I didn’t realize we were exclusive.

Perhaps you’ve seen this scenario on TV or in real life: the dating relationship in which both parties understand the status, or at least the rules of engagement, of this relationship quite differently. One may find it to be a serious bond with far reaching implications while the other may be oblivious that anything had escalated to that point at all.  And perhaps you’ve heard movie character A or relationship B come out with the words, “I didn’t realize we were exclusive.”

Many are familiar with the story found in Exodus 32 regarding the infamous golden calf.  Absurdities flow in abundance here, for sure.  Hasn’t God proved Himself? Why do they need to make a new god? Who melts their own jewelry to worship it? And does Aaron really think we believe it jumped out of the fire in that shape?

But Moses’ reactions to what they’ve done while he was gone are interesting.

Angry, Moses takes this golden calf and has it burnt and ground to powder.  He then proceeds to scatter it all over the water and make the people of Israel drink it. But why?

Maybe this is a reprimand.  We’ve all made mistakes as children, and maybe this is some classic punishment. Moses is simply the stern mother of the Israelites and he is going to force these folks to wash their mouths out with soap! Hamilton’s Handbook of the Pentateuch suggests it may even have been a means to establishing guilt, giving the Levites knowledge of whom to kill.

However, Hamilton also helps us to draw a connection between this passage and one found in Numbers 5.  In this passage, a wife who has been unfaithful to her mate is to drink water from the laver that is mixed with dirt from the tabernacle floor.  The drinking of this mix is both an admission of guilt and physical representation of it.

Like our couple from above, these two passages needed some serious DTR time. (define the relationship for you old folks) Have these people forgotten that the relationship was exclusive?

In both, a betrayal has occurred. In the instance of this adulterous woman and our idolatrous Israel, we find a great need to return to an exclusive relationship.  Our God desires an exclusive relationship. If they didn’t find that in the beginning, if they skipped that part of the 10 Commandments, if they missed the revelations along the journey, surely they can see it now.

Israelites, this is to be an exclusive relationship with God.

We are to be exclusively His.

Exclusive: excluding other things.  Focused or targeted on one thing only. Sole. Constant. Undivided. Unbroken. Absolute.

“I’ve been told…”

I’m no psychologist, but I do tend lean on the side of environmental influence. In other words, I tend to look around me and notice the things that are a product of what we have been told should or could be. Let’s face it, we all make decisions daily that are the result of how we were raised, how our society has influenced our life, or how a successful person looks, thinks, acts and lives in our communities.

When I encounter the laws laid out throughout the book of Exodus, both in the Decalogue (10 commandments) and beyond, I join the average reader in losing interest rapidly. I often find them with little to offer to my own current situations. However, this is far from the truth.

They have, after all, completely influenced not only the way that I live, but the way in which people have acted for centuries. It’s as if God is laying out for the Hebrew people a manner of living, both in relation to God (Commandments 1-4) and in relation to fellow man (6-10), that is to become the way in which they are conditioned. I am realizing that these principles for life, these standards of conduct, these ethical paradigms are largely responsible for the development of a much greater sociological phenomenon. To borrow the language of America’s founding fathers, what is found in the 10 Commandments are no doubt truths that so many of us hold to be self-evident.

God’s revelation of the law, his revealing of these rules, convey to us not only much about His own character but also much about what many Christian’s today take as obvious. Of course, Jesus would extend the scope of these laws in an interpretation which would transform the Christian community, but in the first revelation of these in Exodus the reader finds a foundation, a compass of sorts, for much of what is to come for humanity.

As God’s people, may we be formed, molded, indeed conditioned, by these very principles. But let us not forget the way in which these laws would later be abused. Jesus expands the entire scope of this foundation in Matthew 5. For Jesus, it seems that the Jewish community has lost sight of the true spirit of these ethical standards. Because of this, we find his delineation of these laws and much broader application as an awakening for the people of his time and for us. They had become complacent in their legalistic interpretation of the laws, and Jesus presents a whole new way to understand them. Suddenly, there is an entirely new way of thinking about how to live, act, and think. What they had been told… wasn’t all there was to it. There was better to be had. Jesus makes groundbreaking interpretations of the law, each beginning with “You have heard it said…”

Jesus says, you may have been told a lot of things, but let me tell you how it should be.

