Tag: moses

When God Takes Too Long

~ Theologetics ~ 2 Comments

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Often in our lives we come upon difficult situations. We pray that God will handle these issues. We have faith that He will. We hope that He will. We wait on Him. But He seems to take His time. In the meantime we’re left waiting on progress or healing. We’re left waiting on a word from God or a display of His power and love. Often that is the plight of the believer. To wait on God.

It can get frustrating. We pray and pray and wait and wait. Sometimes it seems as though He is not there. Yet, we know in our minds and hearts that He is. We have seen Him work in our lives before. We have seen Him deliver us. We have seen Him heal us. We have seen His wonder working power in our lives and in the lives of others around us. But, when God seems silent we get impatient and faith can seem to dwindle. However, every new obstacle comes with a new lesson to learn.

Such was the case with the Israelites after they were freed from Egypt. Their leader Moses went before the LORD on Mount Sinai to receive instruction for the newly liberated Hebrews. They had just seen God’s power through 10 different plagues against the Egyptians. They had just seen God’s power as He parted the waters and they walked through the Red Sea. Afterwards they were waiting on Moses to come back with a word from God so they could make their way to the land promised them by God. They waited. And they continued to wait. I believe knowing that the promised land lay before them made them anxious and impatient. Their impatience with God caused them to commit a heinous sin, idolatry. They created a golden calf and began to revel and party. Why would they do this? Didn’t they know that a golden calf had no power? I think they knew this but since they didn’t hear from God when they wanted to they chose to make a god that they could see. They couldn’t see what they wanted to see when they wanted to see it so they created something they could see. So when they felt abandoned by God they turned to the ways of the land they had just come from. The Israelites were in Egypt for 400 years. They saw the idols of the Egyptians, some may have even dabbled in the Egyptian idolatry. But when they were freed from Egypt they still had some of Egypt left in them.

We can be guilty of the same thing. In God’s “silence” we turn to those things that we remember satisfied our flesh before we were delivered. But the Bible says it’s like a dog returning to its vomit. God delivers us from sins because only He can truly and wholly satisfy us. His provisions are more than anything we can ever imagine.

The same was true for Abraham and Sarah. God had promised that they would have a child. But the years went by and God had not moved yet. So they created their own answer by committing another heinous sin, adultery. They couldn’t see the child promised to them by God so they took the wrong path to make one they could see. 25 years went by between the time of the promise to the fulfullment of the promise.

Before the Israelites went into Egypt, Joseph was a picture of what to do when God seems distant. His brothers sold him into slavery when he was 17. As he worked as a slave he was falsely accused by his master’s wife and thrown into prison. But the Bible tells us four times (Genesis 39:2,3,21,23) that all this time “the LORD was with Joseph”. Knowing that, Joseph remained faithful in whatever he did. He was ultimately taken from prison and made an official to the Pharaoh…13 years after being sold by his brothers. Joseph endured a lot but he continued to patiently wait on God. How many of us would have given up way before then?

In our human experience, we have only a limited finite grasp of eternity. We can’t see what God sees. God sees the beginning and the end of all situations. Someone has said they were are like characters in a very extravagant painting. We can only see the spot that we are in but God sees the entire painting all at once. As scripture says “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

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God is always working while we are waiting. The Hebrews were waiting on Moses because he was talking to God. Neither he nor God had abandoned his people. God was doing a work and His people should have been patiently waiting on what He was doing. It’s the same with us. While it may seem God has not moved in whatever situation we are in, we can be confident that He is working all things together for our good. The worst thing we can do is try to get ahead of God and make things happen that He hasn’t condoned or that He just plain hates. We then take our faith away from God and put it on ourselves. And anyone who has ever made one mistake (that’s all of us) knows that we cannot compare anywhere close to a perfect God.

Further reading: Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalm 27:14, 37:4, 46:10, 90:4, Proverbs 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 3:1,11, Lamentations 3:25-26, Isaiah 40:31, 55:8-9, Habakkuk 2:3, Micah 7:7, Romans 8:28, Galatians 6:9

Derrick Stokes
Theologetics.org

The Self-Sufficiency of God

~ Theologetics ~ 1 Comment
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Moses Sees A Fire Burning In A Bush, 1897

Exodus 3:2 …So he looked and behold the bush was burning with fire but the bush was not consumed.

