A difficult grace

One of the hardest-to-take passages in all the Bible is the one that describes Moses’ momentary outburst of anger - and the consequences - in Numbers 20:10-12. After listening to the Israelites gripe for the hundredth time, Moses lost it (but only a little). “Listen, you rebels”, he said to them, “must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

Then comes this in v. 12 - But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

It seems so unfair - the death penalty for getting jelly on the tablecloth, as Fred Craddock once put it. But L. L. Barkat, in her new book Stone Crossings, suggests that God’s discipline hides a severe mercy, a difficult grace. She says that the way Moses speaks to the people here shows that maybe he’s handled the things of God for so long that he is beginning to confuse himself with God (a common temptation in ministry). So God shuts him out of Canaan.

But this isn’t the end for Moses. At the end of Deuteronomy, God takes him to a high mountain and shows him the Promised Land. GOD does this, as a man might do for his best friend. And then Moses dies there on that mountain, and God buries him..as a man might do for his BEST friend. Getting shut out of the Promised Land wasn’t the same as getting shut out of God’s presence. Quite the opposite.

I read this in Stone Crossings today just after I read about the pitiful prophets of Matthew 7 to whom Jesus says “I never knew you”. “But Lord, Lord,” they say, “didn’t we do mighty miracles in your name?”

Maybe that’s where Moses was heading when God saved him from himself.

P. S. Did Moses ever enter the Promised Land? Sure he did. See Matthew 17:3 ;)

April 17, 2008 · Filed Under Books, Grace

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