Moses Part 9 (Exodus 11-12)

    Last time we talked about Yahveh's justice which is simultaneously frightening and comforting. Frightening because it demonstrates that Yahveh is a god far beyond our control who is capable of wreaking devastation on a massive scale. It reminds us just how powerful Yahveh is and that it would behoove us to stay on his good side.

    But also comforting for the exact same reasons. We serve a god who isn't impotent to act against the injustices of the world. We serve a god who acts on behalf of the downtrodden and oppressed and a god who does not let injustice go unpunished. And that is a comforting thought.

    This time we are going to talk about the other side of the coin: Yahveh's mercy. This is a much more popular topic because it is nicer to talk about, though it is often done at the expense of Yahveh's sovereignty and justice. But it is no less crucial to our understanding who Yahveh.

    There are three anchor points in the Bible that everything else comes back to: Creation, Cross, and (second) Coming. I call them the three C's. Creation is the ideal that Yahveh intended when he created this world as outlined in the first couple chapters of Genesis. The Cross is the plan of redemption fulfilled with Christ taking our place as sinners before Yahveh. Finally, the Second Coming is the earth restored to the way it was supposed to be. Sin and sinners are destroyed and the redeemed live forever in paradise before Yahveh's throne.

    The plagues refer us to the Second Coming. They speak of a just god who comes to the rescue of his people, just as Christ will at the end of the age. But tucked in the plagues is one of the five central feasts in the ancient Israelite calendar known as the Passover. And this festival, which commemorates the Exodus from Egypt, comes back to the Cross.

    The context is the dreadful 10^th plague, the execution of the firstborn throughout Egypt. In Exodus 11, Yahveh outlines what is about to happen to Moses, telling him specifically that, "About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well."

    Aside from the chilling sense that this punishment brings, notice something interesting about this plague that sets it apart from the others. In plagues 4-9, the Land of Goshen where the Israelites lived had been separated out as special. They were "smart" plagues as some have called it. But in Plague 10, no such stipulation is made. This plague is going to hit everyone.

    Well, that's strange. I thought Yahveh was meeting out justice on the Egyptians. Why would he target the Israelites too? For that, we hop over to chapter 12.

    On the Passover, the Israelites were to take a perfect lamb about a year old and slaughter it. Then they were to take the blood of the lamb and paint it on the doorframes of their houses because, "The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt."

    Yahveh was offering an out, one that applied to everyone. Now it is true that following this there were restrictions on who could eat the Passover meal that excluded foreigners (as in people into town for the holidays, not resident aliens in Israel), but there is nothing in all of this that excluded the Egyptians from putting blood on their doorposts to protect themselves. That's the beauty of Yahveh. Yes, he is a god of justice who punishes the guilty but his justice is always mixed with mercy. He gives us an out.

    Let's think back through the plagues. They would've stopped at any time had Pharaoh simply caved. Before each plague, Moses gave the king of Egypt a warning, giving him the chance to give in and save his people. Of course each time Pharaoh refused, but the point is that Yahveh gave him the option of ending everything. Yahveh offered to extend mercy.

    More than that, Yahveh held back as much as he could. In chapter 9 of Exodus, Yahveh points out that he, "could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you of the earth." And with what Egypt had done to the Israelites, they would've deserved it. But Yahveh didn't.

    Even in that particular plague, the hail, Yahveh left the Egyptians with hope. He destroyed the flax and barely, but left the wheat and spelt (whatever that is) intact. The Egyptians were completely ruined.

    The point is that Yahveh always gives us an out. According to Romans, we've all sinned, badly. We are all under Yahveh's judgment and deserving of death. But Yahveh still has offered us an out, a Passover lamb: Jesus Christ.

    Ultimately that's who the Passover is all about. It was a symbol to the Israelites that even though we all have a judgment of death hanging over our heads, Yahveh has provided us an escape, an Exodus if you will. We merely have to put the blood of Christ on the doorposts of our hearts and minds.

    That may sound trite and simple, but that's all there is to it. I'm certain the Israelites, with much consternation, thought the same thing 3500 years ago. I can imagine them saying, "That's it? All I have to do to protect my son is put some lamb's blood on the doorposts? And that will keep my family safe?" I sincerely doubt that many got a lot of sleep that night.

    But really that's all there is to it. The blood was marker that said then, "This person belongs to Yahveh." Today, the out from under the judgment of the world is the same thing. It is allowing Christ to mark us with his blood, saying, "This person is mine."

    "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life."

Moses Part 8 (Exodus 7:14-12:30)

    The Ten Plagues, the first nine of which more or less we are going to explore here, raise huge issues about Yahveh's love and kindness. People often wonder how a being who proclaims himself to be a god of love can rain down such wanton destruction on people. And, to be fair, this is a legitimate question.

    After Moses and Aaron are rebuffed by Pharaoh the second time, Yahveh tells them that the kid gloves are coming off. He's given Thutmose III two chances to let the Israelites go with no adverse consequences and both times Pharaoh has refused. Yahveh through Moses had warned Pharaoh that if he continued to refuse, the consequences would not be pleasant and so the plagues began.

    The first plague begins in the latter half of Exodus 7 with the turning essentially all the water in Egypt into blood, which made a huge mess. The fish died and stunk to high heaven and people had a hard time finding drinking water although they managed to get by through digging wells. But Pharaoh largely laughed it off.

    A week later, Yahveh unleashed his second salvo: frogs. Yes, you read that correctly, Yahveh sent a plague of frogs. Frogs came up from the water and were literally everywhere. They were in beds, on people, in ovens, in bread, and just about anywhere else. You could barely walk without stepping on a frog, which in addition to being disgusting was also sacrilegious as frogs were sacred to the ancient Egyptians.

    It was annoying enough that for a moment, Thutmose pretended to let the Israelites go just to get rid of the frogs, which Yahveh through Moses did. Of course their version was to have all the frogs die simultaneously which made a massive and revolting mess. And Pharaoh changed his mind.

