What He’s Like ~ Reflections on Exodus 34

Think of your closest friend.  What is that person like?  Based on your past experiences with them – your conversations, observing their actions, listening to how they express themselves – all give you a picture in your head about who that person is and what they are like.  

Here in Exodus 34, we get another beautiful glimpse of what God is like.  Remember what had just happened in the first 33 chapters of Exodus.  God promises to lead his people out of Egypt, and using Moses and the 10 plagues, boldly keeps his promise.  He leads the Israelites through the Red Sea to the base of Mt. Sinai.  Time and time again he delivers them from their enemies, from their hunger and thirst.  And what reaction do we see from the Israelites?  Regular grumbling and complaining against God, then the golden calf.  If you were God how would you react?  Or maybe better yet, how do you act when treated in a similar way by someone.  (You know, showing a person love, and getting the opposite in return).

How does God react?  Perhaps the only word that begins to describe it is “GRACE.”  Undeserved love.  Instead of wiping the Israelites out, starting over, or anything else that he could have rightfully done, he forgives.  He reestablishes his covenant with his people.  He reminds them that he is “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.”  It is that same gracious God who loves you and me too!  It gives me reason to praise my God for what He’s like!

Someday, I’m going to do a search in my Bible software on “stiff-necked people.”  It would be interesting to see how often it is used.  From my feeble recollection, it is often used to describe the Israelites.  We’ve seen it already in Exodus – a stubborn, proud people who if thinks don’t go the way they think it should, get upset.  Come to think of it, “stiff-necked” unfortunately could be used to describe us more often than not.  Stubborn, proud people who get upset when God doesn’t give us what we want when we want it; people who get upset with things don’t go the way we think they should.  In my own prayers today, I included the confession Moses speaks to God, “Although [this is] a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”

I can’t help but be impressed with the covenant God established with the Israelites and all that it encompassed.  He gave the Israelites rules and laws that governed every aspect of their life - their civil / societal life, their religious life, their morals and values.  At times, I tend to chafe and see laws as a burden.  Something I have to do.  But in this covenant, you again see what God is like.  He gave the Israelites these laws as another expression of his love.  He wanted to keep them separate from the heathen and ungodly nations that surrounded them, and thereby keeping them from spiritual danger.  The laws he gave were also designed to keep the Israelites from physical danger, as well as guard their society.  Ultimately, he graciously gave them a way to show their love for their God by keeping the commands he had given.  They were a way for the Israelites to show their gratitude and appreciation for all that he had done.  God’s rules for us today have the same purpose – keep us from physical and spiritual danger, keep us from falling away from the saving faith, and as a way to say “thank-you” to God for all that he has done for us.  They are a way for us to show our love for God!

Finally, have you ever wondered what that face of Moses looked like when he was done talking to God.  Here it is described as “radiant.”  You could say, being in God’s presence gave Moses a special glow!  And to think, we have the same privilege Moses did.  We too can talk to God – laying our prayers of praise, confession, thanksgiving, and requests at his feet.  What a blessings.  Another great example of What He’s Like!

Back from vacation

I’m sorry about the lack of devotions and reflections on the daily readings recently.  I was on vacation with my family.  Starting tomorrow, Monday, June 23rd, I will be back in the swing of things writing daily devotions.

On vacation, I was thinking about my own spiritual growth, about how to hold myself more accountable to my daily devotion and study of God’s Word, as well as how to continue to encourage you in your spiritual growth.  All of this thinking made me wonder – what do you do for your daily devotional time?  What thing(s) would you find most helpful in your devotional life that isn’t there right now?  Any resources you would like to see?  One thought I’ve had is podcasting these daily devotions.  Would anybody be interested in it?  I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas.

God’s blessings

Lost It All ~ Reflections on Genesis 4-6:8

Ever had something that changed a relationship forever?  Maybe you betrayed someone or someone betrayed you.  Lies are just as capable too.  Yesterday, we saw how sin changed the relationship between God and humans.  It didn’t just change it – it destroyed it.  In today’s reading, we see the toll that sin took not just on their relationship with God, but also with their relationship with one another.

