Exodus 33 & 34 (selected) February 24, 2008
I Saw the Lord – Part 4
“Changed”
Rev. Meagan M. Boozer
It’s time for a short review – for we are 4 weeks into our Lenten study, “I Saw the Lord.” Let’s make sure we remember where we’ve been before we go any further.
On the Sunday before Lent began, we looked at the story in Mark 9:2-8 that told us about Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up a high mountain with him. While on the mountain, Moses and Elijah showed up to talk with Jesus, and after Moses and Elijah vanished, a voice from heaven spoke to Peter, James, and John saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.” Several of the main challenges to us through this Scripture were: Do we want to go up the mountain with Jesus? Do we really want to get alone with him? Do we listen to Jesus? Are we ready to start on this Lenten journey with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
On the first Sunday of Lent, we shared communion together after considering the lessons of the life of King Josiah – a good king of Judah by all accounts. On that day we were challenged to ask ourselves if we really had given our hearts to the Lord and were living in conformity to his will – or whether we were living in defiance of the Holy Spirit’s teaching within us. As we came to the Table of the Lord that day, we were called back to faithfulness through the tangible covenantal promises of God.
Last Sunday, we looked at a vision of the prophet Ezekiel in order to learn all we could about walking through the storms of our lives with faith, not fear – trusting that God is in the storms in order to teach us more about ourselves, more about him, and more about his purpose for our lives.
There’s an intentional movement to this study that I don’t want us to miss. The movement is towards a true revival of our hearts. To revive means to bring somebody or something back to life, consciousness, or full strength – implying of course, that that somebody or something is lifeless, unconscious, or running on less-than-full strength.
Some might be offended if described as needing revival. Others might roll their eyes and quietly wait for the pastor to get over it. And there might be some, maybe only one, who is willing to admit their heart needs to be revived, their spirit needs to be awakened, their mind needs to be renewed, for their strength is running low.
If we’re willing to go up the mountain with Jesus and listen to him, if we’re willing to commit to following him and bringing our lives in line with the teaching of the Spirit within us (which is always in accordance with the Word of God), if we’re willing to let God teach us through the storms that come into our lives, instead of cowering in fear and wallowing in disappointment, then we’re ready to hear an important story about Moses today, that will continue to move us closer to the revival of our hearts.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you that you love us so much that you do not want us to live half-heartedly in your presence. Thank you that you call us beyond where we are, to places we have never been before. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who is right here with us, ready to still our minds, so that we may receive a word and a touch from you this day. We don’t want to leave here the same as when we came in. We want to be changed, as Moses was changed – so that others will know that we have been with you. This we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
I don’t want to assume that any of us knows or remembers what has taken place with God’s people up until we get to chapters 33 & 34 of the book of Exodus. So, here’s a really brief recap:
The Hebrew people, God’s chosen ones, have been enslaved by the Egyptians. By God’s hand, Moses ended up being a person of power in Egypt, though he was also a Hebrew.
God called Moses to plead with the Egyptian Pharaoh to let the people go free. Plagues were sent against the Egyptian people to pressure the Pharaoh to give in to Moses’ request. Pharaoh finally agreed.
The Hebrew people fled, followed on their heels by the Egyptians (who had changed their minds in no time at all). On the banks of the Red Sea when it looked as if all was lost, God instructed Moses to raise his staff over the sea. That’s when a pathway opened up right through the sea on which the Hebrew people could walk. When the Egyptians tried to follow, the water engulfed them – assuring a successful escape to freedom.
Their trek through the desert was not without great stress. God fed them with daily bread, provided water for them, and led them by night as a pillar of fire, and by day as a cloud. The people groaned, complained, and grumbled. They told Moses they’d rather go back to Egypt and be slaves than be put through the hardship of this journey. Moses, trying to follow God and lead the people at the same time, was about ready to blow. He needed revival.
So, God called Moses up a high mountain (sound familiar?), and gives him what we now know as The Ten Commandments – and a whole lot of other instructions for the people as well. God gave Moses the stone tablets with the commandments on them, and gave him an experience of his glory in the cloud that only Moses can tell us about when we meet him in heaven some day. Moses was up on that mountain for forty days and forty nights (25:18).
And while he was up there, the grumblers grumbled all the more. The whiners whined. The complainers complained. Somehow, they talked Aaron, Moses’ brother, into letting them make an idol to worship, since God seemed to have abandoned them. In Chapter 32, verse 1 we read, “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So, Aaron instructed them to take off all the gold rings from their ears and bring them to him. Then he took all the gold and made a mold into an image of a calf that they could worship.
Can you imagine? Moses is on the mountain, on their behalf, and they have given up, not just on him, but given up on the God who had parted the sea for them!
