A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Eight: Wandering in the Wilderness

Here is the eighth lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [here] and buy related study materials.
___________________________________________________

Our last lesson ended on a sour note. After being freed from centuries of slavery to the Egyptians, the Israelites are led by Moses to the foot of Mt. Sinai. There, he leads them in swearing a covenant oath declaring themselves to God’s people. Seeing that he has cared for them so miraculously, they swear to do all he commands. Unfortunately, they’re not the most faithful people.

Thinking that Moses has died up on top of Mt. Sinai, they have his brother Aaron make a golden calf – an image of the Egyptian bull god, Apis. Then they offer sacrifice, and as Exodus 32 describes, they “rose up to play,” a euphemism for immoral sexual activity. The situation was bad. And it sets the stage for one of the most dramatic stories of all time, in which we see not only God’s incredible mercy for his people, but why Moses is one of the most amazing men who ever lived.

We begin this lesson with a pivotal scene that takes place while Moses is up on Mt. Sinai. More specifically, it’s when God tells him what the Israelites are up to down below. Exodus 32:7-10 tells us:

7 Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.' 9 "I have seen these people," the Lord said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation."

Note how it is no longer “my people” like it was in Exodus 3:10. The Israelites are now Moses’ people, not God’s. Something extremely interesting happens here. You would think that Moses would agree with God. You would think he’d conclude that these people don’t deserve to be the Lord’s chosen ones and should be wiped out, according to the terms of the covenant they made only forty days earlier. After all, the Israelites had done nothing but complain to Moses ever since they left Egypt. But he doesn’t think that at all.

Instead, Moses protests and reminds God of his oath to Abraham. Moses says in effect, “Listen God, if you destroy the Israelites, you’ll kill Abraham’s chosen descendants and break your promise to bless all the nations through them.” Of course, God knows this. It is not like he’d forgotten his oath. He just wanted Moses to realize why he swore that oath to Abraham in the first place. Even way back then he knew Israel would need it.

This is something a lot of people miss. From the beginning, God had “programmed” the covenant with mercy back in Genesis. He purposely included within it provisions to ensure his Word would be fulfilled, no matter how badly his people violated their part of the covenant. But the fact that merciful provisions exits doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences for the Israelites’ infidelity. There are always consequences for sin.

Moses descends the mountain, and when he sees the Israelites engaged in their terrible idolatry, he smashes the stone tables upon which the Lord’s own finger had carved the ten commandments. He was symbolizing what the Israelites had done – they had smashed their covenant with the Lord. Moses then calls out to the Israelites, asking, “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Only the tribe Levi – the Levites – respond and come forth; the rest of the camp remains silent.

Accordingly, Moses instructs the Levites to slay the idolaters. Three thousand idolaters die that day by the Levites’ swords. For their faithfulness, God rewards the Levites by giving them the priesthood that was originally intended for all the Israelites. Exodus 32:29 makes this clear, with Moses telling the Levites, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord.”

Israel’s betrayal means that a lot about their covenant with the Lord has to be renewed and revised, including the covenant law. By worshipping the golden calf, Israel revels that they are still in spiritual bondage to the gods of Egypt. As a result, the Israelites are given exhaustive instructions for continual animal sacrifice. Because they worshipped the golden calf, they must now regularly sacrifice calves, as well as sheep and goats, as a way of renouncing the gods of Egypt.

They had to sacrifice the very animals they worshipped so as to purge them of their idolatry. To put God’s dealings with the Israelites in a more modern context, image if you or I worshipped money. And to break us of this idolatry, God made us burn a $1,000 bill. You would be slaughtering your affections, so to speak. You’d quickly realize that since you had to burn it, it wasn’t doing you a whole lot of good, so why keep chasing after it? God was showing the Israelites that the animals they worshipped were just that – animals. Moreover, there wasn’t any benefit to worshipping them, because only God is God.