    The next judgment Yahveh dropped on Egypt was to infest the land with gnats, lots and lots of tiny little gnats. They were everywhere, getting the hair, eyes, ears, food, clothes, and other such places of all the people. But there was one little change this time. Up to this point, Pharaoh's magicians had been able to reproduce the stunts Moses and Aaron pulled: the snakes, the blood, and the frogs. But they couldn't reproduce the gnats, which freaked them out. A lot. But Thutmose just shrugged them off.

    So Yahveh upgraded from gnats to flies. The land was covered with flies. Now whether these were horseflies or other biting flies, I don't know. Whatever they were, they certainly ate the food and drove everyone crazy as you can imagine that flies do. But again, there was a difference with this plague verse the previous three: the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, was not touched. At any rate, the flies were enough that again Pharaoh pretended to capitulate only to change his mind yet again when the plague was gone.

    Up to now, Yahveh had still been playing nice. The first four plagues, while exceptionally irritating, had not been life threatening. But with Pharaoh's stubborn refusal and occasional deception, that was about to change.

    Plague five sent a clear message that Yahveh was not to be taken lightly. After warning Pharaoh, who as usual ignored the warning, Yahveh struck down every single animal possessed by the Egyptians. Horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs: whatever it was, if it was owned by an Egyptian, it died. Again, the Israelites' animals were spared.

    You can imagine the economic blow this leveled against the Egyptian nation. Thousands of people depended on their animals for their income and now they were suddenly gone. These animals provided food, clothing, tools, and other such things. But this was only the beginning and Pharaoh stubbornly refused to bend to Yahveh's will.

    The next plague was worse. Now Yahveh directly attacked the people, causing painful boils to break out over all the people. It was so bad that the magicians couldn't even stand in front of Moses and Aaron. And still Pharaoh refused to yield.

    Yahveh upped the ante. He sent the worst hailstorm that Egypt had ever seen, flattening anything growing that was more than ankle height. Trees, crops, more than a few buildings, livestock (that the Egyptians had purchased from the Israelites), and anyone stupid enough to be outside were all destroyed. Now was not only Egyptians husbandry wiped out, but so was the vast majority of their agriculture. Legitimate questions about how they were going to eat in the coming year were starting to be asked. And yet Pharaoh resisted.

    So Yahveh sent his economic coup d'grace. A massive swarm of locust swept down and ate anything that had survived the hailstorm, reducing the land of the Nile to a barren landscape like the rest of North Africa. The people of Egypt now faced starvation because their Pharaoh stubbornly rebelled against Yahveh's command.

    The ninth plague itself seems rather innocuous. Yahveh plunged the land of Egypt into total, oppressive darkness, which was a direct attack on Amun-Re, the son god and father of Pharaoh (according to Egyptian mythology). Yahveh had stripped the Egyptians of everything but their lives and this darkness was ominous, like the calm before the storm.

    Again Pharaoh tried to haggle with Yahveh only to be told that it was all or nothing. In a rage, he threw Moses and Aaron out of the palace, telling them that if he saw them again, he would kill them. In that act of defiance, Pharaoh sealed his nation's fate.

    The tenth and final plague, which will be dealt with in more depth in the following post, was far and away the harshest. In it, Yahveh promised that at midnight, he would execute the firstborn of every living thing in Egypt from Pharaoh's son to the firstborn of all the cattle. And at midnight, Yahveh carried through with his promise and Pharaoh's will finally broke.

    We read this and it horrifies us. How could a god of love do this? It seems so incongruent with the message and character of Christ in the New Testament that it is made many theologians act like there is a different god of each testament. Others have disregarded the Old Testament entirely because of stuff like this.

    But is it really? Or was what Yahveh did justice?

    A couple of weeks ago, I went on a school trip to Berlin, Germany. While we were there, we made a stop at a place called Sachsenhausen. Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp just outside of Berlin that became the mother of all Nazi camps throughout Europe during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned there, mostly Jews but others too, and thousands of those were murdered through medical experiments, starvation, executions, or mass gassings. It is a chilling place to be sure.

    If any of you have ever been to one of the Nazi death camps (not something I necessarily recommend) perhaps you can better understand Yahveh's punishment of Egypt. We walk through these places, reading the stories and seeing the morgues and mass graves and we get angry. We want something to be done to the people responsible for these atrocities because we know in our bones that this isn't right; that this isn't human.

    And then were read of the doctors who orchestrated the horrific medical experiments on prisoners or the camp commandants who got sadistic pleasure out of torturing innocent people to death that they were tried and then hung in 1948. We read that and we get a measure of peace. It doesn't bring back those who died, but it does at least say that the people responsible don't get away with what they did. They don't get to enjoy long, happy lives after so ruthlessly taking them from others. And that gives us a sense of balance and order to the world. It doesn't make things right, but it does put things in the right direction.

    Remember back to Exodus chapter 1, the introduction to all of this? Out of fear, the Egyptians had enslaved the Israelites with the intention of working them to death. It was to be a long, slow genocide of slavery. Except that when that wasn't fast enough, they employed more draconian measures, massacring the baby boys of all the Israelites, first trying through the midwives and then sending soldiers to toss them into the Nile. Moses survived yes, but how many infant Hebrews met their demise at the jaws of crocodiles? Hundreds? Thousands?

    And this wasn't just something that the Pharaohs did. The people were whole hearted participants. They had hated these Semites just as much as the Pharaohs and they went along with the massacre too. They had made their bed and now Yahveh was going to make them sleep in it.

    Throughout history there have been appalling atrocities, the kind that make us ashamed to be human. The Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocides, Pol Pot's reign of terror, Stalin and Mao's massacring of millions of their own people, Saddam Hussein's using of the Kurds to test chemical weapons, and that's just to list a few that have happened in the 20^th century. We watch these things on the news or read about them in history class and we wonder where Yahveh is in all of this. Why doesn't he do something? Why doesn't he make it right?

