The Heart of Moses
08.10.05
After successfully leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses went up to God on Mount Sinai and the Lord called to him “…you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”1 But when the people saw the lightning and smoke, they trembled and said to Moses “speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.”2 So Moses was the intercessor between God and Israel.
Moses told the people everything the Lord had said, and all the people responded, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do!”3 Then Moses returned up the mountain, and remained with God for forty days, and God gave him stone tablets with the law and the commandment.
Having lost their leader, their intercessor with God, the people of Israel grew restless and fell astray. They demanded that Aaron “make them a god,” and he did – he listened to the people of Israel. He fashioned a molten calf – and they said it was the god that brought them out of Egypt. Were they trying to put a face on an invisible God? Take an immeasurable God and make Him into something they could understand? While Israel may have thought that they were worshipping God, they were actually committing an act of idolatry – breaking the covenant they had just agreed to.
Moses was still on the mountain with God, but God saw Israel’s corruption. In telling Moses what they had done, God disowns His people4, calling them “your people, whom you brought up…”5 Then God says “let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them”6 and offers “I will make you a great nation.”
Moses had just spent days learning how God was to make his brother Aaron the high priest, and Aaron’s sons would become the priestly line. What would Moses and his descendants get for putting up with these grumbling people of Israel? And now the Lord offers Moses, son of a Levite, to become the father of a nation. But none of this is on Moses’ mind - instead he reminds God that these are His people, and says to the Lord “Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.”7 And God does, He changes His mind.
Now when Moses descended from the mountain, he saw everything God had told him. And his anger burned, and he threw down the tablets of the covenant - the covenant Israel had broken. But the day after punishing the Israelites, Moses announces “you yourselves have committed a great sin; and now I am going up to the LORD, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”8 Going to the Lord, he pleads for forgiveness for this people, and offers up his very salvation – his ticket to heaven – if God will only forgive them. God responds “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book.”9
Moses wasn’t to be the one to atone for Israel’s sins, God had a much bigger plan, and honestly Moses didn’t qualify for the role. But Moses the lawgiver, shows us his heart – in that he was willing to sacrifice everything for a people who deserved death. He did not see himself as the Messiah, but in humility asked God if his life could be exchanged for the lives of the people.
If anyone could wind up with a god-complex, it would be Moses. God had said to Moses “I make you as God to Pharaoh”10 and indeed, all sorts of power was wielded through Moses. Yet he understood who he was, and knew he was nothing special without God. “If Your presence does not go with us” what would “distinguish us from all the other people who are upon the earth?”11 Perhaps his insufficiency12 and God’s grace bore a constant reminder of his role as God’s humble servant.
We can learn much in this passage from the life of Moses. We see how important it is to have a personal relationship with Christ, our intercessor, and not to put all our faith in man – what will we do if our pastor leaves, as Moses did for forty days? Aaron listened to the crowd, and was swayed into serving other gods – when do we go along with the crowd? Do we limit God by our thinking, or try to put a face on Him? Do we sometimes serve the god of our imagination, putting certain expectations on how He should be?
Is our relationship with Christ an open one? Are we willing to tell Him just how we feel, as Moses did? I think that perhaps we need to forget for a moment that God knows everything, so that we can just talk to Him like a person. Because He already knows everything, there is no use trying to hide. But there still is every reason to tell God what he already knows – our heart.
What about our willingness to sacrifice part of ourselves for the needs of others? Jesus provides salvation to all who believe, but what about our time, our resources, our energy and our talents? Are we willing to give up what we want in order to provide for the lives of others? Even the lives of sinners?
And finally, our reliance on God, is it that of Moses? Do we know who we are in Christ, and who we would be without Him. Can we honestly say to God “what would distinguish me from anyone else, if not for You.”