Good morning,
In a couple weeks from now God’s people will be celebrating God’s love. The Jewish people will be celebrating the Passover and one day later the Christians will be celebrating Easter. It’s fascinating to me that we live in a world that celebrates free love and safe sex and open relationships while doing it’s best to ignore or attack these expressions of God’s love for those he created in his own image. What the world demands is love that meets it’s own standards while ignoring the standards of love as God has defined them. I think that Moses, a very special friend of God, can help us to understand what is involved when God says that he loves the world that he created. There is no doubt that Moses really did love God. He spend long periods of his adult life in God’s presence. He was also God’s spokesman to the nation of Israel and again and again showed his love for the Israelites as he plead with God to spare them when they kept on rebelling against God’s guidelines for loving him back.
It’s also interesting that as Jesus was nearing the end of his earthly ministry, God the Father sent two heavenly friends to encourage him. One was Elijah and the other was Moses. These men understood their Lover and how God’s love actually works. Just before Moses was called into God’s presence he reminded the Jewish people, and us as well, the truth of how love works. His first point was that it was the creator God who had the right to define how love worked. Then he pointed out that because of God’s love for those he created, he would faithfully keep his promises to those who loved him and obeyed him. Love wasn’t just a word, it was a commitment to do what was needed to meet the needs of those who were loved. Already then the Jewish people had the blood on the doorposts that marked the passover and now we have the blood shed on the cross as concrete proof that God was willing to pay the price to set us free from the penalty of our sins. If we love him, we will obey him. But God’s plan didn’t stop there. If after all he has done for us and how willing he is to bring us into his family and share his heaven with us for eternity, we still insist on rebelling against him, watch out. He will not hesitate to punish and destroy those who reject him. Jesus isn’t just the Savior, he is also the Judge.
Deuteronomy 7:9 Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. 10 But he does not hesitate to punish and destroy those who reject him.
Roy Wisner
