The Woes of Middle Management

For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the LORD while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!

Deuteronomy 31:27

Moses chose some harsh words for his farewell address to the Israelites he had been leading for over forty years. Perhaps justifiably so. The Israelites hadn’t stopped complaining since they left Egypt. They were idolaters who built a golden calf to worship while Moses was off receiving the stone tablets of God’s covenant law (Exodus 32). They were rebels constantly attacking Moses’s leadership, even taking up the cause of Korah after God miraculously opened the mouth of the earth to swallow him and his fellow rebels alive (Numbers 16). 

Yes, Moses had his reasons to rebuke the Israelites, but let’s dig deeper into the context, shall we? 

You see, Moses was only middle management. God was in charge, and Moses had just come from the tent of meeting where he and Joshua had been summoned to hear the will of the boss. God, speaking in a pillar of cloud, expressed the same sentiment toward the Israelites that Moses parrotted and then commissioned Joshua as their new leader, for God was about to bring the Israelites into the promised land. By God’s will, Moses would never experience it. He would only view the promised land from a nearby mountain just before his death. Why? Moses was being punished for his own rebellion against God (Numbers 20).

On that day, Moses was both the recipient and proclaimer of God’s righteous judgment. He climbed Mount Nebo and died, never to be heard from again … 

Until the transfiguration! There, again atop a mountain, Moses beheld one whose face shone like the sun, whose clothes were white as light (Matthew 17). Moses never entered the promised land, but he talked with the promised one, the perfect lamb of God, the Messiah who through his death and resurrection would free us all from God’s righteous judgment.

Single Mindedness

(Judgment)

Luke 23:26-31

 

My wife and I recently watched the remake of the 1977 TV miniseries Roots. Like the original, it depicted the atrocities of American slavery. However, about half way through the series I found myself getting quite emotional.

 

For me, there was an even greater message than the abuse of slavery. It was the commitment and single mindedness of Kunta Kinte, and those who followed him, to remember their African heritage; to be a great Mandingo warrior; but mostly to make their forefathers proud.

 

Jesus was truly single minded. He obeyed his Father even to the humiliating and painful death of the cross. In today’s passage he reminds the grieving “daughters of Jerusalem” of God’s judgement on Israel by quoting the prophet Hosea.

 

The high places of wickedness will be destroyed—
    it is the sin of Israel.
Thorns and thistles will grow up
    and cover their altars.
Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”
    and to the hills, “Fall on us!”    NIV

 

Jesus was intricately involved in God’s judgement and in God’s plan of redemption. Without his sacrifice, you and I would suffer judgement; there would be no redemption. Jesus was single minded in his desire to do his Father’s will; to fulfill the prophet’s warnings; to make His Father proud; to please Him.

 

There is a powerful scene in Roots when Kunta Kinte is being whipped until he will say his slave name of Toby. It is painful to watch. Time and time again as the lash, laced with nails, tears his flesh, he says, “My name is Kunta Kinte”. I found myself whispering, “Just say Toby”. But he was single minded in his commitment to his African ways.

 

The single mindedness of Jesus suffered God’s judgment for you and for me. If only we

could be single minded like that. What great things we could accomplish for our Heavenly Father who sacrificed everything for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=LUKE%2023%3A26-31&version=NIV;TLB
https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Luke.23.26-Luke.23.31