    Yet what strikes me as odd is that we ask these questions about Yahveh and then read this in the Bible and turn right around and accuse him of being too harsh, too merciless, and even cruel. Well, which do you want? Do you want a god who punishes the guilty and upholds the cause of the oppressed or do you want a nice god who doesn't hurt anybody? Because if you want the former, this is what you are going to get. And if want the latter, you get world where the evil oppress the good with no consequences, with no reckoning.

    Yahveh punished Egypt, who richly deserved it. In fact, if you ask me, he went a little light on them. Yet this does not make him any less a god of love. If anything, it proves him even more to be a god of love.

    In today's society, we think of love as being essentially rainbows and roses. You forgive everyone (forgiveness meaning, in this case, amnesty). There's no place for punishment in love. A loving person never hurts anyone; no matter what happens, it's okay; just let them go free.

    But that is not love. That is weakness. True love defends and protects the ones we love and it demands recompense from those who wrong our loved ones. Not revenge, which is different, but justice. True love requires a sense of justice.

    This rainbow and roses concept of love is the product of our sterilized American society. We live our days in a land where nothing bad really happens to us. The atrocities we read about are far away and so we shrug them off because they don't really affect us because we don't understand. It is easy for us to sit back in our armchair and deride the actions of Yahveh as being draconian and unjust and unloving. After all, what the Egyptians did wasn't really that bad.

    But go to gas chambers in Auschwitz and Dachau, go to the killing fields of Cambodia, go see the devastation in Rwanda that exists to this day, go to the Soviet gulags of Siberia, go to the wiped out Kurdish villages in Iraq: go there and then come back and tell me that it's "okay," that it's not that bad. Go to these places and tell me that your soul doesn't cry out for Yahveh to do something to the people who did this. And then remember that this is what the Egyptians did to the Israelites for a hundred years.

    This story gives me hope. It tells me that Yahveh doesn't just stand back and watch people destroy each other. It tells me that there is a day of reckoning coming for everyone who has abused, murdered, and oppressed others. It tells me all these horrors are not okay and that Yahveh will do something about it. And that thought gives me peace.

    A god of rainbows and roses is in the end a useless god. He cannot defend or protect. Instead he gives the wicked a free reign to abuse the weak with no fear of consequence. But a god of justice, like Yahveh, is a god who makes a real difference. He is a god I can depend on; he is a god I can serve.

Moses Part 7 (Exodus 6:28-7:13)

    In this passage, we are going to talk about one of the most difficult verses to swallow in the entire Bible. It is one of those verses that makes do a double-take and start questioning the love of Yahveh.

    Moses is complaining to Yahveh that he stutters and so Pharaoh won't listen to him. But Yahveh reminds him that Aaron, who was apparently an eloquent speaker, was there to speak for Moses. Aaron is to be Moses's "prophet." Then Yahveh says this.

    "But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay out my hand on Egypt and with might acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites."

    Whoa, what? Yahveh will "harden" Pharaoh's heart? Isn't that manipulating free will? Does Yahveh just want to beat the daylights out of Egypt so he forces Pharaoh to say "no" so he has an out? What is going on here? It gets even worse in Exodus 9:16 where Yahveh says of Pharaoh, "But I have raised you up for this purpose, that I might show you my power and that my mighty name might be proclaimed in all the earth." Is Yahveh handing out all this death and destruction because of an ego trip?

    Admittedly this does seem incongruent with the whole "God is love" thing and this passage has caused many Christians to give up their faith. I get it. On the surface, it does seem like Yahveh is forcing Pharaoh to essentially condemn himself to utter destruction. But could there be more going on here than meets the eye?

    Let's consider what has happened thus far in the story: Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and told him to let the people of Israel go. Pharaoh not only refused, but made life for the Israelites twice as hard. In the passage we are discussing, Moses and Aaron go back and tell Pharaoh again to let the Israelites go. They even throw in the snake trick to help convince him. Pharaoh again says "no."

    So far Pharaoh has had two chances to save himself and his people a lot of trouble by simply letting the Israelites go but he has refused. Then come the plagues, which will be discussed in more detail in the coming post(s). After each plague Pharaoh has the chance to let the Israelites go. In all but a couple, Moses and Pharaoh meet face to face and Moses repeats his message of "Let my people go." And each time Pharaoh refuses.

    Three of those plagues end with the epithet that Yahveh hardened Pharaoh's heart; the rest say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart or something similar but to that effect. This makes things even more confusing? Which is it? Did Yahveh harden Pharaoh's heart or did Pharaoh harden his own?

    The answer is yes: both hardened Pharaoh's heart.

    To understand this, we must understand the historical and religious context that this battle took place in. In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh was the incarnation of Horus who was the son of Amun-Re the chief deity in the extensive Egyptian pantheon. Pharaoh was literally god on earth. The Pharaohs conquests (especially Thutmose III) over the years since kicking the Hyksos out had only enhanced this idea. By now, barely 100 years since the Hyksos expulsion, the 18^th Dynasty controlled the land from Ethiopia to Lebanon.

    And into this mix comes two men in their 80s, albeit rather spry, claiming to be messengers from this desert god Yahveh, demanding that Thutmose let his slaves the Israelites go. Pharaoh was one of the most powerful gods in his own pantheon; he didn't listen probably to most of the lesser Egyptian gods so he certainly wasn't going to listen to some unknown god from the Midian desert.

    Then there is Moses, his old rival. He's back after 40 years of exile in Midian and demanding that Thutmose releases a veritable nation of slaves into his control. The memory of the Hyksos oppression is still vividly etched on the walls of Pharaoh's palace and the fear that Moses might bring it back begins to gnaw at him.

