water of the Word and His Spirit (John 3:5; 13:1-18; Eph. 5:26; Ezek. 36:25; Zech. 13:1). Through faith in Jesus we can have our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (Heb. 10:22).
The court (Exod. 27:9-18; 38:9-20; 40:33) was formed by linen curtains, hung between pillars. It measured about 150 feet long by 75 feet wide. The court separated God’s presence from the rest of the camp. But there was an entrance, showing that we may enter His presence through proper sacrifice, who is Jesus Christ.
The tabernacle was located at the center of Israel’s camp, but it was entered from the camp of Judah, suggesting that Jesus would be born of the tribe of Judah (David’s tribe). Its centrality showed that Jesus should always be at the center of His people.
After the tabernacle was completed, God told Moses to anoint the tabernacle and all that was in it with the anointing oil (Exod. 40:9-11). This symbolized the Father’s anointing Jesus with the Holy Spirit at His baptism. In the same way, every believer in Christ receives the Holy Spirit, who sets him or her apart unto God (Rom. 8:9).
Thus, God’s way into His presence was through the tabernacle, which pictures Jesus Christ, the true tabernacle. But, also,
All Israelites could enter the courtyard of the tabernacle to bring sacrifices to the altar, but that’s as far as they could go. There were no guided tours to show people what the inside of the tabernacle looked like! Only the priests could go inside the holy place and only the high priest could enter the holy of holies once a year on the Day of Atonement. He could only enter after offering a sacrifice for his own sins and then taking the atoning blood there for the sins of the people.
But when Jesus died, the way into God’s presence was opened through His death. Now every believer in Christ is a priest with access, not only to the holy place, but even into the holy of holies, into God’s holy presence (Heb. 4:14-16; Eph. 2:18; 1 Pet. 2:9)! But just as the Old Testament priests had to be anointed and cleansed before they entered the tabernacle (Exod. 40:12-15, 31-32), so we can only enter God’s holy presence when we are yielded to the Holy Spirit and cleansed by confessing all of our sins (1 John 1:9).
After the tabernacle was set up for the first time, the cloud covered it and God’s glory filled it to such an unusual extent that Moses was not able to go in (Exod. 40:34-35). The people could see that the tabernacle was not due to the genius of Moses. He had only carried out God’s specific design. All he could do on this occasion was to fall down with all the people and worship the God of glory who was pleased to dwell with His people in this tabernacle.
The cloud that settled on the tabernacle from here on during Israel’s time in the wilderness provided at least three things. First, the cloud was a visible reminder of God’s presence with His people. The Israelites could see it during the day and at night it became a pillar of fire. It showed Israel God’s transcendence: He is far greater than we are and separated from His creation by His holiness. And it showed God’s immanence: He is gracious to dwell with His chosen people. When the risen Lord Jesus returned to the Father, He promised not to leave us as orphans, but to send His Spirit to dwell in us (John 14:16-17), which was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost.
Second, the cloud represented God’s protection over Israel. The cloud shielded them from the desert heat during the day. As a fire, it illumined and warmed them at night (Ps. 105:39). When Pharaoh’s army was pursuing Israel on the shores of the Red Sea, the cloud moved behind them to provide a barrier of darkness for the Egyptians, but a source of light for Israel (Exod. 14:19-20). The Holy Spirit’s presence with us assures us that no one can harm us apart from His sovereign will (John 16:1-7; Luke 21:12-19).
Third, the cloud provided God’s guidance of Israel through the wilderness. When the cloud moved, Israel moved. When it stayed still, Israel stayed still. At first, you might think, “I wish God’s guidance was so clear for me!” But, as James Boice humorously pointed out (The Life of Moses [P & R Publishing], pp. 216-217, crediting Donald Grey Barnhouse), the cloud’s guidance could have been a real pain. You just got your tent set up and your stuff unpacked and the cloud started moving! So, you packed up everything and followed. You stopped for dinner and wanted to bed down for the night, but that cloud, now a pillar of fire, kept going! So the next time you said, “Let’s not unpack this time. We’ll wait till it moves.” But this time it didn’t move for weeks! So you finally unpacked and set up your tent, only to see the cloud moving! God didn’t give them any warning: they just had to follow that often frustrating cloud!
God doesn’t guide us through the cloud, but through His Holy Spirit. He dwells in us to guide us into all His truth through His Word, which reveals God’s will for how we should live (John 16:13; Rom. 8:15-17; 1 Cor. 2:6-13). But, we have to follow Him when He leads, even if it isn’t convenient! We have to obey His commands, even when they may not be what we wanted to hear!
You may not even want to come into God’s holy presence, but as I said at the beginning of this message, someday you will be there! It’s far better to come now through the only way He has provided: by trusting in the death and resurrection of Jesus on your behalf. He is God’s tabernacle who dwelled among us. He invites you to enter God’s holy presence through His blood.
As believers in Christ, since Jesus is both our tabernacle where we meet God and our high priest, we have the great privilege of daily drawing near to God through Him (Heb. 4:14-16):
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (21)
July 15, 2018
You might think that godly Christian leaders never get depressed. Perhaps they shouldn’t get depressed, but the truth is, many strong Christian leaders have struggled with depression.
It is well known that the famous 19th century British preacher, C. H. Spurgeon, suffered from terrible bouts with depression. He had several serious health issues that could have triggered his depression, but whatever the causes, he often was brought extremely low. Once, he told his congregation that he felt so down that he could say with Job, “My soul chooseth strangling rather than life.” He added (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Pilgrim Publications], 36:200), “I could readily enough have laid violent hands upon myself, to escape from my misery of spirit.” He was suicidal!
Spurgeon wasn’t alone. Martin Luther sometimes struggled with deep depression. Several great preachers from the past—John Henry Jowett, Alexander Whyte, and G. Campbell Morgan—wrestled with depression in their ministries (Kent Hughes, Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week Messages, 1984, p. 89).
In Numbers 10, Moses seemed optimistic about the future, but in Numbers 11 he was so depressed that he asked God to take his life. In Numbers 10:29, he appealed to his brother-in-law, Hobab, to come with Israel as they journeyed to the Promised Land, assuring him (Num. 10:29), “The Lord has promised good concerning Israel.” The future looked bright. But by Numbers 11:15, he was so down that he prayed, “So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”
What happened? And what can leaders and all of God’s people learn from Moses’ bout with depression?
A leader can get depressed if he lets complaining people get to him; he tries to do everything by himself; or he forgets God’s promises and power to accomplish His purposes.
Before we look at why Moses got depressed, note that many other godly leaders in the Bible have been depressed. As Spurgeon mentioned, in Job’s intense suffering he wished that he could die. The author of Psalms 42 & 43 was fighting depression because he felt abandoned by God and oppressed by enemies. Jeremiah, whose message was pretty much rejected, wished that he had never been born (Jer. 15:10; 20:14-18). When God spared the people of Ninevah, Jonah, who wanted God to judge them, asked God to kill him (Jon. 4:3). John the Baptist got depressed in prison and wondered if Jesus really was the Messiah (Matt. 11:1-6). Peter wept bitterly over his failure when he denied the Lord (Matt. 26:75). And, Paul was depressed because of the attacks against him from some in the Corinthian church (2 Cor. 7:6).
Even the mighty prophet Elijah, who had seen God do many mighty miracles and had just seen a great victory over the prophets of Baal, asked God to take his life (1 Kings 19:4). The ironic thing was that he was fleeing from the wicked Queen Jezebel, who had threatened to take his life! If he really wanted to die, she could have done the job! But depressed people don’t always think logically!
Moses’ experience here is not comprehensive, but we can see three reasons leaders may get depressed:
The tabernacle was constructed after the people had given so much that Moses had to ask them to stop giving (Exod. 36:5-6)! That must have been a unique and wonderful problem! After the tabernacle was completed, God’s glory was seen as the cloud descended on it. After that, the cloud led Israel through the wilderness, reminding them of God’s presence with them (Num. 9:15-23). In the second year after they came out of Egypt, on the twentieth day of the second month, the cloud lifted and Israel set out towards the Promised Land (Num. 10:11-12). They were on their way. Things were looking hopeful!
But then the grumbling that had characterized Israel when they first came out of Egypt started up again (Num. 11:1): “Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the Lord; and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.” We learn …
God’s way to the Promised Land was through the barren wilderness. And His way to heaven is always through trials. As Paul told his new converts (Acts 14:22), “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” The Lord uses various trials to teach us to trust Him and to shape us into the image of Jesus, who learned obedience from the things which He suffered (Heb. 5:8).
The people’s complaining was “in the hearing of the Lord.” All complaining is in the hearing of the Lord! In Exodus 14-16 when the people complained, God graciously met their need. But now they have experienced a year of His gracious protection and guidance through the cloud, and His provision of manna and water in the desert. So now when they complained, the Lord was angry and sent fire around the outskirts of the camp. We aren’t told whether any people perished or if there was just property damage. But Moses prayed and the fire died out.
If we think that God’s plan is to give us health and material comforts and to protect us from all trials, then we’ll be prone to complain when we face adversity. To give thanks and not complain when we face adversity, we need to remember that God’s purpose is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ, not to make us comfortable and protect us from trials.
Numbers 11:4-6: “The rabble who were among them had greedy desires; and also the sons of Israel wept again and said, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna.’”
“The rabble” probably refers to the non-Israelites who joined Israel when they left Egypt. They were not the majority, but when complainers gripe about conditions or leaders that they’re not happy with, it can spread like wildfire among the whole congregation. Pretty soon all of the sons of Israel were weeping about the “boring” manna and fondly reminiscing about how good they had it back in Egypt. This was amazing—they were slaves in Egypt, treated harshly by their masters, but they could only remember the variety of food that they used to eat for “free”! Well, sort of! They may have eaten free, but they weren’t free! They were slaves, forced to make bricks in the hot Egyptian sun every day. But now the greedy rabble stirred up everyone to complain.
One cause of greed and complaining is that you compare yourself with others whom you think are better off than you are. In the barren wilderness, the rabble thought about the Egyptians eating cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But they forgot that the Egyptians had all lost their firstborn in the final plague. They were complaining because Moses wasn’t giving them all the tasty food that they enjoyed in Egypt. But they forgot that in Egypt they were under the cruel dictatorship of Pharaoh, who didn’t care about their welfare as Moses did. And so they complained. At the root of their complaint was an even deeper cause:
God, who knows every heart, told Moses that the people had rejected Him, the Lord who had led them out of slavery and had protected and provided for them for the past year in the wilderness (Num. 11:20). Their problem wasn’t boredom with manna, but rejecting the gracious Lord who had redeemed them and met all of their needs. They had His presence in the wilderness and His promises to lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey, but they preferred returning to slavery in Egypt!
This would be comparable to a Christian saying, “Life was better when I was a non-Christian. I wish that God hadn’t saved me! I’d rather be back in the world, enjoying everything I had back then!” (See Ronald Allen, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:793.) So the people were completely self-centered and not thankful for God’s abundant provisions and His promise for a glorious future in the Promised Land. Their continued complaining would soon result in their being excluded from entering the land.
The people were weeping and saying, “Who will give us meat to eat?” And Moses heard them weeping (vv. 4, 10). The first time the people complained, Moses did the right thing: he prayed for them and God graciously stopped the fire. But this time, he let it get to him. He was right to pray again, but this time his prayer was a complaint to the Lord about the complainers (Num. 11:11-15):
So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me? Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”
Moses got depressed because he listened to difficult people complaining about problems that Moses could not fix. Where in the barren wilderness can you get enough meat to feed two million people? If you let complaining people get to you because they’re making impossible demands, you’re headed for depression.
There is a lesson here for leaders and those thinking about taking a leadership position: When there are problems in a group, the leader often is the focus of criticism. So before you sign up for the job, count the cost! If God is calling you to be a leader, you won’t be able to make everyone happy! You will catch flak. Even a great leader like Moses had to deal with difficult, complaining, self-centered people. But be careful, because complaining people can wear you down and get you depressed.
There is also a lesson for God’s people: Before you complain about problems in the church, examine your heart before the Lord. Are you seeking first your comfort and happiness or God’s kingdom and righteousness? Are you expecting your leaders to do what only God can do? Maybe your complaint is a valid problem that you and the leaders can resolve as you prayerfully work together in the Lord. Or, it may be a situation that everyone has to live with for the present. Wilderness camping was not the Promised Land! The people needed to adjust to the reality of the journey.
So, a leader can get depressed if he lets complaining people get to him. But there’s a second reason a leader can get depressed:
God graciously did not rebuke Moses for his accusation that the Lord had loaded him with more than he could handle. Instead, the Lord instructed Moses to gather seventy men from the elders of Israel. He promised to take of the Spirit on Moses and put Him on them, so that they could bear the burden of the people with Moses (Num. 11:16-17). The idea was not that Moses would have less of the Spirit than he presently had, but rather that the same Spirit that was on Moses would now rest on these men, who would help him lead the people.
When the Spirit rested on these men, they prophesied once, but didn’t do it again (Num. 11:25). Their prophesying was a temporary gift to establish their credentials before the people. Their main task would not be to speak God’s word to the people, as Moses did, but rather to help Moses meet the needs of this huge group (Allen, ibid., 2:794).
Two men (probably two of the seventy) did not go out to Moses at the tent of meeting where the others prophesied. Rather, they prophesied in the camp (v. 26). A young man came and reported this and Joshua, who was jealous for Moses’ leadership, entreated him to restrain these men. But Moses replied (Num. 11:29), “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!” Moses wasn’t after glory for himself. He wanted the Lord’s work to get done, whether through him or others. Moses’ attitude was the same as that of the Lord Jesus (Mark 9:38-40):
John said to Him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to prevent him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. For he who is not against us is for us.”
The apostle Paul reflected the same spirit when he told the Philippians (1:15-17) that some in Rome were preaching Christ out of envy and selfish ambition, trying to cause Paul distress in his imprisonment. He concluded (Phil. 1:18), “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.” Paul’s aim was to see the gospel preached, not to get glory for himself. F. B. Meyer (Moses [Christian Literature Crusade], p. 155) wrote, “There is no test more searching than this. Am I as eager for God’s kingdom to come through others as through myself?”
Moses’ attitude here also anticipated the prophet Joel (2:28),
“It will come about after this
That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind;
And your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your old men will dream dreams,
Your young men will see visions.”
That prophecy was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church (see, also, Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-27). Now, every believer in Christ possesses the Holy Spirit and is given a spiritual gift to use in serving Him (Rom. 8:9; 12: 1 Cor. 12:7, 13). The church is strong in proportion to how many of its members are using their spiritual gifts to serve the Lord. Pastors who try to do everything by themselves are headed for burnout and depression.
Thus a leader can get depressed if he lets complaining people get to him and if he tries to do everything by himself. Finally,
In Exodus 33, the Lord responded to the incident with the golden calf by telling Moses that He would send His angel with Israel to take them into the Promised Land, but He Himself would not go with them, lest he destroy them because of their disobedience. But Moses told the Lord, in effect, “If You don’t go with us, we’re not going. It would be better to stay here in this barren desert with You than to go to the Promised Land without You.” The Lord responded by promising to go with them. The fulfillment of that promise was seen in the cloud, which Moses could still see (Num. 10:34). It was a visible sign of God’s favor. But now, because of the people’s complaining, Moses asks the Lord (Num. 11:11), “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me?” He had forgotten God’s promise to bring the people into the Promised Land.
Speaking as a pastor, it can be very discouraging when people complain about some problem in the church and leave the church because you haven’t fixed it. Often they don’t even tell you about the problem; they just leave. At such times, I have to claim Christ’s promise (Matt. 16:18), “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” Or, if you aren’t a leader, but something happens in your life that is discouraging or depressing, remember the Lord’s wonderful promise (Rom. 8:31-32), “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
Moses thought that maybe the Lord had forgotten how many people were out there in the wilderness. So he reminded Him (Num. 11:21) and then asked rhetorically (v. 22) whether Israel should slaughter off all their livestock or catch all the fish in the sea to feed them. The Lord replied by reminding Moses of His power (Num. 11:23): “Is the Lord’s power limited? Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not.” The Lord then sent quail in such abundance that the ones who gathered the least gathered ten homers (about 500-800 gallons!). The Lord never lacks resources to meet our needs!
But the people were greedy and God judged them for it, striking them with a plague, so that many died (Num. 11:33-34). John Currid (Numbers [EP Books], p. 172) points out that they were craving for Egypt, so God gave them a taste of what Egypt experienced—plagues. They did not acknowledge God as the provider of the meat or give thanks, so He gave them over to their own lusts (see Rom. 1:21-32). Those who sow to the flesh from the flesh reap corruption (Gal. 6:8).
Moses’ asking the Lord where he can get enough meat to feed this huge group in the desert reminds me of Jesus and the disciples when they were in a remote place with 5,000 men, plus women and children. Jesus asked Philip (John 6:5), “Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?” Like Moses trying to figure out where to get enough meat, Philip did the math and figured that 200 denarii (which they didn’t have) wouldn’t be enough. Jesus proceeded to multiply the meagre five loaves and two fish to feed that hungry crowd, with twelve baskets full left over.
The late Chinese evangelist, Watchman Nee, has a wonderful sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, “Expecting the Lord’s Blessing” (Twelve Baskets Full [Hong Kong Church Bookroom], 2:48), where he makes the point, “Everything in our service for the Lord is dependent on His blessing…. The meeting of need is not dependent on the supply in hand, but on the blessing of the Lord resting on the supply.” I first read that sermon years before I became a pastor, and its message has sustained me over the years as I have constantly felt inadequate for this ministry. I would have been overwhelmed with depression years ago if I didn’t keep in mind that the Lord doesn’t work by my might or power, but by His Spirit (Zech. 4:6).
Whether you’re a leader or not, don’t listen to complainers. People complained about Moses’ leadership and about God’s plan to take them to the Promised Land, in spite of His abundant provisions. No matter how faithfully you serve the Lord, someone is sure to complain. If the complaint is valid, then try to deal with it. But if not, then keep serving by the Lord’s strength. Don’t try to do everything yourself. Ask God to raise up others who will serve Him in the Spirit. And, don’t forget His promises and His power. Moses was an imperfect mediator, but we have a perfect high priest who will give grace to help in our time of need (Heb. 4:14-16).
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (22)
July 22, 2018
Stephen Neill (source unknown) said, “Criticism is the manure in which God’s servants grow best.” But the truth is, many of God’s servants don’t like the smell of manure and get out of it fairly quickly. Almost thirty years ago, a survey showed that 20 percent of any given seminary graduating class will quit the ministry and find some other career within five years of entering the ministry. The number one reason these pastors bailed out was not low pay, moral problems, or health issues. The number one reason they left the ministry was the pressure of criticism (Ron Lee Davis, Mentoring [Thomas Nelson], p. 157).
