The Israelites engage in a bit of revisionist history. Their response to the threat of Pharaoh and
his army is to say, “We never wanted to come out of Egypt, didn’t we tell you
to leave us alone to serve the Egyptians?”
Right at the beginning Moses is getting a taste of what his life is
going to look like for most of the next forty years, the people complaining
about their situation every time difficulty arises. He knew it was going to be this way, he had a
certain amount of fear of the people from his final encounter with them before
he left Egypt the first time, they wouldn’t simply accept his leadership. Here, the Lord led them to a place where they
had no options but to turn to Him for help and yet His response to Moses was to
ask why they were crying to Him, go forward.
Moses is given instructions on how to go forward by parting the waters
of the sea and in the end promised that this would get God glory over Pharaoh. What a strange thing it must have been to see
the waters rolled back and 600,000 or more people walking through the heaps on
right and left.
The disciples are like the Israelites. Jesus talks about going somewhere and they
have no idea where He is talking about going, much less how to get there. Neither the Israelites nor the disciples
could see a way forward and yet God provided the way for all of them. Jesus makes an extraordinary claim here to be
the way, the truth and the life. He
leaves no room for mis-interpretation, if you want to go to the Father you have
to come through Jesus. We live in a time
when people talk of many roads to God but Jesus doesn’t leave that option at
all, He makes a very exclusive claim, what we call the “scandal of particularity.” The Israelites could literally see that there
was only one way forward, God hemmed them in behind and right and left with
obstacles. We need to see that in Jesus
the Lord has provided us a means of escape and that He is the only way to
everlasting life.
You can hear the longing in John’s voice in remembering that
we “have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we
looked upon and have touched with our hands…”
Jesus was real to John, his friend with whom he spent three years. What would it be to have a friend that you
later realized was God? John says here
that if the readers of the epistle want to have fellowship with him they must
accept the truth about Jesus and in doing so the fellowship they share will be
not only with John but also with the Father and the Son. He encourages them to walk in the light
rather than the darkness. The Israelites
knew the light as a physical reality, we know it as the light of the truth,
Jesus, who calls us to walk in His way that we might participate in His life.
Shepherd of souls,
refresh and bless
Thy chosen pilgrim
flock
With manna in the
wilderness,
With water from the
rock.
Hungry and thirsty,
faint and weak,
As Thou when here
below,
Our souls the joys
celestial seek
Which from Thy sorrows
flow.
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