Moses the Hot Mess

I was talking with God about Exodus 33, one of my favorite conversations in the Old Testament. And if I’m honest, sometimes one of the most confusing.

I was observing that God wasn’t particularly answering that Moses was asking, and then I remembered that Jesus was pretty famous for that, too. “You and your Son don’t like answering questions head-on, do you?”

And to my immense surprise, he didn’t answer my question head-on either. Instead, he took me inside Mo’s heart, inside his soul, and we looked at some of the stuff going on there. And maybe for the first time, I realized how much Mo was a wounded soul.

I mean, look at what he’d been through:

• He was essentially kidnapped by the king’s daughter [Exodus 2:10], raised as a grandson of the maniacal king who was slave master of his entire family [1:11], and appeared to be in the midst of trying to commit genocide on his people’s race [1:22].

• It appears that his genocidal grandfather didn’t know he was actually a member of the race he was trying to exterminate: he lived with a (shameful?) secret his entire life. Some people think he was being groomed to be the next genocidal king in the land.

• He figured out that he was really part of the slave race, presumably from his wet nurse, who was his birth mom, and it appears that he wanted to use his position of power to free them.

• He makes his first attempt toward their freedom [2:12], which a) fails, b) reveals he favors the slave race over the existing power structure, c) alienates the people he’s trying to save [2:14], d) turns his maniacal grandfather against him [2:15], and e) scares the piss out of him [ibid]. He flees for his life.

• He meets strangers in the desert who mis-identify him as a member of the genocidal ruling race [2:19], and he doesn’t correct them.

• He gives up on doing anything important with his life, marries into a family of nomads and settles for being a shepherd on the backside of the desert, for 40 years. (Sounds like a real “death of a vision” to me.)

• On day 14,600 (approximately) of his life as a hopeless, helpless shepherd, he stumbles on an encounter with a God he’s not known [3:2ff], who gives him a quest [3:10] to do the very thing that he had tried to do 40 years earlier. He’s too broken and still too scared to go back, too intimidated to attempt anything that important [3:11].

• So he argues with God, putting up obstacle [3:11] after obstacle [3:13] after obstacle [4:1] after obstacle [4:10] as to why he shouldn’t be expected to do that job.

• He experiences a couple of undeniable miracles [3:2, 4:3, 4:6] there on the mountainside. He believes his fears more than he believes the miracles.

• In the end, he flat-out refuses to comply with God’s instructions. “Send someone else!” [4:13] He pisses God off [4:14], who adds his older brother to the deliverance party.

We could go on. But I began to better understand the whiny tone in Moses’ voice [33:12-16]. And it was at that point that God pointed out that Moses was an 80-year-old broken man, with a lot of un-healed wounds in his soul. He was kind of a dysfunctional mess. An old dysfunctional mess.

And THAT is who God chose to deliver millions of people from arguably the mightiest nation on the planet at the time.

And you know that God made it personal. “If I can use a messed-up man like that (and I heard the tender affection in his “voice”), I can use you just fine, too.”

Learning From the Past

I felt like I was being schooled as I drove across town. 

The guy on the podcast was talking about the Jesus Revolution movie and the Jesus People movement in which it's set. He made a dramatic statement that I've heard before, but this time it hit me like a freight train: 

• More than 80% of current pastors came to faith in Jesus during that move of God, even though many of them were not part of the Jesus People movement. 

It hit me strong enough that I tapped Pause on the podcast to think about it. "This shouldn't be a surprise to you, Son; you were there," and he reminded me of some things. 

And as I reflected on those days, Father reminded me of some things I hadn't paid attention to. For example, American culture was a mess. Sex was a dominant topic on people's mind (whether "free love" or advancing homosexuality or the sexes at war in the Women's Liberation movement). Jane Roe's lawsuit against Henry Wade for abortion was making it's way through the courts, destined for the Supreme Court. The political world was characterized by assassinations (two Kennedys & Martin Luther King), and the media had declared that God was dead. Riots filled campuses across the nation, hopelessness was rampant, and rebellion might have been the watchword for a generation.

"Does that sound familiar, Son?" and he reminded  me of some of the headlines I've read recently. 

But God.... It was into that mess that God stepped in. Holy Spirit began answering prayers in ways that church folk never expected and it blew up one tidy little Bible church after another, beginning with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel, but it went well beyond that. Before long, there were flocks of people getting baptized in oceans and lakes and rivers and apartment swimming pools.