In Numbers 11:4, the attacks against Moses came from “the rabble,” but now Moses’ sister and brother, Miriam and Aaron, speak out against him. Commentators agree that because Miriam’s name is placed before Aaron’s name and the verb in verse 1 is feminine singular, she was the instigator of this charge against their younger brother. As we saw in the incident of the golden calf, Aaron seems to have been more of a follower than a leader. So when Miriam brought up her criticism against Moses, Aaron lamely went along. But when the Lord confronted them and struck Miriam with a skin disease, Aaron was quick to repent.
The pretext for their criticism was Moses’ marriage to a Cushite woman, but the real reason was jealousy about Moses’ superior leadership position over Israel. Miriam the prophetess and Aaron the high priest wanted equal billing with Moses. Perhaps Miriam felt threatened by Moses’ new wife in her role as the leader of Israel’s women (Eugene Merrill, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], ed. by John Walvoord and Roy Zuck, 1:228).
This is the only time the Bible mentions this wife. There are different views on who she was. Some think that she is the same as Zipporah, whom Moses married while he was a fugitive in Midian (Exod. 2:15-22; Habakkuk 3:7 equates the Cushites with the Midianites). But Moses had been married to Zipporah for a long time, whereas Numbers 12:1 seems to refer to a recent marriage.
Usually Cush in the Bible refers to dark-skinned people who lived in the southern Nile valley. So probably Zipporah had died and Moses married this unnamed woman who had been among the non-Israelites who came out of Egypt with Israel. Whether because she was not an Israelite or perhaps because of her dark skin, Miriam was unhappy with Moses for marrying this woman. She complained to Aaron, who sided with her. We do not know how widely they may have spread their criticism. But we do know (Num. 12:2), “The Lord heard it.” He always does! That statement is in the text to show that God was about to take up the cause of His chosen servant (Ronald Allen, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:798).
So this is a story about challenging God’s appointed spiritual leaders. The main lesson is:
While there are times when it is right to challenge spiritual leaders, we should never challenge the Lord Jesus Christ.
I think that as Americans, we do not have a biblical perspective on the subject of authority. We think that questioning or defying authority and rallying others to our cause is our constitutional right. An early United States Revolutionary flag pictures a coiled rattlesnake with the motto, “Don’t tread on me.” We resist the concept of authority. We don’t like submitting to anyone.
In a previous message on this subject (“Understanding Biblical Authority,” 5/6/2007, p. 1), I said:
When it comes to the church, most American evangelicals do not view it as a place where you submit to the leadership for the purpose of growth and accountability, but rather as a store where you shop as a consumer. If you like the place and it services your needs, you come back. If another place down the road offers a more pleasant experience, you move your business there. Thus pastors who are trying to market their churches don’t dare say anything that might offend or upset the customers. The customer is king. You want to please your customers. With this consumer view about the church, the idea of spiritual authority, of proclaiming, “Thus says the Lord,” seems odd and out of place.
So to understand and apply this narrative about Miriam and Aaron challenging Moses’ leadership, we need to consider a few basics about the subject of biblical spiritual authority.
Whether in the government, the church, or the home, God never grants authority for the power or benefit of those in authority. If a leader uses authority to dominate those under his authority for his own benefit, he is misusing that authority and God will hold him accountable. We need to understand one thing about Moses’ leadership role in Israel and then three things about leadership in the New Testament church:
Israel was not a democracy and Moses was not the leader who won the election! God chose Moses and appointed him to confront Pharaoh and to lead Israel out of bondage in Egypt. God spoke with “Moses face to face, just as a man speaks with his friend” (Exod. 33:11; Num. 12:8). Numbers 12 was written to vindicate Moses’ divinely given leadership over Israel (John Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative [Zondervan], p. 386).
In this role, Moses was not a model for the senior pastor or the leader of a Christian ministry. Rather, he was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet to come after Moses (Deut. 18:15; Acts 7:37). He was Israel’s sole, God-appointed leader who brought God’s word to Israel and Israel’s needs to God. The New Testament parallel is that Christ is the sole head of His church. No one is free to usurp that role. How then is the church governed?
Whenever the New Testament refers to the elders of a particular local church, it always uses the plural. For example, Acts 14:23 reports concerning the churches that Paul and Barnabas had planted, “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” Later (Acts 20:17), Luke writes, “From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.” Paul wrote to Titus (1:5), “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.” Since there was just one church per city, there were multiple elders in each church.
A plurality of elders over a single local church is God’s way of protecting the church against the abuses of authority that may easily happen if a single man runs the church. The elders must submit to the Lord and be accountable to one another and to the church. There is only one New Testament example of a one-man leader over a local church and it isn’t pretty. The apostle John wrote (3 John 9-10):
I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words; and not satisfied with this, he himself does not receive the brethren, either, and he forbids those who desire to do so and puts them out of the church.
Paul told the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:28), “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” They were to do this through building up the church through God’s word, exhorting in sound doctrine and refuting those who contradict (Acts 20:32; Titus 1:9).
In a similar way, Peter wrote (1 Pet. 5:1-3): “Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.”
Two times in the Lord’s rebuke of Miriam and Aaron (Num. 12:7, 8), He referred to Moses as “My servant.” Moses saw himself that way (Num. 11:11). He wasn’t trying to build an empire for himself. He wasn’t a politician, seeking to please the people so that he could retain his position of power. He was serving the Lord and trying to be obedient to the Lord’s purpose for His people. In the same way, church leaders should see themselves primarily as the Lord’s servants or stewards, accountable to Him (1 Cor. 4:1-1-5).
So the elders are not to run the church as they see fit. Rather, they are to submit every action and decision to the headship of Jesus Christ, seeking faithfully to apply God’s Word. As Ray Stedman said (Discovery Paper 3500, “A Pastor’s Authority”), “The task of the elders is not to run the church themselves, but to determine how the Lord in their midst wishes to run his church.”
I’m guessing that that statement, especially the words “submit to and obey,” frightens some of you. It conjures up images of Jim Jones, who led his submissive followers to die en masse rather than to challenge his leadership. While not that extreme, some of you may have had bad experiences with authoritarian pastors who lorded it over the church and used the people in the church for their own evil advantage. So I want to cite some Scriptures so that you see that this is God’s Word, not my word:
1 Thessalonians 5:12: “But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work.” You may think, “Okay, I can appreciate and esteem the elders, but that doesn’t say, ‘Submit to and obey.’” But it does say that these church leaders “have charge over you in the Lord.” The implication is that you should submit to their teaching from God’s Word.
1 Timothy 4:11-12: “Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.” “Prescribe” translates a Greek word that referred to the transmitted orders of a military commander (G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament [Charles Scribner’s Sons], p. 156). Rather than allowing those in the church to disregard Timothy because he was relatively young (he was probably in his mid to late thirties), he was to “prescribe and teach” God’s authoritative commandments, backed up by his godly example.
1 Timothy 5:17: “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.” In the context (see v. 18), “double honor” refers both to respect and adequate financial support. Often there is a connection between respect and pay: if the church doesn’t pay a man a decent salary, they won’t respect him. But “double honor” also includes respect.
Titus 2:15: “These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” Titus was to speak with all authority to help establish the churches on the island of Crete.
Hebrews 13:17: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.” This verse directly says, “obey and submit to.”
I realize that this point runs counter to the American way of thinking, but it is God’s inspired, authoritative word to His church. “But,” you may be thinking, “what if a leader is wrong? Am I just supposed to obediently submit to him?”
While Miriam and Aaron clearly were wrong to challenge Moses’ leadership …
I have heard authoritarian pastors apply this text or David’s words about not touching the Lord’s anointed (1 Sam. 16:6; 24:6, 10; 26:9, 11, 16, 23; 2 Sam. 1:14, 16) to mean that pastors should be exempt from any criticism, correction, or challenge to their word. But that is to misapply God’s Word. Human leaders are fallible and subject to correction. If you think that a leader is wrong on an important matter or in sin, he may need correction. But the New Testament gives a proper way to challenge an elder whom you think is wrong. I’ll give you a hint: It is not to go to others in the church and criticize the elder behind his back!
If you think that a church leader is wrong on an important doctrinal issue, or if he wronged you in some way, or if he’s guilty of sin that would bring reproach on the name of Christ, the first step after prayer is to meet privately with the leader to talk about the matter. Perhaps you misunderstood what he said or did. So don’t come at him with angry accusations, but rather go humbly and ask questions to try to understand the situation more clearly.
If you do not get a satisfactory answer, then you should go with one or two others to seek the truth (Matt. 18:15-16). In line with this, Paul wrote (1 Tim. 5:19), “Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses. Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning.”
So it is not wrong to challenge or confront a leader whom you believe to be in the wrong. But it is wrong to gossip about that leader or to stir up opposition in the church to him. Also,
It’s obvious in our text that Miriam and Aaron were jealous of Moses’ position as the main leader of Israel. They felt like they deserved a place alongside him. Their criticism of his marriage was just a pretext. The real issue was rivalry and the desire for personal power and recognition.
Before you criticize or challenge a spiritual leader, honestly examine your real motives. Make sure that you are not resisting the Word of God that the leader is proclaiming. Your motive should be God’s glory through the well-being of the church and the well-being of the spiritual leader. But, how should a leader respond when someone challenges or criticizes him?
Being criticized by his older sister and brother must have been especially painful for Moses. Verse 3 is put in the text to explain his reaction to their attack: “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)” Some say that Moses could not have written that about himself or he wouldn’t be humble! Some argue that the Hebrew word translated “humble” should be translated “miserable.” In light of the attacks against Moses in chapters 11 & 12, he was more miserable than anyone on earth (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, pp. 798-799).
But I think that Moses wrote verse 3 to explain why he didn’t lash out in vindictive anger or self-defense against Miriam and Aaron. There are two main components of biblical humility: First, a humble person realizes that everything he has comes from the Lord by His grace (not by merit) and that he is first and foremost the Lord’s servant (1 Cor. 4:1, 7; Num. 12:7, 8). Moses met that qualification. Second, a humble person is consciously dependent on the Lord, not on his own ingenuity or strength (2 Cor. 1:8-9; 3:5).
Sometimes humility means not defending yourself and letting the Lord defend you. Matthew Henry (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible [Revell], 1:614) pointed out that when God’s honor was attacked, as with the golden calf, Moses was bold as a lion; but when his own honor was attacked, he was as mild as a lamb.
But there are times when a leader’s integrity is challenged, so that to be silent would undermine the Word that he preaches. Then he should defend himself. Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Second Corinthians are defenses both of Paul’s integrity and the message he preached. Jesus defended Himself at times (John 5, 8; 18:36-37). Sometimes those who challenge a leader want to discredit him so that they don’t have to obey the Word of God that he is preaching. Such persons need to be refuted (Titus 1:9-11).
Since Moses was a type of Christ, the proper application of this text is that to challenge Jesus Christ as the sole authority over His church would be a serious sin that would incur God’s discipline. He is the head of His church. His will is revealed in Scripture, which we must obey. He is Lord; we are not Lord!
Why did God discipline Miriam but not Aaron? Probably because she was the instigator of the attack on Moses. Aaron was immediately repentant, perhaps because he didn’t want what happened to Miriam to happen to him! Her “leprosy” was not like modern leprosy, known as Hansen’s disease. Rather, it was some type of skin infection that either turned the skin white like snow or flaky like snow. It caused ceremonial defilement and required that the person be quarantined outside the camp for a period of time (Lev. 13:4; Num. 5:2-4). James Boice (The Life of Moses [P&R Publishers], p. 303) suggests that if Miriam was bothered by Moses’ marrying a dark-skinned woman, God may have been saying, “You don’t like dark skin? I’ll give you white skin!” God hates racism!
Although God healed Miriam in response to Moses’ prayer, she had to remain outside the camp and bear her shame for seven days. This also served to teach all of Israel not to challenge God’s servant Moses.
God said of Moses (Num. 12:7), “He is faithful in all My household.” Hebrews 3:1-6 cites this verse and applies it to Jesus as one greater than Moses (Heb. 3:3): “For He has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, by just so much as the builder of the house has more honor than the house.” God spoke with Moses “mouth to mouth” and “openly” (Num. 12:8), so that Moses could speak God’s word to Israel. But Jesus, the prophet greater than Moses (Deut. 18:15-18), was eternally with God and was God. He revealed God to us as no one else can (John 1:1, 18; 14:9).
You may think, “Oh, I would never challenge the Lord Jesus Christ!” But many who profess to believe in Jesus do not submit to His teachings, many of which are hard. He said that if you do not judge your sinful anger or lust, you will be thrown into the fiery hell (Matt. 5:21-22, 27-30). Do you obey that or challenge it by your disobedience? He said that you cannot serve God and wealth (Luke 16:13). Do you challenge that or submit to it by managing your money according to the principles of His Word?
So while criticism may be the manure in which God’s servants grow best, before you try to help a church leader grow by piling on the manure, check yourself! Have you put yourself properly under the elders’ God-given authority? Are you showing proper respect and honor to the elder you’re critical of? Are your true motives for challenging the leader acceptable before God? Are you in submission to the truth from God’s Word that the elder is teaching? While sometimes a leader may need some fertilizing, make sure that you do it properly. And never challenge the Lord Jesus Christ or His commandments. He is the only Lord of His church!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (23)
July 29, 2018
In the early 20th century, Robert Dick Wilson was a scholarly, godly Hebrew professor at Princeton Seminary. He could read at least 26 Semitic languages! One time after Donald Grey Barnhouse had graduated, he went back to the seminary to preach to the students. Dr. Wilson sat near the front. After the message, he went forward and shook Barnhouse’s hand. He said, “When my boys come back, I come to see if they are big-godders or little-godders, and then I know what their ministry will be.”
Barnhouse asked him to explain. Dr. Wilson replied, “Well, some men have a little god and they are always in trouble with him. He can’t do any miracles. He can’t take care of the inspiration and transmission of the Scripture to us. He doesn’t intervene on behalf of His people. They have a little god and I call them little-godders. Then there are those who have a great God. He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands fast. He knows how to show Himself strong on behalf of them that fear Him.” He went on to tell Barnhouse that he could see that he had a great God and that God would bless his ministry (Donald Grey Barnhouse, Let Me Illustrate [Revell, 1967], pp. 132-133).
In Numbers 13 & 14, we meet two men who were “big-godders,” and ten men who were little-godders. Israel was on the southern border of Canaan, poised to go into the land. Moses sent these 12 men to spy out the land. Ten came back with a bad report, focusing on the giants in the land. Two came back with a good report, saying, in effect, “We’ll eat those guys for lunch!” But the ten influenced the whole congregation to side with them. They voted to appoint a leader and return to Egypt. As a result, God decreed that they would all die in the wilderness; only their children and the two believing spies would enter the Promised Land. The message for us is that …
By faith, God wants you to persevere in His promise of salvation and not yield to temptations to unbelief.
There is an apparent contradiction between our text and Moses’ recounting of this incident in Deuteronomy 1:22-23. There Moses says that the people asked him to send out spies and he agreed. But here, the Lord tells Moses to send out the spies. Putting the two accounts together, probably the people, out of fear, asked Moses to send out the spies. He agreed, thinking that it would strengthen their faith to see that the land was good, just as God had promised. Numbers 13 shows that God consented to the people’s request, either graciously to strengthen their weak faith, or to reveal the unbelief that would disqualify them from entering the land. So we have examples here of persevering faith and of temporary faith turned to unbelief when faced with problems.
The exodus is the Old Testament picture of salvation or redemption. God brought His chosen people out of slavery in Egypt, just as today He brings His chosen people out of bondage to sin. The New Testament reveals that …
In the Old Testament, salvation was restricted to Israel and those who by faith joined with Israel. Rahab, the harlot from Jericho, was saved because she believed in Israel’s God, harbored their spies, and put the scarlet cord in her window when Israel conquered Jericho (Joshua 2, 6). But in the New Testament, God promises salvation to all people who believe (Rom. 10:13): “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” The Bible ends on this open invitation (Rev. 22:17): “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” That invitation is open to you!
But, there were many in Israel who were descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they only had temporary faith, not persevering faith (Rom. 9:6-8). At the exodus, they believed to the extent of putting the blood of the Passover lamb on their doorposts. But, as the subsequent history reveals, they did not truly believe in God or His promise to give them the land of Canaan.
In the same way, in the church today, there are people who profess faith in Christ and associate with the church, but they do not truly believe in Christ. Like the seed sown on the rocky soil, at first they receive the gospel with joy. But when temptation or trials come, they fall away because they have no firm root (Mark 4:16-17). In the same vein, the Book of Hebrews was written to some Jewish churches with members who had professed faith in Christ, but under persecution they were tempted to abandon Christ and go back to Judaism. The author exhorts them (Heb. 10:36), “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.” In Hebrews 3, the author refers to the generation that perished in the wilderness because they did not persevere in faith. He warns (Heb. 3:14-19):
For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said,
“Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.”
For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.
Thus we learn …
Many evangelicals do not understand this important point. Often parents will say about their adult child, “Yes, sadly he’s living in immorality, doing drugs, and he makes no profession of faith now. But when he was a child, he invited Jesus to be his Savior and Lord. So, once saved, always saved, right?” I would add one crucial word: “Once truly saved, always saved.” True believers may fall into sin, as David and Peter did. But they can’t be happy in sin (see Psalms 38 & 51). To be content in sin is not a good sign! Not all who make professions of faith are truly saved. As Jesus warned (Matt. 7:22-23),
“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”
In the context of warning about coming persecution and lawlessness, Jesus stated (Matt. 24:13), “But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved.” The several warning passages in Hebrews make the same point. People may make a claim of believing in Christ and even for a time look as if they believe. But the test of genuine saving faith is perseverance, especially under trials. As Hebrews 10:38-39 warns,
But My righteous one shall live by faith; And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.
But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
But the good news is …
In Numbers 13:2, God reiterates His promise to give the land of Canaan to the Israelites. Obviously, God knew that there were giants in the land that Israel would need to defeat. He knew that there would be the temptation to compromise with the Canaanites, rather than kill them as He commanded. There would be the temptation to adopt the Canaanite gods and to intermarry with their people. The leaders of the tribes who were sent out should have known God’s promise and relied on it, but ten of them didn’t.
The only two spies that we remember are Caleb and Hoshea, whom Moses called, Joshua (Num. 13:8, 16). Hoshea means “salvation”; Joshua means, “Yahweh is salvation.” It’s the name God used at the burning bush. It’s also the name that the angel told Joseph to give Mary’s son, adding (Matt. 1:21), “for He will save His people from their sins.” Perhaps the change in Joshua’s name is mentioned here (even though Joshua was used earlier, Exod. 17:9; 24:13; 33:11; Num. 11:28) because his report shows that the Lord will save His people if they trust Him. The other ten spies died in a plague from the Lord because of their unbelief (Num. 14:36-37).
Joshua and Caleb report (Num. 14:7, 8) that the Promised Land was “an exceedingly good land … flowing with milk and honey” (a sign of abundance). The spies brought back the huge cluster of grapes as evidence. Even the ten unbelieving spies reported (Num. 13:27), “it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.”
