Tag Archives: Exodus

Linen and Light

February 16, 2010

Any maturing believer in Christ Jesus knows that sometimes the joy and wonder of our faith is a spontaneous gift of God and that at other times it has to be pursued with dutiful diligence.  Often, though, we are unsure as to why the experience differs like this.  During those seasons when the wonder of God and the will to do His work come less naturally, are we doing something wrong?  Has sin kept us from a more full experience of our faith, or has God designed the Christian life to be this way?

Certainly it seems easy to obey and delight in our God when we wake up in the morning with His glory and His joy flooding our souls.  But on just as many (or usually more) mornings, we wake up without that nuclear plant of godly devotion pumping spiritual energy into our arteries.  God’s Word does not make a distinction between these two types of days, however.  We are to delight ourselves in the Lord always (Psalm 37:4).  We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30) regardless of what kind of day it is.  We are still to obey all His commands, still to serve the Lord with zeal, and still to rejoice.

In essence, it’s as if some days we wake up being Moses and some days we wake up being Aaron.  One day we are the prophet, and one day the priest.

Moses had an enviable position (Numbers 16).  He got called up to the Mountain of God on special occasions when no one else was allowed to touch it.  He got to simply live off the Word of God and nothing else for forty days at a time – twice!  He spoke to God face to face like a man talks with a friend.  He got to stand in the cleft of the rock as God’s glory passed by and he even got to see a little bit of it.  And when he came back down from the mountain, his face shone with the reflected glory of God.  I liken this to the days when we wake up with the spontaneous joy and wonder of God.  These are good times.

Aaron, on the other hand, didn’t get to talk to God face to face like Moses did.  He wasn’t invited to spend forty days feasting on God’s Word up in the mountains.  He wasn’t standing next to Moses in the cleft of the rock.  I liken Aaron’s position to those days when we wake up and have to pursue the joy and wonder of the Lord with blood sweat and tears – days when it does not come naturally.

And yet, Aaron had a form of glory and privilege all his own.  His face might not have shone with beams of light, but he got to get dressed up in special priestly garments that were made “for beauty and glory” (Exodus 28:2).  On his head was a crown that was engraved with the words “Holy to the Lord” (Exodus 39:30).  And when the glory of the Lord descended onto the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34-35), Moses could no longer get inside while Aaron could (that’s what the book of Leviticus is about).

Moses’ countenance truly was glorious after he had spent time talking with the Lord, but Aaron’s was no less beautiful or glorious.  Moses’ glory spoke of Christ’s prophetic role in shining the light of God’s revelation to His people, but Aaron’s glory spoke of Christ’s priestly role of atoning for the sins of His people and covering them with His righteousness.  Great and awesome deeds were done in the name of Yahweh by both of these brothers, and it is the same with us, no matter which side of the spiritual bed we wake up on.

Sometimes the joy of the Christian life comes easy and natural and sometimes we have to put it on like a garment.  Today’s an Aaron kind of day for me, but I’m going to pursue the wonder and glory of God in His Word, I’m going to fight for holiness, and by God’s grace I’m going to please Him with my faithful and zealous service.  Some days we find fruit, but today I’m going to have to farm it.  To God be the glory!

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Trickle Down

February 15, 2010

God doesn’t always do things the way that we might think that He should.  If I were writing Exodus, for example, I wouldn’t have put those six chapters at the end that repeat, sometimes even word for word, what has already been said about the design of the tabernacle.  I also wouldn’t have done what He did in preparing a workforce to build the tabernacle.  Out of all the people who would eventually find themselves working on the project, God gave the artistic abilities necessary to build it only to two men: Bezalel and Oholiab.  He then told these two men to teach the rest of them how to do it.  Why not just give everyone the ability right from the start and skip the whole man-teaching-man aspect of the thing?

Well, a related question might be: why have men build the tabernacle at all?  Why go to all the trouble to give this ultra-specific blueprint to Moses when God could have just dropped the thing out of the sky already assembled?  The answer to these questions is the same as the answer to the question as to why God doesn’t just write the gospel in letters of fire in the sky so that anyone could just look up and understand the offer of salvation in Christ: God delights to use human means to accomplish His purposes.

