The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection of Leawood, Kansas, United States Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Thursday, 8 January 2015 "Moses learned God’s true character"Daily Scripture: Exodus 34:4-7 So Moses cut two tablets of stone just like the originals. He got up early in the morning and climbed Mount Sinai as God had commanded him, carrying the two tablets of stone. God descended in the cloud and took up his position there beside him and called out the name, God. God passed in front of him and called out, “God, God, a God of mercy and grace, endlessly patient—so much love, so deeply true—loyal in love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. Still, he doesn’t ignore sin. He holds sons and grandsons responsible for a father’s sins to the third and even fourth generation.”
8-9 At once, Moses fell to the ground and worshiped, saying, “Please, O Master, if you see anything good in me, please Master, travel with us, hard-headed as these people are. Forgive our iniquity and sin. Own us, possess us.”
Reflection Questions:
In Exodus 32, Israel failed badly, making and worshipping a gold statue of a bull, an Egyptian god (of all things!). In the violent, revenge-oriented ancient Middle East, the Israelites found it hard to grasp what God was really like. Yet, almost like an unexpected harmony in a dissonant symphony, God (unlike Egypt’s gods) showed Moses a divine character based on the profound realities of love and forgiveness.
• Neither Egyptians nor Canaanites believed their gods loved them. They certainly didn’t envision their “gods” making any good promises to them. Instead, they tended to offer sacrifices mostly to try to stay on their fickle gods’ good side, hoping to avoid the gods’ capricious, hurtful actions. Have you ever known (or been) a person who tends to see God in that way? How does that view affect our ability to love or trust God?
• By contrast, when God revealed his character to Moses, “compassionate and merciful” were the key characteristics in that revelation. In verse 10, even after Israel’s ugly failure in Exodus 32, God told Moses, “I now make a covenant.” Have any of your experiences with human “trust” relationships, good or bad, affected your ability to trust that God’s love for you is truly steadfast? In what ways have you sensed that God sticks with you through both good and bad?
Prayer: Lord God, please give me a thirst to know you better. I’m so thankful that you want to be known, loved and trusted! Amen.
Insight from Janelle Gregory
Janelle Gregory serves on the Resurrection staff as a Human Resources Specialist.
Everyone was home for the holidays, so it was time for the traditional, family tag-football game. This annual event has been going on for over 10 years, and is now an essential part of the Christmas festivities. Eating. Gifts. Football. The smack-talk had already started, and the teams were being formed. Everyone was gearing up for the big game… everyone but my husband and me.
You see, this wasn’t our family football game. You could barely even call it our family. It was my husband’s sister’s husband’s family (good luck following that!). We met these people this summer at the wedding, and now we were sitting in their house to celebrate Christmas. They were very kind to go out of their way to make sure we felt like family, and to them, this included participating in the family football game.
My husband, Brandon, is extremely intelligent, highly creative, profoundly gifted, and about the least athletic person I know. I listened as he was approached about the game:
Family member: “You’re playing football, aren’t you?”
Brandon: “I didn’t know about the game, so I didn’t bring the right clothes.”
Member: “No worries. We’ll just put you in some of dad’s clothes.”
Brandon, looking for another way out: “Well, I didn’t bring the right shoes.”
Member: “What size do you where?”
Brandon: “11”
Member: “So does dad! That’s perfect.”
Brandon: “Well, we’re leaving that day, and I don’t want to drive home dirty.”
Member: “You can just take a shower here!”
Ugh.
To her credit, the family member thought she was being nice by being inclusive. She assumed he wanted to play, but couldn’t. She didn’t know that my husband ranks sporting events just above being tortured and left on the side of the road for dead. And there’s really no way that she could know. Like I said, we had only met them once before.
I sat there knowing him very well, having no doubt that he had no intention of playing football. I know this, because I know my husband.
I have to think that like this family member, our view of God’s desires and actions is similarly inaccurate due to our lack of truly knowing who God is. We might expect Him to behave in a certain way, not realizing that our expectations go against His character. But the more we get to know Him, the easier it is to see His movement in our world and in our lives.
How God acts, flows from who God is. So who is God? Exodus 34 tells us that the LORD is the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.
While many of us see God through the lens of justice or mercy, the beauty is that he encompasses both. And if we want to know God, we find ourselves embracing the two. As Brennan Manning said, “I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. ”
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