In the same way, if God has saved you, He has given you many gracious evidences of His abundant goodness to help you persevere. He has blessed you with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3). He has given you “everything pertaining to life and godliness” through the knowledge of Jesus our Lord and through “His precious and magnificent promises” (2 Pet. 1:3-4). He has promised to give you victory over sin as you walk in the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16). He promises to supply your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19). But He never promises that the Christian life will be easy and trouble-free. It is often pictured in terms of battle and warfare:
God could have sent a plague to kill all the Canaanites, allowing Israel to move in effortlessly. (He later did that with Sennacherib’s 185,000 troops, 2 Kings 19:35). But God allowed the Canaanites to remain so that Israel would learn to trust and obey Him and know His faithfulness and power in a deeper way. As you know if you’ve been a Christian for a while, the times when you’ve grown the most were when you were facing some really big giants and had to trust God like you don’t need to trust Him when everything is going smoothly.
But the options are not a difficult life as you face the giants in the land or a life of prosperity and ease if you go back to the world. The people’s plan to dump Moses, choose a new leader, and return to Egypt would not have been any easier than to go into the land and conquer the Canaanites. Going back to Egypt would have meant going back through the hot desert with no cloud to cover them or lead them, no manna to feed them, and no water from the rock to quench their thirst. If they even got back, they would have faced people who were angry with them because of the plagues, including the loss of their firstborn. So returning to Egypt wouldn’t have solved their problems!
So, as Jesus warned about the seed on the rocky soil and as the Book of Hebrews warns, there are many who profess to believe in Christ, but when trials hit, they bail out and go back to the world, where they foolishly think they will have an easier life. Thus,
When God met Moses at the burning bush and promised to use him to bring Israel out of bondage in Egypt, He said (Exod. 3:8): “So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.” Note both parts of that promise: the land is good, flowing with milk and honey, but it also has a bunch of strange, threatening people living there! The ten spies came back and reported both sides of that promise (Num. 13:27-29). But rather than believing God’s promise by going into the land to fight, they focused on the giants and rejected God’s promise. Their story teaches four things about persevering in faith:
If I asked you to give me your list of the worst sins, you’d probably mention murder, immorality, theft, child abuse, and the like. But would unbelief be on your list? It should be, because …
Pride also may be regarded as the root of all sins, because pride and unbelief are inseparable. Pride does not believe God’s word that we are sinners who cannot save ourselves, so we must trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Pride says, “No, I can save myself by my good works!” That’s unbelief and it damns millions to eternity in hell. Unbelief is behind all sins, because it takes the same bait that Satan used with Eve (Gen. 3:1), “Indeed, has God said …?” Unbelief whispers, “Has God said that whatever you sow, you will reap? Come on, you can enjoy sowing some wild oats. God will forgive!” Any time we sin, we disbelieve what God has said.
Unbelief has a way of spreading as it plays on people’s fears. Note (Num. 14:1, 2), “all the congregation … all the sons of Israel … the whole congregation….” Alexander Maclaren (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], 1:332) describes the unbelief of the ten spies as “cowardice, disguised as prudence.” They seemed like the voice of sanity. They said, “These guys are really big! They are way too strong for us! If we try to fight them, we’re going to fall by the sword! The prudent plan is to go back to Egypt.” Their unbelief quickly spread through all the camp.
In our day, unbelief deceives God’s people and spreads quickly by saying, “The Genesis account of creation is just a myth. Science proves that evolution is true. And, by the way, there are many other myths in the Bible that you can’t take literally.” Pretty soon, faith in God’s inerrant word is undermined.
In Numbers 14:3, the people accuse God of bringing them into the land to die by the sword and having their wives and children become plunder! As John Calvin pointed out (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], 3:65), they were accusing God of deception and cruelty, as if He were betraying them into the hands of the Canaanites where they would be slaughtered. And they were accusing Him of weakness, as if He were less powerful than these godless idolaters.
But professing Christians do the same thing when they have a major trial and accuse God of not caring for them. I’ve read a Christian counselor who told a young mother who lost her child, “You have a right to be angry at God!” That is encouraging blasphemous unbelief! None of us have a right to draw our next breath! To accuse God of cruelty because of our trials, or of deception because His promises aren’t fitting our expectations, or of weakness because He isn’t answering our prayers, is blasphemy!
Faith in God and His promises is often not the popular view. To trust God, you may need to stand against the prevailing unbelief. Maclaren (ibid. 1:334) observes, “Not to believe Him unless a jury of twelve of ourselves says the same thing, is surely much the same as not believing Him at all; for it is not He, but they, whom we believe after all.” Modern unbelief says, “Being gay is not a sin; it’s just the way you were born. You can believe in Jesus and practice homosexuality.” That’s the majority opinion and many in the church are going along with it! The world is also rapidly endorsing the madness that you’re free to explore different genders or combinations of genders. Persevering faith takes God at His Word.
Maclaren (1:337) points out that the ten spies went looking “for dangers, and of course they found them.” When they came to Hebron, they encountered three descendants of Anak there (Num. 13:22). They should have recalled that Abraham had moved to Hebron right after God promised to give the land of Canaan to his descendants (Gen. 13:18). Sarah and Abraham were buried in the cave of Machpelah in Hebron (Gen. 23:19). The spies should have thought about God’s promises and the faith of their forefathers.
But instead, all they could think about were these fearful descendants of Anak. By verse 33, these sons of Anak had grown into Nephilim (Gen. 6:4), so huge that the ten spies said, “We became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” Maclaren (ibid. 1:339) humorously observed that “fear performed the miracle of adding a cubit to their stature.” Problems have a way of growing when you’re not trusting in God!
In Numbers 13:27, the ten spies agreed that the land flowed with milk and honey and they showed the cluster of grapes as evidence. But by verse 32, they reverse themselves and say that the land “devours its inhabitants.” Commentators differ as to exactly what they meant. Probably it referred to the warlike people living there. But whatever they meant, the ten spies were maximizing the problems of taking the Promised Land and minimizing God’s power to keep His promises. Their view, which prevailed, was, “Let’s play it safe and go back to Egypt.”
Joshua and Caleb saw the same giants that the ten spies saw, but they saw the giants from the perspective of God’s promise to give Israel the land and His power to keep His promise, as seen in the exodus. The ten spies said, “These guys will devour us!” Joshua and Caleb said (literally, Num. 14:9), “They will be our food.” In modern language, “We’ll eat them for lunch!”
Maclaren (1:337) points out how the ten spies presented their findings as objective facts. He says (1:338) that they sounded like “an unbiased appeal to common sense, as if the reporter said, ‘These are the facts; we leave you to draw the conclusions.’” He adds (ibid. italics his),
To begin a perilous enterprise without fairly facing its risks and difficulties is folly. To look at them only is no less folly, and is the sure precursor to defeat. But when on the one side is God’s command, and on the other such doleful discouragements, they are more than folly, they are sin.
The ten spies and the two spies had the same experiences and the same facts. The ten interpreted the facts through unbelief; the two interpreted the facts through faith in God’s promises and His power to keep His promises. We face the same choice when we encounter giants in the land: Look at the facts, but then look at our God. Are the giants going to eat you, or are you going to eat them by persevering faith in God’s promises and His power?
So ask yourself, “Am I a big-godder or a little-godder?” There are giants in this evil world! God calls you to conquer them through persevering faith in His promises and power. As Hebrews 11:6 affirms, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (24)
August 12, 2018
Blaise Pascal (source unknown) said, “One-half of the ills of life come because men are unwilling to sit down quietly for thirty minutes to think through all the possible consequences of their acts.” The apostle Paul put it (Gal. 6:7-8):
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
You are free to sow whatever kind of seeds you want, but once they’re sown, you’re not free to reap something else—unless the amazing grace of God through the gospel floods into your life. But even then, sometimes God allows the consequences of previous sins to linger to teach us to hate our sins. Our text shows that:
If through unbelief you reject God’s gracious promise of salvation, you will reap tragic consequences; but if you respond in faith you will reap eternal life.
You may think, “The first half of that is kind of gloomy. Couldn’t you skip the negative and focus on the positive?” But except for the examples of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, Numbers 14 is a gloomy chapter. In chapter 13, the twelve spies had gone into the land. Ten came back with a doom and gloom report: “There are giants in the land! We were like grasshoppers in their sight! There’s no way that we can go in and take the land!”
But two of the spies, Caleb and Joshua, tried to counter the negative report by saying, “If God is with us, we’ll eat those guys for lunch!” The people, however, sided with the ten faithless spies. They proposed appointing a new leader and returning to Egypt. They were about to stone Caleb and Joshua when God suddenly displayed His glory at the tent of meeting. The verses that we’re considering now report God’s pronouncement of judgment on that evil, unbelieving congregation. But even in judgment, God’s mercy shines through to give hope to all who respond in faith. We’ll consider five lessons:
In Numbers 14:11, the Lord asks Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?” In verse 22, the Lord says that these people who had seen His glory and the signs He had performed in Egypt and in the wilderness had put Him to the test, “these ten times.” The Talmud and some commentators count up exactly ten times that Israel had spurned the Lord (Ronald Allen, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:822). But ten is often the number of completion (e.g. the Ten Commandments, the ten plagues). So, “ten times” is probably a figure of speech meaning that they had filled up the measure of sin requiring judgment (John Currid, Numbers [EP Books], pp. 201-202).
Again (Num. 14:27), the Lord asks Moses, “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against Me.” The people have crossed the line, so now the Lord pronounces judgment on that evil generation.
First, He presents Moses with the same test that He had given him after the incident with the golden calf (Num. 14:12): “I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.” Moses responds here as he did after the golden calf, arguing for God’s glory. The Lord relents from destroying this unbelieving people on the spot, but He does sentence all of the generation 20 years old and upward who had grumbled against Him to die in the wilderness. Only Joshua and Caleb, who had believed in God and His promise to give them the land, would enter in. So the chapter shows that people who repeatedly reject God’s grace may cross the line of no return. God is gracious and patient, but at some point, His judgment will fall on those who persist in unbelief.
This raises a serious question: “When does a person cross that line? Could I or one of my loved ones have committed the unpardonable sin?” I get so many emails from people asking that question that I should have written out a standard reply! The basic answer is: If you are concerned that you may have committed the unpardonable sin, you probably have not committed it! In other words, those who have gone beyond the reach of God’s grace couldn’t care less. Strictly speaking, the unpardonable sin involved attributing Jesus’ miracles to Satan, so it could only be committed during His time on earth (Matt. 12:24, 31-32). But the warning still applies, even if the exact sense cannot be duplicated: a person may repeatedly turn his heart away from the good news of Jesus Christ until he reaches a point where he is hardened beyond remedy.
You ask, “When does a person cross that line of no return?” God only knows, but clearly, rejecting God’s grace is not something to mess with! Proverbs 29:1 warns, “A man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy.” Someone may say, “The thief on the cross got saved right before he died. So I’ll believe later, but for now I’m going to sow my wild oats!” But the thief on the cross may have encountered God’s grace for the first time as he was hanging there dying. A wise Puritan wrote (source unknown), “We have one account of a deathbed repentance in order that no man need despair; we have only one, in order that no man may presume.” As Paul exhorts (2 Cor. 6:2), “Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation.’” Don’t push the limits of God’s grace!
The problem with the crowd in Israel that wanted to return to Egypt was that they did not believe in the Lord and His promise to give them the land of Canaan (Num. 13:2; 14:11). As we’ve seen, God’s deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt and His promise to give them the land of Canaan is a picture of our salvation. And the Bible is clear that we are saved by God’s grace through faith, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 4:4-5). Even faith is God’s gift (Phil. 1:29); if it were not, we’d boast in our faith!
It’s important to understand that the main reason God saves anyone is “to the praise of the glory of His grace” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14). As He tells Moses (Num. 14:21), “but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.” His glory is displayed both in His grace toward those He saves and also in His judgment toward sinners who reject Him (Num. 14:17-18).
In other words, salvation is not mainly about us; it’s primarily about God and His glory. Moses understood this. When God proposed wiping out this evil people and starting over with Moses, Moses immediately brought up the matter of God’s fame among the nations (Num. 14:15-16): “Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say, ‘Because the Lord could not bring this people into the land which He promised them by oath, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’” I love the way Moses argued his case before the Lord, much as an attorney would argue a case in court! He continues (Num. 14:17-19):
“But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”
He’s praying the Lord’s own words from Exodus 34:6-7 as the basis for his request! He’s saying, in effect, “Lord, this is what You Yourself have said. Now, act in accordance with Your own words!”
In the same way, we should lay hold of God’s Word and pray it back to Him: “Lord, You have said that You take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live (Ezek. 33:11). You have said that the whole earth will be filled with Your glory (Num. 14:21). Please be glorified in saving [so and so] by granting him the repentance that leads to eternal life (Acts 11:18).”
Note one other point here: Moses knew that the pagan nations were paying attention to God’s dealings with Israel. If He slaughtered this people in the wilderness, the nations would wrongly assume that He lacked the power to bring them into the land. Forty years later, after Moses’ death, when Israel was ready to cross the Jordan and enter the land, Joshua sent two spies into Jericho. They lodged at the house of Rahab the harlot. She recounted to them how forty years before the Lord had delivered Israel through the Red Sea and how He would give them the land of Canaan (Josh. 2:9-11). The pagan nations were paying attention! Rahab believed in the God of Israel and begged the spies to save her life and the lives of her family, which they did. Later, she is listed as an ancestor of Jesus Christ and as a woman of faith (Matt. 1:5; Heb. 11:31). The application for us is: The world is watching us. Will we uphold God’s fame before unbelievers by trusting Him (Num. 14:15) or will we cause unbelievers to scoff at our God because of our unbelief?
When the people heard about the giants in the land, they wailed (Num. 14:2), “Would that we had died in this wilderness!” They accused God of bringing them into the land so that their wives and children would become prey for the Canaanites. So the Lord solemnly declared (four times, Num. 14:29, 32, 33, 35), “Okay, you said you’d rather die in this wilderness, so you’ll die in the wilderness! You accused Me of wanting to kill your children, but I will bring them into the land which you have rejected” (Num. 14:31). So during the next 38 years, over a million adults who had come out of Egypt died in the wilderness. If you do the math, that amounts to over 26,000 deaths every year, or 72 per day for 38 years! Moses saw a lot of death during those long years in the wilderness (Ps. 90:5-7)! Two lessons:
Israel’s main problem was that they did not believe in the Lord (Num. 14:11). The Lord also says (vv. 11, 23) that they spurned Him, which is a strong word meaning to despise (ESV) or have contempt (NIV) for someone. Twice (Num. 14:27, 35) God calls them an “evil congregation” who were grumbling against Him. As He declares (Ps. 95:10-11),
“For forty years I loathed that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
“Therefore I swore in My anger,
Truly they shall not enter into My rest.”
But, you may wonder, why does God tell Moses that He has pardoned them in response to Moses’ prayer (Num. 14:20), and yet He decrees that they all will die in the wilderness? And the ten unbelieving spies died immediately by a plague before the Lord (Num. 14:36-37). God’s forgiveness was not forgiveness unto eternal life, but rather it meant that He was delaying His judgment by not wiping them all out on the spot. God was promising Moses that His covenant with Abraham would not be abrogated (John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], p. 77). Their children would be spared, but the grumbling unbelievers would suffer the consequences of their rebellion. Not only would they not enjoy the abundance of the Promised Land; also they would die and face eternal judgment for their unbelief at God’s throne of justice.
The author of Hebrews refers to this incident and cites Psalm 95:7-11. He then applies it to his readers, who professed faith in Christ, but were tempted to go back to Judaism because of persecution (Heb. 3:12): “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.” He’s saying that although like Israel in the wilderness you may be having some difficult trials because of following Christ, to go back to the world (Egypt) would indicate that you have an evil, unbelieving heart. To turn from Christ back to the world would be to fall away from the living God! If you do that, you will not enjoy the many blessings of knowing Christ in this life and you will face His eternal judgment when you die. You don’t want to do that!
Although God promised to bring the children of the rebels into the land, He said that they would have to be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and suffer for their parents’ unfaithfulness (Num. 14:31, 33). They all would have to watch their parents die premature deaths and be buried in that desolate place.
While God does not condemn any person because of his or her parents’ sins (Ezek. 18:20), the sad result of the fall is that the sins of parents are visited on children, even to the third and fourth generations (Exod. 34:7; Num. 14:18). That means, if you love your children, kill your sin! If you don’t want your kids to reject the Lord, then you’ve got to deal with your hypocrisy, anger, lust, and selfishness. Show them daily the love and kindness of our Savior so that they will want to follow Him too.
So this chapter hits us with some bad news-good news lessons: Bad news: If you repeatedly reject God’s grace, you may cross the line of no return. Good news: God’s promise of salvation is laid hold of by faith so that He will be glorified among the nations. Bad news: Although the Lord may delay judgment, He does not necessarily remove the consequences of sin on us or on our children. Then there’s more bad news before some good news:
When Moses told the Israelites God’s word of judgment, they “mourned greatly” (Num. 14:39). But it was superficial repentance, as seen by the fact that immediately after they decided to go against the Lord’s command to set out into the wilderness (Num. 14:25). Instead, they determined to go up and enter the land (Num. 14:40). So when they had the promise of God’s presence to go into the land, they voted to return to Egypt. But now when Moses warns them twice (vv. 42, 43) that the Lord will not go with them, they think they are strong enough without the Lord to go up and conquer the Canaanites.
Outwardly, they profess to be obeying God by going in accord with Joshua and Caleb’s report (v. 40). But actually, they were disobeying what God had just pronounced in judgment against them. So they went up without the Lord’s presence (as represented by the ark) and without God’s mediator, Moses (Num. 14:44). The Canaanites struck them and beat them down as far as Hormah.
As such, these self-willed Israelites are a picture of those who reject God’s promise of salvation by faith in Christ alone and determine to get to heaven by their own way, trusting in their own ability. Alfred Edersheim observed (Old Testament Bible History [Eerdmans], p. 169), “The obedience which is not of simple faith is of self-confidence, and only another kind of unbelief and self-righteousness.”
It’s safe to say that people’s attempt to save themselves by trusting in themselves is the main reason they miss God’s offer of free grace through Jesus Christ. They mistakenly think, “I’m a good person. I don’t need a Savior because I’m not a terrible sinner!” But God’s standard is absolute righteousness. A single sin of thought, word, or deed is enough to condemn anyone. That’s why Paul wrote (Rom. 3:10-12):
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
How then can anyone be saved from God’s judgment?
The two believing spies, Joshua and Caleb, are the bright spots in this otherwise gloomy chapter. They believed in God’s promise to give the land of Canaan to Israel. They pleaded with the unbelieving majority (Num. 14:8-9),
“If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.”