The gifting of Bezalel and Oholiab with artistic skill and the ability to teach that skill is similar to what God does in the church.  He gifts certain individuals – the preaching and teaching elders (or pastors) – with gifts of wisdom and insight into His word and then also with the gifts to teach that wisdom.  And I’m sure that Bezalel and Oholiab had some of the very same difficulties that we modern pastors have with the task that has been given to us.  Some people don’t learn very well.  For some, it’s like pulling teeth.  You can tell them the same thing ten times in ten days and on the eleventh day, they will do or say something that indicates that they have totally missed what you have been trying to teach them.  Wouldn’t it have been easier if God would have just granted everyone the same level of insight?

But like I said, apparently God delights to use human means to accomplish His purposes.  I say “apparently” because that’s the way He operates all through His Word, and we know that if He has the power to create the entire universe in six days, then He has the power to simply skip the middle men if that was what He wanted.

So why does God do this?  Certainly He could just do everything for us so that we would never have to move or lift a finger.  But that is not how He designed us.  He didn’t make us to simply be blissful blobs.  He has designed us so that we take delight in serving Him.  He has also made each of us unique, so that His people make up a beautiful, multicolored, and ridiculously complex tapestry.  The people of God are not a one note precise unison, we are a heart-stoppingly beautiful harmony.  None of that would be possible if God simply did by Himself everything that He purposed to do and just made us into a bunch of happy little spots on the rug of the universe.

Of course, the logical outworking of this idea is that we only realize our own unique identity and we only feel the deepest joy that God has intended for us if we are each serving God wholly as He has called us.  There is no lasting joy in merely entertaining ourselves with the slop that the world sets out for its swine.  The real joy lies in giving away yourself in the service of the Almighty.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit are not decorations for your soul, they are a call to serve.  They are, in fact, equipment for the mission that God has given each of us uniquely.  So let’s not lament the difficulty of our task; let’s take joy in the fact that we have been given responsibilities by the Creator of the Universe to be co-laborers with Him in all that He is doing.  To God be the glory.

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Holy Inside-Out Man!

February 12, 2010

There are a lot of really cool places on earth that the grand majority of us will never be permitted to go.  I’m not talking about the prohibitive costs of taking a vacation to New Zealand or anything like that.  I’m talking about places like Area 51 or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing of the White House.  We just don’t have the clearance to go into places like that.  They’re places like the old Forbidden City of the Chinese Emperor; there’s a very small list of people who are privileged to have access to the wonders inside.

One of the grandest of such places was the portable tabernacle that served as Israel’s temple during their wilderness wanderings.  I can’t imagine that most Israelites wouldn’t have been itching to take a look inside that place!  They had given so much jewelery and costly fabrics that went into the construction of the thing; they knew it had to be palatial on the inside, but only one family was permitted to go inside, and then only one man out of that family was privileged to enter into the Most Holy Place, and that only once a year.

Another one of those places that we wish we could have been at as we read the Old Testament is in that cleft of the rock when Moses got to see the glorious back of God as He passed by.  But again, that’s one of those places that had an extremely short guest list: one person!  If we don’t have a good understanding of the concept of grace, then this exclusivity can seem unfair.  “Why does he get to see the glory of God like that and the rest of us just have to take it on faith!?”

Fascinatingly, though, God does something wondrous in those who have the special blessing of drawing so near to Him: He makes them living pictures to the rest of the people of the glory that they had the privilege to experience.

When you look at the pattern of the priestly garments in Exodus 28, what you find is that they are made of the same kind of stuff as the tabernacle: blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, fine twined linen, and gold.  In fact, the really intriguing thing about the outfit that the High Priest wears is that it just like the Most Holy Place, only inside-out!  The tabernacle was veiled all around by a courtyard-fence of white linen (this is a picture of the Glory-Cloud, by the way), but what was outside for the tabernacle was inside for the High Priest: he wore the white linen as underwear (Exodus 28:42).  Next came the blue, purple and scarlet cloth (the colors of fire – the heart of the Glory-Cloud).  These colors made up the interior of the tabernacle, and they were clearly visible as the main outer garments of the High Priest.  Finally, at the center of the Holy of Holies, and as the outermost layer of the priestly garments, there is gold (the glory of the presence of the Lord enthroned in the Glory-Cloud).  The High Priest was the only one permitted to go into the glorious Most Holy Place of the tabernacle, but when he came out, all the rest of the Israelites had but to look at him to get an idea of what the inside was like – he was wearing it!