    On the flipside of this is Yahveh who actually is god. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. And he has taken a special interest in this group of slaves who call themselves Israelites. So he sends his messengers to Pharaoh with a simple message: Let my people go or suffer the consequences. While it comes across as an ultimatum, it is a simple command. Yahveh had little to no interest in burning Egypt to the ground but he wouldn't hesitate if it came to that.

    But because of his pride, stubbornness, and fear, Thutmose dug in. He refused to be controlled or ordered around by this non-Egyptian deity. He was Horus, son of Amun-Re, god of the most powerful nation in the world and Pharaoh would not bow to this desert spirit.

    And so the plagues came one after another after another. As each blow fell against his land, Pharaoh dug in deeper and deeper even though he knew it was hopeless. In some of his more desperate moments, he would try to compromise with Yahveh only to be told the same thing: let my people go. And that he would not do until Egypt was nothing but ashes and dust.

    That is how Pharaoh hardened his own heart but how did Yahveh harden Pharaoh's heart? By simply being himself. Through the entire battle with Pharaoh, Yahveh's message stayed consistent: let my people go. He never backed down, never wavered, never compromised. Pharaoh a couple of times tried to bargain with Yahveh, play a little give and take. Each time Pharaoh got the same answer. It was Yahveh's way or no way.

    And that is the point with Yahveh. He is the sovereign creator and lord of the universe. We bow to his wishes not the other way around. This is not to say that Yahveh isn't a merciful god because he is: he gave Pharaoh two opportunities before the plagues started to acquiesce but Pharaoh chose not to. Even after the plagues began raining down on Egypt, Yahveh repeated gave Thutmose chances to surrender; Pharaoh stubbornly refused.

    But that surrender is always going to be on Yahveh's terms. In the New Testament book of Matthew there is a story of a rich young man who wanted to follow Jesus and gain eternal life. He asked Jesus what to do. Jesus replied that he needed to sell all that he had and give it to the poor and then follow him. The rich young man couldn't do it, he wanted Jesus and his wealth and so he walked away. What did Jesus do?

    Nothing.

    He let him walk because Jesus (who is Yahveh) does not compromise. Ever. He will accept you as you are, he will grant you mercy, he will give you salvation but on his terms. You must surrender to him totally and unreservedly; nothing else will do. You must be prepared to do whatever you are asked to do.

    That is the difference between Moses and Pharaoh. Both were commanded by Yahveh to do difficult things. Moses, after a lot of whining and complaining, gave in. He surrendered himself to Yahveh.

    On the other hand, Pharaoh hardened his hard. Through his stubbornness and pride, Pharaoh refused to listen to Yahveh's command and he not only cost himself dearly, but his entire nation as well.

    Who are you? Are you Moses? Will you surrender yourself to Yahveh's will? Or are you Pharaoh? Are you going to try to get what Yahveh has to offer on your own terms, never quite surrendering yourself to him?

Moses Part 6 (Exodus 5-6:12)

    Finally the moment we've been waiting for. After Moses and Aaron worship with the elders of Israel, they go before Pharaoh and the showdown begins.

    There are a remarkably few scenes from the Bible that I would've liked to have witnessed but this is one of them. It must have been an awesome sight. The palace at Thebes was a grand sight, its pillars and walls ornately painted with scenes from Egypt's past. As Moses and Aaron walked in, undoubtedly their attention drawn to Ahmose smiting the Hyksos who were not unlike the Israelites. They walked past hundreds of nobles, courtiers, priests, and scribes, all richly dressed with linen kilts and shimmering jewelry. And sitting at the end of the hall on his golden throne with the Ureaus (the cobra symbol that protected Pharaoh and by extension Egypt) wrapped around his head was Pharaoh.

    Here more so the anywhere else with the possible exception of Karnack were Moses and Aaron confronted with the awesome splendor of the world's mightiest nation. And here they stood, no crowns or jewelry to announce their station; no nobles or courtiers. Instead they were dressed in simple shepherd's garb, their only symbols of power being an old, gnarled stick in each hand.

    The contrast must have been striking and yet I cannot help but wonder who truly carried the weight of power with them. Pharaoh was supposed to be god, Horus incarnate, but for all of his trappings and temporal power, did he really feel divine in the face of these two simple men? Who really carried the weight of power with them in that room 3500 years ago?

    Moses and Aaron deliver their simple message: "This is what the LORD (Yahveh), the God of Israel, says: 'Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert.'"

    Pharaoh (probably Thutmose III) had been a young man sent off to fight wars in Canaan when Moses had gone into exile. Moses had been intended for the throne by his aunt and sort of step-mother Hatshepsut (Thutmose was the son of a concubine. Egyptian family trees can be a bit confusing). But Moses had largely refused to become Pharaoh, choosing rather to side to a degree with his people. Hatshepsut had used this refusal to essentially take the throne for herself while sending her nephew and legitimate heir off into the wilderness.

    But then Moses, the Hebrew, had murdered the Egyptian task master which was just the thing Thutmose III needed. Moses had been forced into exile and shortly thereafter Hatshepsut had died, leaving Thutmose III in sole possession of the throne. He had immediately erased his cousin and aunt from history.

    Or so he had thought. Now this ghost from the past was standing before him having hardly aged a day in the 40 years he'd been gone, demanding that he let the Israelites go into the desert for a festival. Why this and why now? Who was this "Yahveh"? The God of Israel? What right did the god of slaves have to demand anything of Pharaoh, the divine incarnation of Horus on earth?

    "Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go?" questions Pharaoh. "I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go."

    "The God of the Hebrews has met with us," Moses and Aaron answer. "Now let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword."

    Dread seizes Thutmose as his eyes flicker up to the elaborate paintings on the wall of Ahmose driving the Hyksos back to Canaan and beyond. His memory goes back to his own campaigns against the Semites, like his epic victory at Megiddo so many years ago.

