Moses' Epitaph, Our Challenge

Famous Last Words, Episode 5, a series by Yehudi01 and myself.

You can see his corresponding article here: Moses and King Messiah ....

Imagine the following written on your tombstone, or said about you in a eulogy at your funeral:

"And it was through Moses that the LORD demonstrated His might power and terrifying acts in the sight of all Israel."

Not bad, huh? This is, in a sense, the sum total of Moses' life, the concluding remark about his "accomplishments" as a man. His epitaph.

And if this was all you knew about his life, just this one sentence, I wonder what kind of man, what kind of life you'd imagine.

I would probably picture an extremely serious and well-dressed man, broadchested, without scar or blemish, perfectly self-controlled. With eyes that are never quite focussed on an earthly reality. He would enjoy the respect of millions, be very wealthy and carry no regrets. Nothing would faze him.

This was far from the actual truth about Moses, if the last 4 books of the Torah have been any indication. His was an extremely hard life, at least for the last 80 years of it. He carried a burden of responsibility that I really don't envy. He experienced a huge measure of rejection and disrespect from 2 of the ethnic groups he identified with (Egypt and Israel). Leadership more often meant doing things that large groups of people weren't happy with than it making people rejoice. Two thirds of his life, he lived in barren places, and as an outcast for a third of it.

To top it off, the Moses we know from Exodus 3 onwards lacked confidence, had temper tantrums and - though he was sharp and strong at 120 - he really just plain suffered greatly in his life.

Once again as I contemplate this I'm reminded of how authentic and hold-no-punches the biblical record is. No Hollywood scriptwriter or marketing agent got their hands on this story. Moses suffered as much as he succeeded, and was a mix of good and bad humanity.

But it was through this both noble and flawed human being that God Almighty did some pretty almighty stuff.

Now it's certainly not fresh thinking for me to say "God usually chooses flawed human beings to be His conduits". We're used to that thought. We're used to being conduits of His mercy, His compassion, even His truth, His gospel perhaps.

But could we write "it is through Pete Aldin that God did mighty acts" or "it was through Daniel Abrahamson that Hashem demonstrated His terrifying power" or "it was through [insert your name] that the Lord did miracles" ... and IN THE SIGHT OF OTHERS?

I'm not writing this to condemn. I'm really not saying that just because we don't send plagues of locusts against the local nazi gang leader's house that we're not doing enough! I'm not suggesting that just because the neighbors haven't seen you split the water in the local swimming pool, you're a spiritual flop.

I'm just wondering how much of a correlation there is between the suffering & sacrifice of a life however flawed which is truly devoted to God (ie., holiness) and the potential for God to work POWERFULLY through that life ... and in a way that will enact His will and bring Him glory...

The last thought I bring from this verse is this (and it's not my own, I read this somewhere and loved it): despite the fact that we have had 4 books which place a major emphasis on laws and commands, God's will is not just about words, but about acts. Once again, it's not just what I know or what I say or even what I verbally agree to believing. It's about what I do and how that doing lines up with His will.

What will you do with these thoughts today? Where's the realm in which truly devoting yourself to holy action on God's behalf is being asked of you? For me, I decided (and this may be tangential) that as a Dad, I will fully accept that great parenting means a difficult life for a couple of decades. Difficulty and sacrifice that will (I prayerfully ask, Lord) result in God raising empathetic, adventurous, honorable, confident, spiritual men of my sons.

The decision that this brought me to in prayer was that this weekend, I will focus on NOT DISCIPLINING MY BOYS TO MAKE LIFE EASIER TO ME, but training them lovingly and only enforcing limits and consequences for their best interests, not mine. [By the way, hold me accountable to that please. So far, a few hours into it, so good.]

May you be blessed in all that you do, knowing Him more and truly being a conduit for His grace, power, truth and love.

Leaving No Man's Land

Well folks, it's New Year's Day here in Australia and in my Bible time this morning, I turned to the last verse of Numbers. [What else would you read on New Year's Day??]

In this 4th Episode of Famous Last Words, I'm tempted as always to do some background digging into the text, and to construct a well-thought-out symposium on the verse...

But maybe 'cause it's New Years Day [and I'm worn out from celebrating last night, I may have had one too many root beers with my boys! :)] - maybe it's because as I read it, I had the sense that the meaning for me was a fairly obvious and simple one. So I'll keep this entry more from the gut...

Numbers 36: 13:

These are the commands and regulations the LORD gave through Moses to the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.

When I read this, I immediately thought "This is much the same verse as the one finishing Leviticus." Then I read it again and realised, "No, boy, this is a verse about being on the verge of something new."