The same was true of Moses being allowed to see the glory of the Lord in the cleft of the rock (Exodus 33:18-33).  He had the great privilege of seeing this most glorious of all sights, but then as he came down the mountain, his own face was shining like the sun (Exodus 34:29-30).  Just as with the High Priest, he was the witness to the rest of the people of the glory of the presence of God.

Very significantly, believers in the New Covenant have this same ministry.  “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)  We are then to take our vision of this glory that we have received and “shine like lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15) and “let your light shine before others” (Matthew 5:16).  The unbelievers are outside the tent entirely, but we as believers have entered in beyond the veil (Hebrews 10:19-20) into the Most Holy Place in Christ.  Therefore, we are witnesses, so wear the holiness of Christ and the testimony of His glorious gospel where all can see it, and thus introduce others to this awesome God that has graciously allowed us to see His majesty.

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Wall of Souls

February 11, 2010

God seems to like images of cherubim in interior décor.  In the tabernacle, the veil that separated the Most Holy Place from the rest of the structure was covered with embroidered representations of these angelic creatures (Exodus 26:31).  In the temple built by Solomon, all the walls of the inner and outer rooms were covered in cherubim (1 Kings 6:29).  In addition, Solomon also built two huge cherubim statues and placed them in the Most Holy Place on either side of the Ark of the Covenant (1 Kings 6:23-28).  Even the Ark of the Covenant itself was topped with the Atonement Cover that featured, as its main decoration, two cherubim with their wings spread out and touching each other and therefore overshadowing the Ark (Exodus 25:20).

At first, I thought that all of this angelic imagery was just because the earthly tabernacle and temple were physical reflections of God’s own heavenly dwelling.  Certainly we find, when we are allowed glimpses into the heavenly realities, that God is surrounded by angelic creatures at all times.  In Isaiah 6, when the prophet is allowed entrance into the heavenly temple, God is surrounded by seraphim (“burning ones”) that constantly speak of His holiness.  When Ezekiel sees the presence of God in the first chapter of his prophecy, the initial details that he notes concern the “four living creatures” that proceed from midst of the glory.  We see the same thing again in Revelation 4, with the throne being surrounded by the four living creatures.  So, certainly the choice of decoration in the earthly copies of God’s heavenly temple reflect the fact that God is constantly surrounded by His angelic host, but there is more to it than that.

In the tabernacle furnishings, the cherubim serve as a barrier.  They are most prominently displayed on the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.  Just like the cherubim of old that guarded the way back to the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24), this veil kept human beings from entering into the presence of God – or even from seeing into it.  And for the one gracious day of the year when the High Priest was allowed into the innermost part of the sanctuary to offer atonement, one final cherubic barrier existed between him and God: the golden cherubim atop the Mercy Seat, with their wings overshadowing the Ark.  God said that He would meet the High Priest here “from between the two cherubim that are on the Ark of the Testimony” (Exodus 25:22).  Once again, angel wings veil the presence of God from human sight.

But I don’t believe that the sole purpose of the presence of these beings around the throne of God is to veil Him from sight; I believe that God orders His abode in this way because He delights in being surrounded by the praise of His creatures.  It’s just that a natural feature of this temple whose walls are made of souls is that those who are not permitted to see the glory of the One at the center have their sight interrupted by all the other beings that surround His throne.

Thus it is with the church.  God is still building his temple walls with spiritual beings.  We are told in 1 Peter 2:5 that we ourselves “like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house”.  Because of the reconciling work of Christ, believers are allowed access through the veil of His flesh (Hebrews 10:19-20) into the holy presence of God and there we become like pillars in His temple (Revelation 3:12).  And what is fascinating about all of this is that we then become both the veil and the representation of God’s glory to all of those that are still outside of it.

