Three months earlier, their world had changed.

At last, they had left slavery behind. At first, they had felt such relief, such joy, to be free. But now, they felt very afraid.

Overnight, they had become transients in a barren desert, with powerful enemies on all sides. They had no experience or training in defending themselves, or governing themselves, or providing for themselves where nothing grew at all.

They had been chased by one army, and attacked by another. They had been without water and food. Supposedly, good land lay ahead. But they had no clue what it might take to get there, and live there, or how they would survive along the way.

Now, God had invited them to be his people.They had gathered to meet with him. What he asked of them, they’d thought reasonable, doable. But the shock and awe that accompanied his presence had wrecked them.

They had no clue how unable they were to do the “doable,” or how fiercely God was working to bring them to himself. They couldn’t seem to grasp, either, the magnitude of the deliverance he kept working in their behalf.

When their world had changed, they camped in the desert emotionally, as well as physically. Instead of owning their fears, facing them and taking them to the Lord, time and again they panicked. They believed what was not true. They made terrible choices. They threatened to stampede.

We may be tempted to judge them.
Until our own world seismically shifts,
and we know exactly how they felt.

In the big middle of their panic, God called Moses into thick darkness, to make some things clear.

When your world, or mine, has changed, their true story from long ago can help us too.

You go, Moses!

Already, it had been a stunning and exhausting day. The people led by Moses had gathered at the foot of Sinai. The Lord had descended on its top.

Then, surprisingly, God called Moses up the mountain – and promptly sent him back down again. It was a four-hour round trip, and Moses’ third such trek in a week. This time, Moses made the climb while the people stood, watching Sinai convulse with earthquake and storm.

As Moses rejoined everyone else, the Lord spoke. He gave his people the Ten Words. Four focused on relating to God; six, on relating to others.¹

After all that, 80-year-old Moses set out up the mountain for a fourth time.

The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. (Ex. 20:21)

Each previous visit atop Sinai, God had given Moses a brief memo to take back to the people. This time, God gave Moses a message that spans more than three chapters. “These are the laws you are to set before them,” God said.²

Scripture doesn’t say how long Moses remained on the mountain, but it does tell us that, when he returned, he told the whole message to the people, and then wrote it down in detail.

When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. (Ex. 24:3-4)

You go, Moses! You faced major change with courage and spunk. You continued to seek God and to do what he said. Spirit, soul and body, you rose to a challenge that terrified everyone else.

A different way

It might seem that an all-wise God, instructing his upended people, would start by telling them how to deal with the huge dangers and urgent needs they faced.

What may seem random

Instead, speaking to Moses atop that mountain, the Lord addressed matters that may seem inconsequential and random, such as how to make altars and what to do if someone loses your stuff.

He began and ended this set of laws with commands regarding worship. To start, he reiterated the first and second commandments:

You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold. (Ex. 20:22-23)

To conclude, the Lord told his people to set aside times to rest, and to celebrate. Last of all, he warned them yet again not to worship other gods.³

Between those bookends, God set a few more parameters for relationship with him. He gave more details as to how to treat other people.

What is good

Repeatedly, the Lord stressed the importance of treating well the people easiest to mistreat – the poor, the foreigner, the forsaken woman, the forsaken child, the pregnant woman, the sexual abuse victim, the servant, the neighbor who trusts you with his stuff, the neighbor you hate.

Succinctly, God described what to do when someone:

• acts violently toward another;
• verbally abuses another or blasphemes God;
• recklessly or knowingly endangers another;
• takes advantage of another;
• lends to or borrows from another;
• steals, loses or damages the property of another.

Brilliantly, Micah 6:8 captures the essence of the whole:

O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right,
to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God. (NLT)

In short, God called his people to quit being driven by panic. He required of them a completely different way.

Hanging on love

What Micah summarized in a sentence, Jesus summarized in a word.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matt. 22:36-40)

Granted, love is not what people tend to associate with the Old Testament. Further, no command to love appears in this first set of laws. Rather, God gave practical instructions for handling relationships and life.

Yet according to Jesus, every word God spoke hangs on love. Indeed, every instruction from God to his people can only be rightly understood and implemented through love.

This love, though, may not look as we have thought.

For one thing, love is not blind. It does not live in denial, to protect what is not real. Nor does it jump to conclusions, based on bias, resentment, or incomplete facts. Instead, love sees what is true, and keeps looking. It presses in to learn what is really going on.

So love sees reality. And love sees worth. It sees the incalculable worth of God and of people made in his image. Love does not forfeit integrity and identity in order to please others. Nor does it manipulate and control to get what it wants. It does not agree to dehumanize people, nor does it protect and enable those who do.

The Old Testament law shows us: Love acts justly, as well as mercifully. The Old Testament prophets show us: Love speaks up to expose and to warn, as well as to encourage and cheer.

Love responds to real circumstances
involving real people
in ways that reflect the holiness,
wisdom and compassion
of the Lord.

Learning true worship

Often, we use the word worship to describe certain things we do in certain settings. I’d suggest:

Worship is the moment-by-moment outflow
of loving the Lord your God
with all your heart.

