11. Moses’ Mess

It's funny how man went through a couple thousand years before there was ever any mention of laws. Before that, there were covenants, blessings and curses, cause and effect, life and death. Somehow they were added. I wrote a little bit about the foundation of where they started when Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet while there were likely some sort of laws that men abided by, there is little written about them until the time of the ten commandments.

Exodus 19 and 20 contains a major shift in the bible that I had often breezed over thinking I had "got it." …I'd love for you to look at it for yourself but let me throw a few things out at you.

God tells Moses that he wants to make ALL of the Israelites into "a treasured possession among all peoples…a KINGDOM of priests and a Holy NATION." I believe God when He said that He desired to make the whole nation a kingdom of priests in which God would bless all nations through them.

OK, so what was the "catch".

The if in the whole thing was this: "IF you listen to my voice and obey my covenant."

1. Listening to someone means you have to communicate with them…there has to be a relationship.

2. I used to read this as "and obey my commandments." It doesn't say that and this is a big reason why I'm writing this whole series.

Regardless, there's a whole mess of stuff that happens between chapters 19 and 34. However, I think it's important to mention that the 10 commandments weren't originally written. Likewise, God tried speaking with the people after they all agreed that they would listen to His voice and follow His covenant…(I'm assuming His covenant of love, lived out through faith and trust in His promise.)

However, the people responded by saying "He scares us…we can't listen to Him…Moses, you speak to Him and then talk to us and whatever you say, we'll do."

After a series of pretty crazy events, Moses is up on the mountain and God sees how the people have got Aaron to lead them into idol worship. God's had about enough of that but Moses pleads their case. God writes the commandments on the stones and hands them to Moses who then wants to break them over the heads (my translation) of the people who are dancing around golden calves.

There's a lot more to this story, but it's interesting to see how the people have tried trading in a God who's power blows them away for gods of their own hands that they can "control".