Transcript
I want you to think about the best day you’ve ever had. And then think about what happened next, because I believe the best day Moses ever had was the day he led God’s people through the waters of the Red Sea and brought them to safety on the other side. He turned around and looked back, and the army of Egypt was in hot pursuit.
But God told him to raise his hands over the waters, and when he did, the waters came back together again and drowned the entire Egyptian army. The dead bodies of those soldiers washed up on the shore. And when Miriam saw it, Moses’ sister, she picked up her tambourine and began to sing praise to God.
And all the women of Israel joined her, and they were singing together, O give thanks to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. That was a pretty good day for Moses. But just after that, as I imagine it, someone said, now what? And that’s when Moses realized that he had led 600,000 men, not to mention the women and children, the flocks and the herds, 600,000 men into the wilderness with no clear plan in mind for where they would sleep or what they would eat or what they would drink.
But this was Moses, a leader of the people. He led them into the wilderness confidently for three days until they ran out of food and began to complain against him, saying, is it because there weren’t enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die of hunger in the wilderness? And Moses prayed to the Lord and said, I don’t know what to do with these people. And the Lord said, I myself will give them bread.
I will rain down bread from heaven. Just watch and see. Sure enough, the next morning when those people stepped outside their tents, they saw on the ground, this fine, white, flaky substance.
They didn’t know what it was. Somebody pointed and said, what is that? A Hebrew word that sounds very much like manna. And Moses said, this is the bread that the Lord your God is giving you.
Taste it and see that the Lord is good. One of the old men bent down carefully. He picked up one of those flakes.
He put it in his mouth, tasted it. He said, it tastes like a wafer made with honey. It’s delicious.
And one of the young people picked up one of those flakes and tasted it and said, that’s basen, which is a young person’s word for delicious. This was the bread that God provided to his people in the wilderness. They were able to pick up bowls of manna and baskets full of manna, except on the Sabbath day when no manna fell.
On the day before, God would provide twice as much, trying to teach his people a lesson about the Sabbath. Spend that day before, he said, gathering up extra so that on the Sabbath day you can rest and spend time with me. That’s what God wanted.
That’s why he brought his people out into the wilderness. They were grateful for the manna. They moved on from there.
Three days later, they came to a place called Rephidim, where there was no water. A person can live 30 days without food, but only about three days without water. And these people began to complain to Moses, saying, were there not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us out into the wilderness to die of thirst? And Moses prayed to the Lord, he said, Lord, I don’t know what to do with these people.
And the Lord said, what’s that in your hand, Moses? He said, that’s my staff. He said, take your staff and hit the rock and water will come out. That’s what Moses did, and that’s what happened.
Water came out of the rock. So much water that the people could drink their fill and bathe their bodies and wash their clothes. It was a miracle from God, and the people were grateful.
They moved on from there and came closer and closer to Mount Sinai, that place that was called the mountain of God, the place where Moses had encountered God in the burning bush. And you may recall that God had said to him, this will be a sign for you when you have delivered my people from their slavery in Egypt. They will worship me here on this mountain.
When they came to the foot of that mountain, the people looked up and they saw the glory of God descending on the mountain. It was like a bright cloud. Some people said that it burned like a fiery furnace.
Others said they saw smoke going up from it, like the smoke of a kill. But Moses, who has had some experience with this, went up on the mountain to speak to God face to face as a man speaks with his friend. And God said to Moses, I want you to say to my people, say to them, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.
Say to my people, if you will obey my word and keep my covenant of all the people on earth, you will be my treasured possession. The whole earth is mine, but if you will obey my word and keep my covenant, you will be to me a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Moses carried those words down the mountain to the people like a marriage proposal.
He said that the Lord is saying to me that if you will be His, He will be yours. And all the people said, yes, yes, of course, whatever the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses went back up on the mountain to work out the terms of the covenant between God and His people.
If you listen carefully, they sound almost like wedding vows. God said, first of all, I am the Lord, your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me.
Don’t make any idols to worship. I am the Lord. Keep my name holy.
Don’t use it in an irreverent way. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. You have six days to do all your work, but the Sabbath day is holy to the Lord.
Honor your father and mother so that your days may be long in the land to which I am taking you. Don’t murder one another. Don’t commit adultery.
Don’t steal from one another. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. And do not covet your neighbor’s possession, not his house, not his wife, not his donkey or anything your neighbor has.
I am the Lord. Moses stayed on the mountain with the Lord and the Lord gave him more laws. So many more laws.
But he also began to talk to Moses about something he called the tabernacle, a tent of meeting, a place where God could come down and be with his people and they could be with him. God gave Moses all these instructions, detailed instructions, and there was Moses on the mountain writing down everything God said and making floor plans and measuring and making sure that all was in order. Meanwhile the people down at the foot of the mountain were getting restless.
Some of them came to Aaron, Moses’ brother, and said, make us some gods who will take us into the promised land. As for this fellow Moses, we don’t know what’s become of him. And Aaron, the brother of Moses, said, bring me your rings and your gold bracelets and I’ll see what I can do.