Of Caleb, who may have been the main spokesman in verses 8-9, the Lord said (Num. 14:24), “But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.” Forty-five years later, Caleb approached Joshua and said (Josh. 14:12), “Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.” The next verses confirm (Josh. 14:13-14),
So Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore, Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite until this day, because he followed the Lord God of Israel fully.
The Bible is clear that God will bless those who trust His promises and follow Him fully. Giving the Promised Land to Caleb and Joshua, who believed His promise, is a picture of the eternal blessing that God offers to all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. At the cross, God’s mercy and justice met. Jesus bore God’s penalty for our sins, so that He can be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). It was the Father’s and the Son’s love that sent Jesus to the cross (John 3:16): “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
To receive God’s offer of forgiveness of all your sins and eternal life with Him in the indescribable joy of heaven, you must abandon your own way of salvation through your good works and believe in God’s way, which gives Him all the glory. As Paul stated (Titus 3:4-7), “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” If you will believe God’s promise, you will inherit eternal life as His free gift!
Robert Louis Stevenson (source unknown) observed, “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” Make sure that your consequences will not be God’s judgment because you have not believed His promises. Let your banquet of consequences be eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (25)
August 19, 2018
When I was a pastor in California, we experienced what I call a lateral: Our social chairwoman lateraled leadership to someone else without running it by the elders. So all of a sudden, we had a new social chairwoman. We didn’t want to offend the new woman by removing her from the position at the outset, so we let her stay to see how things would go.
As Christmas approached, this woman told me that she wanted the church to have a Christmas ball. I tried to explain that a Christmas ball wouldn’t fit with our church, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally, an elder’s wife met with her and tried unsuccessfully to steer her in a different direction. So reluctantly the elder’s wife had to tell this woman that she needed to step down as our social chairwoman.
When I got home from church, the woman’s husband called, irate that we had done this to his wife. I could hear her sobbing in the background. This couple stopped attending the church and for years, whenever I would see them at the post office or market and try to greet them in a friendly way, they would look away and not return my greeting.
While we all should be serving the Lord in some way, that story illustrates that it’s easy to serve the Lord for the wrong reasons. Many in churches across America, including some in full-time ministry, are serving for what they can get out of it, not for the Lord and His glory. That’s the situation in Numbers 16. Korah, a Levite, organized some disgruntled Reubenites, along with 250 leaders of the congregation, to rebel against Moses and Aaron. Their contention was that they and everyone in Israel, were holy to the Lord. Therefore, they all should be able to serve as priests. They accused Moses and Aaron of going too far by exalting themselves over Israel. So they were challenging God’s appointed leaders, demanding equality for all. The chapter relates this rebellion and its aftermath, where God vindicated Moses and Aaron and brought frightening judgment on these rebels. The lesson for us is:
We serve God wrongly when we serve for ourselves, but rightly when we serve for Him.
Motive is everything in our service for the Lord. Why do you do what you do for Him? Often your true motives are uncovered when you feel that you should have a higher position of service or more recognition than the church has given to you. You resent those in leadership and think that you could do a better job if you only had the chance. The text reveals four ways that we can serve wrongly, as exemplified by these rebels; and, four ways to serve rightly, as seen in Moses and Aaron.
The rebels were Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On (who is not mentioned again; perhaps he repented). Korah was a son of Kohath, a Levite, a cousin of Moses. The sons of Kohath had important duties in the tabernacle, including setting it up and taking it down when Israel changed locations in the wilderness (Num. 4:1-20). But the Kohathites were a notch below the Aaronic priests.
The other men were from the tribe of Reuben. Reuben had forfeited his preeminence as Jacob’s firstborn when he slept with his father’s concubine, Bilhah (Gen. 35:22; 49:4). The Levites and the tribe of Reuben shared adjoining campsites on the south side of the tabernacle (Num. 2:10; 3:29), which may account for their collusion here. Korah may have appealed to the Reubenites, “Because you’re descendants of Jacob’s firstborn, you should have a higher role in Israel than Moses has given to you. He just wants preeminence for himself! We’re organizing a group to confront him and his arrogant brother. Please join with us!”
Also joining Korah and the sons of Reuben were “two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, chosen in the assembly, men of renown” (Num. 16:2). So this was not just a few complainers! It was a large, organized rebellion, made up of top leaders. The pretext for their complaint was (Num. 16:3): “You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?”
Like all heretics, Korah and his fellow rebels emphasized one legitimate truth to the exclusion of other truths (Gordon Wenham, Numbers [IVP], p. 134). It was true that all Israel was to be holy unto the Lord (Exod. 19:6; Lev. 11:44; Num. 15:38-41); but it was also true that God had appointed Moses to be the leader over Israel and Aaron and his sons to serve as the officiating priests. Israel was to be a nation of priests before the Lord (Exod. 19:6), but that did not exclude Moses as God’s appointed mediator and Aaron as the appointed high priest. So their appeal for “equality” for all the people sounded right, but was out of balance.
So Korah and the rebels disguised their real motive for wanting to serve in more prestigious positions by claiming, “We just want to follow the word of the Lord, that we’re all holy in His sight.” But the real reason they demanded more preeminence was jealousy and the desire for more power and prestige for themselves. Moses unmasks them with the truth (Num. 16:8-11):
“Hear now, you sons of Levi, is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them; and that He has brought you near, Korah, and all your brothers, sons of Levi, with you? And are you seeking for the priesthood also? Therefore you and all your company are gathered together against the Lord; but as for Aaron, who is he that you grumble against him?”
The application for us is: Constantly guard your motives for why you serve the Lord! It’s easy to cover pride under the guise of, “I just want the Lord’s kingdom to increase under my ministry!” But when you peel away the veneer, the real reason you want your ministry to grow is that you want more power and prestige for yourself. Certainly, we all should strive to do our best in whatever God has called us to do, but be careful not to do your best to promote yourself. God looks on our hearts. John the Baptist’s well known statement when his disciples were worried that Jesus was gaining more disciples than John is always appropriate (John 3:30): “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
In Numbers 18:1-7, the Lord makes it clear that He has entrusted to Aaron and his sons the ministry in the sanctuary, but the other Levites were a gift to Aaron, performing the service for the tent of meeting. But they could not enter the holy place. God tells Aaron (Num. 18:7): “But you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything concerning the altar and inside the veil, and you are to perform service. I am giving you the priesthood as a bestowed service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death.” “Bestowed service” is literally, “a service of gift.” In the context, the “outsider” refers to not only the other Israelites, but also to the Levites who were not priests.
The point is, God has assigned gifts and roles to each person and they are to view those positions as gifts, entrusted to each one to be used in serving the Lord. That’s exactly the point that Paul made to the Corinthians, who were boasting in their gifts, rather than humbly using them to build up others in the body. He told them (1 Cor. 4:7), “For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” Later, he reminded them that God had given each person different gifts to serve the church, much as the human body has many different parts that serve for the overall well-being of the person. He wrote (1 Cor. 12:4-7):
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
So we shouldn’t be jealous of the prestige of those who have more popular ministries than we have, but rather rejoice that the gospel is being preached and the body of Christ is being built up. And we shouldn’t despise or neglect the gifts that God has entrusted to us, but use them to serve Him with thankful hearts.
These rebels were wicked men who had spurned the Lord (cf. Num. 14:11, 23, 27, 35). Their problem was that they did not have hearts that loved and feared God. Moses met their challenge that they deserved to be priests on a par with Aaron first by falling on his face and then challenging them (Num. 16:5-7),
“Tomorrow morning the Lord will show who is His, and who is holy, and will bring him near to Himself; even the one whom He will choose, He will bring near to Himself. Do this: take censers for yourselves, Korah and all your company, and put fire in them, and lay incense upon them in the presence of the Lord tomorrow; and the man whom the Lord chooses shall be the one who is holy. You have gone far enough, you sons of Levi!”
Moses fell on his face because he rightly feared the Lord. If the rebels had even a twinge of fear for the Lord, they would have responded to Moses’ challenge by saying, “Uh oh! We’re literally toast if we go through with this challenge!” Aaron’s two sons, Nadab and Abihu, who were legitimate priests by birth, had taken “strange fire” in their censers and offered it before the Lord. Instantly fire came out from the Lord and consumed them (Lev. 10:1-3). These rebels, who weren’t of priestly lineage, should have connected the dots between that incident and Moses’ challenge and fallen on their faces in repentance. But they didn’t.
The next day, when they assembled at the doorway of the tent of meeting with their censers in hand, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation (Num. 16:19). Again, they should have dropped their unauthorized incense offerings, fallen on their faces, and begged God for mercy. But they didn’t. As Paul characterized the ungodly (Rom. 3:18; cf. Ps. 36:1), “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Even after the Lord opened the earth to swallow Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, along with their families and He sent fire to consume the 250 men offering the unauthorized incense, the entire congregation had the audacity the next day to accuse Moses and Aaron of being responsible for the death of these godless men, whom they called (Num. 16:41), “the Lord’s people”! You would think that after seeing God’s power in the plagues in Egypt, parting the Red Sea, and the fire and thunder on Mount Sinai, the Israelites would have respected God’s power, but they didn’t. This shows that even seeing powerful miracles is not enough evidence to convert sinners. The hearts of skeptics are so hardened that they can see miracles and rather than fall on their faces in the fear of God, they accuse God and His servants of cruelty.
The immediate response of Moses and Aaron to Korah’s rebellion and later to the whole congregation’s accusation that they were responsible for the rebels’ deaths, was to fall on their faces (Num. 16:4, 45). They feared God because they knew that He is the righteous Judge who has legitimate grounds and the power to destroy on the spot all who challenge His right to rule.
This story shows that the God we serve is not to be trifled with! If you say, “Well, this is the Old Testament; we’re under grace in the New Testament,” my reply is, “Remember Ananias and Sapphira!” They died instantly because of their hypocrisy with their financial gift. While thankfully that was a unique occurrence, the result of it was (Acts 5:11), “And great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard of these things.” These stories are in the Bible so that great fear would come over us as we serve the Lord!
Fearing God as you serve Him is crucial because it keeps you from compromising the truth because you fear what others will think. In confronting the Galatian heresy, Paul asked (Gal. 1:10), “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.” You can’t serve God rightly if you fear people and their approval more than you fear God.
So, we serve God wrongly when we desire power and prestige for ourselves, but rightly when we are content with the gifts and calling He has given to us, using them to serve Him. We serve God wrongly when we do not fear Him, but rightly when we fear Him above all.
One telltale sign of people who are not in submission to proper authority is that they blame the leaders for problems that they (the people) have brought on themselves. The rebels ask Moses (Num. 16:13), “Is it not enough that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, but you would also lord it over us?” They’re calling Egypt, where they were enslaved and mistreated, “a land flowing with milk and honey”! Incredible!
Then they add (v. 14), “Indeed, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor have you given us an inheritance of fields and vineyards. Would you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up!” By “putting out the eyes of these men,” the rebels are exaggerating, claiming that Moses wants to blind men to his true intentions (Ronald Allen, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:838). So they’re blaming Moses for not bringing them into the Promised Land when it was they who sided with the ten faithless spies, resulting in God’s judgment that they would all die in the wilderness.
Then later (Num. 16:41) the whole congregation blamed Moses and Aaron for the deaths of the rebels, whom God killed by miraculous displays of His power. Sinners like to blame everyone but themselves for the troubles that they encounter due to their own sin (Prov. 19:3)! But at the root of their blaming Moses and Aaron for problems that they brought on themselves was that they were not submissive to the authorities whom God had appointed. You can’t serve God rightly if you’re in rebellion against the leaders He has put in place over you.
Of course Moses and Aaron and later the apostles had unique positions of authority in God’s kingdom. But we have the apostles’ inspired, authoritative writings in the New Testament, which tells us (Heb. 13:17), “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.” And the entire church, including the leaders, are to be in submission to the Lord and His Word of truth. One requirement for elders is that they are not self-willed (Titus 1:7). We serve God wrongly when we are not submissive to proper authority, but rightly when we serve in submission to His properly appointed leaders. Finally,
It’s evident that the rebels only cared about themselves. Their pretext was that they wanted equality for everyone, but their real motive was that they wanted more power and prestige for their own glory. Preachers who take advantage of people by using their donations so that they can live a luxurious lifestyle are not serving God. They’re false prophets who are serving themselves at others’ expense (2 Pet. 2:14-15; 1 Tim. 6:5)!
Although Moses was one of the greatest and most godly leaders of all time, he had to deal with constant grumbling among the people. He had many reasons to ask God to wipe out these ungrateful people, but he didn’t succumb to that temptation. With Korah’s rebellion he and Aaron asked the Lord to spare the rest of the congregation (Num. 16:22). With the rebellion of the entire congregation, Moses directed Aaron to take his censer and make atonement for them, so that the plague would be limited. Aaron ran to save lives! Even with this intervention, 14,700 died, besides those who died on account of Korah (Num. 16:49). They cared for these rebellious people even when they had falsely accused them.
Aaron was the high priest, standing between the Judge and death for the guilty sinners (Num. 16:48). Ironically, even though the people resented Aaron and his priestly role, his fulfilling his duty as the high priest saved their lives. As such, Aaron is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, who made atonement for our sins even when we were His enemies (Rom. 5:6-10)! His example of loving us when we opposed Him should help us to love those who may treat us wrongly when we are serving Him (Eph. 5:2).
I’ve shared this unforgettable story before, but I share it again because it illustrates how wrongly and rightly to serve God. At a pastors’ conference, Bill Mills told about when he was speaking to a group of Wycliffe missionaries in South America. On the last evening as he ate dinner with the director and his wife, she told him how years before they had been assigned to translate the Bible into one of the native tribal languages. This is a lengthy and tedious process which, before computers, often took up to twenty years.
During that time, the translators were teaching the Scriptures and seeing a new church emerging among the tribe. But as the translation was almost done, the tribal people were becoming more and more involved in selling their crops for the drug trade and less and less interested in the Scriptures. When they finally finished the translation and scheduled a dedication of the New Testament, not even one tribal person came! This missionary wife was angry and bitter. She had given twenty years of her life so that these people could have the Scriptures, but they didn’t even want it!
Then with regard to Bill’s ministry of the Word that week, she said (in, Finishing Well in Life and Ministry [Leadership Resources International], p. 190):
God has … opened my eyes to see this all from His perspective. I am just beginning to realize now that we did it for Him! That is the only thing that makes any sense in all of this. We did it for God!
Mills concludes, “That is the only thing that makes any sense in ministry. We do it for Him.” Amen! We serve God wrongly when we serve for ourselves, but rightly when we serve for Him.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (26)
September 2, 2018
When you’re watching the Olympics, it’s always sad to see a long-distance runner who is leading the race, but in the final lap, he stumbles and falls. All of his years of training toward winning the gold are ruined in the final lap.
It’s been said that the Bible paints its heroes warts and all! Sadly, there are many great men in the Bible who ran well for a while, but later in life they stumbled and fell. David, who wrote so many beloved psalms, was probably in his fifties when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged to have her husband Uriah, one of David’s loyal mighty men, killed in battle (2 Samuel 11). King Solomon, who had extraordinary wisdom and brought unprecedented prosperity to Israel, allowed his many wives to turn his heart to idolatry (1 Kings 11:3-4).
King Asa began by doing “good and right in the sight of the Lord his God” (2 Chron. 14:2). He made many godly reforms in Israel. But in the 36th year of his reign, rather than relying on the Lord, he stripped the silver and gold from the temple to hire a foreign king to fight against his enemies. When a godly prophet confronted him, rather than repenting, he became angry and put the prophet into prison (2 Chron. 16:1-11).
The godly King Jehoshaphat made many reforms, but later he allied himself with the wicked Ahab and his evil son, Ahaziah (2 Chron. 19:2; 20:35). King Joash began by repairing the house of the Lord and instituting reforms, but later he abandoned the Lord, served idols, and murdered the son of the man who had raised him (2 Chron. 24). King Hezekiah restored worship in Judah and saw the Lord bring amazing victories, but late in life he foolishly showed the Babylonian envoys all of his treasures, setting the stage for the later Babylonian invasion (2 Chron. 29:2, 36; 30:26; 32:22; 2 Kings 20:12-19).
There are more examples, but they all warn us that starting well is no guarantee of finishing well. Past faithfulness and obedience do not guarantee future faithfulness and obedience. Even a lifetime of walking with God does not ensure that we will finish well. Our text shows us one of the greatest men of God in history stumbling near the finish line. His mission and one desire had been to lead God’s people into the Promised Land. But now he makes a single mistake and God tells him that he won’t be the one to lead Israel into the land.
Numbers 20 is a sad chapter. It begins with a brief notice of the death of Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, and ends with the death of Aaron. These notices are a grim reminder of God’s judgment that none above age 20, except for Joshua and Caleb, would enter the Promised Land. Sandwiched in between is the account of Moses’ anger toward the grumbling people, resulting in his striking the rock in disobedience rather than speaking to it, as God commanded. Because he and Aaron did not believe God to treat Him as holy before the congregation, God announced that neither leader would bring Israel into the land (Num. 20:12). We learn:
To glorify God, all believers, but especially Christian leaders, should seek to finish well.
While not comprehensive, our text reveals five essentials for finishing well. Moses did some of these, but he failed in others.
This incident took place in “the first month” (Num. 20:1), which probably refers to the first month of Israel’s last year in the wilderness (cf. Num. 20:22-29 with 33:38). Within a year, they’d be crossing the Jordan and heading into Canaan. They are at Kadesh, where almost 40 years before the ten faithless spies had persuaded the congregation not to go in and take the land. The same problem that Israel had encountered then (Exod. 17:1-7) surfaced again: there was no water. Rather than calling the nation to pray for water, the people contended with Moses (Num. 20:3-5):
“If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord! Why then have you brought the Lord’s assembly into this wilderness, for us and our beasts to die here? Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us in to this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink.”
Then we read (Num. 20:6), “Then Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to them ….” So these servants of God went from the presence of angry, accusatory critics into the glorious presence of God.
That’s always a good thing to do when people criticize you or your service for the Lord: Take refuge in the Lord’s presence. Look at His glory as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Savior was sinless and yet was relentlessly attacked by critics. So why should I, who am far from sinless, expect better treatment? Then, in the Lord’s presence and through His Word, evaluate the criticism. Perhaps it’s totally false and can be dismissed. But perhaps some of the criticism is valid and you need to learn from it. But whenever you’re criticized, you have a choice: You can counter-attack your critics; or, you can allow the criticism to drive you into the Lord’s presence, where you can experience a fresh glimpse of His glory. Moses and Aaron were on target on this first essential.
Chuck Swindoll (Moses [Thomas Nelson], pp. 305-311) argues that Moses had a lifelong anger problem that led him to this tragic failure at the end of his life. He points out that Moses was angry when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a fellow Israelite (Exod. 2:11-12; Acts 7:23-24). Forty years later, God called Moses to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let Israel go. But even though the Lord had told Moses that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart, when Pharaoh repeatedly refused to let Israel go, Moses “went out from Pharaoh in hot anger” (Exod. 11:8), which was unnecessary. Later, when Moses went down from Mount Sinai and saw the people worshiping the golden calf, in anger he smashed the Ten Commandments (Exod. 32:19). While his anger may have been righteous, Swindoll (pp. 307-308) argues that God did not approve of his destroying those tablets. Moses’ unchecked pattern of anger is what now, 40 years later, caused him to strike the rock in anger, resulting in his being excluded from the Promised Land.
