Having helped us contemplate the faith of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the author of Hebrews now turns our attention to Moses, Joshua, and Rahab and gives a fair amount of textual space to their journeys. Over the next several blogs, I’m going to write in the mode of “first-person narrative” and essentially speak as though I am Moses, Joshua, and Rahab. Along the way, I will take some creative and interpretive license, but please know that this is not an attempt to add to the words of the Bible, rather, it’s an attempt to help us better hear, understand, and believe the Bible.
As for Moses, as great as he was, he was just a man, and when he rises amidst the great cloud of witnesses to testify to the faithfulness of God, he might say something like this. “Hello, everyone, my name is Moses and I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his glorious face to shine upon you. It’s an honor for me to stand and say a word or two about the faithfulness of God because he has been very good to me for a very long time. From before I was born to the days of my youth, to the crossing of the Red Sea, to the top of Mount Sinai, to the borders of the Promised Land, to the top of the mountain of transfiguration where I stood in glory with Elijah and Jesus himself, all the way to this present moment: God has been faithful to me and I want to testify to this fact.
“Let me start by telling you about the day that the Lord called me up onto Mount Sinai for the third time. While I eagerly ascended its slopes that day, I must say that it was actually a low point in my life. Israel, after being delivered from Egypt by the grace and power of the Lord, had just sinned a horrible sin against him by worshiping a false idol and calling it by his name. Perhaps that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you, but what if your spouse had sexual relations with another person and tried to comfort you by saying that they had called that person by your name? How would that make you feel? The sin of Israel was outrageous, Beloved, and in his just wrath, God punished the people for their sin, after which he showed tremendous restraint and poured out unspeakable grace upon them as well. But God’s grace aside, I was grieving over what had transpired.
“However, one day the Lord instructed me to go up onto the mountain because I had asked him if I could see his glory. I had been with the Lord so many times and he had graciously revealed his heart and hand to me in so many ways. You’ve probably read in the Bible that I had the privilege of having a sort of face-to-face relationship with the Lord, and I felt that. I was very grateful for that. But I still had this longing in my heart for something more. I wanted to see him in a more tangible way. I wanted to be able to touch him, even if I didn’t literally touch him. I wanted to behold the God I loved so much, and who had been so faithful to me. What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t curiosity that motivated me to ask him for this, it was love. And so I said, ‘O Lord, will you please show me your glory?’ And praise be to his holy name, he said, ‘Yes.’ Well, he said, ‘Yes, but I’m only going to show you my back side,’ which I know sounds strange but which I’ll explain in a few moments.
“So there I was up on the mountain, waiting for the Lord to answer my prayer. My heart was beating fast and my breath was a little hurried. I was scared and excited, kind of like the feeling you have when you know you’re about to meet someone very great. And then it happened. I wrote about this in Exodus 34:5-7. The Lord descended upon me in the form of a cloud as he had before and I knew that the cloud was his glory but this time it felt different.
"Lo and behold, as I strained my eyes to see what the Lord might reveal, I noticed that he was actually standing there with me in that sacred place. How can I possibly explain what I felt in that moment? God Almighty who had done such great and marvelous things in my sight was standing with me on the mountain although I could only see his back. At the time I didn’t understand, but later I came to see that I was beholding Jesus in part. I was looking at his form but I wasn’t allowed to see his face, and yet, what I saw took my breath away. I could never explain the feeling I had in that moment, however, I can say that when you finally see your great and gracious Savior face to face, you’ll understand. Believe me, you’ll understand!
“While I stood there gazing on his form, the Lord took me by surprise and spoke in audible words. I had expected to see his glory because he told me that he was going to show me that in part, but I was surprised to hear his voice. Over time, my life came to be shaped by these words, and indeed, the rest of God’s activity in history and all of his revelations in the Bible were shaped by these words.
“As the Lord passed by me, he proclaimed his name and said, ‘The Lord, the Lord [‘Yahweh, Yahweh’ or ‘I Am, I Am’], a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).
“Oh there are so many things I could say about what God said to me on that day but let me mention just a couple of them. God’s name means, “I Am.” He is God and there is no other. He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and he is in perfect control over them forever and ever. It is this God, the only God, who said that he is gracious, merciful, and slow to anger. Oh, of all the things he could have said to me on that particular day, blessed be his holy name! It is this God who said that he is steadfast in love which means that he keeps his covenants. It means that when he makes a promise, he fulfills it no matter what. So when he adds another word and says ‘I am abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,’ he saying that he’s faithful to keep his promises.
“The faithfulness of God is not an abstract attribute of God, rather, it means that when he says something he fulfills it. It means that he does everything he says he will do. And I’m here to testify today that you can take this to the bank: God is indeed steadfast in love and faithful to all his words. I have seen this with my own eyes, over many years of time, and you will see it too if you simply put your trust in him and cling to what he has said.
“You must remember that God spoke these history-shaping words just after the precious people he had redeemed and delivered from Egypt turned their backs on him and committed adultery against him. The people were neither steadfast in love nor faithful. Rather, they worshiped a false god of their own making and called it by the name ‘Yahweh.’ O Beloved, this was an evil act, it was horrid, it was unthinkable, and the Lord was right to pour out a small measure of his anger upon them. But then he forgave them and he called me up on to the mountain and he showed me his glory in some measure and he said, ‘Moses, my precious servant, this is who I am: I am steadfast in love and I am faithful. I am not like the people. I am holy, holy, holy and my word is a solid rock upon which you can build your life because I am a solid rock on which you can build your life. I will never break my covenant because I the Lord am faithful.’
“How can I explain what I felt in that moment? I bowed my face to the ground and worshiped our God. I say, I worshiped our God from the depths of my heart. I respected him so profoundly. I admired him. I loved him with a love I had never felt before. I was in awe of him. We did speak about some other things that day but I’ll have to leave that for another time. For now, I want you to know that up on that mountain I savored his words and I thought back on my life and I realized that what he said to me was true for me: God had been faithful to me and he’ll be faithful to you."
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