Daily Lesson for April 18, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 32 verses 7 through 10:

7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

This one I owe to my former professor, friend and insightful reader of the Hebrew Scriptures, Howard Curzer:

On the face of it, today's lesson looks as if God is ready to give up on the Israelites for their idolatry and is trying to induce Moses to accept the invitation to be done with the people and to start over in re-making the nation all by himself. In this reading Moses talks the LORD out of simply doing away with the stiff-necked Israelites.

But Professor Curzer helped me see something else going on here -- something hidden. It can be uncovered by asking this question: When Moses went up the mountain, why was it that he was made to stay 40 days, and not told to go back down until after the Israelites had become desperate below and made Aaron to fashion the Golden Calf?

When the story is looked at through the lens of that question we realize that while it looks like this is a story about the question of the LORD's faithfulness to Israel, what it in fact is is a story about Moses' faithfulness to his people. It is a test of Moses' character. Will Moses be faithful to his people, even when they are not faithful to him?  Will he be true to them in spite of their stiff-necked ways?  Will he reject the temptation to run off and leave them low and dry in the wilderness?  In short, is he committed to being their leader -- through good times and through bad?

I would say this has all kinds of implications for pastors, deacons, business leaders, and parents.