Month: May 2018

We have more details about the tabernacle, and they continue to be impressive.  But notice how this chapter ends.  We find ourselves with the name of Aaron being mentioned who was given the responsibilities of the priesthood, so this whole tabernacle thing was right in his wheelhouse.  The lamp that is lit for the tabernacle is mentioned and we hear that it should always be lit.  They are to use olive oil to keep it lit, pure, extra extra virgin olive oil.  

There are some traditions where you see a lamp lit to signify the presence of the Lord.  I think of the Roman Catholic tradition where you have the lamp lit to signify that the host is present.  The light signifying the presence of the Lord for the Israelites is not unusual.  We saw that in the night as they made their way out of Egypt the Lord lead them in a pillar of fire.  This lamp which had to be tended day and night served as a reminder that the Lord was present in the tabernacle in the same time frame: day and night.

Again, there is a lot of detail, but focus on where the ark of the covenant was to be placed.  Look at vs. 31-34 and you will see that the ark is at the center of all things because that is where God’s power and law were placed.  There is a separation between that and the rest of the population because the presence of the Lord was to be feared and had the power to give life…and death.

Okay, this is just a fictitious rendering of a story that never happened, but the power of God could be something like this.  The details reminds us that when we are in the presence of God, which is always, all things matter down to the last detail.  

What you have before you is the pre-temple place of worship.  The detail that went into describing what had to be done to prepare this place is amazing.  Most of what you have before you is made out of gold, and silver, and bronze.  The chapter begins innocently enough as we see that Moses is asking the people to contribute and give gifts.  The assumption is that most of what they have is a result of their plunder of Egypt on their way out.  Remember that part in chapter 12:35 that they took from the Egyptians on their way out silver and gold.

What you see described above had to be moved every time the people of Israel moved.  That was not an easy feat.  The enormous decadence of what is being built never ceases to amaze me.  Remember, it wasn’t a problem.  The Israelites were living together and had all things in common.  There was no upper and lower and middle class.  They had all things in common and lived in common.  Not so for today.  So when we see a structure like the one below, or the other one below, we have to ask, what would it look like if we worshiped in places that did not require extravagant cost and that these funds could be used for the poor.  I think the words of Jesus in Matthew 26:9 give us pause in addressing this question too glibly.

This is a very significant chapter for a whole variety of reasons.  Look at the beginning 8 verses which show the meticulous care that Moses had for his people.  He established pillars for each tribe where they could worship their Lord and their God.  He did not leave them without an opportunity to worship God and to allow the people to fulfill their responsibilities of worship to God.  The golden calf example should be even more shocking as a result of this chapter.  It isn’t as if God left them with nothing.  He had prepared them for his time up the mountain.  

Some of the details that we may have missed in this story because we think we know it so well.  Notice who goes up the mountain with Moses and who stays behind.  Joshua goes up the mountain with Moses (vs.13).  God has been preparing Joshua for quite a long time to take over for Moses, even before he was given the task after the people are disobedient to the Lord.  It also places him outside of the group who disobeyed the Lord.  God prepares us for what our next step will be even before we know what that step will be.  I know that there are many times in my life when I can look back and think: I am so grateful that I had a certain experience because God has prepared me through that experience for today.  God is always at work.

Notice how long Moses is up the mountain.  This example of forty days and nights is the same time period that we have for the flood.   It is the same number, except in years, that the people of Israel are banished to the wilderness.  Later in the New Testament it is the same amount of time that Jesus spends in the wilderness. The similarity to that event is significant.  God was up a mountain receiving the law from  the Lord.  Jesus was in the wilderness preparing himself, as Lord, for a life of ministry to the people.  That wilderness experience and those forty days are formative for both Moses and Jesus.  

I was struck by the statement in vs. 3  that “you shall not be partial to the poor in a lawsuit.”  Now, I always thought that we were supposed to be partial to the poor, but keep in mind that this deals specifically with lawsuits and the law.  I guess the concept was that if a poor person did something illegal, you do not deal less severely with them strictly because they are poor.  I still believe that Jesus has a preference for the poor.  Remember he said: blessed are the poor.  We never hear him say: blessed are the rich.  