It's also about being at the end of something painful and bad. Here are the Israelites, at the end of 40 years of wandering in No Man's Land. My study Bible put it nicely (ok, so I did a LITTLE background reading!)...

"The lesson of Numbers is clear. While it may be necessary to to pass through wilderness experiences, one does not have to live there. For Israel, an eleven-day journey became a forty-year agony."

How many of us live in No Man's Land - the lifestyle, the situation, the choices that represent NOT God's will for us, NOT His Promises or plans, NOT even the best option we had available, but the results of deliberate decisions to withdraw from Him in some way.

The following considerations may sound harsh. But they are things I ask of myself first and foremost. I invite you to meditate on these thoughts too...

Perhaps it was that in the time that He had planned to "sideline" you, to put you under pressure which would purify, you actually chose the warm embrace of "sin for a season" [Hebrews 11:25]. Now that time has extended to years.

Perhaps it is that you wandered away from whole-hearted allegience to Him.

Perhaps you let the deceptiveness of worldly scientific "reason" undermine your faith. My 11 year old son said to me this morning, "I can understand why people find it hard to believe in God. They say, if God created us, who created Him? It's too hard to understand."


I didn't shout him down, because I think that's healthy that he's beginning to wrestle with these ideas. What I did say in the conversation that followed was "It is hard to understand. And personally I find that a wonderful thing, that I can't understand everything about God. I like mystery. And by the way, I think sometimes those people are hypocritical saying that's a reason to not believe in God, because they believe in other things they don't understand." I didn't even have to explain that last statement, I say the light dawn and he said "Oh yeah."

Perhaps some lunatic waving the "spiritual warfare" banner hurt you deeply. Or a man or woman using their position in a church community to insult or guilt-trip you offended you deeply. Or a prayer you prayed wasn't answered the way you wanted it to.

Or perhaps, it's just the longterm neglect of your soul, of your relationship with the Lord, of your actively putting it all into practise.

Whatever the case, right now, Divine mercy is available for you and I. You're standing at the Jordan, the boundary between No Man's Land, and the life God wants for you. A new "land", a new season, a new context, a new level - it's all waiting on the other side.

The river represents the decision to act, the decision to move forward. The Commandments given at the river were the sign to Israel that it takes submission to God - acquiescing to His will and His ways - to move into living in constant nearness to Him.

Lord, afresh today, I acquiesce to You. You are Father. You are King. I see at the start of a calendar year, there are 12 months of possibility stretching before me. But I want them to be about You and not about me.

I know that standing across the Jordan from Jericho is an indicator that moving forward will mean battle. All I know is that I don't want to live in No Man's Land, in wilderness! Guide me again, renew my knowledge of Your will, command me. Speak, for your servant is listening.

***

If this devotion was helpful, please feel free to visit the other posts in the series by clicking Famous Last Words. And don't forget to visit the sister post to this, written by Yehudi01 who joins me in this project, writing from the Jewish perspective.

God's Will - The 3 Strands of Love

The final verse of Leviticus:

These are the commands the LORD gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the Israelites.

Bible. Big book. Lot’s to remember. Hard to get my head around.

For the Jews: Torah and Talmud. Lots of commandments. Lots of history. Lots to understand, lot’s to act upon.

For the Christians: Old and New Testaments. Questions like “Do we still obey the Law?” “If so how much?” Jesus’ words: lot’s to remember, lots to obey, hard to get our head around…

I don't know about you, maybe you're smarter than me, but I find it’s always better to understand something in a nutshell and then build knowledge and detail on that understanding. I always love it when someone boils it down for me.

In fact when I was a child (a long long time ago), my mum tells me that I would ask her hard questions then as she tried to explain, I'd constantly interupt her with the same phrase: "No Mum, I don't want to know that. I just want to know ..." In other words: "Cut to the chase, Ma! Bottom line it for me."

So I'm so there when a teacher of the Law asks Jesus, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”. Yes! Bottom line it for us!

Jesus responded:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." [Mark 12-28-30]

In another place, Jesus added “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”. [Matthew 22:40]

So using these words of Christ as a launching point, the commandments that the LORD gave Moses were given to teach Israel how to:

• Love God



• Love other humans



• Love themselves (this is implied in Leviticus 19:18 – love your neighbour as yourself)

Love in popular media is about an endorphin-enriched emotion that makes you do crazy things to gain another person’s endorphin-enriched emotion toward you.

In the Bible, love is about actively seeking the betterment of the other according to God's standards. That not only helps us understand loving God and others but also the love ourselves part: flossing my teeth – although it’s tedious – is essential to taking care of the body God gave me to be caretaker of.

