Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:19-20, 25-26

19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.

God continues to re-establish His original commandments, now detailing the requirement that every firstborn of their flocks was to be an offering to the Most High. These instructions are all things that we have heard before.

It is interesting to note that the laws that God is re-establishing were originally given clear back at the start of Israel’s journey out of Egypt. These are not the instructions that He gave the first time Moses met with Him in Mount Sinai, which included the ten commandments, nor is it the instructions that He gave during Moses’s second visit to the mountain, which included the details for building the tabernacle.

Of course, we will see throughout the rest of the Old Testament that the Israelites observed all of the laws given at all of the prior times of instruction, even if we don’t hear them all being reimplemented here. Moses was up in the mountain this third time for another forty days and forty nights, so it is entirely possible that the Lord did, in fact, restate all of the previous commands during this visit, even if only the first portion of His words have been transcribed into our present-day Bible.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:18, 22-24

18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end.

23 Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.

24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year.

Israel had gone astray and broken their promise with the Lord, but God had restored it to them afresh. So, too, He also gave His people their core commandments afresh, as if for the first time ever. We have heard all of these commandments already, but now they are new again.

God reminds them of the feast of unleavened bread, which He first established with them as He brought them out of Egypt. He also reinstates the other two feasts: firstfruits and ingathering. Over the next couple days, we will continue to see God re-establishing His agreements with the Israelites, all of them made new.

It is in our human nature to have a long memory, burdening ourselves with the disappointments and failures of the past. We say that we are recommitting ourselves to prior agreements, but we also hold onto our old baggage. God does not operate the same way. As Paul taught, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). In today’s verses we see that when we repent for our sins, and God extends His partnership to us again, He really is doing so untethered by the memory of our past. Though it may go against our nature, we should strive to receive that offer with the same newness and freedom that it is being extended with, as if we are receiving it for the very first time.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:15-17

15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

What God says here about the tendency to make a covenant with idolatry has been an eternal challenge of God’s people. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth thousands of years later, he still had to continually remind the people to not mix their faith with false gods. For convenience or politeness, the people would partake of the culture around them, even when doing so violated their exclusive commitment to the Lord.

Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled (1 Corinthians 8:7).

We must not make the mistake of dismissing these verses decrying idolatry as irrelevant to us today because we do not carve our false gods out of wood anymore. There are still many false gods and vain obsessions all around us, and many the disciple is deceived to think that they can both be a Christian and partake in the world’s folly. We commit idolatry when we show fealty to the prevailing societal trends, even though they contradict God’s laws. Many that would follow the Lord stumble to the ideals of sexual and identity perversion.

God is also very right to identify the trojan horse of family members and spouses that we become devoted to, who then seduce us into unworthy concessions. I know many the brother and sister who watched the world celebrating that which God has called sin, and they stood boldly against the perversion, but then their spouse convinced them of the need to be “tolerant” of the evil, and by-and-by they lost their way.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:11-14

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

As part of the Lord re-extending His covenant to bring Israel into the Promised Land, He now describes all of the enemies that currently dwell in that land, whom He will drive out to make space for His chosen people. God then warns the Israelites against making any sort of liaison with those people. The Canaanites had been marked for destruction because of their perversions, and anyone that became confederate with them would be linking themselves to their doom. Instead, the Israelites were commanded to remain firmly apart, and to tear down any of the false gods that they came across.

While the Lord did not specifically bring to mind Israel’s recent offense, these instructions must have been a timely reminder for how fundamentally they had betrayed their covenant to Him with the worship of the golden calf, taking a step towards the same idolatry of the Canaanites. In that one act they had broken God’s first two commandments. Indeed, the supplanting of God with any other ideal is the first of all wickedness. If the first and great commandment is to love the Lord with all of your heart, then the first and great sin must be to replace Him with something else.

Thus, God says in verse 14 that He is a jealous God. He is necessarily an exclusive God, one that must permeate all of our lives and not be mixed with alternative beliefs. Indeed, He cannot be mixed with alternative beliefs, for once one tries to mix, they have already cast aside God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:10

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.

Notice how God makes no reference to Israel’s sin or broken promises. He is establishing His covenant as if it is totally fresh, being extended for the first time, with no baggage from previous failures.

Such is the magnanimity of the Lord’s mercy. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, transgressions are not merely swept under the rug, they fully die with him, and every new beginning is as pure and perfect as the first. Because Israel sought a way to make restitution, the Lord has already forgiven them, and they are being offered the exact same covenant as before.

The word that the Lord uses towards the end to describe the work that He will accomplish with Israel is translated here as “terrible.” The original word is יָרֵא, which is often used to describe fear, but more broadly can also mean to cause reverence or awe. It suggests something so great that it overpowers the beholder. In the next verses God will specifically mention the driving out of the heathen nations in Canaan, so the application of this word makes sense.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:8-9

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

Moses now repeats the same sort of pleas that he made for Israel down in the tabernacle. He asks that the people can be pardoned for their sins, chosen once again as the Lord’s inheritance, and then led by His presence directly. He does not specifically say what end he hopes for them to be led to, though. He does not discuss the Promised Land or the driving out of their enemies or even safe passage through the wilderness. For now, the return of God’s presence is all that matters to Israel.

