Lord, Please Stay

The vast majority of the world’s billionaires and successful business magnates don’t even give a word of acknowledgement to their Creator, nor do they attribute their success to abiding in the Will of God. Yet they continue to succeed, because they are the best in their field, work hard at what they do and have core principles to which they rigorously adhere. This applies to many of the world’s top athletes, artists, entertainers, leaders etc.

The Parashat HaShavua (This week’s Torah Portion, Parashat Ki Tisa, Exodus 30:11 – 34:35) has something to say about this.

Moses came desperately close to being among their number, save for the fact that he had the additional virtue of love for God, by which he was able to pluck himself out of the broad path set ultimately for destruction. Like the world’s top successful people, Moses had remarkable leadership qualities and was able to rigorously discipline himself to hold to his own core values that were being formed and aligned to the commands of the Almighty. Compare the leadership skills of Moses to the poor leadership skills of his brother Aaron and you will see clearly that Moses was a natural leader. When Moses was up on top of Mount Sinai, the people of Israel pressurized Aaron in the absence of Moses to make the golden calf. Aaron, in his weakness, fell to the pressure hook, line and sinker. In contrast, as soon as Moses came down from the mountain and saw the revelry, he immediately rallied help from ‘whoever is for YHVH’, which happened to be the people of his own tribe, the Levites. It was a desperate but necessary strategic manoeuvre by which to obtain order in the camp, whereby about three thousand of the people died at the swords of their Levite brothers (Exodus 32:25-27).

Just like any of the world’s top successful people, Moses came to a place in his leadership career where he had to choose between success without God and success with God. If you think this is not so, then look at Exodus 32:34. God told Moses to lead the people. Moses was a natural born leader and he could lead the people. God would provide everything that was needed for a successful mission, because of His oath to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God would send along His angel to drive out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. The combination of the provisions given by God because of his faithfulness, together with Moses’ leadership skills was all that was necessary for God to accomplish His promise to the patriarchs (Exodus 33:1-3). A vast number of my own people, modern day Israel, rarely give any glory to God for their success as a re-birthed nation, yet they exist not because of their faith in God, but because of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling the words told by the prophets of long ago.

God said to Moses:

‘But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.’ (Exodus 33:3 NIV)

So it is clear from the Scripture, from God’s very own words in Scripture, that Moses could quite possibly have achieved his success without having any direct relationship with God, just as any of the world’s top successful people have attained to success without acknowledging the need for a relationship with God.

But Moses was no ordinary man. He was called by God, not only because of his natural leadership qualities, but because of his love for God. Not only did Moses have the choice to achieve his mission without God, but he had the choice to become a great nation through the destruction and replacement of the very people who he was leading (Exodus 32:9-10).

Instead, Moses chose to remain loyal to his people and to relentlessly seek a loving relationship with his God. He pleaded with God for Israel and for God’s ongoing favour not only for himself, but also for his people:

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” (Exodus 33:15 NIV)

God loved Moses’ response:

And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” (Exodus 33:17)

So great was Moses’ love for God and for his people, that he could not imagine an existence in eternity without God’s forgiveness for them. In his desperation to provide some kind of atonement for Israel, he even tried to offer up his place in God’s book in exchange for God’s forgiveness for them (Exodus 32:30-32).

It is in this way that Moses is a type of Jesus. Some 1400 years later, Jesus would provide atonement for the sins of the world through the sacrifice of his own body.

Jesus is our “Immanuel”, which means “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14). As Moses pleaded with God for His Presence to go with him and with the Israelites on their journey into the promised land, so too Jesus has made a way for us to go through life with God near to us, as we keep to the narrow path that Jesus said we should take, living out the life that Jesus said we should live.

We may or may not have the success that some people in the world have. But that does not constitute success in the eyes of God. What constitutes our success in the eyes of God is that He is always with us on the journey.