We can we learn from this reading?  We see…

• Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s first children.  Cain is a farmer, Abel a shepherd.
• We see already here God’s people returning a portion of the blessings God showered in their lives as an offering.  However, the simple of act of giving a offering isn’t what God is looking for.  We see both Cain and Abel did that.  An offering is more a matter of the heart.  It seems as though Abel gave an offering from the very best of his flocks, an offering that reflected the heartfelt appreciation and love he must have had for his God.  Cain, however, while still giving an offering, didn’t seem to give it in the same way Abel did – whether it was in how generous he was or wasn’t or just an attitude that God was able to see in Cain’s heart.  I suppose it gives us a moment to consider our offerings – are they from the best of what God has given us, or just leftovers?  With what type of attitude are they given?  Love and appreciation or relutance and grudgingly?
• It is intersting to me to see the progression of sin in this chapter.  Cain evidently sinned in his offering – as God wasn’t pleased with it.  That sin led to the sin of anger in Cain – anger at God, anger (maybe some jealousy) at Abel.  God warns him about the sin he is getting caught up in.  In essence, God warns him about the sin crouching at his door, just waiting to get a piece of Cain.  The anger in Cain’s heart and mind led finally to the action of killing his brother and lying to God about what had happened. 
• Another interesting thing comes up at the end of chapter 4.  In verse 26, we read, “at that time, men began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4:26).  In other words, people begain to pray, to preach, and worship God in a more organized way.  As the number of people on earth increased, the believers began to gather together to worship and call upon the name of the Lord.
• We see that mankind had completely lost God’s image.  Remember when God created Adam and Eve, he created them in the image of God (Gen 1:26).  This meant that, like God, they were perfect and holy.  However, when they sinned, they lost that perfection and holiness.  Now they were sinful.  They had lost the image of God.  That is further demonstrated by the birth of Adam’s children.  They were not born in God’s image (perfect and holy), but in Adam’s image (sinful).  Sin was being passed on from generation to generation.  I suppose this means we can blame our parents for our sinfulness? 
• One can’t help but be impressed by the long life these men and women enjoyed.  They lived hundreds and hundreds of years.  A blessing from God in that it was much easier to hand down the promise of a Savior to subsequent generations, insuring that people had an opportunity to hear the Gospel message of a Savior from sin.  For instance, Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather, would have lived for a number of years on the earth at the same time as Adam, and would have then been able to tell his grandson exactly what he heard from Adam about God and the promise of a Savior!
• We see the effect sin had on people – both in the descendants of Cain as they fell away from faith in the true God and also in the fact that at the end of these long lives, everyone died – one of the results of sin that God had proclaimed.
• What do you see?  Please share your insights or your questions using the comment feature.

Reflections on Genesis 3

What can we learn from the third chapter of Genesis?  Let’s see…

• The word “devil” means “slanderer” or “liar.”  We see the devil live up to his name as he tells Adam and Eve a bunch of half-truths and blatant lies as he tempts them to sin.
• We see that the devil still uses the same tricks on us as he did with Adam and Eve.  Little lies, big lies, all to create doubt – doubt in our God, doubt in his love, doubt that he knows best.  All of which lead to sin.  How often in life don’t things happen that the devil uses to get us to question God’s love and motives?
• What was the “first” sin?  Eve taking a bite of the fruit?  It seems to me like that is just the outward demonstration of a sin that had already taken place in her heart.  And not just her heart – Adam’s too.  They doubted God and his love for them.  There is the other issue of Adam and Eve stepping out of the roles God had given them.  Adam as the servant-leader should have been the leader in this young family, taken charge, and gotten them out of the situation by walking away.  Eve stepped out of her role as servant-helper and was the one calling the shots as Adam stood by.  Yet, as the servant-leader, it was Adam whom God held responsible for the fall into sin  (Romans 5:12; 5:15-19)
• As I mentioned in the devotion, we have the first promise of a Savior from sin.  How loving is that.  Adam and Eve mess up and sin.  And one of the first things he does is to assure them that he would send someone who would forgive their sins.  He didn’t let them sit in their guilt, wondering, worrying – he simply told them he would send one of their offspring to crush sin and the devil.

WOW! ~ Reflections on Genesis 1-2

WOW!

One can’t help but be amazed at all that God does in the first two chapters of Genesis.  And I thought some of my weeks were busy!  God tells us some things about who he is:

• God’s almighty power is on display as he creates everything in 6 days.  Not “days” that were hundreds of years long (even God calls those “centuries”), not days that were even 25 hours long (I could use a few of them every so often), but regular, old 24 hour days – just like you and I experience them.  And he created it all from nothing – just simply saying, “Let there be…” and it came into being.  WOW!
• God’s wisdom is displayed in his creation.  Think about how all the different “systems” on earth work and work together (the atmosphere, the water cycle, etc.)  Think about how intricately designed our own bodies are – with nervous, circulatory, respiratory, and all the other systems are interconnected and normally work seamlessly to keep us alive.  How are bodies are designed to heal themselves.  I’m barely wise enough to look at my calendar before committing something, much less design something as simple and complex as the world and the human body.  WOW!
• We see God’s divine purpose as he made mankind the pinnacle of his creation.  Take a look again how different he created man and woman.  With everything else, he simple spoke and things appeared, but with Adam and Eve, he lovingly formed them from the dust of the earth, breathed into them the breath of life (aka – he gave them a soul), made them in his image (they didn’t look like God, after all, God is a spirit;  rather, they were perfect and holy, just like God), and told them they were to take care of all that God had commanded.  They were to rule over what God had just created (Gen 1:28).  WOW!
• God’s love is clearly seen as we watch him personally interact with Adam and Eve and talking with them.  We see God lovingly take care of their needs by having his creation provide the food that they will need to survive, and in a way, show and take care of Adam’s need for a partner.  We see God’s love in giving Adam and Eve a way for them to worship God by keeping his commands.  Adam and Eve could show their love for God by avoiding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  As Luther put it, that tree was their altar as they obeyed God’s commands.  WOW!
• We can’t help but look and catch glimpses of God in his creation.  WOW!