When Moses came down from the mountain and saw what they had come to, he threw the stone tablets God had given him onto the ground and broke them, and he took the golden calf, burned it with fire, ground it into powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it. This reminds of a lesson I learned in my early days of parenthood. Make the punishment fit the crime! If a child comes in the door over and over with muddy feet, he/she is the one on their hands and knees cleaning the floor! Make the punishment fit the crime! That’s part of what Moses was doing here. And then, he called Aaron to himself and asked him what had happened – and Aaron blamed it all on the people, even going so far as to lie about how the calf had been made. This is what he said, “I threw the gold into the fire, and out came this calf!” The old blame game from Adam and Eve is alive and well, right here, at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Thou shalt not lie. Oops.
Now, we’re caught up. Let’s read what happens in chapters 33 & 34. I’ve chosen particular sections to read in order to give, I hope, a good overview.
The LORD said to Moses, “Now that you have brought these people out of Egypt, lead them to the land I solemnly promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I told them long ago that I would give this land to their descendants. And I will send an angel before you to drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Theirs is a land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not travel along with you, for you are a stubborn, unruly people. If I did, I would be tempted to destroy you along the way.” . . . Then Moses said, “If you don’t go with us personally, don’t let us move a step from this place. If you don’t go with us, how will anyone ever know that your people and I have found favor with you? How else will they know we are special and distinct from all other people on the earth?” And the LORD replied to Moses, “I will indeed do what you have asked, for you have found favor with me, and you are my friend.” Then Moses had one more request. “Please let me see your glorious presence,” he said.
The LORD replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will call out my name, ‘the LORD,’ to you. I will show kindness to anyone I choose, and I will show mercy to anyone I choose. But you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live.” The LORD continued, “Stand here on this rock beside me. As my glorious presence passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see me from behind. But my face will not be seen.” The LORD told Moses, “Prepare two stone tablets like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed. Be ready in the morning to come up Mount Sinai and present yourself to me there on the top of the mountain . . . Early in the morning he climbed Mount Sinai as the LORD had told him, carrying the two stone tablets in his hands. Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud and called out his own name, “the LORD,” as Moses stood there in his presence. He passed in front of Moses and said, “I am the LORD, I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness. I show this unfailing love to many thousands by forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion . . . Moses immediately fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, “If it is true that I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, then please go with us. Yes, this is an unruly and stubborn people, but please pardon our iniquity and our sins. Accept us as your own special possession.” The LORD replied, “All right. This is the covenant I am going to make with you. I will perform wonders that have never been done before anywhere in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people around you will see the power of the LORD—the awesome power I will display through you . . . And the LORD said to Moses, “Write down all these instructions, for they represent the terms of my covenant with you and with Israel.” Moses was up on the mountain with the LORD forty days and forty nights. In all that time he neither ate nor drank. At that time he wrote the terms of the covenant—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets. When Moses came down the mountain carrying the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, he wasn’t aware that his face glowed because he had spoken to the LORD face to face.”
Talking with God changes people, especially when you talk to God like Moses talked to God. We read that Moses’ face shown because he had been talking with God. But, if we look at the whole book of Exodus, God was doing most of the talking, not Moses! In Chapter 20, Moses went up the mountain and God started talking, and God pretty much kept on talking through Chapter 34! Moses hardly manages to get a word in edgewise! And then, we read that Moses’ face shone because he had been talking to God!
Moses talked to God with his ears open and his mouth closed. God invited Moses to talk, and because Moses showed up, and didn’t press his own agenda and just listened to God, Moses felt so good afterwards that his face glowed!
This is an important part of moving towards a true revival – a real awakening of our hearts to God: We must listen more than we talk, when we talk to God.
One of my favorite parts of the testimony we saw in the beginning of our time together this morning, was the shot of Danny’s face towards the end – when he stops talking and just smiles. The way I see him, he’s glowing – just the way I picture Moses glowing after spending time with the Lord.
This is a very loud world. Some of that noise comes from outside of us – traffic, sirens, car alarms, tractors, blaring radios, people talking all around us on their cell phones. There’s a lot of noise in this world.
But there’s also a lot of noise that comes from inside of us – our never-ceasing “to do” list of thing undone, our strongly-held opinions that we can’t muffle, and all of our frustrations that want to find a voice for grumbling, whining, and complaining about gas prices, TV shows, the neighbors, our co-worker, the church, the price of prescriptions, the lack of things to do where we live, the need for more time to do all the stuff we’ve put on our plates to do.
I know I generate a lot of noise over the course of a day - I make a lot of noise, I hear a lot of noise. There’s a reason we have 2 ears and only 1 mouth.
Psalm 46 records the words of the Lord, “Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
May we take these words to heart. May we come now before him, confessing our over-activity, our lack of stillness, our incessant talking. Let us confess our sin before God . . .
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