In addition to the new sacrificial code, the Israelites are also given an elaborate code of ritual purity laws. The ritual purity laws, in part, are designed to quarantine Israel from the Gentiles and their idolatrous practices. They have to not only renounce pagan worship, but also renounce pagan ways. In other words, these laws imply that Israel was not yet holy enough to go out and evangelize the nations. Rather than evangelizing others into godliness, the Israelites would just end up finding themselves evangelized into worldliness.

As mentioned previously, Israel’s infidelity has cost them their privilege of being a nation of priests. Before, in Exodus 19:6, God called them to be a kingdom of priests, with the priesthood passing down to each generation from father to son in every Israelite family. But because of the Israelites’ unfaithfulness, now only the Levites will serve God as his priests. The Book of Leviticus is largely a manual for Levite priesthood. It contains a lot of interesting material, once understand what is going on.

Division of Leviticus

Leviticus explains the sacrifice and purity laws [the Priestly Code, chapters 1-16], and the laws that teach the people the ways of holiness [the Holiness Code, chapters 17-27]. Now you would think that getting a whole new code of laws and losing the priesthood might teach the Israelites a thing or two. But no. God didn’t call them a “stiff-necked people” for nothing. The Book of Numbers follows the same pattern as Exodus: Israel sins, and God gives them more laws to correct their ways.

Centuries later, St. Paul says as much, explaining in his letter to the Galatians that the law was added because of sin. The laws were given by God to teach Israel to acknowledge their weakness and seek the Lord’s grace. Galatians 3:19 states:

19 Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.

Eventually, after the Sinai covenant was renewed and expanded, the Israelites made their way to what is supposed to be their final destination: The Promised Land. That land is everything God promised it would be – beautiful, fertile, “flowing with milk and honey.” The Promised Land is, in summary, everything short of Paradise. But there’s just one catch. It is filled with fearsome warriors and fortified cities. Brutal fighters protected by massive walls. So in Numbers 13:30-14:10, we see the Israelites panic. Even though the Lord has promised them this land and victory over those who inhabit it, they refuse to enter. Not for the first time and not for the last time, they don’t trust the Lord will honor his word and take care of them.

Out of all the Israelites, only two men – Joshua and Caleb – believe that God will do what he promised to do. They speak up and try to rally the people. But it doesn’t work. So, what does God do? He gives the people what they want. God tells them that this generation – everybody except Joshua and Caleb – will never step foot into the Promised Land. Instead, they will wander in the desert until they all die. It will be their children, the second generation, who will enter and inherit the Promised Land.

Unfortunately, forty years later, the second generation proves no better than the first. Numbers 25 tells us that like their parents before them, they fall into idolatry at a place called Beth Peor. As a result of their sin, God gives Israel yet another set of laws in the Book of Deuteronomy. “Deuteronomy” literally means “second law.” This is an even lower set of laws then the laws their parents received after they worshiped the golden calf. One of the signs that Deuteronomy is a lower law is the fact that it is promulgated in the words of Moses, not God. It also makes concessions such as permitting divorce and introducing warfare laws, concessions that were absent in previous covenantal legislation given to Israel.

In the New Testament, Jesus explains why God made these concessions. Matthew 19:8 says: “8 Jesus said to them, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.’” Concessions were made because of the hardness of their hearts. God knew at that point in time the Israelites had a very difficult time doing what was right. The Israelites had proven themselves incapable of obeying God’s laws. So he lowered the bar. In Ezekiel 20:25, he point black acknowledges the inferiority of the Deuteronomic law when he says, “I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live.”

The fathers of the Church saw Deuteronomy as an example of the way God fathers his sons and daughters, stooping down to the level of his children so that he can eventually raise them up to his level. Likewise, in Galatians 3:24, St. Paul calls the law a “custodian” or in some translation, a “pedagogue,” comparing it to a child’s tutor. In other words, Israel is not yet mature. When understood in this light, we can see that the Deuteronomic law was God tolerating undesirable behavior until the Israelites learned to grow up and attain to a higher standard. These laws bound Israel until the coming of Christ, when a new law was given which would retire the Deuteronomic code.