So we are witnesses of His glory and His truth because, though these things have been veiled to those still in the world, they have been made clear to us (2 Corinthians 4:1-6).  And God has so ordained it that those who are outside cannot see in unless one of those who makes up the wall of His temple carries news of the glory to those who have not heard (Romans 10:14).  May we truly be a “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) that makes the might and majesty of our Lord just as obvious as that pillar of cloud (angel wings?) and fire (the light of His glory) that led God’s people through the wilderness.

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To Steal a Man

February 10, 2010

The Law of God in the Bible condones slavery.  Oh don’t try to deny it, it’s absolutely true!  It has rules for how to sell yourself into slavery (Exodus 21:1-6), how to sell your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7-11), and some crimes are even punished by selling the perpetrator into slavery (Exodus 22:1-3).  It also has many different rules on how to treat your slaves (Exodus 21:20-21, cf. Colossians 4:1).  And I believe that all of these laws ought to be adopted by our own nation.

Well, those are fighting words in many parts of the country, I understand, but I believe that all nations are held accountable for how well they implement God’s Law (compare Romans 13:1-7 with Revelation 13).  Our nation has had a long and ugly history with slavery, though, and so to even suggest that such a thing be made legal makes the one doing the suggesting look like a racist and a bigot.

The truth of the matter, however, is that if this nation would have structured its laws to reflect the Law of God from the beginning, we never would have had the trouble with the institution of slavery like we did prior to the Civil War.  The Law of God allows a man to sell himself to another man as a slave (apparently for the purpose of overcoming financial difficulty).  The Law allows a father to sell his daughters (the feminists won’t like that one, but then again, they’re going to hate most of the Bible anyway), but it also protects those women from any mistreatment.  The Law uses slavery as a punishment for crime – especially theft – and even allows wartime captives to be taken as slaves in some circumstances.  But what we find absolutely forbidden in the Biblical Law is the taking of a man against his will (outside of a formal war) in order to make him a slave.  In fact, the Bible states that if this done, the one who ‘stole’ the man and any other person found in the possession of the ‘stolen’ man should be put to death (Exodus 21:16).

Imagine if that law were applied to the situation in the South prior to the Civil War.  How many of those slaves that were being brought over here by the boatload do you think were ‘stolen’?  Many Southerners tried to defend the practice of slavery by saying that the Africans’ own people had sold them to us, but we know that virtually none of those slaves came into the system according to the ways that the Bible prescribes.  Practically all of them were stolen men (and women).  If the Biblical Law were the basis of the system, though, those distinguished Southern gentlemen would be put to death as soon as it was determined that they were in possession of man who had been taken against his will.  In fact, the whole African slave trade would never have been started in this country because of the fear of violating this command.

In addition, if our nation’s laws were built around God’s Law, we wouldn’t have the kinds of problems that we have today with unemployment, an abused welfare system, and overcrowded prisons (actually, the Biblical Law has no place at all for incarceration).  Someone who has fallen to the lowest rungs of society could easily sell themselves for a time to a wealthy family and be well taken care of while providing a valuable service.  Those who have been reduced to theft in order to survive would be sold into the same system to make restitution for their crime, but also to be taken care of so that they would no longer have to steal.

The Old Testament’s laws are not antiquated and naive.  They have not been proven less civilized than modern American thinking in these areas.  They reflect the perfectly just, good, and wise character of the benevolent God who gave them.  Fallible and fallen man will never improve on them.  This is as good of a blueprint for a Utopian society as you can get.  Whenever someone complains that God’s Law just doesn’t work – like in the story of the Salem witch trials – the problem can always be traced back to those in the wrong not following the Law of God close enough.  May those of us who are believers in Christ ever strive to show the holy character of God in the Law.

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Don’t Wear Us Out!

February 9, 2010

One of the biggest areas of tension between young pastors and older congregations today – at least in Baptist circles – is the area of ‘visitation’.  Apparently, there has been some kind of radical change in cultural norms in the last couple of generations when it comes to this issue of the expectation of pastors to constantly visit their church members.  Younger pastors do not even understand this expectation and older congregations don’t understand why their young pastor doesn’t see it as a vital need.

