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Post by Josh on May 21, 2007 20:21:29 GMT -8
Please post your comments/ questions about Numbers 20 as replies here.
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Post by Josh on May 22, 2007 18:09:13 GMT -8
This is a tragic passage as it details the deaths of Aaron and Miriam and Moses' exclusion from seeing the promised land.
I think to most readers (ancient and modern) it seems harsh that God denies his faithful servant Moses entry into the promised land for----, well, what for exactly? That's a good question. The text doesn't really tell us so we're left to guess.
Some think it's because Moses didn't follow God's instructions to speak to the rock instead of strike it. Most think it at least had something to do with Moses losing his cool and striking the rock in anger or bitterness. Maybe it has to do with his choice of words, namely:
"Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?"
It's probably all of the above, but nonetheless, it seems unfair that after all the investment Moses has made, he is unable to experience the goal of all of his labors because of one slip-up-- and not even a premeditated one, apparently.
As a side note, it's not obvious immediately in the text until you read Numbers 33:38 that this event is happening right at the end of the 40 years of wilderness wandering, not at the beginning, so we're talking about a time of ripe excitement for both Moses and the young Israelites.
So, what's up with this wacked out passage? Well, I'll see if a bit of meditation on this passage brings up anything for this Sunday's teaching, but feel free to prime my pump through some dialogue here.
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Post by Josh on May 27, 2007 16:14:00 GMT -8
I'll summarize the points I made today about this passage.
Throughout the Exodus narrative, we are often told that Moses gets angry, and God never once up until this time chastises him for it. God Himself often gets angry in these stories, with Moses actually interceding several times for the Israelites.
Why in this passage would God punish Moses so severely for an expression of anger toward a group of people who for like the 20th time are grumbling against him and God?
The common explanations of this passage weren't working so well for me, but I did find one commentary that pointed me in a more promising direction.
It compared and contrasted this passage (Num. 20) with a similar story in Exodus 17. The setting in Exodus 17 is when the Israelites are just entering the desert for the first time after the Exodus. Though they have just seen a great miracle at the Red Sea, they begin to run out of food and water and panic as well as begin to grumble. It's easy for us in a comfortable living room reading this text to laugh at those cranky, forgetful Israelites, but to go even 2 days without water would most likely try us all to the breaking point.
In that Exodus 17 passage, when the Israelites freak out and complain, God does not respond with anger or judgment. He merely tells Moses what to do so that their needs are met.
It is only later in the Exodus/ Numbers accounts that God grows weary of their complaining and lack of faith, increasing the retribution for continued lack of faith and rebellion against authority.
What this tells me is that God made allowances for the Israelites when they first entered the desert- he put up graciously with the newbies lack of faith-- for long enough that they should have begun to trust him more. It was only after repeated failures to learn to trust that God upped the ante with them in order to prepare the people for the level of faith they would need to enter the promised land.
So, on this logic, it would seem that Moses was all the more justified in expressing his anger toward the Israelites in Numbers 20, who are once again lacking trust that God will deliver water to them in their time of need.
But the key piece we're missing is that the Numbers 20 story occurs near the very end of the 40 year wilderness wanderings. The people Moses is dealing with here aren't the people who witnessed the water from the rock in Exodus 17-- they are their children. This is by and large and whole new group of people-- a group of greenhorns in need of some baby-steps. I think this is why God shows very little perturbance in Numbers 20 when he tells Moses casually to go and speak to the rock in order to get water.
But Moses, it seems, was harboring bitter feelings against this new generation because of the deeds of their fathers and mothers. In effect, he was still holding their parents sins against them, and therefor had an egregious lack of concern for their needs. As a leader who would soon be taking these children of promise into the promised land, Moses needed at this point to be in touch with his people and the state of their development, not callous and resentful. And yet his behavior tells us that his patience was at an end.
Without God intervening at all, this kind of behavior showed that Moses wasn't up to the task of leading this new generation to their destiny in a constructive way.
Far from being judged for a momentary temper-tantrum, Moses here realizes (or maybe not, if you read parts of Deuteronomy) that leadership requires looking out for the best needs of the community and accurately gauging where they are at and how best to help them mature.
This is why God's complaint against Moses in Numbers 20 isn't some specific slip up like striking the rock twice, etc.. but it is that Moses didn't trust God enough to show Him as holy. Another way of saying this might be that Moses didn't trust that God's merciful attitude toward this next generation was the best course of action (always a bad position to take when you're thinking about God), and also that a huge part of God's holiness is his fairness, his just way of handling situations. Moses, acting in God's stead here, does not represent God's fairness but instead makes God look like a bitter old, vindictive man who rages at children who complain of being thirsty... a god made in Moses' likeness.
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Post by Josh on May 27, 2007 16:17:31 GMT -8
Today I used this passage to speak to us in our lives, where we have a tendency to let past greivances fester into hard and fast boxes we put others in-- to the point where we miss or ignore how God is asking us to treat those people.
Here are the two powerful passages that tie this point into this Numbers passage:
2 Corinthians 5:16
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
Hebrews 12:
14Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
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Post by Josh on May 27, 2007 16:25:58 GMT -8
The end of the book of Numbers tells us how Moses met his end- being allowed to view the Promised Land from afar before his death and being buried in a mystery location by God Himself.
But the story doesn't end there. It actually ends like a shameless Hollywood back from the dead surpise plot twist. It picks up about 1200 years later in Matthew 17:
We don't know much about how time passes for the dead, so I can just imagine Moses dying on that desolate mount overlooking the promised land, only to wake up in the presence of Elijah and Jesus, conversing together on the mount of Jesus' transfiguration... in the promised land at last, both the physical promised land and the much more surprising and eternally joyful promised land of the kingdom of the Messiah.
Kinda like that scene in Star Wars where the half-invisible now dead Anakin and Obi Wan sit and chat it up with Yoda.
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