But the laws and the mandates go on.  Be nice to the livestock of your enemies.  Don’t take bribes.  Observe the Sabbath.  Celebrate three holy days: Festival of unleavened bread, Festival of the harvest, Festival of the ingathering.  All of this is for thee purpose of giving thanks for the grace and the protection of our God.  This is crucial for us as well, that we do not forget to celebrate and give thanks for the presence of our Lord.

Finally he tells the people that they will take over the land of Canaan.  Did you notice that he says that it is not going to happen all at once.  It will happen gradually, because if you take over the land all at once, you don’t have the people to populate the land and wild animals will run a muck.  That is a conquest theory that I have not heard before.  Don’t annihilate all of your enemies at once out of fear that wild animals will take over the territories where they once lived.

His primary focus on the conquest of these lands is that the people of Israel would never worship the gods of the lands that they conquer.  Always focus your worship and your praise on the God of Abraham, the one and only true God.  

I’ll guess I can encourage you not to apply all that you read in this chapter literally to your life today.  Just think what the people of Israel were going through as they were making their way toward the promised land.  Notice that there is no mention of land law, because no one owned their land at that time.  They do speak about land in the way that produce and crops are mentioned, so it is interesting that these laws are in place as they make their way across the land.  It was all in relationship to those things that you may have as you were making your way across in a caravan.  This is really, in some ways, gypsy law.  I say that having been involved in ministry with gypsies, which we should really use the term Roma.  

Each Roma community has its own set of laws and rules by which each person must abide.  There is a general consistency in all of them when you go from community to community, but it is not perfectly uniform.  Here in chapter 22 we find the emphasis is placed on animals and daughters.  He doesn’t match them up as equal, but there is mention of both here.  I like vs.25-27 which speaks against loaning money on interest.  He specifies specifically that if they are poor you are not to request interest from them.  There is a specific mention of the poor.

There is a sense in this Scripture that we are all in this together and sometimes mistakes happen.  When they do happen, you have to make it right.  It was crucial for the community to know what should be done when certain things happened so that everyone was on the same page.  I also think it is quite horrific that if a young woman is raped then she must marry the man who raped her.  But remember, back then if a woman lost her virginity, by rape or not, then she was no longer considered of value to anyone.  I did not make this up, it is written here.  As a result these laws in reality protected women from being tossed out into the street without anyone to take care of them.  

I’m tempted to avoid the whole discussion of why these laws were really necessary and what application is there for us in this day and age, but I won’t.  There is no justifying the disparity of how men and women are treated in this chapter.  There is no justifying the acceptance and the institutionalization of slavery in the Israelite community.  In Moses’ time and before, and then even after, slavery was a part of life.  It was wrong, but it was a part of life.  Slavery tended to be institutionalized by nation states who took over certain regions and those natives would be taken as property and booty for the war. 

It was also common for slaves to come from afar and brought into the urban regions of those nation states which are in charge.  You think of Babylon and how it took the nation of Israel out of its promised land and to its own land and there the Israelites were slaves.  Look at Psalm 137 and you will see that Scripture which speaks of the treatment that the Israelites had at the hands of the Babylonians, forced to sing in a foreign land.  Moses and his people were used to being slaves in Egypt. 

You would think that if you have experienced atrocities against you then you would be less likely to commit them yourself.  But that is never historically the case.  In the genocides that have taken place they are usually a response against a people whom those in power feel have harmed or committed terrible acts against them.  Now that they are in power it is time to give them a taste of their own medicine.  That is not what our Savior commands, but reading these laws in Deuteronomy one would think it is okayed by God, it is not. 

As a result we can categorize these Scriptures as God’s command for a certain time to a certain people simply because they are not consistent with all of Scripture which speaks much more uniformly about a God who would never allow or imagine that a person would actually own another.  That is not in any way loving your neighbor as yourself.  That has to be a 21st century application to a Scripture which seems to state something very different.  Likewise we see how women were so very differently treated in Scriptural times.  As we take the stance that in the eyes of God there is no male and no female, there is no hierarchy or order of gender in God’s eyes, then these Scriptures in Deuteronomy give us an insight as to how a theocracy was run by the Israelites.  It gives us insight into the people of God of the Old Covenant.  We give thanks to God that the New Covenant came in Christ which shows us a very different way to live.

