Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 08 July 2012
By Captain Michael Ramsay
Do you ever notice that when you hear a certain song or smell a certain smell or see a certain thing or go to a certain place where something has happened in your life then all of a sudden all of these memories come flooding back from that different time? You go somewhere you haven’t been for a long time and you find that there are all these memories of experiences attached to the place.
We will be heading ‘back home’ to Vancouver Island this week. Now when I use the term ‘back home’, I use it very loosely because honestly there is no ‘back home’ for me anymore. My parents made the good and right decision to sell the house I grew up in a few years ago and move to a neighbouring city. All the memories attached to my ‘home’ are just adrift, much like Shakespearean ghost, with no place really to attach themselves. When I used to go back to my childhood home in previous visits, I would enjoy walking the routes that I would frequently walk growing up: to my old schools, the old soccer fields, my friends old houses and I used notice everything and remember. I haven’t been able to do this for many years actually. Aside from the main streets, there were three trails out of my neighbourhood when I was growing up. The path through Farmer Wild’s field is long gone as all his land has been a suburb since late the last century. The trail through the blackberry patch towards my old church and junior high school is likewise blocked by a housing development and the last time I walked the path to my old elementary school, high school, and university; I couldn’t even get through as they closed down my old grade school, sold the soccer fields and put up another subdivision. It is strange for me to head to Victoria now – my parents don’t live there anymore – everything is changed. It is like they changed the password on my old Victoria life. I don’t have access to it anymore. Any memories that I don’t have backed up somewhere else, they are lost forever.
Now this isn’t really bad – of course – because if I didn’t leave that time and place behind me I would still be there and I would not have this time and place here to experience and I wouldn’t trade this for anything. I really do experience God’s goodness in Swift Current, as I did in Nipawin and Tisdale before this and on the prairies in general. My oldest two girls started school on the prairies and my youngest daughter was born right here in Swift Current. We have so many experiences here -ministry and otherwise- that we couldn’t possibly have had there –especially the wintertime experiences – and I wouldn’t pass these up for anything.
My life is quite a bit different now than it ever was before and, honestly, I am quite a bit different now too. I do not have the same profession now as I did then; I do not have the same pastimes now as I did then; I have studied and learned a lot more now and made a lot of new friends that I didn’t have then. In short, one thing that I realize every time I return to the Island is that as I have followed God’s leading into fulltime ministry in this promised land of Saskatchewan and Swift Current here, I am a different person.
Moses, as he returns to the place of the burning bush in Chapter 32, he is a very different person than he was when he first encountered God here in Chapter 3. Today, we are speaking about Moses’ reunion with God on Mt. Horeb (Mt. Sinai). Two weeks ago we discussed Moses’ first encounter with God on this very mountain.[1] Everybody remembers the story of the burning bush, right? God gives Moses his marching orders and tells Moses that when everything has been accomplished that the two of them will meet again at this very spot (Exodus 3:12). Well, here we are in our pericope today, back on Mount Horeb where God and Moses are gathered again – and Moses has changed a lot. Now this should be no surprise: God has provided many new experiences for Moses. A lot has happened since the first meeting on this mountain. Last week we spoke about the harrowing story of the Angel of Death, from whom God spared the Hebrews.[2] We also referenced nine other plagues that descended upon the country where Moses and the Hebrews were residing:
- The Nile River turns to blood (Exodus 7:14–25)
- Plague of frogs (Exodus 7:25–8:11)
- Plague of gnats (Exodus 8:12–15)
- Plague of flies (Exodus 8:20–32)
- Plague on the livestalk (Exodus 9:1–7)
- Plague of boils (Exodus 9:8–12)
- Plague of hail (Exodus 9:13-35)
- Plague of locusts (Exodus 10:1–20)
- Plague of darkness (Exodus 10:21–29)
It is in this context, after the plagues, after the Angel of Death, after God buries Pharaoh’s army in the water; it is after all this that Moses and God meet again on Mt. Horeb.
