3 May 2012

Psalm 119:49-72; Exod. 33:1-23; 1 Thess. 2:1-12; Matt. 5:17-20

The command to Moses sounds a bit like what God said to a man called Abram in Genesis 12, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.”  Now that promise of a nation and a land is to be fulfilled as this multitude goes out from Sinai, the place where God revealed Himself and His purpose to Moses in the burning bush, things have come full circle for Moses and the family/nation.  The problem is that God won’t go with them because they are a stiff-necked nation (see Stephen’s speech in Acts 7).  Beginning here Moses chose to have a place apart where he as the leader could go and be alone with the Lord and seek His counsel.  Leaders always need that time apart for wisdom.  Moses’ prayer in verses 12-16 is critical for all leaders of God’s people, not just pastors but small group leaders and ministry leaders.  Moses’ desire to see the face of God is not presumptuous, it is motivated by his desire to know God more, he wants more intimacy and more knowledge, he is hungry for that relationship.  Is that my desire also?

As I have said before there is a strain of antinomiansm, a term coined by Martin Luther that is defined as holding that, under the gospel dispensation of grace, moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation (“nomos” being the Greek word for “law” so the word means literally against law.)  Jesus here makes that an impossibility for us to accept as a Christian idea.  “Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”  Could that be any clearer?  Our righteousness in standing before God is an alien righteousness in the sense that it belongs to Jesus and is imputed to us for salvation.  That righteousness and the benefits it provides, eternal life and the Holy Spirit living in us, allows us to seek true righteousness in living as well.  We are called to righteousness and empowered to not only seek it but to live by the Spirit in righteousness.  We will never “get there” as far as perfection is concerned but it is to be our goal and in that we will know Him more.  As we seek to be like Him we will also find that we know more about Him and about righteousness.

I love these words, “just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.”  That gets to the heart of the pastor’s vocation and avocation.  I wish it were always true.  Too often we are motivated by pleasing men and women, I admit it and I hate it about myself.  It comes from wanting to be like by those we see rather than by pleasing the One whose face we can’t see.  It also, unfortunately, comes from being too busy with people to spend face time with God and allowing the concerns of our people to outweigh His concerns.  If we are to lead and shepherd God’s people we need more time with Him getting our marching orders than we need getting our marching orders from the people.  We all need a tent of meeting and we need to use it, not let it collect dust like our treadmills, bikes, and other exercise equipment. 

See! the streams of living waters,
spring form eternal love,
well supply thy sons and daughters
and all fear of want remove.
Who can faint, when such a river
ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace which, like the Lord, the Giver,
never fails from age to age.

Tune