By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé
Michael speaks so well about this week’s study when he says,
“When you just talk to God, you are actually praying. He is a good listener. He answers with hurdles and challenges and teachings and blessings.”
How many dialogues have we already listened to between God and Moses? We have called them talks, but, as Michael says, they are actually prayers. They are sacred, divine appointments between God and His handpicked leader. Today, they will run the gambit from affirming to painful.
Where do Moses, Aaron and the Israelites find themselves in the story of their journey with God to the Promised Land? The context is this: The forty years of wandering through the wilderness, caused by their failure to enter the Land of God’s Promise, has almost come and gone. Scripture gives us little guidance about the particulars of those decades. We only know that they are at their close, and that most of the Israelite generation, who did not enter the Promised Land, have passed on. We find the Israelites and all camped at Kadesh.
Notably, Moses’ sister, Miriam, died there. Notably, once again, there is no water and this has the Israelites, the new generation, complaining and grumbling with as much fervor as their parents had.
“Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD!…Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place?”
(Numbers 20:2-5) NIV
Moses and Aaron did what they had done so many times before when the Israelites spoke in this manner. They
“…fell facedown…”
(Numbers 20:6) NIV
God immediately appeared to them and said to Moses,
“Take the staff and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. SPEAK to that rock BEFORE THEIR EYES and it will pour out its water.”
(emphasis added)
(Numbers 20:8) NIV
In order to understand what God does next, we must picture the scene. God said to do three things:
1) Gather ALL the Israelites (certainly, over a million people)
2) SPEAK to the rock
3) Do it very PUBLICLY
God made it clear that, as in the past, this would be a demonstration of HIS provision for His people and that what Moses said and did, was as God’s representative.
As Michael said, there had been this dialogue between them. Moses spoke when he and Aaron fell facedown, saying, in so many words, that they were at the end of their power to deal with the situation. God took them at their word and trusted them to then follow His instructions to the letter. What happened next is the stuff of Biblical legend:
“So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, must WE bring you water out of this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and STRUCK the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.”
(emphasis added)
(Numbers 20:9-11) NIV
Oh goodness! The staff that was in the hand of Moses and the arm that raised it at the Red Sea, to part the water, so that Israel could walk through on dry land…the staff that had been taken from the presence of God, at God’s command, was in the hand of an angry man, of Moses, in fury and out of control.
Oh, the mouth of Moses, God’s man, as Michael says, God’s mouthpiece to speak to an assembly of people, larger than most of us will ever view during our sojourn on Earth, people hanging on his every syllable, waiting for GOD’S provision of water. Moses then represented that he and Aaron were the providers for a thirsty multitude! “…must WE bring you water out of this rock?”
What was it to assume the mantle of speaking for God, and then to lash out, “Listen, you rebels!”
And yet…what a compelling point Michael makes about Moses:
“It’s a hard and long road that Moses walked. This man lived over 120 years. He tried his best and man broke him down. It’s tough to be the chosen one!”
After months of study about Moses, we are all eyewitnesses to the great truth of this statement.
God responded to the incident in the currency of painful consequences:
“But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”
(Numbers 20:12) NIV
As Michael says,
“It’s not like he didn’t go to Heaven. He just didn’t get to go to the land of milk and honey.”
It would be the most natural thing to now ask, after he was denied entry into the Promised Land, whether he abandoned God’s work in leadership with the Israelites? Not at all. As the next few weeks will show, Moses continued to, in Michael’s words, “give it his best.”
Without missing a beat, Moses just simply went on to the next thing. And what was this? It was to do everything in his power to advance the Israelites in the direction of the Promised Land, despite the fact that it was a land he knew he would not himself enjoy.
What is the quote?
“ Society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
This is the Moses we have all come to love and admire.
Next week, we will see Moses, the diplomat, who first elects to use finesse to avoid conflict that would delay the Israelites’ arrival at the Promised Land. But, when artful diplomacy fails, Scripture will showcase Moses, the military strategist who knows how to battle those who would oppose God’s mission to God’s promised country.
What a story! What a window into the persona of a hero! And, for some of us, what a surprise to find it all in the OLD Testament. As Michael says of this often misunderstood first half of the Bible and its drama, heroics and lessons,
“It’s all there, but we don’t see it. How important it is to take the time to look.”
This is exactly what we will be doing as Moses continues to be “God’s man,” over the next few months, in ways both numerous and profound.
Several months with Moses! Bring it on! Would that we would be as faithful!