Since there was never an overly-precise definition of what exactly was part of the Jesus People movement and what wasn't, I can get away with saying that I was part of that movement. In point of fact, I was only one of several minor leaders of a tiny little eddy of that movement in a remote corner of the country (a Bible study I was part of exploded from one person to a couple of hundred). 

But I was part of it. And our little sparkle of light was only one of a magnificent firework display that Holy Spirit was setting off in our region. 

There was a Young Life group that was blowing up, some of the earliest Christian musicians kept showing up at the school offering free concerts where stories of Jesus captured students' attention. Several local churches were exploding with hungry newcomers, and many music pastors were hastily learning to play guitar.

As I write this, I'm remembering, and I have the benefit of fifty years of reflection. I remember thinking, "How could God bring so much good into such a nasty, sin-filled culture?" But he did. 

And as I drove across town, reminiscing, Father drew my attention to three facts: 

1) The culture was full of sex and sin and rebellion and anything-but-God. 

2) That was the climate that God chose to step in, and he stepped in first among the youth, among the "unreachable" generations. 

3) His invasion changed the nation, for generations even, though a good deal of what he was doing was not actually visible. In fact, it was decades later that I learned that the entire student leadership of one school had come to faith during those days. They had been serving as missionaries and pastors for many years. Or that one cheerleader with a rebellious streak and a sullied reputation told how she was wrestled to the ground and forced against her will to "pray the prayer," but had been powerfully changed by God and had been walking with him for years. 

I need to clarify: I am not prophesying. I'm observing. 

I'm observing a generation obsessed by sex and rebellion and marked by hopelessness. I see governments stained by corruption, the legal system and the business world weighed down with attempts to make sin acceptable.

And I remember: But God. 

He reminded me: It was into an environment like this that Jesus stepped up as Lord and the world shifted around him. 

Two conflicting things are true: 

 ▪️ If he did it once, he can do it again. In fact, in the Greek roots of the declaration, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," is hidden the thought, the prayer, "Do it again, God!" 

And at the same time,  

▪️ I've observed that he seems to favor doing it again in a new way. He also said, "Behold, I do a new thing!" and I've never seen him do the same thing the same way he did it before. 

Which means, I want to position my heart to recognize (and join in) the invasion he's carrying out in this generation, and while I loved the Jesus People movement, I do not expect to see another move quite like that one. I expect to see something new and different.

And I do Not plan to attend the conference and buy the books and watch them burn. Instead, I plan to blow on the embers until they flicker into flame, and then I plan to feed that little flame the best I can.

And then I plan to jump in with both feet.

The Bible Contains Lies. It Says So.

The Bible contains lies. It says so. 

Let me back up. I’ve just finished the book of Job. That’s a hard read, for me, anyway. The book has several sections: 

• Chapters 1&2: The Set Up. The conversations in Heaven between God and the devil (that Job never knows about!), and the resulting destruction of Job’s life.

• Chapters 3 – 31: Job arguing with his “friends,” Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. Mostly, Job is proclaiming his innocence and these three are telling him what God is like and why Job is wrong. 

• Chapters 32 – 37: The lecture from “Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite, of the family of Ram.” Mostly, he’s defending God. 

• Chapters 38 – 41: God speaks up. Essentially, “This is above your pay grade, Son,” but how beautifully he says it! 

• Chapter 42: Job repents, God chews out Eliphaz, Bildad & Zophar, God restores Job. 

The verse that stuck out to me most strongly this time was this:

"After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” [Job 42:7]

And I realized that God just declared that much of Job 3 – Job 31 is “not the truth” about God. That means there are lies there! In the Bible! <Gasp!>

(He also declares that Job was telling the truth when he protested that he was innocent in his suffering.)

So God says at least 29 chapters of my Bible contain lies. That’s worth thinking about. 

Keep in mind that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” [2 Timothy 3:16-17] 

So it’s “God-breathed.” Other translations read “given by inspiration of God or “breathed out by God.” But that doesn’t mean that every word is literally true or actually factual. It means that it’s inspired by God, motivated by God through the men who wrote the stuff down. It’s still profitable for teaching, rebuking & correcting, certainly.

But not every bit of Scripture is actually, factually correct, at least not these 29 chapters in Job. Don’t get me wrong: the Bible is telling the truth when it records the lies these yahoos are telling about God. But they are still lies, and they’re still in the Bible. 

I wonder if there are other places, passages that are also inspired by God, where Scripture (accurately) records people saying stupid things, untrue things? (And I won’t even get into the question of where God is speaking metaphorically or symbolically.) 

The Bible contains lies. It says so. 

So apparently, more skill is required when employing the Bible than merely swallowing everything whole. That’s kind of true for all of life, isn’t it?