What the Lord speaks to Moses is simple. He gives a command to go and gather the
people and tell them the time has come to fulfill the promise of giving them
the land. He also says that the people
will believe Moses and that the elders of Israel will go with Moses to ask for
a three day journey to sacrifice to their God.
Moses, however, says that they will not believe him, after the Lord has
promised they would. Because of his unbelief the Lord gives him signs
to authenticate his commissioning by God.
The Lord promises Moses that He will be with him and will teach his
mouth what to speak. Of whom is Moses
afraid? It is not Pharaoh but the people
of Israel that Moses fears.
Certainly Jesus’ experience of speaking to these people
confirms Moses’ fears. The problem,
however, isn’t His eloquence but their hearing.
The Lord can be with our tongue teaching us what to say but if He isn’t
in the hearer also it doesn’t much matter what we say. Their retort to Jesus is one that proves that
an ad hominem attack is the last refuge of those who have no argument at all,
“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” The one thing they always purport to know is
that Jesus is a Galileean, so the Samaritan card is ludicrous. It would seem that God’s definition of the
word “death” has always been somewhat different from our own. Jesus uses it here to say that “if anyone
keeps my word, he will never see death.”
It is perfectly obvious to everyone then and now that death comes for us
all and yet Jesus must be speaking truth.
In Genesis 2 the Lord said that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil “you shall surely die.”
Adam and Eve did not die in the sense that their lives ceased when they
ate. Death must have more to do with
separation from the source of life than with the cessation of physical
processes. Will we embrace His
definition or continue using our own?
We need to be transformed to live as Christians and that
begins with the renewing of our minds to know the good and acceptable and perfect. Paul tells us to abhor what is evil and hold
fast that which is good and that sentence should cause us fear. We need to be in prayer to know what is evil
and what is good. The original sin was
seeking to know these things apart from God Himself and so we should proceed on
that path with great caution. The
passage ends with an admonition Cain should have heeded, “Do not be overcome by
evil, but overcome evil with good.” Sounds
a good bit like the warning God gave him, “If you do not do well, sin is crouching
at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” We must humble ourselves and come to the Lord
to understand anything truly in this life.
It is better to take
refuge in the LORD
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in princes.
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in princes.
You are my God, and I
will give thanks to you;
you are my God; I will extol you.
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!
you are my God; I will extol you.
Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!
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