What would Moses’ life have been like if God hadn’t called to him “in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai,” Acts 7:30? Likely he would have continued his 40 year exile from Egypt as “an alien in a foreign land,” Exodus 2:22, where he’d settled down as a shepherd “tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law” (3:1). And it wasn’t a bad life either; Moses had a wife and two kids, and a steady job that kept them all alive and close to family.
But then God introduced himself to Moses in Exodus 3, starting Moses on a lifetime of knowing him. God began the “knowing” by stating who he was and why he was talking to Moses from a burning bush (5-10). Both points successfully got Moses’ attention, but he wasn’t comfortable with God wanting to send him back to Egypt to free his fellow Israelites (11). Which led to the first lesson in Moses’ journey to knowing God, that when God initiates a relationship with a human, he has a purpose in mind – and he supplies whatever is needed to accomplish it too. In Moses’ case, God would strike the Pharaoh hard enough that he’d let the Israelites go, and the Egyptians would then supply the Israelites with all that they needed too (19-22).
Life for Moses then became an ongoing knowing of this God who made it obvious again and again that he deeply cared. But then a crisis arose that revealed just how well Moses had come to know God.
The crisis was the making of the Golden Calf, and the Israelites claiming that it was the god who’d rescued them from Egypt (32:1-4). How quick they’d been to ditch God in favour of their own man-made god (7-8) – and resort to a wild party to celebrate it too (6). So God told Moses to “leave me alone to vent my anger against these people and destroy them” (9-10). Instead, Moses got back to God, and in a strongly worded appeal reminded God of his reason for ripping the Israelites out of Egypt, and what evil the Egyptians would accuse him of if he killed off the Israelites instead. He even said to God, “Turn from your fierce anger, relent and do not bring disaster on your people” (11-12).
Which only proved how well Moses knew God, because of course God wouldn’t destroy the Israelites, having promised “by his own self” to preserve and increase them (13). And God happily responded to Moses’ confidence in him by doing what Moses knew he’d do (14). It’s right after this incident too, that we then find out in Moses’ life “What knowing God does”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 