Moses, Man of Sorrows
by Stefano Mulinari, in the public domain
The souls we love best are the souls we know most intimately. A special bond is formed with those who share moments of wonder, rites of passage, and seasons of sorrow with us. Of course, not every soul we know well is easy to love. But those who accompany us in suffering or show us the way of faith in the face of sorrow - these individuals are proven by fire. Our hearts would be ill-tuned not to love them. God Himself is moved by constancy in sorrow; and He is unable to refuse a broken, contrite heart.
I am coming to love Moses as a friend. When I read his stories as a child, he seemed so imposing, even frightening, that I could hardly think of him as a real person. But the better I know the LORD, the more I understand why Jews revere Moses so highly. Moses proved himself a faithful friend to God through suffering. Moses was a man of sorrows, like Jesus. His intimacy with God was, at times, a burden he bore on behalf of the people. He was cursed, maligned, rebelled against - and yet he served the people as a faithful shepherd, a teacher, and a judge. He began his service at the age of 80 after years of exile in the desert. He was too old by human reckoning, to bear such weight. Yet God entrusted Moses with a level of authority unparalleled until Jesus walked the earth. The connection between Jesus and Moses is so mysterious and significant that the Father arranged for Jesus to see Moses in person before His passion. That is true friendship! (Matt 17:1-3)
The suffering of Moses has been on my mind as I have been meditating on Exodus 32. With the exception of Jesus’ crucifixion, I think this must be the most tragic passage in scripture. It is the chapter in which the LORD tells Moses to leave the mountain where he has been allowed to liven in God’s presence the past forty days. During that time, Moses neither ate nor drank. He was sustained by God Himself - dialoging with the Creator, receiving the Law written on tablet of stone by the hand of the Holy One. No other man in history has ever had such an experience. Immediately prior to these days of revelation, Moses ascended the mountain with 70 elders of Israel. Scripture says that ate and drank with God and saw a sapphire pavement beneath His feet, just as John the Apostle saw. But then Moses was called higher. He alone heard the voice of God speaking as a man speaks to his friends. Moses alone received the tablets.
It is hard to imagine what transpired in this meeting between God and his friend. The Law as it was written can easily be recited in a single day. So what was happened behind the veil of smoke and thunder? The Israelites feared the worse. They believed God had taken Moses permanently. And though the 70 elders had seen the LORD with their own eyes, though they had walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, they did not understand the One who delivered them at all. The same elders who had eaten with the Living God begged Aaron to make them a metal statue they could worship, though the Lord had already forbidden the making of idols.
Of course the LORD knew this was happening even as He was writing the tablets, but He did not turn Moses away. He continued to speak to His friend and abide with him until the full forty days were over. Then God revealed to Moses what had happened. He bared His heart to His friend - the only human who could understand the pain, the abomination, the treachery of this rebellion.
The LORD threatened to wipe the Israelites out and start again with Moses. Moses alone knew how just this punishment would be. And yet, Moses chose to stand in the gap. He begged the LORD for mercy. Moses invoked the covenant made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He counseled the LORD (what a wild thought!) that the Egyptians would mock Him. He pleaded for the people who had betrayed both him and the God of their fathers. And the LORD relented because the He was pleased with Moses’ heart. I do not believe God ever wanted to wipe out Israel. If He had, He would not have continued to give Moses the Law when He saw the people were making a golden calf. But it was important to the LORD that Moses understand the righteousness of His anger, the justice of His punishment, and the greatness of His mercy.
I don’t think I understood until recently what suffering Moses endured in this scene - how torn his heart must have been. Surely walking down the mountain was a kind of death, or at least a humbling that we cannot imagine. Moses had been living in the the glory of the Almighty - full of wonder and grace, in the presence of perfect of love, without hunger or thirst, cold or heat. But duty (which was itself an expression of God’s love for Israel) called him back to the wilderness to serve a people whose hearts were far from the God he loved. He, like Jesus, lived in two worlds, serving as a bridge between them.
Leadership is always a burden of sorts; but intercession is a stretching between two worlds. Living in the tension between hope and disappointment, eternity and temporality, glory and shame is an honor given to friends of God. The good news is that God’s heart is moved by the suffering He shares with His friends.