Micah called for true worship when he urged, “Walk humbly with your God.”

From the first moment that he introduced himself at Sinai, the Lord has stressed how crucial it is for his people to worship him alone. He knows how prone we are to make our own gods. He knows how easily we can be deceived into equating our gods with him. He knows that whatever sabotages our relationship with him sabotages everything else.

Repeatedly, he said: I am the Lord your God. Do not make any gods to be alongside me.⁴

Repeatedly, the people said: No problem. We can do it. Yet, oh so quickly, they worshiped what their hands had made.

In the New Testament, we read:

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. (1 Cor. 10:6-7, 12)

We might think that a life focused on loving God and staying away from the counterfeits would make us so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good. His laws show us the opposite is true.

Walking humbly with God,
we learn what it looks like to love people.
We learn how to handle
complex, real-life situations
wisely and well.

Asking and seeking

It’s easy to recognize love in many of the instructions God gave in Exodus 21-23:

• “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner.” (22:21)
• “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless.” (22:22)
• “Do not spread false reports.” (23:1)
• “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.” (23:2)
• “Do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.” (23:3)
• [And also:] “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.” (23:6)

But some of what God says here may not seem merciful or just.

Why, for example, did the Lord make laws to protect slaves in ancient Israel against mistreatment, rather than abolishing slavery entirely? The church in the antebellum South latched onto such Scriptures to justify an unspeakably brutal and dehumanizing slave system, and to label it, “God’s intended order.”

Why did God command Israel, “Do not allow a sorceress to live” (Ex. 22:18)? The church in colonial Massachusetts used that Scripture to justify the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

When we don’t understand God’s written Word, and when we think we do, it’s important to ask God questions. It’s important to seek answers from a heart set to love.

And it’s vital to know: The Lord himself will guide us.

Guided by his Presence

God knows everything. He knew his Word would be received, written, translated and heard, by people. He knows how very diverse and finite and fallible we are. He sees how very far sin and evil have encroached.

The Lord knew he was offering his people what is spirit and life, and mystery and paradox, and way beyond what we ourselves can grasp. He also knew how often his Word would be co-opted and twisted by the self-seeking – and used to control, oppress, divide.

And so, God gave his Word in the context of his Presence.

When his people found themselves in a barren desert, the Lord was there with them. He was making a way to dwell in their midst. The first message he sent to them from Sinai included these words:

I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. (Ex. 19:4)

Then, when God gave the laws we’ve explored in this post, he said:

See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. (Ex. 23:20-21)

A few weeks later, Moses challenged the Lord on this. Moses said, in essence, “An angel just will not do.”

God replied:

My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.⁵

Today, too, the Lord gives us his Word in the context of his Presence. We know what he is saying, and have the desire and power to do it, by his Spirit dwelling within.⁶

Into the blessing

Before sending Moses back down the mountain, God made huge promises, directly related to the huge threats his people faced:

I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land.

[My] blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will establish your borders.⁷

God made clear that these promises could not be received by those living from fear and “losing it” whenever any new threat arose. Nor by those sitting on their hands, waiting for him to make their problems vanish.

He called his people, and taught them, to focus on treating him well and treating other people well. As they did so – as they trusted and obeyed him in the daily (and oh-so-crucial) stuff – he would take care of the huge, hard stuff.

When a specific need or danger arose, he would make known the path of life. He would lead practically, creatively, often counter-intuitively – and always personally. Whatever they faced, he would make the way through. And he would make clear to them how to walk with him. In love. Into the blessing.

Still today

The same God still says to his people:

When your world has changed, I am here.
Walk humbly with me. Learn from me.

I will lead you into true worship.
I will teach you real love.

And I will take you into the blessings you would have turned and run from –
the blessings that await you where you’re most afraid to go.

---

This is a lightly edited repost with a slight name change. The original post was published August 14, 2020, under the title, “When the world has changed.”

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Seven Encounters with God series

Moses’ encounters with God on Sinai reveal remarkable things about who God is, how he relates to his people and how to cultivate intimacy with him. Lord, give us eyes to see.

• “Come be with me” – Seven encounters with God
• 1: The purpose of the wilderness
• 2: Prepare to meet with God
• 3: God who loves fiercely
• 4: When your world has changed
• 5: Mystery and life: The covenant meal
• 6, part 1: The place his glory dwells
• 6, part 2: One who stands in the gap
• 7: Radiant! A glory story

See also

• Checklists, idols and loving God
• Fighting fear with fear

Footnotes

1. See Exodus 19:16–20:20. ↩︎
2. Exodus 21:1. Moses’ fourth encounter with God on Sinai is recorded in Exodus 20:21–24:4. ↩︎
3. See Exodus 23:23-24, 10-19. ↩︎
4. See, for example, Exodus 20:2-6, 22-23; 23:23-24, 32-33. ↩︎
5. Exodus 33:14; see vv. 1-17. ↩︎
6. See Jesus’ teachings the night before his crucifixion, in John 14-16. ↩︎
7. Exodus 23:22-23, 25-26, 27, 31. ↩︎