Luxury car company, Audi, diminishes it competition while pointing out some parallel truth in this video:

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.”

The fascinating and well known events surrounding the crossing of the Red Sea, found in Ex. 13 and 14 provide for us a fascinating account of the LORD’s provision and the protection of His people.  Interestingly enough, the story begins by immediately acknowledging the weakness of the men and women whom God is delivering. Indeed, these people are being led by Moses by the hand of the Lord out of captivity! Yet, we read that God has not led them down the road through the Philistine country, even though it was shorter.

“For God said, ‘If they face war they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’” (13:17b)

God is already preparing the Israelites for battle, setting in motion events that will help them to not turn back.  This is but a mere foreshadow of the grumblings and murmurings and outright complaints that would be forged against both God and Moses a few verses later and for chapters to come. However, amidst this often told story of God’s miraculous provision for his people (who again find themselves traversing between a promise and its fulfillment), we encounter a Moses who boldly and wisely proclaims the power of God before an immediately retreating Israelite people.

The questions and complaints begin pouring out in Ch. 14 as the Egyptians approach , “marching after them.”  The people begin to question the journey, the reasons, the difficulties, and even whether or not their original plight was all that bad to begin with.

And Moses replies to his people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still” (14:14)

A profound statement amidst such brash questioning by his people.  Yet Moses’ statements here are even more prolific if one but lingers 10 or 11 chapters back to a man who stood before the voice of God and did some questioning of his own. This after all, is the man who replied to the calling of God with such phrases as: “Who am I?” “They will not believe me,” “I am not eloquent,” “send someone else.” Surely, this is a man who had come realize that His journey, which we but critically read of today, was far more about who the LORD is than who they are.

Note also that his words “you need only to be still” are as often translated “you have only to be silent.” The “not eloquent” man we once met in the beginnings of Exodus has now stood before the people of God to offer these words of wisdom, encouragement, and strength.

Brother and sisters, you need only, in faith, to watch what Lord is capable of, he tells them.

In the absence of your ability, the LORD shall display His.

Life Between Promise and Fulfillment

The book of Genesis presents its readers with characters who are easily criticized, men and women whose actions are far from irreproachable.  To look back at the events which took place, the decisions people made, and the results which came from them, the skeptic can easily critique the lives of these biblical characters.  In simply looking at Abraham, the dichotomy of faithfulness and faithlessness is evident.

After all, this is the man who answers to resounding “go worth” and leave your home with little hesitation (Gen. 12) and whose providential  journey reaches its high point on a mountain with his son in one of the purest expressions of faith we can find (Gen. 22).  Yet, it takes no scholar to realize that this is the same man who is introducing his wife as his sister and the man who utilizes the surrogate Hagar, when his patience runs thin. (16)

So what do we have in all these characters?

For Abraham, and those through whom his covenant goes forth, great things surely await.  Abraham, after all, has been promised to become “a great nation”.  He has been shown the stars and told, “So shall your descendants be,” by God himself.  The man was guaranteed “one who will come forth from your own body” as an heir.

Amidst all of this, the blessings, the promises, the voice of God, the families of Genesis continue to struggle with faith in God.  It is as if no promise can assure them.  No guarantee is quite enough. Note here that the divine will of God prevails regardless.  Yet any critic, to be fair, must now be self-reflective.

In these men and women, we find narratives of lives lived out in the most difficult arena of life: the time between promise and fulfillment.

Valuable examples stream through Genesis and beyond of what life looks like after the promise yet awaiting the fulfillment. Indeed, each of us experience such difficulty in one or many ways.  Ask the couple recently engaged, the seminarian with a vision for the future, or perhaps the believer who awaits provision.  Ask Abraham, the old one to whom a son was promised. Ask the follower of Christ, to whom the Spirit has been given as a guarantee or pledge of “our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.” (Eph. 1:14)

Victor P. Hamilton, in his Handbook on the Pentateuch, reminds us of the underlying struggle when he writes that “whenever one sees the fruit of God’s promises as something to be achieved rather than received, all sorts of options present themselves.”(p.90)

A struggle with faith and obedience. Responsibility and expectations.  Waiting and what assuredly awaits.

Life lived in the moments between promise and fulfillment.

This song, by John Waller, offers a contemporary glance into this same struggle.