While some of Moses’ anger was righteous, we need to be careful not to justify most of our anger as righteous. The Scottish hymn writer George Matheson said (source unknown), “There are times when I do well to be angry, but I have mistaken the times.” Or, as Aristotle said (source unknown),
Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time and in the right way—that is not easy.
Maybe your besetting sin isn’t anger. Whatever keeps tripping you up, Moses’ failure warns you to identify that sin and deal with it now before it causes you to stumble at the end of your life.
When you first read this account, it seems as if the Lord is making a big deal out of a relatively small sin. He commands Moses to speak to the rock, but Moses, understandably frustrated with these constant grumblers, strikes the rock with his rod. As a result, the Lord denies Moses the fulfillment of what he has worked toward for the past 40 years. We may think, “What’s the big deal? Isn’t the Lord being overly harsh with His faithful servant who gave up a life of luxury in Pharaoh’s palace to lead this ungrateful mob in this barren wilderness for the past 40 years? Where is God’s grace?” (See Charles Simeon, Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible [Zondervan], 2:108-109.) But, we know that God is always gracious and never unduly harsh with His servants.
As we consider Moses’ sin, we must conclude that what may seem to us to be a relatively minor sin may be a major sin to God. His ways are not our ways (Isa. 55:8). God labeled Moses’ sin as not believing in Him to treat Him as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel (Num. 20:12). Not to believe in God is in effect to call God a liar! It impugns His faithfulness! That’s a big sin! Not to treat God as holy, especially as a leader of God’s people, is to lower Him from His exalted throne where the angels cover their faces and cry, “Holy, holy, holy” (Isa. 6:3). It may cause His people to disrespect or disregard Him. That’s a big sin!
This incident is very similar to the one 40 years before when God directed Moses to strike the rock with his rod to produce water for the grumbling people (Exod. 17:6). But this time, God directed Moses to take the rod, which was a symbol of his God-given authority; but instead of striking the rock, he was to speak to it. Moses began well by taking the rod, but then he disobeyed by striking the rock, not just once, but twice. You may wonder, “Why did God change the command from striking the rock to speaking to it, and why was He so severe with Moses for his disobedience?”
The apostle Paul tells us that the rock in the wilderness that produced water for the thirsty people was a type of Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). When Christ came the first time, He had to bear the penalty of our sins by being “wounded for our transgressions” (Isa. 53:5, New KJV). But Jesus had to suffer and die only once to make atonement for our sins, providing the living water of salvation for all who are thirsty (Rom. 6:9-10; Heb. 9:26, 28; 1 Pet. 3:18). Now that He has suffered and died for our sins, we only need to cry out to Him in prayer to satisfy our thirsty souls. So by striking the rock on this second occasion, Moses messed up the type of Jesus Christ and our salvation. And, as Pastor Roger Ellsworth observed (Moses [Evangelical Press], p. 224), “God is very precise about the whole business of salvation, and we must be precise as well.”
Also, Matthew Henry observed (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible [Revell], 1:659),
He bids him speak to the rock, which would do as it was bidden, to shame the people who had been so often spoken to, and would not hear nor obey. Their hearts were harder than this rock, not so tender, not so yielding, not so obedient.
So don’t shrug off God’s commandments as if they’re no big deal. What may seem to you to be a relatively small thing may be a big thing to God! So to avoid stumbling at the finish line, go from your critics’ presence into the Lord’s presence. Deal with your besetting sin. Develop the habit of obedience in what may seem to be relatively small things.
When Moses struck the rock in disobedience to the Lord’s command to speak to it, he said to the grumbling crowd (Num. 20:10), “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” The implication of that question was that Moses and Aaron were able to bring water from the rock. But as Alexander Maclaren observed (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], 1:360), “He who claims power to himself, denies it to God.”
Interestingly, God brought the water gushing from the rock in spite of Moses’ disobedience. Sometimes in His grace God grants results in ministry in spite of our disobedience. So if you see success in your ministry, you have to be careful or you might start thinking, “My success is due to my great faith or because of something I did!” But results do not necessarily indicate faithfulness on the part of the one seeing the results! Some of the largest churches in America today are pastored by heretics, whereas some of the smallest churches are pastored by godly men who faithfully preach the Word and depend upon God in prayer.
The apostle Paul was always careful to give God the credit for any fruit that he saw in his ministry. When the Corinthians were boasting about whether they followed Paul or Apollos, he wrote (1 Cor. 3:5-7),
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.
Later, he explained (1 Cor. 15:10), “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Concerning his ministry, he explained (Rom. 15:18), “For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed.” Or, again (2 Cor. 3:5), “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.” His overall principle was (1 Cor. 10:31), “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Finally,
The Lord’s perspective on Moses’ striking the rock was (Num. 20:12), “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
Unbelief was the root sin that led to not treating God as holy. Regarding unbelief, Alfred Edersheim (Old Testament Bible History Eerdmans], pp. 185-186) pointed out that the people despaired of getting into the land and directed their frustrations against Moses and Aaron. They were looking to Moses and not to God as the one who had not yet brought them into the land (Num. 20:4-5). On the other hand, Moses and Aaron despaired of getting into the land and directed their frustrations against this grumbling people. Moses and Aaron were looking at the grumbling people rather than to the Lord and His promise to bring them into the land. Edersheim observed, “But at bottom, the ground of despair and of rebellion, both on the part of the people and of Moses, was precisely the same. In both cases it was really unbelief of God.”
The point is, when we look at people rather than the Lord, we’re sure to grow frustrated, because people will always fall short in some way. Even a gifted leader like Moses had a lot of critics. And if leaders look at the people, they will get frustrated with their grumbling and many shortcomings. Look to the Lord!
Also, as F. B. Meyer points out (Moses [Christian Literature Crusade], p. 176), Moses may have been trusting more in his rod than in the Lord. God had used Moses’ rod to turn the Nile to blood and to separate the Red Sea. When we’ve seen a method that works, our tendency is to rely on the method for results, not on the Lord. Meyer also notes that faith had been Moses’ strong point up till now. But our greatest strengths are often our greatest points of vulnerability. If I’m a strong preacher, I may mistakenly think that all I need to do is use my proven method and natural ability and everything will go well! So we have to be on guard against the sin of unbelief in God, which always means that we’re trusting in ourselves. Faith looks to the Lord and His promises. He has promised to build His church and He uses some pretty rough material to build with, both with leaders and with people!
The Lord’s other indictment of Moses and Aaron was that they had not treated Him as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel. The Lord repeats this charge in Numbers 27:14, when He reminds Moses, “for in the wilderness of Zin, during the strife of the congregation, you rebelled against My command to treat Me as holy before their eyes at the water.” Disobedience to God’s commands means that we’re not believing Him or treating Him as holy. As I said, the rock was identified with Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). Elsewhere in Scripture, God is called our rock (Pss. 18:2; 31:3; 42:9). So to strike the rock was to strike the Lord, who is identified with the rock. Also, when Moses implied that he, not the Lord, would bring water from the rock, he did not treat God as holy before the people.
As a result of Moses and Aaron not believing God to treat Him as holy, He imposed the penalty that they would not bring the people into the land. This must have been a huge emotional blow to Moses, who had spent the last 40 years enduring much hardship with the hope that one day he would set foot in the land. But later, in God’s grace, Moses did stand in the land. He and Elijah stood with the glorified Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). In spite of our failures and disappointments in this life, we know that one day soon we will be with Jesus in glory, free from our sin and sharing His victory over sin and death!
Charles Simeon (ibid. 2:112) pointed out that Moses represents the Law, which can only condemn us, not save us. One violation of God’s holy Law is enough to render us guilty of breaking the whole thing (James 2:10). One violation was enough to keep Moses out of the Promised Land. As Paul said (Rom. 3:20), “By the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight.” To enter the land, we need the new Joshua—Jesus, the Savior, who fulfilled the Law perfectly (Meyer, ibid. p. 177). As Paul stated (Rom. 10:4), “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Put your trust in Him!
If you’ve never read the life of George Muller, I strongly urge you to do so. I first read George Muller of Bristol (A. T. Pierson, [Revell]) during the summer of 1970, and it changed my life. Muller was a man “who prayed earnestly that he might live a life and do a work which should be convincing proof that God hears prayer and that it is safe to trust Him at all times” (ibid., pp. 15-16). For over 60 years, without making any needs known to supporters, he trusted God through prayer alone to provide for thousands of orphans.
At Muller’s funeral service, a man related how a friend had said to Muller, “When God calls you home, it will be like a ship going into harbor, full sail.” Muller replied, “Oh no! It is poor George Muller who needs daily to pray, ‘Hold Thou me up in my goings, that my footsteps slip not.’” Pierson adds (p. 289) that the lives of men in Scripture who fell later in life were “a perpetual warning, leading [Muller] to pray that he might never thus depart from the Lord in his old age.” Muller finished well!
Finishing well in life depends on running well now, no matter where you’re at. To enter the race, put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Then, each day meet with Him in His Word and in prayer. As Muller often advised (ibid., pp. 314-315), “The first business of every morning should be to secure happiness in God.”
Then, when you encounter problems, use them to drive you into the Lord’s presence. Deal with your besetting sin, so that it doesn’t trip you up. Develop the habit of obedience in what may seem to be relatively small things. Give God the glory for everything He uses you to accomplish for Him. Trust in Him at all times and treat Him as holy. One day you will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” You finished well!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (27)
September 9, 2018
Marla and I have hiked thousands of miles, much of it in rugged terrain where rattlesnakes live, but so far, by God’s grace, we’ve never been bitten. We’ve had a few close calls, where suddenly before you see the snake, you hear the frightening rattle. But thankfully, those snakes didn’t strike us.
But from a spiritual perspective, we’ve all been bitten by the serpent of old, who deceived Eve and infected the entire human race with the poison of sin. God had warned Adam (Gen. 2:17), “but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Not just Adam and Eve, but the entire human race, was plunged into sin and death because of their sin. As Paul explained (Rom. 5:12), “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” That death penalty involves not only physical death, but even worse, spiritual death, which is separation from God.
Often when I’m in public, I look at people and grieve over the obvious toll of sin on the human race. Sometimes you see it in physical infirmities—people’s bodies are broken and deteriorating toward death. Sometimes you see it in sensuality—women and sometimes men who are advertising their bodies in the vain attempt to deaden their soul-pain through physical pleasure. Sometimes you see it in anger—parents yelling at their children or couples arguing with each other. But whatever form it takes, it reflects that we’ve all been bitten by the evil serpent.
What’s the remedy? Our text shows that …
Although the wages of our sin is death, all who look in faith to God’s remedy will be instantly healed.
In Numbers 20, Israel was camped at Kadesh on the southern border of the Promised Land. They had been in the wilderness almost 40 years due to the sin of the previous generation that did not trust God’s promise to give them the land. From there, Moses sent to the king of Edom, asking permission for Israel to pass through his land. He promised that they would not take from their crops or even drink their water. They would just pass straight through their territory. But the king of Edom refused and threatened military action against Israel if they tried to go through Edom.
Then, after the death of Aaron, the Canaanite king of Arad, who lived just north of where Israel was camped, fought against Israel and took some of them captive. At this point (for a change!) Israel did the right thing: They sought the Lord and vowed that if He delivered these Canaanites into their hands, they would utterly destroy their cities. God granted them victory, the first in Canaan.
But then, rather than go into the land from the south, the Lord directed Moses to turn around and lead the people to the Red Sea, by the Gulf of Aqaba, to take a circuitous route around the land of Edom. At this point, the people became impatient because of the journey. They grumbled against the Lord and Moses, accusing Moses again of bringing them out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. And they complained about what they called “the miserable” manna and the lack of water.
The Lord then sent “fiery” serpents to bite them, causing many to die. (“Fiery” probably refers to the painful effect of the bite.) The people (for a change!) repented! They confessed their sin to Moses, and asked him to intercede for them. He prayed and God provided this unusual remedy of a bronze snake on a pole. Whoever looked to the bronze snake would be healed and live (which is why medical doctors often have a snake on a pole). Four lessons from this story:
God’s approval of Israel’s utter destruction of the Canaanites (Num. 21:3) raises the problem that becomes even more prominent in the Book of Joshua: How could a good and loving God order the slaughter of all the Canaanites? It’s one thing to kill all the enemy warriors. But how can God command the deaths of women and children? Prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins accuse God of “divine genocide.” Is he right?
First, we need to acknowledge that God justly imposed the death penalty not only on the Canaanites, but also on the entire human race (John Hendryx, monergism.com/blog/why-does-bible-condone-genocide). As the righteous Judge, who knows every thought and intention of every heart, He pronounces (Ezek. 18:4), “The soul who sins will die.” That’s all people! As George Bernard Shaw wryly observed (source unknown), “The statistics on death are quite impressive: one out of one people die!”
Second, we need to understand God’s patience and mercy toward the Canaanites. Hundreds of years before this, God explained to Abraham that his descendants would be slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years before He would give them the land of Canaan. He then explained (Gen. 15:16), “for the iniquity of the Amorite [Canaanite] is not yet complete.” God let these wicked people go on in their gross sins for 400 more years before He commanded Israel’s army to kill them. They practiced “rampant idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality” (Clay Jones, equip.org/articles/killing-the-canaanites). These are all sins that God condemns in the Bible, warning that those who practice such things will face His judgment if they do not repent (e.g. Lev. 18; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Gal. 5:19-21; 1 Tim. 1:8-10). While all cultures deserve judgment, God knows when a people fill up the measure of their sins so that His judgment falls on them. This wasn’t genocide—it was capital punishment.
If you protest, “The Canaanites didn’t know any better,” the biblical answer is that the law of God is written on every human heart (Rom. 2). Creation clearly shows every person that God exists. But, people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness,” so that “their foolish heart was darkened” (Rom. 1:18, 21). When people persist in sin, God gives them over to judgment (Rom. 1:24-32). Also, historically the Canaanites were not far removed from the flood. They would have known through oral history that God wiped out everyone through that cataclysmic judgment because of their sin. Yet the Canaanites persisted in their rebellion against Him.
Sometimes people ask, “Why can’t God just forgive sins? I forgive those who wrong me. Why doesn’t God do that? Why does He have to impose death on sinners?” The answer is: because God is perfectly holy and just. He would not be God if He were unholy or unjust. If a human judge let a man go free after he killed your mother to support his drug habit, you would rightly be outraged. That’s not right or just! Justice demands that sins receive appropriate penalties. To sin against the infinitely holy God requires infinite punishment. Thus the Bible warns (Rom. 6:23), “The wages of sin is death ….” And (Heb. 9:27), “… it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.”
But, the good news is that God has not left us to die in our sins. He sent His eternal Son to bear the punishment that we deserve. In that way, God can be (Rom. 3:26) “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” As Jesus explained to Nicodemus (John 3:14-16),
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
When you read this story of Israel in the wilderness, it’s easy to think, “What’s wrong with these people? How could they be so prone to grumbling?” Right after God grants them victory over the king of Arad, they immediately turn again to grumbling. But, we need to apply it to ourselves, because …
Israel finally got a small taste of victory when they defeated the king of Arad at Hormah (Num. 21:1-3). Perhaps they thought that they were ready now to march north and take the entire land of Canaan. But God directed Moses to turn back to the wilderness and go around the land of Edom (Deut. 2:1-7). This detour back toward the wilderness caused them to become “impatient because of the journey” (v. 4) and to speak against God and Moses again, as they had done frequently (Num. 21:5): “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.”
Even though the manna was God’s gracious gift to sustain them in the barren desert, they were despising it. Since Jesus claimed that the manna pointed to Him as the true bread of life sent from heaven (John 6:32-33), to reject it was the same as despising God’s provision of the Savior (see Ronald Allen, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 2:876).
But before we condemn Israel, we need to admit that we’ve done the same thing. We get impatient with trials that God brings to refine us and shape us into the image of Christ. We get tired of waiting on God to fulfill His promises. We complain about our circumstances, even though God has abundantly provided for our needs. We exaggerate our trials and minimize our blessings, just as Israel did. But we never have valid reasons to accuse the Lord of cruelty or complain about His treatment of us.
In this case (Num. 21:6), “The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.” Those who had not yet died repented (Num. 21:7):
So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.
When we realize that we have sinned, we should confess our sins to the Lord (1 John 1:9). We don’t need to go to a human priest to intercede for us. Rather, we can go directly to the Lord, because (1 John 2:1), “if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” In this case, God provided this very unusual remedy (Num. 21:8): “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.’” This teaches us:
God didn’t remove the snakes, but rather provided a remedy for their bites. It’s often difficult to know how far to go in applying Old Testament types to New Testament truth, but in this case, we don’t need to wonder, since Jesus applied it to Himself. If He had not done so, I never would have dared to compare Jesus to this snake on a pole in the wilderness! Note seven things:
This remedy is rather bizarre. In the Ten Commandments, God had said not to make any graven images. Aaron had disobeyed by making the golden calf, but now Moses makes a bronze serpent. Israel also would have known the story of Eve in the garden being deceived by the despicable serpent. So some may have thought, “What is Moses thinking? Has he lost it?”
But, the bronze snake wasn’t Moses’ idea. It came directly from God. Probably many thought that it was crazy. But it was supernatural and skeptics always think that the miraculous is crazy because they don’t believe in God’s power to do miracles. Here, instead of deadly snakes, God provided a substitute snake, but one without poison. He took what was deadly and turned it into a source of life for all who would trust in His remedy.
Even so, Paul wrote (1 Cor. 1:18), “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The cross is God’s remedy. It didn’t come from the world’s most brilliant philosophers or religious geniuses. It seems strange or foolish to the world, but it’s God’s supernatural remedy for our sin.
It was the only remedy. There were no other cures if you didn’t like or didn’t believe in this one. Apart from the cross, there is no human cure for sin. Christ and Him crucified is the only way.
Moses didn’t say, “Look at the snake, and then rub on some of this special oil that I’ll sell you on, and you’ll be cured.” He didn’t say, “Bring your own offerings to the pole and offer them up to the snake.” There was nothing to add to it. If you only looked at that bronze snake God would heal you.
In the same way, the cross of Christ is sufficient for the salvation of the worst of sinners. You can’t add anything to it. You don’t need to do penance to pay for your sins. You don’t have to join the church or give money to the church. You don’t need to add your good works to what Christ has done. Jesus paid it all! There’s nothing for you to do, except to look to Christ in faith and He will save you.