We find ourselves receiving the 10 Commandments in this chapter.  If you wanted to see another place in the Bible where we find these commandments you can look at Deuteronomy 5.  I’m not going to do a cross section of these two renditions, we will do that when we get to Deuteronomy.  But read the commandments one more time.  What I notice in this section is that God is speaking not only to Moses, but to the entire people of Israel.  The commandments are clear and there is no wiggle room in them.  These commandments address some of the primary problems that the people of Israel were facing at that time.

They had come from a land where gods were abundant.  It is important to hear and to remember that there is only one God.  There is no other God, but only one.  That brings us to the statement that people often say when they compare religions: but there is only one god, right?  The answer is yes, there is only one God.  But the God that Christians worship is not the same god as that worshiped by the religion of Islam or that worshiped by the Jewish people.  I think if you were to ask a Muslim or a Jew if Jesus Christ is God, they would say no.  We believe that Jesus is God.  Now, is it possible that one of us, or all of us, or some of us is/are wrong?  Absolutely it is possible, and I will even go out on a limb and say that it is probable.  I believe that Jesus is God as depicted in Scripture.  I believe that so I believe that this is correct.  With my belief I am not condemning anyone to damnation (as if I had the power to do that, if I did, I would condemn them to grace and mercy instead.  That’s just the way I roll.)  But I don’t think there needs to be a scandal if a believer in the religion of Islam thinks Christians are wrong in their understanding of God, or if a Jew thinks that a Muslim is wrong in their depiction of God, or if a Christian understands God differently from the way a Jew does.  We are not worshiping the same god.  We believe differently about god.  So there is only one God, and one of us, or all of us, or a few of us is/are wrong.  I hope that doesn’t bring scandal, not sure how it could.  

But this was how the early people of God community had to identify themselves.  They were different from the people around them, and they had no problem in proclaiming that and understanding that.  We should have the same courage.

We find ourselves in the precursor to Moses receiving the 10 Commandments.  One of my favorite times of the week is Friday when I lead the preschool in chapel.  During the year they are able to learn the 10 commandments and hopefully they will have that in front of them for their entire lives.  

But let’s not forget the context in which Moses receives these commandments.  It is really a test for the people of Israel that they will be willing to promise God that they will always follow him.  This chapter sets up the people of Israel as the people of God in perpetuity.  God tells them: “If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be…for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” (vs.5-6)  The people then respond (vs.8):  “Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.”  So at least it starts off well.  God promises that they will be his people in perpetuity, and the people promise that they will do everything that God commands.

Moses goes up and down the mountain with no problem in this chapter and tells the people all the messages that God gives to them.  The people see the Lord, see his presence on the holy mountain, and at this stage it doesn’t seem like we have a problem. 

I want to warn you that over  these next few chapters we will be reading quite  a few of the laws of Israel, so just hang in there.  We will be getting to the golden calf soon enough. 

One of the hallmarks of the Presbyterian system, which really works by the way, is the presence of committees.  The purpose of committees is to take decision making away from an individual and place it in the hands of the people themselves.  Every single program and event that takes place in this church has, or at least should have, a home in a committee.  That provides ownership, it provides responsibility, it provides oversight.  Moses had a problem.  He was doing all the work himself, and specifically, he was deciding the fate of every single thing that took place within the Israelite community.  If someone stole a neighbor’s newspaper, let’s go to Moses and see what we are supposed to do about it.  If someone murdered a neighbor, let’s go to Moses and see what we are supposed to do about it.  Remember, this is before the law.  There were no guidelines, there were no ten commandments, there was only Moses who led them out of Egypt in the name of the Lord.

Apparently Moses had a relationship with his father-in-law that was one of a mentor-student.  He must have been fairly wealthy.  He provides the elders of Israel with a feast as he brings burnt offerings to the Lord.  Don’t overlook that.  He is a foreigner who worshiped foreign gods, so in a sense he is saying: “Moses, you were right, the God of Israel is the one and only true God.”  This is a huge step for someone like Jethro.  He is someone who is very grateful that Moses was able to bring his daughter and his grandchildren out of Egypt.  In that context he is able to speak to Moses and provide him with invaluable insight.  He approaches it not as a suggestion, but he says: “What you are doing is not good.”  There is no mincing of words here, Moses, you are doing things wrong.  You need to change.

He actually had a point and Moses puts things into action as a result.