Moses had a relationship with God that bears little or no resemblence to anyone, anywhere I see today. Yet, curiously, I hear people invoke how God dealt with Israel under Moses' leadership as a parallel for what God is speaking to America today. Things like destruction upon our country for its sin and evil deeds. I promised myself to aim high with this blog and avoid going head to head with the prophets of doom....so lets just move along before I brake my promise to myself.
Back to Moses. When Israel decided that Moses was gone too long on his mountain retreat, they invented a new religion and made a golden calf. God slipped this into the morning devotional with Moses and said, "Let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them, and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation." Did you catch that? And not just a one "that" but there are two "thats" here...
First of all, God said to a man, "Let Me alone..." or "Get out of the way..."! And secondly, in a naked appeal to the man's pride, God offered to make a "great nation" out of that man. On the first account, Moses did NOT get out of the way so that God could smoke Israel and on the second account Moses made an equally naked appeal back to the character of God and said, "Turn from Your burning anger and change Your (almighty) mind!" (I added "almighty" just for grins). In fact, Moses later added that if God was going to fry Isael, then He should start with Moses.
Too many current religious leaders would have stepped aside, with a smug smile and given God their blessing, found the nearest TV camera and announced, "God told me..." To say nothing of the fact that they would gleefully accept becoming the founder of a new great nation/ministry. Aw shucks...I think I just broke my promise.....
There's another Old Testament story that comes to mind here as well. God told Jonah to give the city of Ninevah a 40 day notice that a terrorist act would blow them up...or something akin to that. Did Jonah do his best Moses imitation? No. He looked more like us. He ran right into the digestive tract of a fish in order to hide from his God given responsibility. When it finally occured to him that being obedient might be better than becoming fish manure, he repented and the fish puked him up within a 3 day walk of Ninevah. Upon his arrival, he preached, Ninevah did some serious repenting and the terrorist plot was canceled. End of the story? No....
Jonah pouted and prayed to die. In the midst of his praying to die, he admitted that he knew the character of God so well that he said, "I fled...for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and One who relents concerning calamity (terrorist attacks)". In other words, he wanted them to get what they deserved so that the end result of destruction would make him look like a real prophet. As it was, nothing bad happened like Jonah hoped it would....hmmmmmmm...
It seems to me that God is looking for something deeper in those of us who represent Him than just the ability to scare the pants off the nearest bystander with predictions of doom or pronouncements of God's "will". I know there is much more that needs to be said about all of the above, however, for the sake of this one blog let it be summed up that more of us need to look like Moses and much less like Jonah!
What if your one life means the difference in historic change or historic calamity? Would you chose to pay the price to introduce change or would you take the path of least resistance and step aside and watch calamity with the explanation, "Oh well, it must have been God's will..."?
1 comment:
thumbs up
Post a Comment