God said (Num. 21:8), “everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” There weren’t any cases too hard. There were no exceptions: whoever looked would live. Even so, John 3:16 promises, “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Romans 10:13 states, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
God promised (Num. 21:8), “when he looks at it, he will live.” The remedy never failed. It cured every person who believed God enough to look. God’s promise is that if you believe in Jesus Christ as the one who bore your sins on the cross, you will not perish, but have eternal life. If in faith you call on the Lord for salvation, He will save you from judgment. Jesus promised (John 6:37b), “The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” You can count on His word as the truth.
As I said, it was sufficient so that nothing else was needed. Its sufficiency made it very simple. You didn’t have to crawl on your hands and knees over broken glass to go and look at the snake. You didn’t need to learn a difficult mantra that you had to recite perfectly as you looked at the snake. You didn’t need to take special classes where you learned, “Seven steps to fight snakes.” You didn’t have to buy a replica of the snake, set it up in your tent, and pray to it all your life, hoping that you would finally get better. All you had to do was to look and live. And all you need to do is believe in Jesus as the One who paid the penalty for your sin and you will have eternal life.
No one could take credit for looking! You couldn’t boast in your wisdom because you looked, because, as I said, to look at a bronze snake and be cured instantly from a deadly snakebite sounded crazy. You couldn’t boast that you fasted and did good works to get healed. You just needed to realize that you couldn’t cure yourself. You were doomed if God’s remedy didn’t work. All you could say is, “God promised if I looked I would live. So I looked and I live.” (See C. H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Pilgrim Publications], 25:597.)
We’ve seen that the Lord is the holy Judge who can justly impose death on sinners. In spite of many manifestations of God’s grace, we all have grumbled against the Lord, and thus we deserve His judgment. But God has graciously supplied the remedy for our death penalty, namely, Christ crucified. Finally,
God didn’t remove the snakes, but He provided the cure. But the remedy was not automatically effective for everyone. Each person had to believe God’s promise and look at the uplifted snake if he or she wanted to live. But when a person looked, he was healed instantly. There were no delays. He didn’t need to accumulate enough good works to merit healing. The instant he looked, he was miraculously healed.
In the same way, as we’ve seen, Jesus told the Pharisee Nicodemus (John 3:14-15), “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.” Lifted up refers to Jesus being lifted up on the cross (see, also, John 8:28; 12:34), but the apostle John, who was fond of double meanings, also meant that Jesus would be lifted up in glory and majesty (Isa. 52:13; Acts 2:33; 5:31). When God raised from the dead the Savior who bore our sins on the cross, He (Phil. 2:9) “highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
If you will look in faith to the crucified and risen Savior, God will give you eternal life right now as a free gift. But you need to understand that looking to Christ or having faith in Christ is not faith in an idol of Jesus as a good luck charm. Rather, it’s faith in the living person of Christ. In the wilderness, the Israelites had to believe in God’s promise that whoever looked to the serpent would be healed. In the same way, we need to believe God’s promise that whoever looks to Jesus and His death as the just payment for his sins will be forgiven and given eternal life. But we need to be careful not to fall into idolatry by making a charm or magic token out of a statue of Jesus or the cross.
About 700 years after this incident in the wilderness, King Hezekiah had to destroy this bronze serpent because it had become an object of idolatry to the Israelites (2 Kings 18:1-4). That took some courage on Hezekiah’s part! But he saw that people had begun to look to it as a good luck charm. In the same way, there are many today who set up a statue or picture of Jesus on the cross and pray to it, thinking that it will protect them or bring them good luck. But that’s not what faith in Jesus means. That’s a form of idolatry! Destroy your idol and put your trust in the living Lord Jesus to save you. He promised (John 3:16) that “whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”
When Charles Spurgeon, who would later become the greatest preacher of the 19th century, was 15, he was under deep conviction because of his sins. Although his father and grandfather were both preachers and Spurgeon had read many of their solid Puritan books, he didn’t understand the gospel. He thought that he needed to do many more things to be saved.
Then one snowy day he wandered into a small Methodist chapel. The regular preacher wasn’t there because of the snow. A layman preached on Isaiah 45:22, which reads (KJV), “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” He made the point that looking doesn’t take any effort or any special status. Anyone can look. Finally, he looked directly at young Spurgeon and exhorted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothin’ to do but to look and live.” Spurgeon said (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography [Banner of Truth], 1:88), “Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed, so it was with me.” He looked to Jesus and God saved him.
And you will be saved too, if you look in faith to Jesus, who was the fulfillment of this strange but effective remedy that God provided to cure the snakebite of your sins.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (28)
September 16, 2018
In his book, Crisis: the Last Years of the Carter Presidency (cited in Newsweek [10/4/82]), Hamilton Jordan, who was President Carter’s Chief of Staff, tells about the jarring transition from being at the center of historic world events one day and being out of office the next day. The day before Carter left office, he and his team were working feverishly to free the American hostages in Iran. The next day, Carter and his staff flew to Plains, Georgia, as Ronald Reagan became the next President.
It was raining in Plains as President Carter and Jordan got off the helicopter. After Carter announced the breaking news that the hostages had been freed, the crowd cheered and a country music band burst into song. But it was over in a moment. Carter and his men adjourned to a barn behind the peanut warehouse where the staff had assembled a woodworking shop for the President. Jordan was struck with how strange it was that the man who the day before had been orchestrating the rescue of American hostages and leading our great nation was now poring over drills, saws, and screwdrivers in an old barn in rural Georgia.
Jordan decided to stay that night with his mother in Albany, Georgia, about 40 miles away. But he hadn’t made arrangements to get there. It had been years since he had to think about such matters. Soaking wet, carrying his briefcase and a suitcase, he wandered around for an hour trying to find someone who could give him a ride home. Finally, he went to the pay phone at Billy Carter’s old service station and tried to call a taxi, but they were all busy taking VIP’s to the airport. He finally found a Georgia State patrolman he knew who agreed to drive him to his mother’s house. He wrote, “It really is over, I thought as I loaded my luggage into his trunk, climbed into his front seat and headed home.”
Transitions aren’t easy. The bigger the transition, the more difficult it is. Going from being the Chief of Staff for the President of the United States, to being an unemployed man from a small town in Georgia, must have been traumatic!
As you probably know, we’re facing a major transition here at Flagstaff Christian Fellowship. Pastor Stan Johnson, who served on staff here for about 30 years, retired on April 1st. And I’m retiring soon after serving here as senior pastor since May, 1992. The church has called Dave Berry as the next senior pastor. He will begin in the next few months, after getting his family relocated here. My prayer is that the transition will go well and that all of you will warmly welcome Pastor Dave and his family and be as supportive of him as you have been of me.
You may wonder, “Does the Bible have anything to guide us through a healthy transition?” I believe that Moses’ handing his leadership baton to Joshua provides some wisdom for us. (Although I’m not implying that I’m like Moses or Dave is like Joshua!) Deuteronomy 31:1-13 teaches us that …
For a healthy transition, God’s people need to trust Him in the battle and follow new godly leaders who keep His Word central.
These are almost the final recorded words of this great man of God, and thus we should weigh them carefully. Four principles:
Moses spoke to all Israel (Deut. 31:2-3),
“I am a hundred and twenty years old today; I am no longer able to come and go, and the Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not cross this Jordan.’ It is the Lord your God who will cross ahead of you; He will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the Lord has spoken.”
Moses’ life was marked by three very different 40-year periods. For his first 40 years, Moses lived in Pharaoh’s palace as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He would have enjoyed all the comforts of life, with servants waiting to do his every wish. Acts 7:22 states, “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds.”
But then Moses killed the Egyptian taskmaster who was beating an Israelite man. He had to flee to the remote desert area of Midian, where he married a shepherd’s daughter and tended his father-in-law’s sheep for the next 40 years. Then God met him at the burning bush and called him to return to Egypt to deliver the Israelites from bondage. That began the final 40 years of Moses’ life, leading these mostly stiff-necked people through the wilderness to the edge of the Promised Land. But because he did not treat God as holy when he disobediently struck the rock, God told Moses that he could not lead the people into the land of Canaan.
As Moses realizes that his time on earth is short, he reminds Israel of the crucial fact that the Lord is with them and will go with them as they face the people of Canaan, whom they must dispossess of the land. Note how he repeats this essential truth to drive it home: Verse 3: “It is the Lord your God who will cross ahead of you.” Verse 6: “The Lord your God is the one who goes with you.” Verse 8: “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you.” And in verse 23, the Lord says to Joshua, “I will be with you.” Then after Moses’ death, the Lord says to Joshua (Josh. 1:5), “Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.” He repeats (Josh. 1:9), “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
This emphasis on God’s presence with His people takes us back to Exodus 33, where after the incident with the golden calf, the Lord told Moses that He would send His angel with Israel, but He Himself would not go up with them or He would destroy them because of their stiff necks. But Moses prayed, in effect, “Lord, if you don’t go with us, we aren’t going anywhere. It would be better to die in the wilderness with You than to go into the Promised Land without You!” The Lord relented and promised (Exod. 33:14, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.”
In the New Testament, Jesus’ final words to His disciples before He ascended into heaven were (Matt. 28:20), “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Writing to a suffering church, the author of Hebrews (13:5) cites Deuteronomy 31:6, “Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.’”
It is vital at all times, but especially in a time of change, to know that God is present with you. He is the one great unchanging constant in life! Don’t do anything that would put a distance between you and God. After David had sinned with Bathsheba, in Psalm 51:11 he pleads, “Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” I’ve heard Bible teachers say that we shouldn’t pray David’s prayer that the Lord would not take His Holy Spirit from us, since the Spirit permanently dwells in every believer. Technically, that’s true, but practically, sin will rob you from experiencing the Spirit’s presence and blessing.
Also, Moses repeats the theme of God’s faithfulness to His promises. He had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants (Deut. 31:7). Now Moses reminds them (Deut. 31:6), “He will not fail you or forsake you.” He repeats (v. 8), “He will not fail you or forsake you.” At the end of Joshua’s life, echoing Moses’ words here, he reminded Israel (Josh. 23:14), “Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed.”
So as a church facing a time of transition, God’s word to us is, trust in Him and His faithfulness, not in any human leader, since leaders will pass off the scene. And, don’t do anything that would rob you of knowing God’s presence. It is vital that the Lord goes with us through a time of change.
In verse 3, Moses reminds the people of what they knew very well, that there were frightening enemies that they would have to conquer to take the Promised Land. But he assures them, “It is the Lord your God who will cross ahead of you; He will destroy these nations before you.” He reminds them (v. 4), “The Lord will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them.” Those powerful kings lived on the east side of the Jordan River, and God had already given Israel victory over them and given them their land. Then regarding the future enemies in Canaan, Moses repeats (v. 5), “The Lord will deliver them up before you.” So he was reminding Israel that there would be battles against these powerful enemies, but no enemy could stand against the Lord’s presence and His strength through His people. The Lord easily could have sent a plague on the Canaanites so that they all dropped dead and Israel just moved into their cities. But He didn’t do that. The Lord would deliver these enemies to Israel, but they had to fight in dependence on the Lord’s strength.
The Christian life is often depicted as a fight. We’re called to put on the full armor of God so that we may be able to stand firm in the battle against the unseen forces of darkness (Eph. 6:10-18). Paul exhorted Timothy (1 Tim. 6:12), “Fight the good fight of faith!” Our enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. At the end of Paul’s life, when he could have listed all the people he had led to Christ and all the churches that he had planted, instead, he told Timothy (2 Tim. 4:7), “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.” Jude 3 appeals to us to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.”
When I first began as a pastor over 41 years ago, I thought that most of the battles I would face would come from outside the church. It’s true that the subtle forces of worldliness constantly creep into the church. During my years of ministry, our godless culture has normalized no-fault divorce, pervasive pornography, profanity, homosexuality, and most recently, transgenderism.
But many of the battles have come from those inside the evangelical camp. In the late 1970’s, the inerrancy of Scripture was a major battle. The call to arms came through Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible [Zondervan], which exposed some of Fuller Seminary’s faculty who taught that the Bible contains errors.
In the 1980’s, John MacArthur wrote several books against those who teach that saving faith does not include submission to His lordship. At the same time, the so-called “prosperity gospel” was spreading all over the world. These false teachers claim that it is God’s will to heal all of your diseases and make you financially prosperous, if you claim it by faith (and send a nice donation to their ministries!). Also, the “New Apostolic Reformation” claims that we still have apostles and new prophetic revelation from God (MacArthur, Strange Fire Thomas Nelson], pp. 86, 89-103).
In the 1990’s, many evangelicals became enamored with the ancient rituals of the church and were drawn back to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Churches. Several evangelical leaders produced and signed a document, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” which affirmed that we should come together on the many areas where we agree and set aside our differences. Of course, that meant setting aside the central Reformation truth that we are justified by grace through faith in Christ, apart from works!
In the late 90’s and early part of this century, the “new perspective on Paul” asserted that the Reformers were mistaken to understand justification as God imputing forgiveness of sins and Christ’s righteousness to us by faith. Rather, this false teaching claims that justification didn’t pertain to the doctrine of salvation, but rather to being a part of the covenant community (Phil Johnson, chapter 4 in Fool’s Gold [Crossway], ed. by John MacArthur).
Now, controversy over “social justice” is threatening to confuse the gospel by making racial reconciliation, ministry to the poor, and economic equality the mission of the church. While the church should help the poor and denounce racism, our main mission must be the gospel (see Kevin DeYoung & Greg Gilbert, What is the Mission of the Church? [Crossway]). Otherwise, we’re trying to fix problems that stem from sin with external solutions that cannot transform human hearts.
So my point is, there have been battles over my four decades of ministry and those battles will continue because the enemy is alive and active. But I’m confident that Pastor Dave is knowledgeable about these battles and will stay abreast of those that erupt in the future. He is committed, as I have been, to the truth that an elder must (Titus 1:9) hold “fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.” Relying on God’s strength, we can stand firm in the battles ahead.
Moses recognized (Deut. 31:2) that at this point he was not able to lead Israel in the conquest of Canaan, both because of his age and because the Lord had told him that he would not be the one to do it. Every leader should be able to “do the math” and see that he won’t be around forever. Paul knew that his “outer man [was] decaying” (2 Cor. 4:16) and that the time of his departure had come (2 Tim. 4:6). Peter recognized that “the laying aside of [his] earthly dwelling [was] imminent” (2 Pet. 1:14). And so older leaders should be ready to pass the baton to courageous younger leaders who will carry on God’s work.
Moses did not hand-pick Joshua. Rather, Moses asked God to appoint a leader to follow him, and God told him that Joshua was that man (Num. 27:15-23). Joshua had served Moses from his youth (Num. 11:28). He had a shepherd’s heart (Num. 27:17). Joshua had the great privilege and responsibility of leading God’s people into their long-promised inheritance.
But Joshua was very different in gifts and style than Moses was. That’s true of every leader of God’s people. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. The church should not rally around one man or another, as if he were the only one capable of leading. The Corinthians were doing that with Paul, Apollos, Peter, and some sanctimoniously claiming that they didn’t follow any leader except Christ (1 Cor. 1:12). But Paul asked rhetorically (1 Cor. 3:5-7),
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.
But, while different leaders will have different strengths and gifts, all leaders need courage to fight the good fight of faith. Moses charged Joshua (Deut. 31:7a), “Be strong and courageous ….” When he formally commissioned Joshua (Deut. 31:23), he repeated, “Be strong and courageous ….” When Joshua began his leadership, God challenged him four times to be strong and courageous (Josh. 1:6, 7, 9, 18). To lead God’s people, which includes confronting error and sin, godly leaders need to fear God and desire to please Him more than anyone else.
Thus, for a healthy transition, trust in the Lord and His presence, not in human leaders. Realize that there will be battles to fight, but with God’s strength, we can overcome. Older leaders must pass the baton to courageous younger leaders who will carry on the fight of faith. Finally,
In verses 9-13, we learn that Moses wrote down “this law,” referring at least to Deuteronomy, but probably to the entire Pentateuch, and told the priests to read it to all Israel, including women, children, and aliens, every seven years when they gathered for the Feast of Booths. The objective was (Deut. 31:12b-13), “so that they may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. Their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.” Commentators point out that the priests were charged with teaching God’s law not just every seven years (as stipulated here), but at all times (Mal. 2:7; Neh. 8:8).
The application for us is that God’s Word must be central to everything we believe, teach, and do as God’s people. We are privileged to have the written Word of God so widely available in our language! Most of you own more Bibles and Bible study helps than the majority of pastors around the world. But, we are charged with the important responsibility of teaching God’s truth, especially the gospel, to our children. But, to do this, you must have genuine faith in Christ as your Savior and then learn God’s Word, so that you fear and obey Him. Kids learn more from your life than from your lectures. You can’t impart to your kids what you yourself do not practice, not just on Sundays, but throughout the week.
Note also the repeated emphasis here on fearing the Lord (Deut. 31:12, 13). Proverbs 9:10 states, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” The fear of God is a biblical truth that is often lacking in modern evangelical churches. The fear of God stems from knowing that He is the Holy One. While He is our loving Father who invites us to draw near in fellowship with Him, we should always do so “with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28b-29). As long as we keep God’s Word central we will fear the Lord and pass that reverence on to our children.
The change of transitions can be difficult. Stanley Arnold (source unknown) wrote, “The essence of human life is change, but for too many of us, change does not excite, it disturbs. If success is what we seek, we must make change a partner in our pursuit.”
God knew that after Moses and Joshua, Israel would abandon the Lord for idols, causing Him to forsake them (Deut. 31:16-18). The threat of apostasy is always present. The Bible predicts and warns us about widespread apostasy in the end times (2 Thess. 3:3-12; 2 Tim. 3:1-5). But it’s not inevitable that we follow false teachers or defect from the faith. We can have a healthy transition if we will trust in the Lord and His presence, not in human leaders who will pass off the scene. Be ready to fight together in God’s strength against the many schemes of the devil. When your leaders courageously stand for the truth and against error, stand with them. And, keep God’s Word central, live it, and pass it down to your children.
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (29)
September 23, 2018
When you come near the end of years of ministry, you think about the question, “What has the Lord done through me that is of eternal value?” Moses must have been thinking about that when he wrote the majestic Psalm 90. In the final verse (Ps. 90:17) he prays, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.” I pray that often!
As Moses came near the end of his life, the Lord told him that in the future, Israel would break their covenant with the Lord and play the harlot with the false gods of the Canaanites (Deut. 31:16). As a result, in judgment the Lord would bring many evils upon them. So the Lord directed Moses to write a song as a witness against unfaithful Israel (Deut. 31:19-21). They were to teach this song to their children as a warning about what happens when you forsake the Lord and follow false gods. So Moses wrote this second song (Exodus 15 is his first song) and taught it to Israel.