You get the gist.

Getting back to Leviticus, while the book itself is about formalizing laws governing spiritual practice and daily conduct, I sense the deeper message of Leviticus as

Honoring/Worshipping God Involves Appraoching Every Aspect of Our Life with Love.

Approaching God on His terms is obviously respectful (loving toward Him) and is essential to worship, where worship means bringing glory and honor to God.

But treating others fairly is also a part of “worship”. Managing our sexuality is - in part - spiritual and is a part of worship. Respecting others’ property is a part of worship. Taking care of our body is a part of worship. Because failure and flaw in these areas is a turning away from God (anti-worship) and His expectations of mankind.

And a huge part of “holistic” (ie., whole life) worship would be refusing to be drawn into the religious practices of others (Lev 20:2-5), which in our societies might be less about offering our children up to Molech and more about things like gambling – the god of Luck – or using God’s principles without having to go through Him first – as in the whole Law of Attraction movement. This brings us back to the 3-strands of love that Jesus summed up God’s will by:

• love God (with everything in you),



• love others (with justice, altruism and grace) and



• love your own self (maintain your physical, moral and emotional health, and develop what God has entrusted to you)
  

God is fiercely interested in all of life, not just in getting a little attention occasionally in our church or synagogue gatherings, not just in us getting the sacred or religious compartment of life “right”.

It’s all sacred.

It’s all given as a gift from Him but is expected to be used in honor of Him and to draw us ever closer to Him and to others.

So in the year ahead, the week ahead, the day ahead, which of these 3 strands of love needs the most attention in your life:

• actively loving God?



• actively loving someone else (whether friend or foe)?



• actively caring for your own body soul and mind?

What action do you feel God would require of you in that area? What will you do about that?

***

Don’t forget to go read Yehudi01’s take on this verse at "If You See Mr. Bill, Tell Him I'm Sorry..." and his post about loving God at "Three Small Steps To G-d's Heart..." Always worth the read!

Grace and peace to you today!

Famous Last Words: Exodus

Welcome, readers, both new and old-er. :)

I'm sticking with this project to comment on the last verse of each "book" of the Christian Bible. It was both humbling and energising that my first foray into this drew the attention of a number of Jewish friends, in particular Yehudi01 who has undertaken the same project. I'm looking forward to this as it unfolds; to have a Jewish and a Christian perspective on the same verse ... I dunno, it's just kinda cool!

(In fact, my friend is now miles ahead of me and has posted up to Numbers. I'm trying not to read his posts, until I've at least drafted mine, so I'm only up to his Exodus post ... and it is not only very good reading but highly motivating).

Anyway, let's get into it...

***

So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.

Imagine living like this, the supernatural plainly visible, the actual presence of the Lord manifestly right there in front of you 24/7!! I sometimes skip over the words on the page, but when I stop to place myself in the situation, man! For creatures like us whose primary sense is sight, this would be breathtaking.

As I contemplate it this morning, the verse speaks to me of 3 things: reassurance, culmination and inclusivity.

Reassurance.
While I imagine the cloud and the fire to be terrifying in some ways, in others I imagine it to have been reassuring. Looking at it would make me think "The Lord is with us".

In Psalm 91 and John's Gospel 14:15-17, He promises to remain with us, to be there for us constantly. Whether in dramatic or in non-dramatic ways, whether seen or unseen, His presence is promised.

But we don't have the fire, the cloud today. We don't live in Exodus 40: 38. And in our reality, it can be so easy to doubt, even to fear abandonment.

So I ask you: how do you look for signs of His presence around you? What has He provided you personally by way of reassurance and how can you utilise that to turn your heart and your faith toward Him afresh today?

He is here. He is near.

Culmination.
Now that the Tabernacle had been set up according to His command, the Lord showed that He accepted their obedience and fulfilled His earlier promise to remain with them in Person.

Some preachers tell us that when we obey the revealed Word, the commands, then we will release the storehouses of heaven over our life, releasing healing, being showered with finances and possessions, having doors open before us, etc etc.

And that's one way that He may choose to bless us, with seasons where these things happen. But I don't think the Lord is into transactional relationships: I can't imagine the Most High saying you scratch My back, I'll scratch yours.

It strikes me from this passage, that the main purpose of His instruction and His commands are to prepare the way for Him to act, to fulfill His own will. Whether that action is dwelling near to us, or doing a miracle, or filling our souls with peace, or humbling us for a time, or suddenly turning our heart to forgive another ... those actions are His choice.

