”MY ANGEL GOES BEFORE YOU”

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

 

How tempting, and even easy, it is to superimpose on God our own thoughts and worldviews. Because He is admittedly unknowable to any great degree of confidence, we tend to simply demur to the prospect of trying to “figure Him out,” and, instead, just think of Him as a Human, with a capital H. To us, He is infinitely wise, immeasurably powerful and larger than life, yes, but still existing in a human persona. As you recall, Michael said it so well:

 

“Don’t ever imagine that God thinks like a human. He is so much more complicated than that.”

 

This sums it up perfectly as we now turn to this week’s story, one that finds two million Israelites camped near the base of iconic Mount Sinai. They were a people who had been enslaved for over 400 years in Egypt. As such, they were extremely accustomed to two things of note: They had not been allowed to worship God in Egypt, something which had fractured their ability to learn trust, to know shalom with regard to the LORD, and, secondly, they had been enslaved, not only by their physical labor but by the rules that enforced it. As Michael says,

 

“Every decision was made for them. Every slave is run by their master.”

 

Now, in our human wisdom and in our humanness, in general, what would some see as the solution to their four hundred years of religious deprivation and enslavement? Wouldn’t many just say, “Worship God and do so in total freedom and on your own terms.” I think so. Isn’t this perceived as reasonable, even merciful?

 

Well, yes, in one’s narrow and, sometimes, eclipsed view of life, it could look this way. But, as Michael states, “God is just more complicated than that.” The LORD has the advantage of knowing everything. Or, as is famously said, “He is God and we are not.”

 

Three months out of Egypt and into their newfound freedom, things were actually not going too well. Moses was calling to God that the Israelites, his own people, were ready to stone him. They were discontent and actually saying that maybe Egypt was looking pretty good to them, as they trekked through the wilderness.

 

In short, what we might have supposed as the solution being unfettered freedom for these former slaves, was a physical and spiritual bust. And now, at Mount Sinai, there was about to be a complete rearrangement of thought.

 

After Michael and I read the Torah, Chapters 21-30, Michael so astutely said,

 

“In those times, it was necessary to keep the Israelites under control. They had been slaves who were now on their own, and they needed God’s commandements. The Israelites, coming out of slavery, needed more than guidance; they needed real rules. When God wrote the rules, there was chaos that He was dealing with.”

 

As Michael points out,

 

“It was actually Jethro, who was sent by God to first lay out the fabric of rules in a perfect sequence of chapters of Scripture. The Bible is always written in this perfect sequence.”

 

Foundation wise, Jethro was God’s messenger to introduce Moses and the Israelites to the rules surrounding the delegation of power from Moses to the Judges.

 

As both the Torah and the Bible set forth, God was establishing Commandments and ordinances that were extensive and detailed. Ultimately, there would be 613 rules to follow. The purposes of these are multi-faceted but some very specific conclusions may be drawn from them.

 

First, and most centrally, they were formulated to draw the Israelites to Himself – to engage His people into relationship with Himself. Wait a minute, some might say, in last week’s study, didn’t we read where God imposed a boundary, a distance, between Himself and almost all of the two million Israelites, at the base of Mount Sinai? Yes, we did.

 

And here, we enter into a paradox. On the one hand, God fervently wants to be a relational God and yet it is He who insists on this strict boundary. There is more than one explanation for this. Certainly, He is telling His People that His holiness is such and mankind’s sinfulness is such that a metaphor for this is a physical boundary.

 

Also, as a God of covenant, there must be a recognition by the Israelites that He is set apart from them in that he will, without exception, keep His promises.

 

There exist two practical areas of God’s rules which strongly drive home Michael’s and my point in this.

 

The first are the voluminous rules as to the sacrifices which God has established regarding atonement through vicarious sacrifice for sin. (Exodus 29:35) God is saying that He wants more than anything to be in the Israelites’ lives, so He has formulated these rules so that this is always possible. He is a holy God and He wants them to be a holy people. The atonement rules made a way for this to happen.

 

One thing we can ALWAYS know: God does not give rules just to be giving them. There is ALWAYS a reason and that reason is ALWAYS to further deepen our relationship with and trust in Him. There may be ancillary reasons as well – to bring order out of chaos in society certainly comes to mind. But, God’s foundation from the Garden of Eden, where relationship was first broken, to the time of the Israelites, where God began to officially form a specific method to reestablish relationship, has always been the same —  He wants to be with us now and forever.

 

The second practical area of God’s rules that reveal how ardently He is a relational God, concerns the rules surrounding the establishment of the Tabernacle. It was here that God would meet with the Israelites. In Exodus 25:22, God says,

 

“I will meet with you.”

 

The Tent of Meeting or Tabernacle is where God “tabernacled” with the Israelites. Through the priests, Aaron, of the Tribe of Levi, and Aaron’s descendants, this was possible.

 

In a beautiful and powerful observation, Michael says about the smoke on Mount Sinai on the occasion of the giving of the Ten Commandments,

 

“He’s just letting you know He’s there.”

 

Yes, in every great revelation and in every small miracle and in the sweet awareness we see and experience, God is just letting us know He is there.

 

Scripture has rarely recorded a more moving example of the LORD assuring His people of this than the following verse:

 

“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.”

(Exodus 23:20) NIV

 

How glorious are these words! How comforting is their message! Who is this angel? This has been a subject of much theological scholarship. One of the conclusions arrived at is that it is Michael, the Archangel. Michael and I believe it is he. God specially called him, who goes ahead of us, an ANGEL. Of these, none is more powerful. As our Michael says,

 

“None other has his foot on Satan’s very neck.”

 

Only Michael. How like God to send ahead of us this angel.

 

Michael says,

 

“God is life; everything about God is life.”

 

He is faithful in every aspect of His being with us.

 

As the beautiful old hymn says, we may stand on His promises, find peace in His provision, knowing that this God of love in the Old Testament, as Michael said, as he so wisely set us on this amazing study, will always guide and guard us on our way.

 

There is not one area of our lives, there is not one time in our lives when God is not with us. It is written, it is solid rock, it is true.