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t had too much experience on the church member side of this equation to be able to know if I should expect more visits out of my pastor.  I say that because my last pastor and his family are some of our family’s closest friends, so we saw them all the time in that regard.  In the church where we were before that one, the pastor was my father-in-law and I worked with him every day as the church’s Minister of Students.  So, I’ve never really had the kind of desire for the ‘visit’ of the pastor like other church members may feel.

But now that I am a pastor myself, I sure feel the expectation from the congregation that this is something that the pastor of a church ought to be doing.  And don’t get me wrong, I believe that a pastor ought to be intimately connected to the lives of the people in his church, and I certainly don’t mind going to see people who are sick and in the hospital; it’s the ‘well visits’ that are the difficult issue.

A pastor who wants to faithfully preach and teach the Word of God three times a week has a lot of work cut out for him, even with nothing else on his plate.  When you add to that work-load the need of a pastor to spend quality time with his own family and his need to continue developing himself spiritually and mentally, there’s not a whole lot of time left for other things.  In my own experience, hospital visits are wonderful: you can really minister to the person or the family, can spend time encouraging them and praying for them, and you don’t actually spend that much time there.  Visiting someone who isn’t going through a crisis, though, is quite a bit different.  A single one of these can last for most of an afternoon, taking up valuable work time, and there is rarely much ministry that happens, because no one wants you to come to their house unannounced and teach a Bible study.  Multiply this time-expenditure by the number of families in the church and you start running into big problems.

As I was reading through Exodus 18 this morning, though, I saw a wonderful solution that many others have seen before.  Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, took one look at Moses trying to meet the needs of all the people and proclaimed, “What you are doing is not good” (Exodus 18:17).  Moses was wearing himself and the people out because he was stretched too thin.  So Jethro’s advice was to set up an organization of helpers that could take care of smaller matters, leaving Moses to deal with the issues that were most important to his calling.

In many churches, this is the way they organize the deacons.  Our church in Georgia called it the “Deacon Family Ministry”.  The idea was that each deacon in the church was to be assigned some number of families to care for and would pass on the larger needs up to the pastor.  In reality, though, this rarely works out very well.

When I was approached and asked to be a deacon of our church there, I was told all about the Deacon Family Ministry by the Chairman of Deacons, but I was also told that “no one really does anything, and you won’t be expected to either.”  What an encouraging and challenging recruitment!  Sadly, however, this is the case in many churches.  If the deacons are organized this way, they don’t really do what they’re supposed to do, and the pastor is still blamed for not visiting enough.

This is a heads-up to all you church members out there that might read this: protect your pastor’s time in this area.  He is called primarily to the “ministry of the Word and prayer” (Acts 6:4).  If you want to spend more time with him, invite him and his family over to eat with you.  This won’t take up any of his valuable work time, and is much more enjoyable than an unannounced mid-day visit anyway.  If you have deacons set up into a Deacon Family Ministry, then expect them to to most of the visiting.  You’re pastor will always be there when you really need him, but otherwise let him focus primarily on what he’s been called to do.

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Faithless to the Grave

February 8, 2010

There’s a scene at the beginning of Kung Fu Panda where Oogway the turtle has a vision of Tai Lung (the bad guy) escaping from prison.  When he relates this vision to Shifu, his former-student-turned-Kung-Fu-master, Shifu immediately sends a messenger goose to double the guard at the prison.  At this point, Oogway turns and says in a low voice that none but the audience can hear, “One often finds one’s destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.”

This is of course what happens.  It is a feather from that messenger goose that Tai Lung eventually uses to escape the prison.

I get the same sense of ironic destiny from the people of Israel as they are leaving Egypt heading toward their encounter with God in the wilderness.  At one point in Exodus chapter 14, just moments before they will witness what still stands as one of the greatest wonders that God has ever wrought in the view of human beings – the parting of the Red Sea – and just days after God has brought wondrous plagues on the Egyptians while sparing the Hebrews, the Israelites actually have the gall to ask, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11)

Well, if they didn’t want to die in the wilderness, they are sure going about it in the wrong way!  I don’t think that I would want to mess with the God who could rain hundred-pound-hailstones on His enemies, turn a river to blood, or supernaturally kill every firstborn son of every family of the strongest nation on earth in a single night.  But this is exactly what the Israelites do over and over again during the Exodus: they complain against God’s leadership.  They show their unbelievable capacity for faithlessness at every turn.  They complain about no food, they complain about the food they’re given, they complain about stinky water, they complain about Moses and Aaron.  And one time, when Moses is gone for about a month – while they are standing in full view of a mountain on fire with God’s glory – they decide they will make their own god to replace the one that they haven’t heard from in a few days.

