Day 174: Thank God for a mediator – Deuteronomy 9 vs 13 -29
13-14 The Lord also said to me, “I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. Leave me alone so I may destroy them and erase their name from under heaven. Then I will make a mighty nation of your descendants, a nation larger and more powerful than they are.”15-16 So while the mountain was blazing with fire I turned and came down, holding in my hands the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant. There below me I could see that you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had melted gold and made a calf idol for yourselves. How quickly you had turned away from the path the Lord had commanded you to follow! 17-19 So I took the stone tablets and threw them to the ground, smashing them before your eyes. Then, as before, I threw myself down before the Lord for forty days and nights. I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had committed by doing what the Lord hated, provoking him to anger. I feared that the furious anger of the Lord, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you. But again he listened to me. 20-21 The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him, too. But I prayed for Aaron, and the Lord spared him. I took your sin - the calf you had made - and I melted it down in the fire and ground it into fine dust. Then I threw the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.
22-23 You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth-hattaavah. And at Kadesh-barnea the Lord sent you out with this command: “Go up and take over the land I have given you.” But you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God and refused to put your trust in him or obey him. 24-25 Yes, you have been rebelling against the Lord as long as I have known you. That is why I threw myself down before the Lord for forty days and nights - for the Lord said he would destroy you. 26-27 I prayed to the Lord and said, “O Sovereign Lord, do not destroy them. They are your own people. They are your special possession, whom you redeemed from Egypt by your mighty power and your strong hand. Please overlook the stubbornness and the awful sin of these people, and remember instead your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 28-29 If you destroy these people, the Egyptians will say, 'The Israelites died because the Lord wasn’t able to bring them to the land he had promised to give them.' Or they might say, 'He destroyed them because he hated them; he deliberately took them into the wilderness to slaughter them.’ But they are your people and your special possession whom you brought out of Egypt by your great strength and powerful arm.” Deuteronomy 9:13-29 New Living Translation (English Standard Version link)
It was a long reading today so I'll keep my comments short. We see how Moses reminded the people he had led out of Egypt of the many times they had rebelled against God and behaved very foolishly. He reminds them how they had made an idol to worship during the very time he was up a mountain getting God's commandments that could be such a blessing to them. He names other places where they had sinned badly, and the time when they stubbornly refused to enter the land before them because they were too afraid of the nations living there. So what did God tell Moses the people really deserved? Vs13-14.
They deserved to be utterly rejected by God! And that is the place that our sins, our ongoing sins, put each and every one of us. There is no reason in ourselves why God should ever let us into His presence. But see what God did for those rebels. Moses humbled himself and became a mediator between them and God. He pleaded on their behalf – even giving God reasons why He should show them mercy. (vs 28-29).
But this mustn’t make us think that God was the harsh person, and Moses was the good guy who ‘twisted God’s arm’. It was God who raised Moses up for that very purpose, to give us an example of how it is only because of the mediator He provides we can ever make it to heaven. Moses could only pray for them – but Jesus Christ laid down his blameless life as the sacrifice that makes atonement. If we’re honest, we have to admit that even after being saved we still let the Lord down so often. Thank God for the mediator He provided. Thank God for our Lord Jesus Christ.