God had made it known to Moses that He was ready to kill the people Moses was to lead and start a new nation with Moses because of how the people were so quick to turn back and forget the Lord after all they saw the Lord do for them. (Exodus 33)
When Moses was on top the mountain receiving God’s law for God’s people to live by; the people incited Aaron (Moses’ assistant and brother) to take all their gold, melt it down, and form a gold image (calf) out of it for them to worship and prosper by. The people wanted their ‘man-made’ god to replace the God of all Creation. What blindness! But this is how the devil works to deceive people throughout time, with lies and deception.
You and I can think, how ridiculous for them to believe that something we make with our hands and that has no life in it – can do us any good. And it can’t. Yet, we have done the same thing when we look at our wealth and abilities as our strength and confidence: a false expectation. We do the same, when we look to a man with false expectations, like the Israelites looked to Moses. God chose a committed man to lead them, and not a man for them to worship.
We see where that got them. They ran wild with their own thoughts and fleshly desires. They indulged themselves – giving themselves over to every lust of the flesh. They defiled the land where they did all this, and GOD WAS VERY ANGRY! If Moses had not reminded God of His covenant with faithful Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – God would have done exactly what He threatened to do. God honored His servant Moses by continuing to show grace and mercy to His people. Moses did not start out a holy man, as he walked in the will of God, he grew in faith, hope and love. Moses started out with very little understanding of how great God is. As he followed the will of the Lord for God’s people – Moses learned, as the people also learned, how great the love and power of God is for His people. We can expect (a true expectation) the same now with the man God chose for the nation of America. What God starts, God finishes.
Moses was afraid to go any further with a people that God called “stiff-necked.” Moses feared God, and unless the Lord went with him – Moses wasn’t going. Moses understood that God’s presence = God’s goodness.
It was the Lord who called him to this assignment in the first place; against Moses’ own will – God chose him. When God chooses someone for His good purpose it doesn’t matter what the man has done or said. It doesn’t matter what the man thinks of himself either. God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and God will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. God can easily change the course of the heart/will or the course of a nation, one way or another. It doesn’t matter what ‘we’ see or know; it’s all about what God sees and knows. Jonah (in the Bible) was a very good example of this. Living in the dark stinking belly of a great whale isn’t very comfortable or promising, but it happened to Jonah to change his heart/will so that Jonah would do what God called him to do.
God put the fears of Moses to rest: “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” “I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim My Name, the LORD, in your presence.” (Exodus 33)
What actually did Moses see? I believe it was the back of Jesus Christ that Moses saw from the cleft of the rock; for God tells us in the book of Hebrews that His Son is the true radiance and exact representation of God. In sending us Jesus, it was our Father showing us His goodness: His mercy and grace, His compassion for us in doing for us what we can NOT do for ourselves; specifically: save ourselves and bless ourselves.
“Therefore, fix your thoughts on Jesus. He was faithful to the One who appointed Him, just a Moses was faithful in all God’s house. But Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house.”
God is giving America a time to repent, turn from our wicked ways, and to prosper so we can prepare for what is inevitably coming against His people with more and more intensity. Like the Israelites who didn’t grasp what God was doing for them and for their future descendants, we also can miss God’s purpose, getting caught up in the flesh (feelings and emotions), having our eyes on the world.
We can look at our new president, God’s choice, and not see what God sees in why He chose the man. That’s fine, but it’s rebellious for us to ‘judge’ God by standing against the man He chose. The Israelites did this with Moses and God was ready to kill them all. We can criticize, protest, cry, lash out and keep living in foolish rebellion, or we can go to the Lord for His wisdom and instructions and get walking with the Lord in such a time as this. For the last 8 years God’s people were under God’s judgment; for God put Obama in office for this. God’s painful discipline in the lives of His people is to work to produce a harvest of righteousness with us – so that He can use us for His goodwill.
We better wise up and see this time of God’s goodness to His people, and listen to HIS VOICE only. What our new president said in his inaugural speech gave us a reason to be hopeful about our nation. But we better be in the Bible every day to hear ‘God’s truth’ about the days ahead and how to prepare in the way He shows us. The power of God’s holy people is in God answering the faithful prayers inspired by God’s Spirit.
There’s lots of talk about people being afraid. Be afraid, but NOT afraid of God’s choice of Donald Trump; rather, be afraid of missing God’s grace and goodness that could’ve been yours in such a time as this.