Moses had been gone
for forty days. Like children in the absence of parental oversight, the people
regressed. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but it was a bad thing.
Their biggest
complaint seems to have been that God could not be seen, but the implication
for the Jews was that Moses made up for that.
How many leaders have
become golden calves, idols that we look up to because of the apparent absence
of God. Well if Moses could fail that, so will contemporary idols. We let them
go up to the misty mounts for us and trust them to bring God’s instruction back
down to us again.
That never changed hearts
or minds. Take such a leader away for a while and you will soon expose the shallowness
of such a faith. We must develop a personal walk with God.
It is because of this
that one of the three clauses of the New Covenant is, “I will show you what to
do and you will not need another to show you” (Hebrews 8). Another clause adds,
“I will be your God and you will be my people”. There is no substitution in any
of that.
Thus, not only did the absence of Moses expose
the undercurrent of unreformed hearts, it also exposed the nakedness of their
souls
Aaron had them all
strip off their clothes to reveal the shame of their sin. They had eaten from
the tree of knowledge in a barren land without trees, where God sent them to
keep them from wrong influences. As soon as they did, the poison of the old
serpent corrupted them.
They made a golden
calf from the earrings of the women, confirming that the people had heard and
but never really listened. They had not received His word or feared it, for
they were mere spectators to what “they” were doing and not fellow stakeholders
in any of it.
Aaron misguidedly or
maybe cynically said, “these be the gods that brought you out of Egypt”. They
danced and sang before that, content to have something that looked religious
enough to make up for the real nakedness of their unregenerated hearts.
Yet, ironically, Aaron
implied that they were worshiping the Lord. Neither he nor the people had a
mature grasp of who the Lord is or was. They were like children growing into an
understanding of their fathers and willing to test his boundaries to find out.
God saw the rebellion and sent Moses back
He smashed the tablets
of stone on the ground, in anger. It is reminiscent of the life that came down
to dwell among us, but which His own did not know for they crushed Him on a
cross.
Moses inter-mediated
for Israel and staved off God’s seething anger, but justice was swift. The
people were asked to declare their allegiance and those with Moses then scythed
through the camp, leaving three thousand dead and a broken nation. They learnt
their first lesson.
God, still angry, told
the Jews to get out and go to the land He had promised them. He was willing to
uphold His promise, but He refused to go with them.
Then Moses set up the
basic tabernacle, outside the camp and a repentant people came to that. I
presume a number didn’t. They saw Moses enter the tent with Joshua and they
witnessed the cloud of God come down to the tent.
God spoke to Moses as man to man
Moses said, “If you
will not go with me, I will not go”. He argued that the greatest distinction of
their faith, that by which they would be known to all, was that God dwelt among
them.
Abraham got that too
when he realized, on Mount Moriah, that the key to his faith was a divine
relationship with God.
Thus God relented. It
was another ‘who are you’ moment, which surfaced a deep undisclosed need in
Moses to also see the glory of God. God obliged and revealed His glory, but not
His face. He held Moses in the cleft of the rock Horeb and Moses saw God walk
by.
The mercy of God returned and the journey of
Israel resumed
Then Moses returned to
the mount for another forty days, but to replace the broken tablets he hewed
new stones from down below and took them with him.
There is such a
powerful picture in that. The law failed in its first pass, because it was
imposed by God on sinful hearts. It required a life hewn from among men, to covenant
with God on our behalf. Without that, the law was unsustainable.
Thus God below, as in Jesus
the son of man, but in all other respects wholly God, covenanted with God
above, on our behalf, to seal a covenant that could never be broken.
Through Him we found lasting
peace with God, a covering for our nakedness and victory over sin. What was
impossible to the weakness of the flesh, was achieved through Jesus.
Moses initiated all the rituals needed to
sustain favor with God
It was demanding, but
we bear fruit unto eternal life. Moses saw the image of God, but we are
transformed into His likeness from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18)
The face of Moses also
shone, which in 2 Corinthians 3, implies that the people could not see beyond
the law to a greater glory – a glory that Moses did not see. They presumed the
law to be it, as far as it would go, as in “we’ll take it from here, thanks”.
Galatians 3:24-26
rather sees the law as the schoolmaster that revealed our sin and gave us reason
to turn to Jesus. It brought us to Him and in so doing brought us to its own
fulfilment, for Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.
That is why Moses and
Elijah deferred to Him on the Mount of Transfiguration.
The hope reserved in
Jesus for new life and an end to a conscience-based religion, in favor of a
life transformed by the blending of revealed truth and the response of a
faithful heart, was weaved into the story that unfolded beneath Horeb so long
ago.
(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com
