Exodus, everyone's struggle.

Exodus 32:15-24, 30-34 and Psalms 106:19-23

I want to confess that I read today’s reading with more than a little guilty amusement.  Why?  Well, I’ve been mad before, but I’ve never been Moses mad.  Moses comes down off the mountain, sees that his people have made a golden calf and is so angry that he throws down the tablets God wrote, and then proceeds to destroy the calf in such a way that it becomes powder.  Then what does he do? He makes his people DRINK the powdered ‘god’.  Now, I want you to meditate on that scene and how it must have looked.  Moses must have looked like he was losing his mind as he went about the business of turning that statue into powder.  I wouldn’t have wanted to be standing in his way as he dragged kindling into the pile to burn it, nor would I have wanted to opened my mouth to say something as he ground the remains into powder.  This is a mad seldom seen, and what tickles my amusement is how incredibly destructive and insane he must have seemed to these people around him who had just sacrificed their gold to make this supposed sacred object.  So, I suppose I find it amusing because I’m not the one forced  to drink the equivalent of powdered god Ovaltine.   

Amusement aside though, there is a lot we can learn from Exodus and the corresponding Psalm about our own walk with God.   In fact, the whole of Exodus can be seen as a cautionary tale for we trying to walk as Christians.  God used Moses to deliver his people out of slavery and gave His people many amazing miracles.  Yet, time and time again, the people are tempted to go back to the comfortable way things were.  You might not realize this, but the golden calf they made was most likely a representation of the Egyptian god Apis.  It wasn’t like they just invented a golden calf, they were clinging to the place they had been delivered from. 

For years, I read Exodus and couldn’t grasp how or why a people who had seen so many miracles, who had been delivered from slavery, saved from death, could want it all back like it was-to the point that in the middle of their deliverance they recreate a little slice ‘home’.  Does that puzzle you?  It did me for ages, and then I realized it’s the perfect representation of us who are choosing to call ourselves Christians.  How many of us confess our sins, only to turn back to them again and again?  How many of us choose to follow God only part time or half way?  It’s not like we don’t receive His Grace, or that we haven’t experienced our own miracles.  Yet, holiness is hard and slavery to the gods we create, may lead us to death, but is so much easier, so much more familiar and comfortable. 

Psalm 106: 23:

23Therefore he said he would destroy them -- had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

The Psalm gives us a link, I think, to what would come after Moses.  Let us first understand that God was not ready to destroy them at His will, but because THEY willingly and wantonly rejected Him.  Of their own free will, just like us, choose that they do not want to be in His presence.  God is not going to force life on them, and anything outside of Him is death, so destruction would have happened were it not for Moses, the faithful, who stood in the breach and turned the people back.  Yes, by going completely mental with anger, but still he did what was needed to impress upon his people this was life and death serious. 

Now, we have a Messiah to stand in the gap for us, offering us not only to turn away God’s anger, but to deliver us out of the slavery which we bind ourselves through the golden calves we create.  Let’s face it, their Exodus is ours, their struggle with a walk of faith is ours, and their desire for the familiar slavery is also ours.  This is the story of all humanity.

Today, whether we are in the desert or the promised land, let us cling to what is good and Holy.  Let us lean on He who stands in the breach for us, and ask that He deliver us from every evil. Most importantly, let us get Moses angry at the false gods we create that keep us from our redemption.

Jesus, your stand in the gap for us, leading us to the promised land of Your Father, destroy in us all desire for our old slavery and grant us the heart that keeps our eyes on truth.  AMEN!

Just some food for thought and prayer…

Here I am, Lord, send me,

Lisa Brandel