That said, obedience culminates in the Lord's action. But again the highlight of this is not so much what He does as it is that we get to know Him! Jesus Himself (John 17) intimated that the goal of life is to know "the only true God". Obedience makes this possible.

Inclusivity.
I picked this word up in my life as a professional trainer/presenter. And I love it.

Everyone in the nation of Israel could see the cloud and the fire. Everyone. It was not for Moses or for priests alone. Everyone from leader to follower, from ol' codger to little baby, both man and woman could see!

The Lord desires that all would be aware of Him, be in awe of Him, draw near to Him.

My position in life does not determine whether or not I can know God; what counts is that I turn my heart to perceive and know Him. Whether He is near or afar is no longer the issue. The issue is: which way am I walking, which way am I facing? I can turn and seek Him, I can turn and know Him, I can turn and 'see' Him.

***

Today, I turn my heart afresh to You, Lord. I believe Your promise to never leave nor forsake me. I see Your hand at work in my life and my family and I thank You for it. I recall what You have asked me to do and to be and once again I turn my strength toward Your instruction and command so that You would do what You will in me and through me.
Amen.

Famous Last Words: Genesis

I've always been fascinated by people's last words. This fascination is drawing me at the moment to the last verse of books of the Bible. Dare I embark on another project? Ah, what the heck! How about I share what these verses seem to say to me, what I take from them? Hope it's life-giving to someone else out there at some time on your journey.

Let's start at the beginning (or the end of the beginning at least): Genesis 50:26...

"So Joseph died at the age of 110. They embalmed him and his body was placed in
a coffin in Egypt."

O-kay. What am I going to do with that?

Well, for starters, I imagine the book of Genesis as a collection of stories, passed down in oral form (before it was eventually written down centuries later), told around the meal table or fireplace.

Imagine the scene: the Hebrews are born into slavery and die early deaths as slaves. The 11 year old boy is slumped on the floor of his hovel, as are his parents. They are bone-weary and depressed. He looks up at his father and asks,

"How did it come to this? Why are we born to this [expletive deleted] life?!"

"Well, son, to understand that, you have to go back to start. In the beginning..."

And over the following months, the stories are told, and then finally the father reaches these last two sentences, the ones about Joseph's death and burial. And here the story ends. And the father says to the son, "And that's how we got to where we are."

What do I take away from that? 3 things (like any good preacher!):

1. The story's not over yet. I know this from verses 24-5 (the penultimate verses of Genesis). A promise had been made: "God will surely come for you to lead you out of this land of Egypt." If I was the Hebrew boy, I hope I would come to believe that the current situation was not the end, that there was hope, that Joesph's coffin was an unfinished sentence rather than death sentence on the Hebrew people. Whatever unfinished business is in my life, I do believe that my Lord Jesus will finish it. That's his way.
2. Our lives are part of a bigger picture. Joseph didn't get back to Canaan himself, but made his brothers swear to take his bones back. That means he felt like he'd missed the Return by a few years at most (though we know it was more like a few centuries!). He honestly felt himself a part of the story that had started with Abraham (way way before his own birth) and would be completed after his own death. In the same way, I have received understanding and resources from those who came before me, as well as certain mandate, and I hopefully have sown further seeds of compassion mission mercy and humour with my own sons and others I've been priveleged to mentor... And we need only do our part, not stress over things outside our control!
3. We believers are stupid to think we exist outside of the culture we live in. Ok, this is a strange one, but I'm referring to the embalming of Joseph's body. This was an Egyptian practise not a Hebrew (nomad) one. This was a practise that (to my knowledge) communicated the expectation of eternal life, and the public's respect of the one embalmed. Joseph had served Egypt well while remaining fully Hebrew in his values and beliefs. He hadn't hidden his worldview or changed his theology to suit the Egyptians, but he hadn't rejected their fashion, their customs, their language, their ways. He had served as a bridge between (on one hand) the belief-system passed onto him by his ancestors and through his dreams from God, and (on the other) the rich culture and amzing people in Egypt. Sometimes we Christians refrain from things in our culture which are basically harmless, thinking that we are communicating God's righteousness because of it, or that we're keeping ourselves unspotted. I'm not talking about The Golden Compass (which I agree is sadly an atheist's stated attempt to destroy belief in Christ amongst children), or about irresponsible sexual practises, or about greed. I'm talking about things like noserings, tattoos, musical tastes, passing a Buddhist temple without vehemently cursing it in tongues, you know what I mean!

Phew. That was actually a meaningful verse to me. I wonder what's at the end of Exodus?