Tag: error

Meltdown at Mount Sinai

When God appeared to Israel on Mt. Sinai, the people quickly concluded that hearing God’s audible commandments directly from the source – the great thundering voice, the raging fire, the billowing smoke, the cloud and gloom, the blasting trumpet, the boulder-splitting earthquake – was far too terrifying for them to deal with. Trembling, they petitioned Moses that God would speak instead through him and not to them directly.

What was behind God’s purpose in taking Israel through such a difficult experience all those years in the wilderness?

“You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deut. 8:2 nasb).

God was testing His people to humble them and to reveal what was in their hearts! But what was their response when they literally encountered God “face to face” at Sinai prior to going into Canaan?

“…If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer, then we will die” (Deut. 5:25 nasb).

In contrast, Moses was not only greatly blessed to be allowed into God’s intimate presence and to communicate directly with Him, but because of his favor and friendship with God, he was given the amazing privilege of seeing God’s glory with his physical eyes (although – as you will recall – God could not fully reveal His actual countenance even to Moses). Moses also trembled at Sinai (Hebrews 12:21), but he was not “afraid” to approach God, because he had received a revelation of God’s great redemptive LOVE that had been demonstrated and proven time and again through the trials in the wilderness.

For a combined total of eighty days and nights Moses was before the God of Israel on Sinai, receiving the law and instructions God had outlined for His chosen people that would enable Him to bless them once they entered the promised land of Canaan. Moses was so enraptured and enveloped in that holy, sustaining presence that he required neither water nor food during his extended stays on the mountaintop, and thereafter his face would shine whenever he had approached God.

“Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!” (Deuteronomy 5:29 nasb).

Do I have a desire to be more like Moses, or more specifically, more like Jesus, whom Moses foretold as the future incarnation of “a prophet like me” (Deut. 18:5), or am I content to remain more like the fearful, doubtful, and stubborn multitude that the faithful servant Moses struggled to intercede for, to shepherd, and to lead?

Do I have an ever-increasing passion to know God for myself and a growing desire to enter daily into His presence directly through the sacrificial blood of my great high priest, Jesus Christ? Or do I prefer, like Israel, to have God’s Word “filtered” through another human being, or perhaps through some compromised or even worldly context in a way that I find more “palatable”; a way that does not really call me into account when the Holy Spirit reveals something in my heart that needs to change.

Concerning the recorded narrative of Israel’s experience in the wilderness, the apostle Paul wrote:

“Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11 nasb).

God admonished the people through Moses:

“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell” (Numbers 33:55 esv).

The Old Testament still speaks to us. For those of us living today, those “inhabitants” represent our enemies of sin and unbelief; those residual areas of pride and self in the promised land of our hearts that still remain to be subjected to the lordship of Jesus.

“If God speaks to us, we will die.”

How prophetic those words were, because that is exactly the point! The Cross of Jesus Christ calls us to complete and unconditional identification with both His death and His resurrection; an ongoing, daily surrender to His life and His leading through a constant “dying out” to ourselves and a growing appetite to feed our spirits with a steady diet of His Word. The prophet Amos spoke of a time when there would be a “famine” for the “hearing” of God’s Word (Amos 8:11). We are clearly living in such a time, but Jesus is still looking for followers who will simply trust Him, persevere, and be available to make a difference in a dark world.

It’s all about Jesus!

“And they overcame him [Satan] because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death” (Revelation 12:11 nasb).

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*Recommended blogs:

https://123hallelujah.wordpress.com/  by Margaret

https://unshakablehope.com/  by Bill Sweeney

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Image attribution: By Mohammed Moussa – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28338950

The Counterfeit Conception

Something very disturbing had happened in the hearts of many of the religious “elite” of Jesus’ time – including priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees – that caused our Lord to categorize them very differently from the common people, even contrasting them in a negative light vis-à-vis the prostitutes and tax collectors, the “dregs” of Hebrew society!

Matthew 21:31-32 NASB…“Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; and you, seeing this, did not even feel remorse afterward so as to believe him.”

According to Jesus, not only were these privileged “sons of Abraham” NOT God’s children, but they had been, in fact, spiritually sired by the evil one, Satan himself! These “converts” were not growing up into the image of Christ. Instead, they were being transformed into the image of the “father of lies.”

John 8:44 NASB “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

Even more terrifying, some very self-righteous and pious among these “counterfeits” had descended so far into Satanic deception and demonic control that they had consciously and deliberately blasphemed the Holy Spirit by declaring – in their jealous rage – that the Son of God and His disciples were casting out demons in their midst by the power of the prince of demons himself, “Beelzebub.” For this sin, Jesus said, there was NO forgiveness, either in this life or in the life to come!

Matthew 12:32 NASB “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.”

It is odd to think that Jesus would pray and ask God to forgive many of the very people who persecuted Him, accused Him, and brutally nailed Him to the Cross, but that there was another class of “religious” persons who had become so blinded and perverted by darkness that they had already sealed their own doom for all eternity, by denying the true source of exorcism by the power of the Holy Ghost working through Jesus and also through His spiritual descendants. By contrast, others like Nicodemus and some of his peers – though in the beginning unregenerate – turned to Jesus, having recognizing the source of His spiritual authority.

Matthew 6:23 NASB “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Hebrews 10:26-31 NASB “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.’ And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Satan is now, more than ever, in the business of seducing followers, but we need to realize that until we are convicted of sin and make the choice to surrender ourselves fully to Christ, we are all prisoners of death and darkness. But for those even in our darkened generation who desire to know truth and whose consciences have not been permanently seared by an appropriation and subsequent rejection of the “Spirit of grace”, there remains great HOPE!

How great is God’s love for us?

Romans 5:8-11 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Bryan