Moses asking the Lord to take Israel “for thine inheritance” is something new. We have heard a good deal of the Israelite’s inheritance, but not of them being the inheritance of God, Himself. This definitely reinforces the notion of Israel being a chosen and peculiar people. It brings to mind a sense that all the world was what it was, but Israel specifically was selected out of the midst of it to be the reward and sole possession of the Lord’s. They were the harvest for all His work on this world, the fruit in the midst of the tree.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 34:4-7

4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

5 And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Moses brings two new tables into Mount Sinai as instructed. The Lord passes before him, and while we do not hear about Moses being covered in the cleft of the rock by the hand of the Lord, presumably that transpires as described in the previous chapter.

It seems particularly appropriate that the Lord’s introduction, beginning in verse 6, particularly focuses on His patterns of justice and mercy, given that those are the qualities being weighed in His meeting with Moses today. Moses and the Lord are here to sanctify their agreement for Israel to be restored to God’s good graces, to be transferred from God’s justice to His mercy.

Verse 7 might initially sound contradictory to some. Is God merciful or does He dole out punishment? Will He forgive iniquity or refuse to clear the guilty? But I believe that is the whole point of this passage, to highlight that God does both. He is perfect justice, and He is perfect mercy. But isn’t that impossible? Aren’t those two mutually exclusive, at least in regard to any individual infraction? To man, perhaps so, but not to God.

These may sound like strange riddles, assertions with no basis, but the delight of the gospel is to take seeming paradoxes like these and beautifully resolve them. This particular riddle finds its answer in the person Jesus Christ.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. 
-Isaiah 53:5-6

Does God dole out justice for transgression or provide undeserved mercy. Both. The justice is met in Christ, and the mercy comes through Christ to all of us. The two natures of God’s judgment described in today’s verses are entirely accurate.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 33:21-23

21 And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

In yesterday’s post I suggested that Moses’s request to see the glory of the Lord might have been in reference to an upcoming meeting between the two, not the one currently transpiring within the tabernacle. Today’s verses seem to support that idea, with God talking about placing Moses in the cleft of a rock. It doesn’t seem that geographical feature would have been present in the tabernacle, but it certainly would have been found up in the top of the mountain, which is where Moses will go immediately after this meeting.

This idea of placing Moses in the cleft of a rock and covering him with God’s hand is clearly symbolic. A cleft in the rock face is a wound in the body. There immediately comes to mind the image of Jesus Christ, pierced in the side while on the cross. We are all of us tucked within that wound, our frailty and impurity being covered by the works of Christ as Moses was by the hand of the Lord, giving us our only hope of surviving the image of God and receiving a good reward.

Even the fact that Moses was only permitted to see the back of God, and not His face, seems symbolic for our experience in following a Lord that we do not perfectly understand. We generally understand God, but certainly not in His totality. We long to see His face but feel we have only a general sense of His form. We follow according to what little we do understand, looking forward to the time when we will fully see “face to face, and shall know Him even as also we are known.“

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 33:18-20

18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

Moses now asks that he might see the Lord’s glory but is told that no one will be able to see His face and live. This passage is a bit confusing, because when Moses first came into the tabernacle, we were told that he spoke with God “face to face.” Some have tried to dismiss the earlier “face to face” reference as not being literal, as only meaning “forthright and openly.” That seems like an unnatural interpretation to me, though. It isn’t derived from the original Greek and only seems to be proposed to try and make amends with today’s verses.

I, however, wonder if this seeming inconsistency is actually pointing towards different degrees of divine manifestation. When Moses conversed with the Lord here in the tabernacle, did he perceive the Lord spiritually as opposed to literally? Was it something like a vision, such as Stephen had when he perceived both God the Father and Jesus Christ at the time of his martyrdom? Was Moses requesting to see God’s form in the flesh, and was learning that His presence could only be tolerated spiritually, as any physical manifestation would be fatal?

Something that supports the idea that Moses was referring to a different sort of appearance than what was going on in the tabernacle is that this was a preliminary conversation between him and the Lord. Immediately following this account, Moses will travel back up into the mountain, where he and the Lord will again confirm everything that has been agreed on here. So, given that this is the pre-agreement before the formal contract, it makes sense that it could also be a spiritual presence before the physical, and different rules would apply for each.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 33:14-17

14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.

15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.

16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.

17 And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Moses appeared to be asking for a path to redemption, a way for Israel to atone for their sin and return to the good graces of God. Today we hear God’s response, and rather than requiring penance, He already says that His presence will reside with the Israelites once more.

I do not believe that God just changed His mind flippantly. As I suggested yesterday, I believe Moses and Israel’s willingness to strive again was the fundamental shift that made them able to abide God’s presence again. In my experience, God does not expect perfection of us, only a willingness to keep getting back in the saddle forever. It is not the place that we are at that matters so much as our orientation. Even if we are in bad places but have reoriented ourselves to be pointed back towards the light, then God will walk with us out of the sewers and into greener fields.

Moses continues, saying that if Israel is ever again not able to abide the Lord’s presence, then he doesn’t want to be led to the Promised Land at all. He would rather get things reoriented properly in the wilderness, then proceed only when they are ready to do so fully in the right. The Lord agrees to this plan, and indeed this would be the pattern of Israel’s journey over the next forty years. They would move forward, then they would rebel, the journey would stop, the people would reorient to the Lord, and then they would proceed again. It would transpire exactly as Moses here requested. This is why their journey played out the way that they did, it was the method that God and Moses agreed on together.