They are so terrified of dying in the wilderness that, ultimately, that becomes their fate.  God was bringing them to a land that was unbelievably fruitful.  The land was inhabited and they were to dispossess the inhabitants, the result being that they wouldn’t even have to build houses or cities for themselves.  The only thing they had to do was trust their God to fight for them.  This He had already done right in front of their faces time and time again.  He completely broke the back of the Egyptians and allowed His people to plunder them on their way out.  If that wasn’t enough, He drowned the entire military might of Egypt in the heart of the Red Sea.  God had conquered the greatest kingdom on earth and His people hadn’t even lifted a finger.

But when they came to Kadesh-barnea and the spies saw the physical might of those whom they were to dispossess, Israel was once again faithless.  God promised them that He would fight their enemies, but they couldn’t imagine themselves fighting the giants of the land and winning.  It seems that this was their problem all along.  They never considered what God would be able to do in their circumstances, they just looked to blame Him when they found themselves in a tough situation.  They never seemed to get it that the tough situations were there so that they could see the glory of God displayed and so that they could emerge victorious and stronger than before on the other side.

So, God finally gave them what they had so long feared and sought to avoid: death in the wilderness.  Kadesh was the last straw.  What would follow was to be a forty-year funeral where all the faithless were to be buried in the sands of the wilderness.

This leads me to wonder: how do I face tough situations?  Does my mind jump first to a complaining question, “Why, God, have you brought this on me?” or to a hopeful expectation, “I can’t wait to see how you’re going to gloriously show yourself in this!”?

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

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The Way He Works

February 5, 2010

What would you expect to happen if God called you to become a pastor and led you to a certain church so that you could feed His sheep?  Well, I can tell you from my own experience and from the reported experiences of many of my friends in ministry that you would expect to see some fruit from your labor.  After all, most pastors have to sacrifice a lot to follow this call of God: we go to school long enough to be doctors and yet we accept pitifully low salaries in proportion to our education level, and we often move great distances away from our families.  Not only that, but we also put in long hours of work that is both mentally and spiritually taxing.  So it is natural to expect to see some kind of results.

Why then does God so often start us out with heartbreaking failure?  That’s the question that Moses asked after his first encounter with Pharaoh in Egypt: “O Yahweh, why have you done evil to this people?  Why did you ever send me?  For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all” (Exodus 5:22-23).

Can we say that our response would have been different if we were in his shoes?  Moses left the land of Egypt as a murderer running for his life.  He had settled into a very happy, comfortable, and prosperous way of life out in the wilderness of Midian.  He had no desire to come back to Egypt and do the kinds of things that God was asking him to do, and yet he finally surrendered to God and set his whole life on this course to do God’s will.  God had even appeared to him and spoke audibly to him telling him that this was his calling and purpose: to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go.  So we understand Moses’ frustration when he does what is required and things get worse for everybody.  Pharaoh just dismisses him, absolutely refusing his demand, and then the Israelites get smashed with extra work just because Moses came, leading pretty much everyone to hate Moses.

A lot of pastors have a similar experience.  We come out to these churches that God has called us to and we seek to do what He has commanded us: we preach His Word.  But what we expect to happen doesn’t happen.  We have read Isaiah 55:11 that says that God’s Word will not return void, but what we find is that people start leaving.  It turns out that a lot of people don’t want to be taught the Word.  So Moses’ complaint becomes our own: “Why did you ever send me?”  “I was happy where I was!  I didn’t need this!”  What are we missing here?