The Book of Deuteronomy contains more than just new laws. It also contains Moses’ detailed instructions on how Israel is to conquer the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Once that is accomplished or, in the words of Deuteronomy 12:10-11, once the Lord gives Israel “rest from all your enemies” – the Lord will show them where they are to build him a permanent sanctuary or temple, in a permanent homeland.

As we will see later, that doesn’t happen until the time of the Davidic Kingdom. Just as all of God’s previous covenants have in some way foreshadowed or pointed to the person and work of Christ, so too do Moses and the events of Israel’s Passover and Exodus. In fact, just a brief sketch of Jesus’ life reveals the many parallels between his story and Moses’ story. For example, like Moses, Jesus was born during the reign of a ruthless king, who killed all the other Hebrew male children. Like Moses, Jesus escaped this slaughter and fled with his parents to safety in Egypt. Jesus is called back to his birth place after a time in exile. He passes through water in his baptism and goes out into the wilderness where he is tested. He fasts forty days and forty nights. Jesus’ first sign is turning water into wine at Cana, which is a sign of what he will eventually do in the Eucharist – turn wine into his blood.

Both of these signs recall the first plague in Exodus, where Moses turned water into blood. Jesus also teaches from a mountain – the Sermon on the Mount – just as Moses’ teaching issued from his visitation with God on a mountain – Mt. Sinai. During the Transfiguration, Jesus’ three companions see him radiate God’s glory, just as Moses’ face shone with God’s glory after his time on the mountaintop. Jesus gives God’s people the Eucharist – heavenly bread and spiritual drink – which was foreshadowed by the Manna that God gave the Israelites in the desert and the water that miraculously flowed from the rock.

Besides the twelve apostles, Jesus appoints an additional group of seventy disciples to assist him in his work – just as Moses administered God’s covenant with Israel with the help of seventy elders. Jesus is also the true Passover Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world. It is Jesus who leads us out of spiritual bondage in a New Exodus. In all these ways, God uses events in the Old Testament to prefigure the salvation Christ brings in the New Testament. This is especially clear with the Passover.

Remember that in Israel’s Passover, when they left Egypt, a lamb was sacrificed, its blood was shed, and it was eaten as part of a family meal. Also, those who partook in the Passover feast were spared from death. Those events pointed to another Passover, the true Passover, the Passover of Jesus Christ. In this true Passover, Christ is offered as the sacrificial Lamb of God. His blood is shed for the salvation of the world. And just as Israel has to eat the lamb, so the Church instructs us to feed upon Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist. Likewise, through the Eucharist, we obtain the graces we need to enter eternal life.

Through the first Passover, God delivered Israel from the bondage of slavery and led his people to the Promised Land. Through the New Passover, Christ delivers us from the bondage of sin and leads us to the true Promised Land of heaven. But as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, like the Israelites, we must choose to partake in this sacrifice, this meal. We also need to remember what we are doing when we partake of it. We need to make sure that we do not receive the Eucharist unworthily with grave sin on our consciences. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 counsels us:

6 “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

We also learn something important in Matthew 26:

26 “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

These words of Christ’s from the Last Supper evoke the covenant ratification ceremony that took place at the foot of Mt. Sinai with Moses. When Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” he is referencing the covenant that Jews knew bound them to God. They remind us that like Moses and the elders, when we eat from the Lord’s table we are feasting in the very presence of God. All of these parallels we have seen between Moses and Christ are pretty amazing. And they once again make clear that God has been at work in salvation history, writing the world like men write words.

In our next lesson, we are going to fast-forward to the time of another seminal figure in the history of humanity – David. It is through the Davidic Kingdom that God begins to bring the Gentiles back into the covenant family of God. We will examine the incredible story of how a shepherd boy becomes king, and learn how God began to build his house – his Kingdom – through David.