God wanted Israel to remember and sing Deuteronomy 32 down through their generations, but it may have been a song that Israel wished they could forget. You’ve had songs that get into your head and you can’t get them out until they just about drive you crazy! We don’t know the tune of Moses’ song, but God wanted it to stay in the Israelites’ heads forever. Someday we’ll hear this song, because in Revelation 15, John saw the saints in heaven singing the song of Moses, praising God for His greatness, righteousness, truth, and holiness. It teaches us:
To avoid turning away from the Lord, we should remember and sing songs that tell us who God is and who we are so that we appreciate what He has done for us in Christ.
It would take many sermons to work through this song in detail, but there are three general lessons:
When God told Moses that in the future, Israel would break God’s covenant and play the harlot with foreign gods, Moses must have felt as if his life’s work was going down in flames! He had put up with hardship, grumbling, criticism, and rebellion from these people for the past 40 years, but his hope no doubt was that once they got into the Promised Land, they would finally become the kingdom of priests and holy nation that God had proclaimed them to be (Exod. 19:5-6). But now he hears this grievous word that after his death, Israel would forsake the Lord and turn to other gods. So God gave Moses this song to teach Israel who He is and to warn them of the consequences if they turned away from Him.
Although God prophesied that Israel would turn to idolatry, it was not inevitable that everyone would do so, if they heeded God’s warning. We need to understand that whatever God foreknows, He foreordains. In other words, God doesn’t just sit in heaven and look down on earth to see in advance what direction the parade will go. Rather, He determines the parade route. He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11; Job 42:2). And so God not only foresaw Israel’s future apostasy, which He announces here (Deut. 31:16); He also foreordained it, yet in such a way that He was not responsible for their sin. While we can’t understand how God can foreordain evil and yet not be responsible for it, the Bible often teaches that very thing (e.g. Acts 2:23; 4:27-28).
When God tells us in His Word what the future holds, it is not so that we can draw up nifty prophecy charts. It’s so that we will heed His warning and not fall into the sins that will happen in the future. And, it’s so that we will not be surprised or discouraged when we see these things taking place. For example, the Bible tells us that in the future, there will be a time of great apostasy, when many professing believers will fall away (Matt. 24:10-12). Many will be deceived by the man of lawlessness (2 Thess. 2:3-12). But knowing that this will happen does not mean that it’s inevitable that we will be part of that future apostasy. Rather, we can be on guard not to fall into spiritual deception. And, we’ll be ready to endure persecution and hardship for the sake of the gospel.
In the introduction (Deut. 32:1-2), Moses calls upon heaven and earth to let his teaching be as refreshing rain on the earth. But the bulk of the song describes terrible judgment, not refreshing showers! How can this be? Warnings and descriptions of future judgment are a means of blessing if we heed the warning. It’s as if I warned, “Don’t go near the edge of the Grand Canyon. Many have fallen in the past and there will be many who fall and die in the future.” That predictive warning does not make it inevitable that you will fall over in the future. If you take the warning to heart, you will be blessed to avoid becoming a victim of my prediction.
That’s the intent of this song. One way to heed the warning of future apostasy is to sing spiritually edifying songs as we gather each week.
John Calvin opens The Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. by John T. McNeill [Westminster Press], 1:1:1) with this provocative statement: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” McNeill notes (p. 36, note 3), “These decisive words set the limits of Calvin’s theology and condition every subsequent statement.” So in one short sentence, Calvin sums up everything he’s going to say for the next 1,500 pages! True and sound wisdom consists of knowing God and knowing ourselves as revealed in Scripture.
Moses begins (Deut. 32:3), “For I proclaim the name of the Lord.” The Lord’s name refers to all that He is, the sum of His attributes. His name is His person as revealed in His Word. I can’t work through this song verse by verse, but here are seven truths that highlight who God is:
“The Lord” (Deut. 32:3) translates Yahweh, God’s covenant name that He revealed to Moses at the burning bush, where He told Moses to tell the Israelites, “I AM has sent me to you” (Exod. 3:14-16). It was by His name Yahweh that the Lord promised to deliver Israel from bondage in Egypt (Exod. 6:2-8). The Lord Jesus claimed to be “I AM” when He told the Jews who challenged Him (John 8:58), “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” He is the mediator of the new covenant, which is better than the old (Heb. 7:22; 8:6).
Also, Moses proclaims (Deut. 32:3), “Ascribe greatness to our God!” God alone is truly great! Even the greatest and most powerful human leaders are not great in comparison with God. Nebuchadnezzar thought that he was great as the ruler and builder of Babylon, but God humbled him and made him act like a beast in the field and eat grass until he recognized (Dan. 4:25), “that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.”
God is also “The Rock” (Deut. 32:4). This points to His stability and unchangeableness. He is a place of refuge and security for His people. We can build our lives on Him as our sure foundation (Matt. 7:24-27). He is not moved by storms. He can be counted on in every situation.
Note, also verse 31: “Indeed their rock is not like our Rock.” “Their rock” refers to the false gods of the Canaanites. It points to idols that people trust in. Some trust in money, thinking that it will bring them stability and security in life. But billions of dollars will be worthless when you die and stand before God (Luke 12:15-21). Others trust in pleasure, but sensual pleasures quickly fade as we grow old and die. Others trust in relationships with a spouse, family, or friends. Such relationships are a gift from God. But death can quickly rob us of our cherished relationships. Whatever rock you put your trust in is not like our Rock, the living and true God. He alone ultimately satisfies, both for time and eternity (Ps. 16:11).
Deut. 32:4: “His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” God’s ways are how He deals with people. Here it especially applies to God’s dealings with Israel in the wilderness. They grumbled and did not submit to His ways, even though He abundantly provided for them. They often accused God of cruelty and unfaithfulness by bringing them into the wilderness to kill them. Thus God says of Israel in the wilderness (Ps. 95:10), “For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways.” He is perfect, just, faithful, and righteous.
Deut. 32:6b: “Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you.” A few times the Old Testament states that God is Israel’s Father (Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Mal. 2:10). It mentions more frequently that Israel was God’s son (Earl Kalland, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelien, 3:201). God was Israel’s Father because He brought them as a nation into existence. Jesus often taught that we are to approach God as our loving Father (Matt. 6:9, 26, 32; etc.).
The fact that God bought Israel refers to His redeeming them out of slavery in Egypt. He has the right of ownership and they owe Him total submission and allegiance. Even so, we are not our own; we’ve been bought with a price. Therefore we are to glorify God in our bodies (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
Deut. 32:8, “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.” Paul was probably referring to this verse when he told the Athenians (Acts 17:26), “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.” Both verses go back to Genesis 10, which records the divisions of the nations after the flood.
The last phrase of verse 8, “according to the number of the sons of Israel,” is unclear, but as one commentator explains (Kalland, ibid. 3:203), “the most probable meaning is that the boundaries of the nations were determined with the intent that Israel would have Canaan because her numbers could be supported in that area. This was done because Israel was central in the Lord’s affection and sovereign planning.”
The Bible teaches that the Lord is our portion and inheritance (Ps. 16:5; Eph. 1:11), but also that we are His portion and inheritance (1 Sam. 10:1; 1 Kings 8:51)! Psalm 149:4 declares, “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people.” It should constantly amaze us that the sovereign over the nations chose us as His portion and inheritance!
Verses 10-14 chronicle how God found Israel in a howling desert wasteland, cared for him, and guarded him as the pupil of His eye. Like an eagle carefully hovering over its young, God tenderly cared for Israel. Looking ahead to Israel’s inheritance in Canaan, Moses says that the Lord guided him, fed him with the produce of the field, gave him honey and oil from the rock, and provided abundant flocks, food, and wine. Even so, Jesus proclaimed (John 6:35), “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” He said (John 10:10b), “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God sustains and cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7).
This is a major theme in this song (see verses 19-27, 31-35, 40-43). His judgment is certain for all who reject Him. This applies both to those who claim to be His people, but live in disobedience to Him, and also to nations that worship false gods. Note two features of this point:
First, in verses 26-27, speaking in human terms, God says that He would have cut disobedient Israel to pieces and removed the memory of them from earth, except that He feared that Israel’s enemies would boast that they had triumphed, rather than acknowledge that God had done it. The point is, God is jealous for His glory among the nations. It’s the same point that we’ve seen when God told Moses that He would wipe out Israel and make a new nation out of Moses’ descendants. But Moses countered, “Lord, if You do that, the nations will say that You weren’t able to keep Your promises to these people!” (See Exod. 32:9-14; Num. 14:11-21). But God will be glorified when He judges sinners.
Second, the Lord tells Israel that when they turn away from Him, He will use the idolatrous nations to punish Israel and then He will judge those nations because of how they treated Israel (Deut. 32:35-36)! It’s similar to Habakkuk, where the Lord tells the prophet that He is raising up the wicked Chaldeans to judge Israel, but then He will judge the Chaldeans. “Vengeance is Mine” (v. 35) is cited twice in the New Testament, once to prohibit us from taking our own vengeance (Rom. 12:19); and the other time (Heb. 10:30) to warn us that God will judge those who trample Jesus under foot and regard His blood of the covenant as unclean. Jonathan Edwards used “in due time their foot will slip” (v. 35) as the text for his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
God sums up the bottom line of who He is (Deut. 32:39):
‘See now that I, I am He,
And there is no god besides Me;
It is I who put to death and give life.
I have wounded and it is I who heal,
And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.
Since that is who God is, we should worship Him alone and sing songs that exalt Him for his greatness and majesty.
As Calvin said, true and sound wisdom, consists both of knowing God and knowing ourselves. He meant, knowing ourselves as God’s Word reveals. We can’t trust our own judgment, because as Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”
This song jars us by portraying God’s greatness, goodness, and faithfulness, but then hitting us with Israel’s sin. After telling us (v. 4) that God is the Rock, whose work is perfect, whose ways are just, that He is faithful, righteous, and upright, verse 5 declares,
“They have acted corruptly toward Him,
They are not His children, because of their defect;
But are a perverse and crooked generation.
Jesus used that last line to verbalize His exasperation over the unbelief He encountered (Matt. 17:17).
Then after telling how God tenderly cared for Israel (Deut. 32:7-14), verse 15 jars us: “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” Jeshurun means, “upright one,” and here refers sarcastically to Israel. After God’s tender care, they should have been upright; instead, they kicked the gracious Shepherd who provided abundantly for them. Moses goes on (vv. 15b-18) to describe the depths of their defection from the Lord:
Then he forsook God who made him,
And scorned the Rock of his salvation.
“They made Him jealous with strange gods;
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
“They sacrificed to demons who were not God,
To gods whom they have not known,
New gods who came lately,
Whom your fathers did not dread.
“You neglected the Rock who begot you,
And forgot the God who gave you birth.
This terrible indictment is not describing true believers in the Lord (“They are not His children,” v. 5). God is condemning the Israelites who had seen God’s grace and love, but had rejected Him to follow false gods.
When God saves us, He gives us a new nature that loves Him and seeks to know Him more deeply. And yet, as Paul lamented (Rom. 7:18), “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.” My understanding is that he was referring to his life after he was saved. I do not agree with those who claim that believers have only a new nature, but not the old. Whether you call it the old nature or the flesh, I can sing, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” The closer we draw to the “unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16) of God’s presence, the more we become aware of the remaining corruption that dwells within us. And so all the more we need to judge our sin, guard our hearts, and walk in moment-by-moment dependence on the Lord. Finally,
At the end of his song (v. 46), Moses tells Israel to take all these words of warning to their heart. As Jonathan Edwards argued (The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, 1:236), “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” In other words, when we truly know God, it affects our hearts, which includes our will and understanding. Moses adds (v. 47) that to obey God’s warning through this song was not just an idle singing of a song, but it was their life.
The only way that such a strong warning that confronts our many sins can be life for us is if God provides a way to forgive our sins. Moses alludes to this at the end of the song (v. 43) when he says that the Lord “will atone for His land and His people.” In the Old Testament atonement was through animal sacrifices. For us, Jesus is God’s perfect and final sacrifice. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). If you trust in Him, your sins are atoned for and you receive eternal life.
The catalyst for heartfelt worship is when you see God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible and you see yourself as justly deserving His wrath. But then you see the surpassing riches of His grace in sending His own Son to die for your sins (Eph. 2:4-7).
In 1715, Louis XIV of France died. He called himself, “Louis the Great.” His court was the most magnificent in all of Europe. He even planned his funeral to be spectacular. To dramatize his greatness, his body was put in a golden coffin. He had given orders that the cathedral be dimly lit, with only a special candle set above the coffin. Thousands waited in hushed silence. Then Bishop Massilon began to speak. Slowly reaching down, he snuffed out the candle, saying, “Only God is great!” (Source unknown)
May our singing help us to remember: Only God is great! We’re not great. But we have a great Savior! Cling to Him! Worship Him alone!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (30)
October 7, 2018
Dr. J. I. Packer begins his classic Knowing God ([IVP], p. 13) with a lengthy quote from a sermon that C. H. Spurgeon preached when he was only 20 years-old. The first paragraph reads:
It has been said by someone that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
After quoting three more paragraphs of Spurgeon’s sermon, Packer raises the possible objection that in Spurgeon’s day, people found theology interesting, but today, people think that theology is boring or irrelevant. But Dr. Packer counters (p. 14) that the study of the nature and character of God “is the most practical project anyone can engage in. Knowing about God,” he argues, “is crucially important for the living of our lives.”
As we near the end of our study of the life of Moses, I thought that it would be beneficial to look at what Moses knew about the God he served. If you’ve ever been around a godly old man, you want to absorb his spirit and find out what he knows about God. As Moses was about to die, he blesses God’s people and tells us what he knows of the eternal God. He glories in God and in the blessedness of God’s people. We learn that …
Knowing God as He has revealed Himself and making Him known should be the quest of our lives.
God gives eternal life to all who believe in Jesus (John 3:16). But what is the essence of eternal life? It’s far more than just living forever! Jesus gave us the essence of eternal life when He said (John 17:3), “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Knowing the only true God and His eternal Son, whom He sent to die to redeem us from our sins, is the heart of eternal life. From Moses’ long life as God’s leader and prophet we learn that …
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, we’re all born as sinners, alienated from God (Rom. 5:12). The problem is, we don’t even realize our desperate need for God to save us from our sin because Satan has blinded our eyes to the truth (1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 4:18). Most people think, “I know that I’ve done wrong things, but I’m a basically good person, not a terrible sinner. And, since God is loving, He will see my good deeds and forgive my faults so that I’ll get into heaven when I die.”
To be saved, God has to open your eyes to the truth that you are lost and you can’t do anything to save yourself. The Holy Spirit convinces you of your sin, of God’s absolute righteousness, and of the coming judgment (John 16:8-11). And then, one glorious day, God graciously opens your eyes to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). He grants you the faith to trust in Christ and His death on the cross as the full payment of your debt of sin (Acts 11:18; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 2:8-9). You enter into a personal relationship with the living God, which is the beginning of eternal life.
We don’t know for certain when Moses came to know God personally. As an infant, Pharaoh’s daughter took pity on him as one of the Hebrew children under her father’s sentence of death. She rescued him and raised him as her own son. We’re not told how much contact he had with his birth parents during his upbringing, but there must have been some influence there. Hebrews 11:24-27 tells us:
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.
We can only know the unseen God to the extent that He reveals Himself to us. So sometime in Moses’ first 40 years, God must have revealed enough of Himself so that Moses gained some knowledge of the treasure of God’s promised redeemer, Jesus Christ. Like the man who discovered the hidden treasure in the field (Matt. 13:44), Moses gave up the riches and pleasures he could have enjoyed in Egypt to buy that field and gain that treasure.
Have you done that? Of course, the depth of your knowledge of the infinite worth of Jesus grows over time. At first, you barely know Him. All you know is, “I was blind, but now I see” (John 9:25) because Jesus opened my eyes. That’s the beginning point of a lifetime and eternity of knowing God.
Moses didn’t have the Bible (he wrote the first five books of the Bible!), so God revealed Himself to Moses directly. We don’t know how much Moses knew of God before God revealed Himself at the burning bush, but there Moses came to know God as the Holy One (Exod. 3:5). He revealed Himself as Yahweh, the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. 3:6). He is “I am who I am” (Exod. 3:14), the eternal, self-existent One. He cares about the affliction of His people. He initiates their deliverance from slavery (Exod. 3:7-8). He is more powerful than Pharaoh, the most powerful monarch on earth at that time (Exod. 3:10, 19-20). He has the power to harden Pharaoh’s heart and to strike his land with terrible plagues, including the death of all of Egypt’s firstborn. He is the God who demands complete obedience (Exod. 4:24-27). God spoke with Moses face to face, which He did not even do with Moses’ brother, Aaron, or His sister, Miriam (Num. 12:7-8; Exod. 33:7-11; Deut. 34:10).
You may wonder, “Does God reveal Himself directly to people today?” He can do this for those without the Bible through dreams or visions, but His normal mode of revelation now is His Word that tells us about Jesus Christ (John 1:1; Heb. 1:1-3). Even if a person comes to know Jesus through direct revelation, that person will not grow to know God very well without learning God’s written Word.
Later, after God directed Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and to worship Him at Mount Sinai, Moses spent forty days and nights on the mountain alone with God (Exod. 24:18). God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and revealed to him many other laws for His people. After the incident with the golden calf (Exod. 32), Moses went back on the mountain, where he boldly asked (Exod. 33:18), “I pray You, show me Your glory!” God replied (Exod. 33:19-20),
“I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
Then God hid Moses in a crack in the rock and passed by, revealing His back to Moses (Exod. 33:21-23). There He proclaimed (Exod. 34:6-7), “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” That profound revelation of who God is, is repeated at least seven other times in the Old Testament (Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2).
Through the detailed instructions about the construction of the tabernacle (Exod. 25-30, 35-40), the role of the priests, the sacrificial offerings, and the feasts (Leviticus), God revealed more of Himself and of the Lord Jesus Christ to Moses and all Israel. Jesus rebuked some Jewish leaders who thought that they were following Moses by saying (John 5:45-46), “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.”
Yet sadly, there are many Christians today who have never read through the Bible even once. But Paul said (Rom. 15:4), “For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” He told Timothy (2 Tim. 3:16-17), “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” By “all Scripture,” Paul was referring to the Old Testament.
On the Emmaus Road after His resurrection, Jesus rebuked the two disciples who did not yet understand that it was necessary for Him to suffer before He entered into His glory. Then Luke (24:27) states, “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.” Before He ascended into heaven, Jesus told the disciples (Luke 24:44), “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” The Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms were the three major divisions of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus’ point was that the entire Old Testament spoke about Him and was fulfilled in Him.
The point is, if you want to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent, you have to read, re-read, meditate on, and study the entire Bible, which is God’s primary means of revealing Himself to us today.
Deepening your personal knowledge of God is not an easy, pain-free process. In fact, it is often through the trials and crises in life that you come to know God in ways that you never would have known Him apart from those difficult times.