What we’re missing is the glory of God.  Moses forgot that God told him that “the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand” (Exodus 3:19).  What we’re missing is that if Moses would have stalked right up to Pharaoh as soon as he arrived, demanded that the Israelites be freed, and then got what he asked for, it would have looked as if Moses had the mighty hand to compel Pharaoh.  He would have been the hero of the people.  As it was, Moses’ strength and aptitude (small though this was) had to decrease so that God’s glory and the display of His power could increase.  God doesn’t need to throw ten miraculous plagues and shine forth His glory if His human servant can accomplish it all with a short speech.

And so why should we as pastors expect any different.  If we were to walk into a struggling church, preach a few Sundays, and then all of a sudden start to see amazing growth, everyone – including us – would think that we had something to do with it.  God desires to get us to the place where it is obvious to everybody that He is the Great One that deserves all the praise.  He hasn’t called us in vain; He’s just waiting to give the fruit until it is obvious that it could have come from no other source.  To God be the glory!

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Unburnable Bush

February 4, 2010

The bush that burns without being consumed (Exodus 3) is a puzzle.  It’s just as puzzling to readers today as it was to Moses thousands of years ago.  We want to stop and examine this phenomenon just as much as he did.

Why is the bush not burned?

Clearly this meeting is full of revelation from God.  This is where He revealed His eternal Name to His servant Moses.  The signs of the staff-tuned-snake-turned-staff and the hand-made-leprous-made-clean also revealed something about God’s power and character.  The instruction for Moses to remove His sandals because the ground was holy further revealed God’s character.  But what was the fire in the bush saying?

Moses gives us an indication that the significance of this theophany (a display of God’s presence) is radically different than we might at first think in Deuteronomy 4:24: “For Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”  How does the man who first meets God in the symbol of a bush not being consumed with fire end up declaring that this same God is a consuming fire?

What we find here at the bush is nothing less than the wonder and mystery of the gospel.  The fire of God speaks everywhere of His judgment.  It was fire from God that consumed Nadab and Abihu for not worshiping in the commanded way (Leviticus 10:1-2).  He is the jealous God that consumes all who will not worship Him in eternal flames (Deuteronomy 4:24, Revelation 14:11).  This fire is holy fire from a God that is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13).  And yet here, in this dry bush in the desert – a plant that should be consumed almost instantly – the fire dwells but does not consume.  And standing before the bush is a murderer (Exodus 2:12).

From the expulsion from Eden to this point in God’s revelation of Himself to man there has only been one sin enumerated that carries with it the death penalty, and that’s murder (Genesis 9:6).  So now here, standing before the presence of the Judge of the universe is one who has no right to appeal the sentence he deserves, and yet God appears as a flame that does not consume.  Herein is the essence of the gospel: the God who made us is a holy and just God who must punish sin, and yet He is also merciful and gracious, giving life where death is due.

How can He do this?  This is the wonder of Christ and His substitutionary atonement.  Sin must be consumed by God’s holy wrath, it cannot simply be forgotten.  To simply forget sin would mean that God has no concern for justice.  But in Christ, God is shown to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26).  This is because Jesus stood in Moses’ place and took the wrath of God that Moses deserved onto Himself.  He became a curse for him so that he would not be cursed (Galatians 3:13).  The fire did not consume the dry kindling because the heat of its flame had been redirected to a Substitute.

We will all meet this flame at one point, if we haven’t already.  He is always a consuming fire, but for those whose faith is firmly in Christ, the fire is a beauty and a wonder, for the heat of the blaze has been spent on another.  Many, however, will meet this fire on different circumstances and it will be torment, for it will consume them in their sin, and they will wish more than anything that those that they love who are still alive could know the Savior (Luke 16:19-31).

Don’t wait until it gets to that point.  This fire now burns all through the highly flammable pages of a book we call the Bible, and yet it is not consumed.  It reveals all we need to know of this great and awesome God.  It speaks of His Law, His justice, and His grace through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.  You can meet God on the same terms that Moses did, and find the same Savior that he did (Hebrews 11:23-26).  Don’t miss the wonder.

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Glory and the Rock

November 24, 2009

gnome-dev-ipodI preached this sermon during the AM service at Hoosier Prairie Baptist Church on November 22, 2009.  The sermon text is Exodus 33:7-11, 17-23.

Glory and the Rock

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