    Had Moses changed his mind? Had he come back to unite the Israelites against Egypt, to overthrow the Egyptians and set himself up as the new Hyksos Pharaoh? Moses had been a skilled warrior and tactician in his day, the Pharaoh remembers. This, Thutmose resolves, he will not allow to happen at any cost.

    With a snarl, he retorts to the two prophets, "Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor? Get back to your work! Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working."

    But Pharaoh isn't done yet. His fear drives him to employ even harsher measures. Under the pretext of laziness, he gives orders to his foremen that they are to no longer provide straw for the Israelites to make bricks with. Straw was a key ingredient in mud bricks, which is what was used to build in Egypt. When the mud and straw were baked in the sun, the straw secreted a substance that made the bricks almost plastic like, thus preventing them from dissolving in rain. Many of these bricks have survived to this day and you can still see the straw in them.

    Yet now the Israelites are told they have to find their own straw to make bricks but they are required to make the same number of bricks as before. This is of course impossible and they are worked harder and beaten more mercilessly. When they go to Pharaoh to beg for mercy, the hard-hearted king rebuffs them, accusing them of laziness and subtly pointing the finger of blame at Moses and Aaron. Naturally they turn and rail at Moses and Aaron.

    Moses particularly is distressed. This is not at all how he envisioned this whole rescue thing working out. He knew it wasn't going to be easy, he knew that Pharaoh wasn't going to just say, "Okay, you kids have fun" and leave it at that. But not this. Instead of helping, Moses was making things worse.

    In despair, he cried out to Yahveh, wondering if somehow he had made a mistake, if he had misread what Yahveh wanted him to do. He asks if this is why Yahveh sent him to Pharaoh, to make things worse for the Israelites instead of helping them. Yahveh's answer is beautiful.

    "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country. I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty but by my name the LORD (Yahveh) I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan where they lived as aliens. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

    "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from the under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to your Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD."

    What is Yahveh saying in all of this? Essentially he is saying that I have not forgotten my people or my promise. I am going to rescue you them and I am going to bring them to a better land. You just have to trust me.

    Many people when they become Christians think that their lives will instantly become better. They will get promotions at work, their spouse will love them even more, they're health will markedly improve, and they'll suddenly stop struggling with all those pesky sins.

    But this is rarely, if ever, the case. If anything, life usually gets worse, not better when we devote our lives to the service of Christ. Our coworkers and friends look at us funny, even making deriding comments about us behind our backs or even to our face. Our spouses just don't understand what we're experiencing. Temptations seem to hit us harder than ever and we still aren't Olympic athletes. In many ways, we can relate to the Israelites who are promised deliverance only to see life get markedly worse. So what gives?

    The battle between Pharaoh and Yahveh (a concept that will be dealt with in the next post) personifies arguably the central theme throughout the entire Bible: the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan. It started in heaven eons ago before coming to earth in Genesis 3. Ever since then, Christ and Satan (adversary in Hebrew) have been fighting a constant battle over humanity.

    You see there are two sides to this world: the good that is brought on by Yahveh and the bad, generated by Satan. Just like Pharaoh wasn't going to take the defection of his slaves lying down, can we really expect Satan to do the same? No, of course not. He is going to throw everything he's got at anyone who goes to the other side. So really, we should expect things to get worse.

    But there is a silver lining to all of this. Things will get better. Just like he promised the Israelites through Moses to deliver them out of the bondage of Pharaoh, Yahveh has promised to deliver us out of the bondage of Satan. Life may be harder now, but it will get better. All you have to do is endure just a little longer.

    That's really what faith is: endurance. It's trusting that no matter how bad things are now, Yahveh's promises to make this world a better place are firm and true and hanging firm to him. It's easier said than done, I know, but it doable. Look at the people in Hebrews 11 (of whom Moses is one). If you read their stories, you realize that there is nothing special about them. Yet they are remembered simply because they endured when times got rough. They refused to let go of Yahveh's promise.

    They say the night is darkest just before the dawn and in life, that is true. The hardest times, the worst pains, the most miserable moments are all just before the great things come. Serving Christ is not easy; he never promised that it would be. But he did promise that the dawn is coming.

Moses Part 5 (Exodus 4:18-31)

    In case you haven't noticed, there are parts of the Bible that leave you scratching your head as to why it is in there. Some of them are just plain disturbing stories like most of Judges while others seem random and completely unrelated to anything. Exodus 4:18-31 are among the latter.

    They are a series of seemingly random anecdotes that Moses (the author of Exodus) stuck in there as fillers and transitions. But they are part of the word of God, so they have to have some message, right? Taken individually, they really don't. But if we look at them as a whole, maybe something will appear.

    First is sort of a conclusion to the argument Moses had been having with Yahveh that we discussed in in the last three entries. Exodus says that Moses "went back to Jethro" and requested that he be allowed to return to Egypt to see his people. Jethro sends him off with a blessing.

    Yahveh tells Moses that the people who wanted to kill him are dead and so it is safe to return to Egypt (that will quickly change). Moses then took his wife and sons and the "staff of God" and headed back to Egypt. Along the way, Yahveh gives Moses another message, essentially saying that Pharaoh's going to be stupid and stubborn and resist Yahveh's commands until basically Egypt is burned to the ground and Pharaoh's firstborn is dead. It is a rather chilling statement by Yahveh, especially the "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" bit which we will discuss in greater detail later.

    Now is where things get really weird. Moses and company stop at what amounts to a Late Bronze Age version of a Motel 6 and suddenly Yahveh shows up about to kill Moses. No explanation is given but Zipporah (Moses's wife) seems to understand something that everyone else has missed. She takes a knife and cuts of her son's foreskins and then presents them to Moses with a sort of sarcastic remark. Apparently Moses hadn't circumcised his boys and Yahveh would not accept that. But thanks to Zipporah's remarkably quick thinking, the day was saved.