In the book of Exodus, as Moses had been living as a shepherd for 40 years and as a fugitive from Egypt, his attention was captured by a bush that was on fire. This probably wouldn’t have been a big deal but what he saw made him investigate even further. “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” The flame spoke to Moses and identified Himself, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God told Moses He will send him to Pharaoh to deliver His people. Moses then asked, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

The name God gave Moses encompasses His attribute of self-sufficiency. “I Am Who I Am.” As Matthew Henry puts it, the representation of I Am Who I Am states “that he is self-existent; he has his being of himself, and has no dependence upon any other…Being self-existent, he cannot but be self-sufficient, and therefore all-sufficient, and the inexhaustible fountain of being and bliss.”

When a bush is on fire, the fire must consume the bush as fuel to exist. However, God was showing Moses several things in this display. He was showing Moses that He didn’t need the bush to exist as a flame. God doesn’t need fuel. God is the self-existent and self-sufficient I Am. He was also displaying that God didn’t need the bush or Moses to display His power. But by His providence and sovereign will, God chooses the lowly things to be His vessels of special purpose. God knew Moses was an 80-year-old fugitive who was “slow of speech and of tongue”, that in spite of his failings and shortcomings, would still be the man to approach the most powerful man in the land and lead His people to freedom. Moses knew that it would not and that it could not be of his own power and influence that he do what God desired of him. He had to rely on the One who needs no outside source.

The self-sufficiency, or aseity, of God should give us comfort. When God has called us to do something we can rest in the fact that He has all power and knowledge and the God that created the universe will equip us to do the task at hand. Our human bodies require rest and sustenance. According to the laws of nature, set into place by God, we must rely on something outside of ourselves to even exist. God, however, requires nothing. As John Piper states, “God exists ‘from Himself’. God owes His existence and completeness as God to nothing outside Himself.”

“nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;” Acts 17:25

For more of God’s Attributes download this PDF

Derrick Stokes
Theologetics.org

The Shema and The Trinity

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MOSES SPEAKS TO ISRAEL, by Henri Felix Emmanuel Phillippoteaux

“The Shema is the central prayer in the Jewish prayer book. It is generally one of the first prayers a Jewish child learns. The Shema defines what it means to be Jewish as it has since the days of Moses:

Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad—“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).”

http://www.jewishvoice.org/media/publications/articles/yeshua-and-the-shema.html?referrer=http://www.google.com.af/

If the the Shema states that God is one, doesn’t that contradict the Christian doctrine of the Trinity?

If the LORD is One, then how can He be also Three? The word “echad” (the ch is more of a throaty h sound) in the above verse is the Hebrew word for one. But, if we believe God is a Trinity how do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?

Well, in Genesis 2:24 the same word “echad” is used to describe how a husband and wife will become one flesh.

In Genesis 11:6, the tower of Babel narrative describes the people as being one (echad).

Ezra 2:64 the whole assembly is gathered together (echad). But the people in the assembly numbered 42,360. In these verses, echad represents a unified oneness, not a numerical oneness.

Now, I can’t say that echad always represents a unified oneness. Sometimes it can represent a numerical oneness (Ex. Numbers 13:2, Deut.17:6) . So how do we know the difference?

As usual, the answer lies in the context. The word for God in the Shema is plural אֱלֹהִים (‘Elohiym). Just like Genesis 2:24, chapter 11 verse 6, Ezra 2:64, and others not listed here, echad means a compound unity.

You will see the word Eloheinu above and perhaps think that’s different than the plural Elohiym. The only difference is Eloheinu means “Our God” but the root word is still the plural word Elohiym.

Therefore, we see that even before the Trinity was understood as we understand it today, the Hebrews of the Old Testament understood there was a vastness and complexity to the Godhead. The very first word used for God in the Bible (Genesis 1:1) is the plural word Elohiym.

So there is no contradiction. God does not change (Malachi 3:6).

Psalm 102:25-27
“In the beginning You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.They will perish, but You remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing You will change them and they will be discarded. But You remain the same, and Your years will never end.”

Derrick Stokes
Theologetics.org