for every excuse, an answer

A couple weeks back we talked at K-Life about the story of the 'burning bush' in Exodus and how Moses emerges as one of the greatest leaders in Biblical history. No doubt Moses was a historic figure, but I wanted to go back to the beginning of how Moses was even put in the position to lead the Hebrews out of exile and to the gates of Canaan.

The story is found in Exodus 3 & 4 and it begins like this:
"Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God."

Moses is an adopted prince of Egypt, turned wanted Hebrew murderer, hiding in the back of the desert; yet God still found him. The burning bush in itself, to me anyway, isn't all that strange or miraculous. I don't know, maybe brush fires are rare in an Arabian desert, but the fact is that Scripture says that Moses noticed the burning bush, and upon seeing it not being consumed turned aside to see why. It was then, after Moses took notice that God called to him.

I think that last part about God calling to Moses only after Moses acknowledge the effort of God to catch our attention. How many times to we look past a seemingly natural occurrence in our lives when in fact God is trying to get our attention.

We know God calls Moses to lead a nation out of bondage, a feat I would argue most of use will never experience, but we have all been called, directly by God, to a command, a commission, a calling. We'll get back to that.

Moses, after a direct command from God, has the pride (some may say he was shy, but defiance (excuses) in the face of God, I would call pride as some level) to come up with not 1 but 4 excuses, and God in His sovereignty has an answer for every one.

You can read the excuses yourself, and God response to each one, but the thing that I think stands out to me and I find applicable to everyday life are the following questions:

1. What is it that God has called us to do a Christians?
2. What are our excuses to not live a sold out life for Christ?
3. What are the pride issues at the root of our excuses that have us believing a lie or doubt about God?

The Cross as our Stoning Experience

I gave a talk to a youth group in Peru the summer before my Senior year of high school. It was about the story of Achan found in Joshua 7. My point in the story was to point out a key verse and have everyone apply it to their own life. It's found in verse 13 and its God's response to Joshua as Joshua is weeping and tearing his clothes asking God why He had brought them out of the desert only lead them to defeat at the gates of their enemies (Chapter 7- Defeat at Ai). God's response is this:

"Get up, sanctify the people, and say, 'Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because thus says the Lord God of Israel: "There is an accursed thing in your midst, O Israel; you cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the accursed thing from among you."

My thoughts were challenge everyone to find that 'accursed' thing in our lives (Achan took gold from Jericho and hid it in his tent) that are keeping us from an intimate relationship with Christ. And for years, that is the only thing I got from the story.

Tonight I talked at K-Life about the same passage, with the same hopes of challenging everyone to ask themselves the question of "Is there something in my live and is separating me from the Grace of God?" As I got into the talk, the story of what took place after the 'accursed' thing was found in the tent of Achan really hit home. Joshua takes Achan, his family, and all his possession out to a field and the story follows:

"And Joshua said, 'Why have you troubled us? The Lord will trouble you this day.' So all Israel stoned him with stones; and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones. Then they raised over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Achor to this day."

Is the Cross our Stoning experience? God is consistent. We know He is both loving and a jealous God. My experience is too often Christians fail to see the severity of our sin because of how accessible Grace is. Yes we have the Cross, but God is Just as He is Love. And we see the product of sin throughout the Old Testament is the "fierceness of His anger". So what changed from the Old to the New Testament?

Here is my belief. The Cross is our Stoning experience. Christ on the Cross took the stones and the fire as nails and a crown of thorns, and the heap of stones raise to remind us that Christ is our propitiation of sin is the Cross. Behind the Grace of the Cross is a loving and jealous God and I hope we never fail to recognize the severity of our sin ('so the anger of the Lord burned against Israel' Joshua 7:1).

The story may or may not be about what is our 'bag of gold hidden in out tent', but here is a thought: every sin we commit against our Father God is worthy of justice, a fate spared us by the Cross. God has an image in our mind of a caring father, but if we believe that about God, we have to take God in His entirety, and that includes a God that burns with anger when we sin against Him.

Don't Abuse Grace. Don't fail to recognize the severity of sin. Don't forget the sacrifice at the Cross.