Now as God and Moses are getting reacquainted, the LORD is giving Moses all kinds of ideas, advice, rules and commands as to how the community of Israel is to look since it has left Egypt. Among the many commands that God has been explaining to Moses since Exodus Chapter 19 are the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20; cf. Deuteronomy 5). God himself writes these with His own hand on both sides of two tablets (Exodus 31:18; but cf. 34:28). (He probably even makes a duplicate copy of these Ten Commandments too!)[3] God and Moses have been alone together, away from the Israelite community that they recently delivered from Egypt for more than a month - almost a month and a half – now (Exodus 24:18). They have been spending this time together when all of a sudden God tells Moses something: God says that Moses better get down to his people because something is very wrong.
It is this conversation between Moses and God that really captured my attention, especially since we recently read their prior conversation on this mountain together as a congregation. Exodus 32:7-14:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ [This verse may also be translated as the singular, “this is your God”][4]
“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
But Moses sought the favour of the Lord his God. “O Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
So did you catch this little interplay? God says “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt” (Verse 7).
Moses then confidently replies to God - Verses 11 and 12 - with, “O Lord…why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.”
God is saying to Moses that these bad people who are making this horrible idol are Moses’ people.[5] Moses replies “oh no, Lord, these bad people are your people.” This is kind of neat. It is especially interesting if we remember the previous conversation that the Lord had with Moses on this mountain. [6] Do you remember the conversation took place when the Lord told Moses to bring the people back with him to Mt. Horeb?
Recorded in Chapters 3 and 4, The LORD says to Moses, “I have come down to rescue the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptians.
Moses says, “I can't do that. I can’t rescue your people. Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I tell them?”
The LORD says, “I will make the Egyptians favourably disposed to My people…” God says, “I will do it!” Then, Moses says to God that he can’t deliver God’s people.
God replies, “You don’t have to do it. I will deliver my people.”
Moses says, “I can’t deliver your people; send someone else please.” This goes on so long and Moses refuses so much to do what he is told to do that the Bible mentions that God becomes angry with Moses (Exodus 4:14).
In Exodus 3-4, Moses is afraid and trying to shirk responsibility for the Israelites but in Exodus 32 God is the one who says that He wants nothing to do with this people. The two different encounters on this same mountain remind me of an antagonistic parent who, when she reads a good report card of one of her children, Mom then says to Dad, “My daughter did such a great job” but when the principal calls them into her office the very next day for some unrelated behavioural problem she turns to her husband and says, “Your daughter has really gotten into trouble this time.”
It is not really that way here, of course. Those who have been reading through the Bible with us will notice how much Moses has changed for the better between Chapters 3 and 32 of Exodus. Moses has changed a lot between his first meeting with God on Mount Horeb and this next one. God, I think, is baiting him a bit here in our text today.[7] He is testing Moses, knowing full well just how much Moses has grown since he has come to know the LORD personally.[8]
In their first conversation on this mountain, when it appears that Moses did not know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob very well, Moses is more afraid of the Israelites than he is of God (Exodus 3:13). He is afraid of the Israelites, that they won’t believe him. He doesn’t want anything to do with their salvation because he is more afraid of embarrassing himself than he is concerned with following God while the LORD delivers them from slavery (Exodus 4:1-14; cf. Matthew 10:28). God remembers this conversation and here and now as He meets Moses again on this very same mountain, He does a role reversal with Moses.
God plays the other character in the script. God now says to Moses that He wants nothing to do with the salvation of Moses’ people. God remembers very well the last time they met on this mountain and that Moses had said that he didn’t want to bring them to salvation; now God is setting Moses up with this test of sorts so that Moses can either continue in his hesitation and doubting of the Lord or he can repent and follow God in leading the Israelites towards salvation in the Promised Land (cf. Exodus 33:12-23, 34:10-29). Moses chooses correctly. Moses is a new man. Moses repents. He changes and Moses now earnestly, voluntarily pursues the fight for the salvation of God’s people (Cf. Exodus 33:12-23). God calls Moses. Moses accepts God’s invitation. Moses is now in a personal relationship with God and Moses no longer cares more about himself than the salvation of others (Exodus 32:7-14, Exodus 4:1-14); Moses has repented, he is changed. This is important.