    Suddenly we shift scenes from Moses to Aaron, who is presumably in Egypt. Moses's brother is told to go meet Moses in the desert, which how that worked given that Aaron was a slave is never really explained but he does hook up with Moses interestingly enough at the mountain of God, where the whole burning bush thing happened and where a lot more was going to happen.

    Finally to the troop get back to Egypt where they meet with the elders of Israel. Moses and Aaron tell them what has Yahveh has told them and that they will soon be free and leave Egypt behind for good. At first it seems that the elders are hesitant about this, which is understandable considering that Moses and Aaron are proposing what amounts to a slave revolt. If it doesn't work, the consequences are decidedly not pleasant. But once Moses performs the signs Yahveh has given him (the snake, the hand, and the blood), they're convinced that Yahveh truly has come to rescue them. The chapter ends with them worshipping Yahveh together.

    As I said earlier, taken separately, these stories seem to have not point other than to fill the gap between the burning bush and Pharaoh's court. But if you look closely, you will see that these individual anecdotes are part of the same story and have a single, common thread running through them: we are not alone.

    At the beginning, Jethro gives Moses his support and blessing. Then Moses takes his wife and sons with him. Even in Yahveh's soliloquy in which he tells Moses of all the hardships he will face in Egypt, Yahveh talks about what he is going to do, the subtle message being that Yahveh is going to be fighting right beside Moss the whole way. Moses has Yahveh as his ally.

    Then there is the circumcision story, which is just plain weird. But notice something interesting: it was Zipporah, not Moses who saved the day. What if she hadn't been there? The story of Israel might have gone very differently.

    Finally, there is Aaron and the elders of Israel. Aaron meets his brother in the wilderness with joy and excitement while the elders of Israel, once convinced, are equally stoked. They throw their support and weight behind Moses 100% (at least for the moment). Moses is not alone.

    At the burning bush and even in this section, Yahveh doesn't hide from Moses exactly how hard his task is going to be. It seems almost strange that Yahveh would tell Moses about how difficult it is going to be convincing Pharaoh to let the Israelites go given how hard it was to convince Moses to try. But that is something else about Yahveh: he is upfront with you. When he gives you a hard task, he tells you exactly how hard it is going to be so that you know what you're getting into.

    But that brings us back to the story. Yes, Yahveh has given Moses a hard task, something he makes no bones about, but he has also given Moses the help he needs to do it. Moses is not alone.

    And that is the common thread, the point of all of this. We are not alone. As Christians we have been given the task of setting the world free from sin (see the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20), which in and of itself is a daunting prospect. Individually we are given specific works to do on Yahveh's behalf to accomplish this great goal. And often they aren't easy.

    When we see the enormity of our mission looming before us, it is easy to quail and feel overwhelmed. But we don't stand alone. Yahveh has given us help to do whatever it is we are sent to do. Moses had Zipporah and Aaron and the elders of Israel. We have our support team too.

    That is one of the beauties of Christianity. We are already part of a community that will give us support and assistance we need. If we are willing to see, we have people like Zipporah who have our back, who see our mistakes when we don't and fix them. We're human after all and make all kinds of mistakes. We need those who have our backs. Yahveh has given them to us.

    We also are surrounded by Aarons, people who are strong where we are weak. We can't do everything, try as we might. There are things, probably lots of things that we're just not good at. But there are lots of people who are and Yahveh will give us those we need.

    Then there are the elders and Jethro. While the Bible doesn't specifically record it, I'm certain that there were naysayers among the Israelites. But there were more than a few among the influential that backed Moses. The same is true with Jethro, who sent his daughter and grandsons with Moses to Egypt. There will be those who say that you're wrong and that what you're doing is foolish and impossible, but there will also be those who believe in the same mission you do. You will have support from them.

    The point is we are not alone. Yahveh will give us the pieces we need to do his work. Yes, it is hard. Yes, it is overwhelming but Yahveh knows this. He understand we need help and he will give it, just like he gave Moses. We are not alone.

Moses Part 4 (Exodus 3:16-4:18)

    Now that Yahveh has told Moses who he is, he reiterates his command. Moses is to go back to Egypt and lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Yahveh also warns Moses that it isn't going to be a simple matter of walking up to Pharaoh and saying, "Let my people go." Pharaoh was going to fight and resist but in the end, Yahveh promised, he would yield.

    How does Moses take all of this? "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The LORD did not appear to you?'"

    When we read this, often we wonder at Moses's doubt and hesitation. After all, he was talking to Yahveh in a burning bush. Isn't that enough?

    But I can understand his hesitation. This wasn't Yahveh telling him to clean his room or something trivial like that. Yahveh was calling Moses to be the liberator of an entire nation, a daunting task to say the least. I know I would be overwhelmed.

    Yahveh understands too. Instead of rebuking Moses for his doubt, he instead gives Moses a sign.

    "What is in your hand?" he asks.

    "A staff," Moses replies.

    "Throw it on the ground."

    Moses does so and to his astonishment, the stick turns into a snake, which he naturally runs from. But Yahveh tells him to reach out and grab the serpent by the tail. Carefully Moses does so only to see the snake become a staff again.

    "This," Yahveh says, "is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers-the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-has appeared to you."

    If this were me, I'd be good at this point (along with more than a little frightened of my staff). But Yahveh isn't done yet.

    "Put your hand inside your cloak," he orders Moses.

    When Moses pulls his hand back out, to his horror, it is leprous (side note: not necessarily leprosy; the ancient Hebrews called a wide variety of skin diseases leprosy). But Yahveh tells him to put his hand back in and this time when Moses pulls it out, his hand is back to normal.

    Yet Yahveh still isn't done giving Moses ammo. "If they don't believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground."

    A staff that turns into a snake, a hand that can be come leprous on command, and the ability to turn water into blood; that should be plenty to give Moses the confidence that he can do this. He's got the power, right? But, nope.

    "O LORD," Moses whines, "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."

