They Saw God

I’ve been reading the Bible on repeat for several years now. The only thing I’ve read nearly as much as I’ve read the Scriptures is The Lord of the Rings. Last week, as I was going about my business, I noticed something that I’d never noticed before. 

Let’s have some context, shall we?

Exodus is the account of God rescuing a nation from slavery. Specifically, he is rescuing the ethnic nation of Israel from slavery in the political nation of Egypt. But you need to know that the book is way more than just the account of Israel’s physical rescue. It’s also about their spiritual and mental rescue from slavery. It’s an account of God not only physically removing people from a place of oppression, but also spiritually and mentally resetting their identity and teaching them to orient their lives around him, not their brick quotas. Basically, it’s God creating a nation and a culture from scratch. Nothing major.

When we think about being freed from slavery, we often neglect to think about what happens once our days, times, and lives are our own. How will we live? What will we do? Who will we serve? Who will we be? 

The Israelites had been slaves for 400 years. For 400 years someone else told them how to live, what to do, who to serve, and who they were. Some have argued, and I agree, that the physical liberation from slavery was the lesser of God’s miracles recounted in the Exodus. Lesser because he could do that one all on his own. To free someone from the spiritual, mental, and emotional impact of generations of oppression takes time and the cooperation of the person being freed. It’s harder work than we realize.

We pick up the story in the middle of the desert at the foot of Mount Sinai. The Israelites have experienced miraculous rescue from slavery and they’ve seen most of Egypt’s armed forces drowned in the Red Sea. Now, they’ve made it to this mountain and God has been talking to them. All of them. If you’re familiar with the story, you might think that it was just Moses, but it wasn’t. At first, God was talking to all the people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai. They got scared pretty quickly and, then, God spoke directly to Moses who relayed the message. So, God is mostly speaking to Moses, but the people are there and are pretty important participants in the whole thing.

After talking to Moses and giving him a whole slew of commands, including the Ten Commandments, God tells Moses to go get his brother, Aaron, and several other priests and leaders of the people and bring them up on the mountain to meet with him. Between this command and this group getting there, there is a ritual of sacrifice in which the people agree to do everything that God has commanded them to do.

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 24:9-11, NIV 1984)

This is what I missed in all my other read-throughs of this part of the Bible: this took place BEFORE the Golden Calf Incident. In fact, I missed that anyone besides Moses (and maybe Joshua) saw God at all.

Immediately following this meal on the mountain, God tells Moses to come up higher so he can give him the laws written down and further instructions about worshiping God and setting up a society from scratch. Moses (and Joshua) go up on the mountain and tell everyone to listen to Aaron and Hur while they’re gone. Moses and Joshua are gone for a long time- 40 days. And while they’re gone, the people get restless. So restless, in fact, that they decide that Moses is probably dead and that it’s time to take matters into their own hands.

I don’t read the story of the golden calf as outright worship of another god. I read it as impatience, fear, and doubt leading to taking control of the situation in an effort to do anything but wait. Remember what I said earlier? It’s a lot easier to be physically free from whoever or whatever enslaves you than it is to be really free (mentally, emotionally, spiritually).

Aaron, Hur, and the other Israelite leaders tell the people to take off their jewelry. The priests use this to make the golden calf, which Aaron tells them is their God who brought them out of Egypt. The people were physically free from Egypt, but they weren’t culturally free. What religion had they ever encountered in which they couldn’t see God? BUT THAT’S THE THING Y’ALL.

Only 40 days ago Aaron, Hur, and the other leaders saw God. THEY SAW GOD. And we have no indication that they were afraid of him. Whenever someone encounters God, or even an angel, in the Bible, their first reaction is terror followed by a certainty that they will die. The account in Exodus 24 doesn’t mention either of these reactions. It mentions God’s mercy saying that he “did not raise his hand against these leaders,” but it doesn’t mention how those leaders felt. I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but I like to think that they enjoyed a meal with God the same way that prostitutes and tax collectors (their descendants) would enjoy one with Jesus a couple thousand years later.

No matter how they felt about it, though, these men saw God with their own eyes and 40 days later, took matters of worship and leadership into their own hands. They saw God, but they couldn’t control him. They ate and drank with God, but they couldn’t bring him down from the mountain with them. This was a God unlike any they’d encountered before and they were going to have to be freed from a lot more than slavery in Egypt before they’d stop trying to make a golden calf out of him.

Can I ask us some questions? How often have we lamented that we don’t live in a time where we can see, hear, and talk to God face-to-face? Have you ever thought that following Jesus would be easier if you were among his disciples in first-century Palestine? Have you ever wished that you could hear his voice coming from the cloud, like Moses does in the Exodus account?

I know that I have. But, can I ask us some more questions? What makes us think that we wouldn’t turn around, 40 days after seeing his face or hearing his voice, and take matters into our own hands? What makes us think that we are better or different than Aaron, Hur, and the Israelite leaders who wanted to take matters into their own hands because they’d rather have a less-powerful God that they can control than the living God of the Bible who speaks to them out of a thunder cloud and also invites them to dinner?

I want you to know that the reason that you struggle to follow Jesus isn’t because you can’t see him face to face or hear his audible voice. Aaron, Hur, and co. saw God face to face and heard his voice and they still struggled to lead his people faithfully. They still failed to fight the urge to create a God they could control.

The reason that you, that I, struggle to follow Jesus is that deep down we’re uncomfortable with the fact that he is in control, not us. We’re uncomfortable with the fact that, as C.S. Lewis says, he’s a little bit wild. However, I also need you to know that it’s not all our fault. Many of us have been a part of households and communities of faith whose theology wasn’t much more than a golden calf. We have been part of churches that looked less like the Kingdom of God and more like a whitewashed version of the late-20th century American dream. They deified individualism, adventure, and “finding God’s will for your life”, but they didn’t consider that the God who rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt is kinda wild. He sent swarms of locusts and turned a whole river into BLOOD. You can’t box him into any kind of dream that you came up with on your own.

If he’s spoken to you at all, and I believe that he has, then you can choose to believe what he has said, take him at his word, and boldly move forward. Resist the urge to take off your jewelry and build a religion that you can understand and control. Resist the urge to follow those who are leading you, if that’s the kind of thing they’re into.

The God of the Exodus is more mysterious and powerful than we could ever imagine. He cannot be contained in 21st century western Christian norms and prescriptions anymore than he could be contained in a prehistoric golden idol. It doesn’t matter how much “theology” we know or how many convoluted seminary words we throw around. God is STILL in the business of building a nation and a culture from scratch. He’s still in the business of setting us free from slavery physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. And, because he’s wild, he’ll have all of you and nothing less.