He took all of that and threw it into the fire and it melted and he poured it into a mold and he finally took it out of the mold and used a graving tool to carve something that looked kind of, sort of, like a golden calf. He put it up on a pedestal and the people gathered around and those who had come to him originally said to the rest of the people, look, these are your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And the people began to worship the golden calf.
They sat down to eat and drink. They got up to revel and the noise rose to the top of the mountain where God heard it and said to Moses, your people are down there worshiping a golden calf. And Moses said, my people? Those are your people.
You’re the one who brought them out of slavery and brought them into the wilderness. God said, they are worshiping that golden calf. I am going to destroy those people and I will make of you a great nation.
Moses said, Lord, if you do that, the Egyptians will say that that was your intention from the beginning, to bring your people out into the wilderness and destroy them. No, Lord, please spare them, spare them. And the Lord relented.
Some would say he repented of what he was about to do. But he sent Moses down to talk to those people. And Moses went down with those Ten Commandments under his arms.
When he saw the people worshiping that golden calf, running wild, for the people were running wild. Moses was filled with holy anger and he threw down those Ten Commandments and smashed the tablets. He burned that golden calf with fire.
He ground it into powder. He spread the powder on the water and forced the people to drink and many of them died. It took a while, but eventually Moses’ anger cooled and the people repented.
And Moses went back up on the mountain and said to the Lord, will you remember? That you are a good and loving God. One who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And God remembered the covenant that he had made with his people.
And then and there he renewed that covenant. And when Moses came down and told the people, they were eager to show God that they planned to do their part. They began to build that tabernacle.
Skilled craftsmen among them were called forth to work out every detail that God had articulated. They made this beautiful tent. It was a place where the glory of God could dwell and the people could come and worship.
The glory of God filled that tabernacle. There was a cloud that rested over it day by day and the people would come and they would say their prayers and sing the Psalms. They would bring their offerings.
They would make their sacrifices. This is where the people learned to worship. There in the wilderness when God was with them.
And Moses wrote down all the rules and regulations of worship in the tabernacle. The ordination of priests. The offering of sacrifices.
You can still find it in a book we call Leviticus. The book, the handbook for the priests. Eventually, it was time for the people to move on.
And they went from there to the edge of the promised land. Moses sent 12 spies into the land and they were gone for 40 days and 40 nights. When they came back, the spies gave their report.
They said, it’s true. What Moses has been telling you is true. This is a good and broad land.
It is a land flowing with milk and honey. They showed off some of the produce of that land. But they also said, this land is inhabited.
There are people who are living there now and they live in fortified cities and they are fierce warriors. And not only that, the descendants of the giants live among these people. We seemed like grasshoppers to them and so we seemed to ourselves.
About this big, only Caleb, one of the 12 spies, stepped forward and said, listen, the same God who brought us out of the land of Egypt can take us into the land of Canaan if we but trust him to do it. But it was one of those days when the majority ruled. And the people listened to the 10 spies and not to Caleb or his friend Joshua who believed that God could deliver them.
The anger of the Lord burned against his people. He was ready to destroy them all. He said so to Moses.
He said, but to you, from you, I will make a great nation. And once again, Moses pleaded with the Lord. He said, remember that you are a good and loving God, that you are slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
These are your people. Please spare them. And if you won’t spare them, then blot my name out of your book.
And when God heard that, he relented. Some would say he repented of what he was about to do. But he said to Moses, this faithless generation that I brought out of Egypt will not enter the promised land.
Only their children and grandchildren will go into it. This generation will wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the faithless die out. And that’s what happened.
Those people wandered in the wilderness all those years. They encountered fiery serpents and foreign enemies, but eventually they pitched their tents on the plains of Moab, just across the Jordan River from the promised land. And Moses had to teach these children who had been born in the wilderness the ways of God.
He shared with them all the laws that had been given. All those laws, 613 of them in a book that we call Deuteronomy. But he began with those original 10.
Said to those Hebrew children, the Lord is God, the Lord alone. You shall have no other gods but him. And you shall not make for yourselves any idols.
You shall keep his name holy. You shall keep his day holy. Remember the Sabbath.
Honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land. Don’t murder each other. Don’t commit adultery.
Don’t steal from each other. Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. Don’t covet your neighbor’s things.
If you’re paying attention, you can see that the first four commandments are about the relationship between God and his people. And the next six are about the relationship between his people and each other. Years later, someone would ask Jesus, which commandment is the most important? If I couldn’t keep all 613, if I could only keep one, which one should it be? And Jesus said, the first and most important of all the commandments is this one.
You shall love the Lord your God. With all your heart and soul and mind and strength. But the second commandment is so much like it, the two cannot be separated.
You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. On these two pegs hang all the law and all the prophets. Nothing is more important than loving God and loving neighbor.
That’s not impossible to remember. And it’s not impossible to do. So may it be for God’s people in this place.
Amen.