Throughout Moses’ life, we see him encountering various trials that drove him to the Lord in prayer. For example, when God directed Moses to demand that Pharaoh let Israel go, Pharaoh’s response was to make things more difficult for the Israelites by requiring that they gather the straw for making bricks and still meet their previous quotas. When they couldn’t do it, the taskmasters beat them. In turn, they angrily confronted Moses for making them odious in Pharaoh’s sight. Moses’ response was to return to the Lord and pour out his complaint (Exod. 5:22-23),
“O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people? Why did You ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all.”
The Lord’s response was to reveal more of Himself to Moses. He promised (Exod. 6:1) that Moses would see more of His power in dealing with Pharaoh. Then God revealed more about His past dealings with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as His promise to bring Israel out of bondage and take them for His people so that they would know that He is the Lord their God (Exod. 6:2-8). Moses faced problem after problem during the exodus and then in the wilderness as the people complained and accused him of bringing them out of Egypt to kill them and their children. Each time, Moses retreated into the Lord’s presence in prayer and then obeyed what the Lord told him to do. He often went out to the tent of meeting, where he spent time in the Lord’s presence and the Lord spoke with him face to face (Exod. 33:7-11).
The one glaring exception to Moses’ obedience was when in anger towards the complaining people, he struck the rock to bring forth water, when God had told him to speak to the rock (Num. 20:1-13). Because of that sin, God told Moses that he would not be the one to lead Israel into the Promised Land. But even through that sin, in a deeper way Moses came to know God as holy (Num. 20:12; 27:14).
Jesus told us how we can know Him more deeply (John 14:21): “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” First, we must have His commandments, which we learn in the Bible. Then as we learn to keep His commandments, He will progressively reveal Himself to us.
But, even as Moses learned more about God through his failure in striking the rock, so we can learn more about Him through our failures when we repent and seek His forgiveness. This isn’t to encourage you to sin so that you can know God more deeply! But even through your failures you can learn more about the Lord’s love, His grace, and His holiness. So, don’t give up when you fail the Lord. Turn back to Him in faith and obedience and He will graciously reveal more of Himself to you.
But so far I’ve only reviewed what we’ve already seen in our study the life of Moses. To briefly survey our text we learn:
Moses did not keep his knowledge of God to himself, but made God known to Israel and to us through writing the Pentateuch (Deut. 31:9, 22) and Psalm 90. Following his example, we should make our knowledge of God known to others as He gives us opportunities. I can only briefly list these characteristics of God:
Thus knowing God is a lifelong quest that requires seeking Him in every situation. A mature knowledge of God over a lifetime gives you a spiritual legacy to pass on to the next generation.
Several versions translate verse 29, “Happy are you, O Israel.” As John Piper often says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” If we are not happy and satisfied in God, we will be poor witnesses for the gospel of God’s grace. To glorify God, we must make it our first priority every day to find happiness and joy in Him and His gracious salvation. In verse 26, Moses exclaims, “There is none like the God of Jeshurun.” In verse 29, he asks rhetorically of Israel, “Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord?” When we realize what the only true God graciously did in sending His only Son to save us from our sins, we should be the happiest people on earth! C. H. Spurgeon observed (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit [Pilgrim Publications], 23:348), “For Christians to be happy is one of the surest ways to set them seeking the salvation of others.” He adds that if we were serving a tyrant who made us miserable, then we should warn others to avoid him. But in our gracious God, we are supremely happy and should want others to share our happiness in Him.
Seven practical things you can do to grow to know God:
In Philippians 3:7-11, Paul explains how he counted all of his former religious activities and accomplishments as rubbish so that he might know Christ. The aim is not just to know about Christ, but to know Him personally (see Packer, pp. 21-22).
Healthy, growing relationships require time spent together. Make it your priority to meet with the Lord every day.
Get a good study Bible (ESV, MacArthur, Reformation, etc.). Read consecutively so that you don’t just read your favorite parts. There are many read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plans online.
As I pointed out, Jesus said that He will reveal Himself to those who love and obey Him. Apply God’s Word on the heart or thought level, not just outwardly.
Packer’s Knowing God is a good place to begin. A. W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy [Harper & Row] is short but deep. A. W. Pink’s The Attributes of God [Baker] is also short and helpful. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology [Zondervan] is readable with an emphasis on application. If you want a challenge, try Stephen Charnock’s two-volume The Existence and Attributes of God [Baker]. Warning: It’s written in Elizabethan English! R. C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God [Tyndale] should be on every Christian’s reading list.
The sermons of John Piper, John MacArthur, Mark Dever, and many other godly men are available online. Finally,
Meet with a small group and interact on good books that you’re all reading together. We need each other to grow in Christ!
May the Lord bless you abundantly as you seek to know Him and make Him known!
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation
Life of Moses (31)
October 14, 2018
Maybe I’m weird, but I often read the obituaries in the newspaper. It’s interesting to read what family members say about the departed loved one. What are they remembered for? Usually, it’s their relationships with family and friends, their careers, and their favorite activities and hobbies. But, it’s also sobering to read obituaries, because someday someone will write mine. What will I be remembered for?
Once in California, my phone rang and a woman on the other end asked, “Father Cole?” I replied, “Well, I am a father and my name is Cole, but are you looking for the Catholic priest?” I offered to get his number, but she asked, “Well, you’re a reverend, aren’t you?” I said, “I’m the pastor of a church here.” She replied, “That will do.” She then explained that her father had died and she was looking for someone to conduct the funeral.
I met with her and two of her siblings. In the course of talking about the funeral service, I shared the gospel with them. Even though I had not said anything about their father, the woman who had called me grew very agitated and blurted out, “Are you saying that our dad is in hell?” I replied that I did not know their father or where he stood with the Lord. I was only trying to let them know what the Bible says about how any person can spend eternity in heaven with the Lord.
At the funeral the three of them got up and read a eulogy about “we remember dad.” They recalled, “We remember dad going to the bar and buying a round of drinks for all his buddies. He loved going to the bar! We remember dad going to the market and flirting with all the cute young checkers.” Basically, they fondly remembered dad as a dirty-minded old drunk! Then I got up and preached the gospel! My associate sitting at the back was trying to suppress his laughter at the disparity of the situation!
But the important question is not how you want your family and friends to remember you, but rather, “What would God say if He wrote your obituary?” In our text, we have the obituary that God wrote about Moses. It was added sometime after his death (v. 10). But since all Scripture is inspired by God, we know that God wrote this obituary about this great prophet. The lesson for us is:
Since we all will stand before God, we need to live with His obituary for our lives constantly in view.
What will the Lord say? Will He say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21)? Will He shake His head and say, “Your work is in the bonfire, but by My grace, come on into heaven” (1 Cor. 3:15)? Or, will He utter those terrible words (Matt. 7:23), “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness”? God’s obituary on Moses teaches us four lessons:
Last week we looked at what Moses knew about God. God spoke with him face to face in a manner that He didn’t speak with anyone else, even with other prophets (Num. 12:6-8). So Moses knew God in a unique way. But when it comes to the end and we read God’s obituary, it doesn’t emphasize Moses’ knowledge of God, but rather God’s knowledge of Moses (Deut. 34:10), “whom the Lord knew face to face.” (This insight is from P. C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy [Eerdmans], p. 406.) That parallels in reverse the Lord’s terrible words to those who claimed to know Him and do miracles in His name (Matt. 7:23), “I never knew you.” The crucial question is not, “Do you claim to know God, but rather, does God know you?” (See, also, 1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9.)
You may think, “Doesn’t God know everyone? After all, He’s omniscient!” True, but God’s knowing you refers to His foreknowing you as one of His chosen ones (Matt. 22:1-14). As Paul wrote (Rom. 8:29-30), “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” God’s foreknowledge does not mean that He knew in advance that you would choose Him. Rather, it means that He chose to know you before you existed.
Now maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, great! What if God didn’t choose me? What if He didn’t predestine me to eternal life?” But the Bible never teaches the doctrine of predestination to discourage or prevent anyone from coming to Christ. The Bible ends by inviting all to come to Jesus (Rev. 22:17). Jesus gave a wonderful, open invitation to every weary soul (Matt. 11:28), “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
But have you ever thought about the verse just before? Jesus said (Matt. 11:27), “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.” And it’s clear from the context (Matt. 11:17-26) that Jesus does not will to reveal the Father to everyone. Rather, He reveals the Father to those whom the Father has granted such knowledge (Matt. 13:11-17; John 6:65; Phil. 1:29).
So, the vital question is, “How can I know that God knows me?” The biblical answer is, “Have you come to Jesus for salvation? Have you trusted in His shed blood to cover all your sins?” If you’ve done that, it wasn’t because of your wise choice or superior intellect. It was because the Father chose you and Jesus willed to reveal Him to you. If God was pleased to reveal the glory of Christ to you (2 Cor. 4:4-6; Gal. 1:15-16), then you should seek to live the rest of your life with a view to giving an account to Him someday soon (Rom. 14:10-12; 2 Cor. 5:9-10).
Moses was unique in that he was God’s man to found the nation of Israel and give them His laws. But few have such important roles in God’s kingdom. For the average Israelite, it was enough to love God and obey His commandments (Deut. 10:12-13): “Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good?”
In the church, there are a few great leaders like Paul, but for most of us, loving God, loving others (beginning at home), living and serving faithfully in God’s church, and bearing witness as He gives opportunity is what He requires. To do this, God must be central in our daily lives. Spend time each day with Him. Walk with Him. It’s a battle because other things invariably crowd in, but keep fighting for a God-ward perspective. Live in view of the fact that God will write your obituary. What do you want Him to say?
Because of Moses’ sin in striking the rock to bring forth water, rather than speaking to the rock, God determined that he would not bring Israel into the Promised Land (Num. 20:12). He reminded Moses of this more than once. Even though Moses pleaded with the Lord to let him cross over into the land, He refused, although He did allow him to go on the mountain and view the land from a distance (Num. 27:12-20; Deut. 3:23-28). So now the time had come. God told Moses to go up on the mountain where he could view the land. Then he would die there (Deut. 32:48-52).
God is sovereign over when and how we die. He has arranged the very day (Ps. 139:16). Even if we die alone, we’re not alone, because the Lord is with us, just as he was with Moses on that mountain. Some may get an advanced warning, when the doctor says, “You’ve probably got six months to live.” But for others, the time is completely unexpected. None of us is guaranteed even to be alive tomorrow. Years ago in California I mentioned this in a sermon. An older couple were there who had moved away but were back visiting. That afternoon as they returned home, a man swerved across the line and hit them head-on. The wife was killed instantly and the husband was permanently disabled. I conducted her funeral service. Our daughter and son-in-law know a young missionary couple where recently the husband was out playing soccer and unexpectedly died.
With Moses, even though he was 120, his death was not due to physical infirmity, but rather to God’s word to him (Deut. 34:5, 7). He went up the mountain knowing that he was to die, but he went calmly by faith in God’s grace. John Calvin observed (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], 3:404), “Such willing submission proceeded from no other source than faith in God’s grace, whereby alone all terror is mitigated, and set at rest, and the bitterness of death is sweetened.” If your faith is in God’s grace to you in Christ, then you can face the day of your death with calm assurance.
In spite of his failure in striking the rock at Meribah, Moses was still “the servant of the Lord” (Deut. 34:5). God’s hand was still on His servant, but His holiness demanded that Moses’ sin result in this severe consequence of not leading Israel into the land. It taught all Israel that God is holy and is to be treated as holy. Even the greatest leaders do not get a free pass.
In fact, the sins of leaders often are met with more severe consequences than those of others. Those who teach God’s Word will incur a stricter judgment (James 3:1). When David sinned with Bathsheba, God forgave his sin, but He did not relent regarding the death of the baby that was conceived, even though David humbled himself and fasted for a week. And God brought other severe consequences on David’s family because of his sin (2 Sam. 12:10-18).
At first, Moses entreated the Lord to let him cross over into the land (Deut. 3:23-25). But when the Lord told Moses (Deut. 3:26), “Enough! Speak to Me no more of this matter,” Moses submitted to God’s discipline. At that point, his concern was for the people. He asked the Lord to appoint a successor and the Lord directed him to appoint Joshua (Num. 27:12-23). But the Lord graciously allowed Moses to go up on the mountain and get this view of the Promised Land. Even though Moses was 120, God graciously gave him the strength to climb this high mountain (without a walker!) and the eyesight to see the distant horizons of the land (without eyeglasses!) (Deut. 34:4, 7).
Was this a supernatural vision of the land? It seems impossible for Moses to have seen physically everything mentioned (Deut. 34:1-3). The mountains around Jerusalem to the west would have blocked a view of the Mediterranean Sea (“the western sea”). Perhaps it was a spiritual vision, comparable to Satan showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory from the top of a high mountain (Matt. 4:8). Or, the text may be using hyperbole.
But as Moses gazed at the land from that mountaintop, he must have had a “sense of accomplishment mixed with disappointment” (Earl Kalland, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], ed. by Frank Gaebelein, 3:234). He had seen God use him to lead these descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of centuries of cruel slavery in Egypt. He had seen God part the Red Sea to let Israel cross, and he saw that sea come back on top of Israel’s enemy. He had seen daily manna, water from the rock, and quail to feed this vast multitude in that barren desert. The cloud protected them by day and the fiery pillar at night. God had given Moses the Ten Commandments plus many other laws to govern these people; the pattern for the tabernacle; the sacrificial system; and the leadership organizational structure for the new nation. Yet in spite of all these accomplishments, Moses probably felt disappointed that he would not be taking Israel into their promised inheritance.
In Psalm 90, after lamenting how our brief lives are like grass that sprouts in the morning, but withers by evening, and how Israel in the wilderness had been consumed by God’s anger, Moses prays (Ps. 90:17),
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;
And confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.”
If a great leader like Moses had to pray that prayer, how much more do we! The longer I’ve been a pastor, the more I’m aware of my many shortcomings. I wrestle with prayers that have not been answered as I wanted. I confess that many times I have not prayed as often or as fervently as I should. There have been many disappointments along the way, as people I’ve cared about have left the church or, even worse, fallen away from the Lord. If you’re serving the Lord, you’ve had disappointments and unanswered prayers, too. But God is still gracious to give us a glimpse of the land. We know that Jesus is coming and that His kingdom will triumph and endure forever!
Moses had two unfulfilled prayers: (1) “Show me Your glory” (Exod. 33:18); and, “Let me cross over and see the fair land” (Deut. 3:25). But by God’s grace, both were eventually answered. On the Mount of Transfiguration Moses along with Elijah saw Jesus in His glory and he stood in the land (James Hamilton, Moses, the Man of God: A Course of Lectures [Kessinger Publishing], p. 379). We may die with disappointments and unanswered prayers, but the glory of Christ and the blessings of heaven will more than make up for all our disappointments.
Thus God’s obituary of Moses teaches us that since we will die, we should live with eternity in view. We can take comfort in God’s sovereignty over the time and manner of our deaths. And, even the greatest leaders die with disappointments and unanswered prayers.
Al Mohler (The Conviction to Lead [Bethany House], p. 203) tells the story of an old preacher who told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. “They are going to put you in a box,” he said, “and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad.” That’s a blunt way to put it, but it’s a healthy reminder: I’m going to die, but God’s work will go on just fine without me!
Here, God reminds Moses of His covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give Israel the land of Canaan (Deut. 34:4). God will be faithful to His promise. His program will not end with Moses. Earlier, when Moses had asked God to appoint a man as his successor so that the people would not be like sheep without a shepherd, God had said (Num. 27:18), “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.” Deuteronomy 34:9 reminds us that Moses had laid his hands on Joshua, who “was filled with the spirit of wisdom.”
The point is, leaders come and go, but God’s Spirit is eternal. He is the main factor in good leadership and fruitful ministry. Moses died, but the same Spirit who empowered him and gave him wisdom was in Joshua. The two men had different gifts and no one after Moses measured up to him in terms of knowing God face to face and performing the mighty miracles that God did through him (Deut. 34:10-12). But God used Joshua to lead Israel in the conquest of Canaan. Even though after Joshua, Israel floundered through the distressing days of the judges, eventually the Lord raised up a descendant of Rahab, the harlot in Jericho who was saved by her faith, namely, King David (Matt. 1:5-6).
While after David there were times when God’s kingdom through Israel hung by a thread or was even exiled in Babylon, eventually the Son of David, Jesus the Messiah, was born. He is the prophet whom Moses predicted that God would raise up after him (Deut. 18:15-18). Whereas Moses was faithful as a servant in God’s house, Christ was faithful as a Son over His house (Heb. 3:5-6). Although the history of Christ’s church has seen heretics depart from the faith and lead many astray and martyrs be slaughtered by evil men, we can be assured that one day soon we will hear the angel in heaven proclaim (Rev. 11:15), “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.”
Deuteronomy 34:6 reads, “And He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows his burial place to this day.” Some commentators say that God may have used men to bury Moses, but I think the fact that no man knows his burial place argues that God Himself buried Moses. Or, He may have sent the archangel Michael to bury him. Jude 9 mysteriously comments, “But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’” There is no other reference to this in Scripture, but it may be that God sent Michael to bury Moses, but Satan demanded Moses’ body, leading to Michael’s pronouncing the Lord’s rebuke on him.
This is similar to Zechariah 3:1-5, where Satan accused Joshua the high priest before the angel of the Lord, but the Lord rebuked Satan, removed Joshua’s filthy garments, and clothed him with a clean robe and turban. So some think that when Moses died, Satan demanded his body, accusing him of being a murderer when he killed the Egyptian taskmaster. But Michael rebuked Satan because God had forgiven Moses by His grace. Believers can be assured that (Rom. 8:1) “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or, perhaps Satan wanted Moses’ body so he could set up a shrine where Israel would fall into idolatry, much like Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Church venerate relics. But God does not want His people to worship any human leader, except for the God-man, Jesus Christ.
Note, that even though Israel often complained against Moses and accused him of trying to kill them in the wilderness, when he died they mourned for him 30 days (v. 8). We often don’t realize our blessings until they are taken from us. Let your loved ones know that you love and appreciate them while you have the opportunity. But then the days of mourning for Moses ended. There is a time to end grieving and move on.
God’s obituary of this great prophet Moses should make us think often about what He will say someday about us. In the 1980’s, I read an interview with Jerry Falwell (in Christianity Today, I think, but I can’t locate the exact source). At the time, Falwell was the pastor of a 20,000-member church. He was the founder and president of Liberty University. He was also the founder and president of The Moral Majority, which was impacting American politics. Although I was not a fan of Falwell, anyone had to admit that he was famous and successful as few leaders are.
But my esteem for Falwell shot up when I read his reply to the interviewer’s question, “What would you like to be remembered for?” Falwell said (as I recall), “I want to be remembered as a godly husband to my wife, a godly father to my children, and a godly pastor to Christ’s church.” I thought, “He nailed it! He hasn’t let his fame go to his head!”
What do you want to be remembered for? Whatever our gifts and calling, the life of Moses the servant of the Lord should motivate us to want God to say in our obituary, “He (or she) was My faithful servant!”
Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation