Moses was a man like no other. Hidden away, protected at birth, adopted by royalty, raised in wealth, God uniquely prepared him for the leadership and spiritual guidance of His people.
Finding himself on the run after a guttural reaction of violence, Moses ended up tending sheep as a virtual nobody in the middle of nowhere. Until one day when a bush caught a flame that could not be extinguished. And the voice of God spoke from that flame. And an unquenchable fire was ignited inside the heart of Moses. Everything changed.
I've often wondered why God chose a burning bush as the sign of His calling. I think it was a demonstration of His dominion over nature and its elements. Moses had to see this from the start because he had grown up in the midst of a people given over to idols who they believed controlled nature for good or for evil. To appease their gods meant possibility for bumper crops or for drought prevention, or for family fertility. God showed Moses there is no other god in control of anything but the great I Am.
Moses would see God work miracles in nature throughout the next forty years. By His works, nations would know His name. One such miracle was the tremendous activity of nature as God called Moses to come up for a personal meeting atop the mountain of Sinai. Now journeying up any mountain is difficult at best. There's risk, there's resistance, there's even reservation. Yet, the result of reward in mountaintop exhilaration drives a climber upward.
God called Moses up and he pressed on to the top, through thick smoke and darkness miraculously appearing at His presence. God spoke with Moses. Moses spoke with God. Exodus 24:18 says Moses' mountaintop experience lasted 40 days and 40 nights...And in those days and nights, God revealed mysteries and Truths about Himself no man had ever known. It was beyond life-changing. It was eternity- changing.
Still, Moses had to leave and come back down the mountain. Often the return trip is just as treacherous as the trip up. If a climber isn't careful his foot can slip, causing him to reach bottom quicker, but much less intact, than intended. Once down the mountain, there's a whole different struggle. The climber's view has been altered. On the mountaintop, God is near and people are far. The presence of God is huge and people are tiny. On the ground, people are big and God's presence among them may seem small. Air at the top is clear, crisp and clean. A ground-level full of people is messy.
Moses descended his mountaintop to find the people in a mess of idol worship. The same God Who called him up is the same God Who sent him back down with a purpose to minister in the messy. We see Moses cleaned up the place and his people, and begged God not to remove His presence from them. God promised.
In his second mountain climb, God revealed even more of His glory to Moses. As Moses made his way back down to the people, he was not only transformed on the inside, he was changed on the outside as well. He saw people differently. People saw him differently. His face shone with the glory of The Lord, so brightly that he had to wear a veil over his face. This time Moses saw the people through the veil. And in the messy, Moses ministered.
Often in my mountaintop experiences with the Lord, I don't want to leave. Looking down at the messy, I can't see how to minister. I want to stay and bask in the miracle of His presence. But God has a job for me, for all of us, to do back on ground level. He sends us down with a mission, keeps our feet from slipping and allows us to see His miraculous hand at work, even in the messy places. From Moses I've learned to look for God's glory on the mountaintop, ask Him to use His glory to transform me, and to purposely see people differently. If I begin to see them through the Veil, through Jesus, then, I'll see clearly how to minister in the messy.
"Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and out bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. " Heb. 10:19-23
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