The world hasn’t changed. The other characters in this story haven’t changed. The Israelites haven’t changed in this episode of the golden calf (or bull). They are still the same people who complained about the straw in the bricks (Exodus 5:21) and they will continue to grumble through the desert as God drags them kicking and screaming towards salvation out of respect to their forefathers and for the sake of their children.
Aaron hasn’t really changed either. Have you ever met those people who when they are talking with you, they seem to agree with everything you say but then when they talk to someone else they tend to agree with them 100% – even if opposite ideas are being espoused? The character of Aaron seems to be a bit like that to me. When Moses tells him in Chapter 4 that they are supposed to talk to the Israelites and Pharaoh, he seems to go along quite nicely (Exodus 4:27-5:1). In Chapter 32 when the Israelites are on the verge of revolt and they ask Aaron to make an image for them, he seems to go along quite nicely with them too and then when Moses comes back, he immediately runs over to his side yet again (Exodus 32:1-6, 21-24).[9] Aaron and the Israelites haven’t changed. Human nature doesn’t change. God doesn’t change. What changes is Moses after he enters into a personal relationship with God. Before Moses responded to God’s call, he was afraid of people and now he is zealous for the LORD. Instead of begging God to please send someone else, in Chapter 32 he heads down the mountain, takes the bull by the horns and with confidence reminds Israel from where their salvation comes. As Moses enters into a personal relationship with God, he repents and he is changed into a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17, cf. TSA doc. 7).
This changing relationship is available to us all. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” If God can transform a cowardly, complain-y, murderer into a tool for salvation for His people, just think what he can do with us. This transformation, as we dedicate our lives to the LORD, it is the most wonderful thing and you never need regret it. Just like I can’t return home to where I grew up because it doesn’t exist anymore, if you are really willing to leave your old life behind you, God can and He promises that He will turn you into a brand new creation, an instrument of His to herald His salvation to the world.
Let’s pray.
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[1] Captain Michael Ramsay, Exodus 3-4: “Go!” presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, (24 June 2012). Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2012/06/exodus-3-4-go.html (accessed 05 July 2012)
[2] By Captain Michael Ramsay, Exodus 12:24-28: Remember, presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, (01 July 2012). Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2012/06/exodus-1224-28-remember.html (accessed 05 July 2012)
[3] But Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 839.
[4] Brevard S. Childs, The Book Of Exodus, (The Old Testament Library: Westminster John Knox Press: Lousiville, Kentucky 2004), 556, 566.
[5] Cf. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/III. Divine Worship (25:1-40:38)/B. False Worship of the Golden Calf (32:1-34:35)/1. Golden calf (32:1-29), Book Version: 4.0.2
[6] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 937
[7] Alan Cole, R.: Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 227: YHWH repented. Another ‘anthropomorphism’ (more properly an ‘anthropopathism’) by which God’s activity is explained, by analogy, in strictly human terms. The meaning is not that God changed his mind; still less that he regretted something that he had intended to do. It means, in biblical language, that he now embarked on a different course of action from that already suggested as a possibility, owing to some new factor which is usually mentioned in the context... We are not to think of Moses as altering God’s purpose towards Israel by this prayer, but as carrying it out: Moses was never more like God than in such moments, for he shared God’s mind and loving purpose.
[8] cf. Jacqueline E. Lapsley Friends with God?: Moses and the Possibility of Covenantal Friendship. Interpretation (April 2004) 58: 117, doi: 10.1177/002096430405800202
[9] Brevard S. Childs, The Book Of Exodus, (The Old Testament Library: Westminster John Knox Press: Lousiville, Kentucky 2004), 564.
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