    Yahveh's answer cuts to the heart of this issue. "Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" (ESV)

    Who has made man's mouth?

    Moses has completely missed the point. All he can see are the problems: I can't do this, they won't do that, so on and so forth. In fact, even after Yahveh has laid this boom on him, Moses still says, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it."

    To his credit, it is a daunting task that Yahveh has called him to. Yahveh is asking Moses to go virtually by himself to the most powerful man in the entire world and challenge him to a battle of the gods and that's the easy part. He then has to take a group of slaves and mold them into a functioning nation. Moses has a wife and kids and a simple, peaceful life. I can understand him not wanting to leave that and I can understand him being overwhelmed. Most of us would be too; we can understand Moses's self-doubt.

    But that self-doubt is the problem. Moses doesn't believe he can do it, which many of us would mistake for humility but that's not humility: it's a lack of faith.

    You see, that's the point Moses missed. Yahveh has called him to this task, he made him for this task and now Moses is essentially saying that Yahveh made a mistake. That is what Moses's is really saying when he says "Send someone else." No wonder Yahveh's anger "burned against Moses."

    But Yahveh doesn't make mistakes, as he reminds Moses. He created Moses, he has the power to fill in whatever Moses lacks and he will. Yahveh is saying, "You can do this because I say you can and that is all that you need."

    Who has made man's mouth?

    All of us were created with a purpose, a task. It may not be as epic as Moses's, freeing an entire race from bondage and making a nation out of them, but it is something. And often it is something we feel is over our heads.

    "I can't be a missionary."

    "I can't learn a new language."

    "I know nothing about teaching."

    "I can't speak in front of people."

    I can't, I can't, I can't.

    We try to pass off our doubt as being humble. We say that we aren't doubting Yahveh, we just know our limits. But that isn't remotely true because we know that Yahveh has called us to that, whatever that is, and we are saying to Yahveh, "You're wrong."

    Isn't that definition of being faithless? Yahveh has made us, created us, and called us. He knows what we're capable of far more than we do. If there is anyone we should trust about what we can do, it ought to be him. When we doubt ourselves, we are really doubting him.

    Yahveh has a purpose, a mission for your life. So when you confront it and you feel overwhelmed, remember who has made man's mouth.

Moses Part 3 (Exodus 3:7-15)

    Moses is standing there in front of a burning bush that has claimed to be the God of his ancestors. Strange as that seems he believes the bush and takes off his shoes and covers his face. This is probably one of those "you had to be there to understand" moments. Obviously God wasn't the burning bush; indeed the Bible says that it was a voice from within the bush that was God but still this had to be a rather peculiar experience.

    This whole episode begs the question why is God in a burning bush in the middle of a desert talking to disgraced-prince-turned-shepherd?

    The answer is simple: God has seen the suffering of his people and now he's about to do something about it. He is going to deliver the Israelites from the Egyptians and bring them "into a land flowing with milk and honey." And he has chosen Moses as his instrument to do this.

    Moses's response to this epic calling? "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

    Translation: "Say what now?"

    Moses hesitation is understandable. Last time he was in Egypt, he failed miserably as the "savior" of Israel. He was forced to flee his home and his family as a humiliated murderer who had lost the respect of his people and his peers. Now he was an 80 year old shepherd. Who would feel up to that task under those or really any other circumstances?

    But not to worry; God gives Moses a promise. "I will be with you. And this will be a sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."

    At this point, I imagine Moses crossing his arms and looking very serious. At least that's the image that comes to mind when I read his reply to God's promise to be by his side.

    "Suppose I go to the Israelites," Moses begins (note the "suppose") and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"

    To us this seems like a fairly routine question. After all, what is the first thing you ask someone when you meet them? What is your name, right? Simple and basic.

    But we have to understand the cultural context of this question. In our culture, a name is little more than a group of sounds that identify a particular thing or person. I am designated "Jonathan." That is how people differentiate me from others around me, although with a name as common as Jonathan that can be a little difficult at times.

    However in the Ancient Near East, a name was far more than an identifying mark: it was your identity. Great significance was attached to the meaning of your name; your name defined you.

    There are tons of examples of this in the Bible. In the book of Hosea, which is a fascinating story in and of itself, God tells Hosea to name his kids (although some, it would seem, are not actually his kids) specific things for a certain message. In the book of Genesis, God changes a man's name from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of many). Later on, he changes another person's name from Jacob (grasper/deceiver) to Israel (he struggles with God).

    We could go on and on with examples of names and their meaning, but the point is that in that culture, to ask someone their name was to ask far more than simply what to call them; you were asking who they were. Moses's question isn't just "What is your name?" It is "Who are you?"

    In God's introduction admittedly had been a bit vague in Hebrew. Literally translated, God introduced himself as the "spirit" or "god (generic)" of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That doesn't tell Moses much. This could just be some local spirit or deity sending Moses against the powerful gods of the Egyptians.

    But God's answer is unlike any Moses could've expected. He says, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

    Initially this answer makes even less sense but think about it. A name is more than just a word to identify someone: a name captures the essence of who that person is and no other name could've so perfectly described God. After all, how does one describe the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God of the universe? I AM fits perfectly.

    God is in effect saying to Moses, "You want to know who I am? I just am. You cannot define me; you cannot put me into a box like you do with other gods. I am beyond your comprehension and understanding. The best you can understand is that I just am."

    But there is even more to it than that. In Hebrew, the phrase is more accurately translated, "I will be who I will be." What does this mean? This means that God is self-determinant.

    This is something that sets this God apart from all the others. The gods that Moses knew of could be bought or bribed or controlled. You offer a certain sacrifice to a certain god who then is bound to perform a certain act. You say a certain prayer to a certain other god and that god will then do thus. Egyptian religion was very rigid and ritualistic. They even buried people with "How-to" manuals on getting into the afterlife.

