Deliverance Story (blog)

"I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God..." (Exodus 6:7) I thought that if I read through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, I would be able to pull all of the details of the Israelites' deliverance story together into a meaningful blog post, but I'm struggling. It's an epic story, and with the historical and cultural contexts to consider it's overwhelming. I get lost in all of the details. I realize how small I am. I have so many questions. How does my story fit in with this much larger story? That's my most pressing question. I'm looking closely at what I think are the two main threads of the deliverance story - a people and their God. In his prayer on Mount Sinai (in Exodus 32), Moses was able to hold firmly onto these two main threads even as the story was unraveling around him. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt when God initiated a covenant relationship with them, calling Moses to serve as mediator. Through God's mighty acts of deliverance (the 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea), He brought them out of slavery in Egypt and took them as His own people, to live as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6) in the land He had promised their ancestors He would give them. God would take the Israelites as His people, and He would be their God. It was through God's redemptive power to deliver His people from slavery and death that this covenant relationship between (sinful) people and (Holy) God was made possible. Then God graciously provided laws for the Israelites to follow and a sacrificial system (for forgiveness when they didn't follow the laws), which enabled Him to dwell among them and them to be near Him. The people agreed to do as God instructed them through Moses, the covenant mediator, who spoke with God "face to face" (Exodus 33:11) and relayed everything God said to the people. God in turn would bless them. God wanted them to experience the blessings of being His people. "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!" (Deuteronomy 5:29) Through His mighty acts of deliverance God had demonstrated His good intentions for His people but, sadly, they mistrusted Him. "The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us," they grumbled amongst themselves (Deuteronomy 1:27). The people often grumbled about Moses as well; they quarreled with him and at times questioned his divine appointment as mediator. Then at Mount Sinai, when the people and God were supposed to be confirming their covenant promises to each other before entering the land God was going to give them, everything unraveled - the people reneged. I felt so sad reading how it happened. God had met with Moses atop the mountain for 40 days and nights, inscribing His commandments for the people on 2 stone tablets, and opening Moses' eyes to the more intricate details of the covenant future He and the people would have together, but..."Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Go down, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away...'" (Exodus 32:7, emphasis added). God was so angry at the people that He was ready to disown them, and even to destroy them. He would delete them from the deliverance story and begin the "People in Covenant Relationship with God" chapter anew, starting with Moses. The people, waiting for Moses at the base of the mountain and wondering what was taking him so long, had abandoned God and their covenant with Him, and had pressured Aaron (God's appointed priest) into making an idol (a golden calf) for them to worship and to follow. They even went so far as to rewrite their deliverance story by claiming that this false god of their creation had brought them out of Egypt! They rejected their God, who through His redemptive power to deliver them from slavery and death had made them His own people. Moses' Mount Sinai prayer, his desperate plea as covenant mediator, is so moving: "Oh 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'...Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 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.'" (Exodus 32:11-13, emphasis added) I think what Moses meant was: 'Because of who you are God, I'm not letting go of these two threads of the story that you delivered these people into: a people and their God. This story is about what you have done, what you are doing, and what you said you will do for these, your people!' Do you see God's goodness and His great mercy in calling Moses to serve as mediator? God put Moses between Himself and the people, between Himself and His (righteous) anger which was so great that He was ready to obliterate them. Through His own gracious provision of Moses as their covenant mediator, God continued the people's deliverance story that day at Mount Sinai."...it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery," Moses assured the Israelites, when they again renewed their covenant relationship with God just before following Him into the land He had promised to give them. (Deuteronomy 7:8, emphasis added) God's plan had always been for the Israelites' deliverance story to continue, because it was part of a much larger story, something even bigger that God was doing for His people, and which He had promised to do for all people (see last week's blog post). When I look closely at what God was doing for the Israelites when He brought them out of Egypt to make them His people and to be their God, with Moses as mediator, I see a pattern that, in wondrous epiphany, I recognize in what God was also and above all doing to redeem all people, to make them His own and to be their God, through the mediator of a new covenant - Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16, emphasis added) In His mightiest act of deliverance, God sent his Son Jesus to be our Savior. Born into the world, God in the flesh, Jesus talked with people face to face so that they could know God and know His love for them - His good intentions and the larger plan He had for them.  Through his death on the Cross for the sins of all people Jesus redeemed us, suffering God's righteous anger so that we wouldn't have to, delivering us from slavery to sin and from death, and fulfilling all of the covenant obligations needed for us to be near God in relationship for all eternity! God raised Jesus to life again, and now Jesus lives to intercede for us - to plead to God on our behalf.  Because of who Jesus is, and through our faith in him, our stories are fixed firmly and securely in God's Redemption Story! Moses spoke about Jesus to the Israelites: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him." (Deuteronomy 18:15) And the Lord also spoke about Jesus to Moses: "...I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him." (Deuteronomy 18:18) Do you see God's redemptive power, His goodness and His mercy, and His great love for us in Jesus?