    God is saying something very different to Moses here. He is saying that he cannot be bought or bribed or controlled. It is he, not you, that gives the commands around here, something that I think our society has forgotten. God is who he is and he alone determines that.

    This leads into another characteristic of God that his name brings out: his eternalness. Part of God being self-determinant is being self-existent. For us, a big part of who we are is determined by genetics from our hair color down to our personality. We don't have a say, or much of one, in any of these things.

    But God has no creator. He just is and always has been. God chose his personality and characteristics; they weren't determined by anything other than himself and they never will be. He will be who he will be.

    This leads us to God giving Moses the name that he will be remembered by for generations, the name I have usually used on this blog, a name that you may have noticed as being absent the last couple of posts: Yahveh.

    In our English Bibles, this name is translated LORD because Jews from roughly the time of Jesus decided that the name of God was too holy to be spoken aloud, something I find ironic since Yahveh said that it is by that name he will be remembered forever.

    The name itself, which no one is entirely sure how it is pronounced, comes from these four letters: YHVH (V is also written W), which is a derivative of the Hebrew "to be" very, HYH. Literally, the name Yahveh means "he is."

    He is. A perfect name for God. Yahveh is far too great to be summed up in a name so just declaring that "he is" is enough.

    It is a name that leaves you hanging. He is…what? Something is supposed to go there, right? Perhaps something is and that is the challenge for us. Fill in the blank. Find out who he is.

    That is the beautiful thing about Yahveh: there is always something more to discover with him. There is a richness and depth that surpasses everything else in the universe. Getting to know him isn't the work of a lifetime; it is the work of eternity and even that is not enough.

    His name is also the answer to the questions the Israelites were asking. "Where is God?" "Does he care?" "Does he exist?"

    This name is Yahveh's way of saying, "Yes, I do exist, and yes, I do care, and yes, I am here to save you."

    Today people are asking the same questions and the answers have not changed in the last 3500 years. Yes, Yahveh does exist. Yes, he does care. And yes, he is going to fix the world.

    People ask me how I can have faith and hope in such a messed up world. They ask me how I can believe in a God of love and kindness when there is so much cruelty. They ask me how I know that God is who he says he is. My answer is simply to say his name.

    He just is.

Moses Part 2

    Forty years have passed since Moses went into his self-imposed exile. He has married Zipporah, one of the women he rescued, and had a son, Gershom. No longer does he rule as the prince of Egypt; now he is a simple shepherd tending the sheep of his father-in-law.

    According to the Bible, Moses has taken the flock to a place called Horeb (it will be significant later on) when he sees a strange sight: there is a bush on fire. Now this in and of itself is not unusual. It is the Sinai Desert after all, which is hot and miserable and bushes I imagine catch fire all the time. But there is something strange about this burning bush.

    It doesn't burn up.

    Instead it continues to burn and burn without the leaves or the branches ever being affected.

    Curious and probably a little bored (tending sheep isn't generally an adrenaline rush), Moses goes over to investigate. And that is when his life changes forever. As he steps closer, he hears a voice calling to him.

    "Moses! Moses!"

    This had to have confused Moses. He was looking at a strange bush that was on fire, yet not consumed and now there was a voice speaking to him. The thought that he had been getting far too much sun must have crossed his mind.

    Yet he decides to play along and answers, "Here I am."

    "Do not come any closer," the voice commands. "Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground."

    Again Moses must have just been more confused. He's standing on holy ground? But all there is is a voice and a strange bush. This isn't a temple or a sanctuary; it's the middle of nowhere!

    Then the voice identifies himself. "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

    Suddenly everything clicked for Moses. Moses realized with terror that he was standing in the very presence of God himself. So quickly he covered his face because, the Bible says, "he was afraid to look at God."

    "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

    Several years ago, then-President George Bush was giving a speech in Iraq to several Iraqis after the successful (more or less) removal of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party. During the Q&A part of the speech, an Iraqi threw his shoe at the President, who displayed admirable reflexes in ducking it. While most of us laugh it off as strange and comical, in that culture what that man did was a far greater insult than if one of us had flipped off President Bush.

    In many cultures today, the Middle East included, the foot is vilest part of the body. Showing someone the bottom of your foot is a worse insult that the finger is here and taking your shoes off when entering a home or a building is a sign of respect. For example, when I was in Laos, we took our shoes off when going into the sanctuary. To us this tradition may seem strange, but to them it is a matter of reverence and respect.

    This brings us back to Moses. God tells him to take his shoes off because he is standing on holy ground. For the former prince of Egypt, being on holy ground certainly wasn't anything new. Egypt was covered with temples and sanctuaries. Even today, the vast complexes at Karnak, Abu Symbel, and Luxor fascinate archaeologists. Taking his shoes off when entering a holy site wasn't something new for Moses.

    But this time, he wasn't at a temple or a sanctuary. He was out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of sheep. There were no priests, no statues, no altars: just him, a bush, and some sheep. And this was holy ground? It begs the question, what makes this place holy?

    The answer is obvious: God was there and anywhere God is, is holy. Well of course anywhere God is holy, we all get that. But do we get that God can be anywhere?

    When we think of a holy place, for most of us our minds immediately think of the church sanctuary. We even have special rules for the sanctuary: we wear our best clothes, speak softly, and never run. Now there's nothing wrong with that: the sanctuary is a holy place and we do go there to meet God. But so often we treat it as the only holy place in our lives; as if it is the only place we go to meet God.

    Yet in the Bible, very rarely do people actually meet God at the sanctuary or temple. They meet God by the sides of roads, on the tops of mountains, in caves, on boats, even at tea time (that's an interesting story). All of these places become "holy ground."

    Do we realize that we are walking on holy ground all the time? Anywhere God is is holy ground and God meets us anywhere. He meets us in our bedrooms, in the car, in class, in church, at lunch, even in the bathroom from time to time. Will we, like Moses, recognize that the ground we are standing on is holy and take off our sandals or will we just walk on by?