Deuteronomy 18:15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.
One of the consisted themes of the Hebrew Scriptures is this: there are singular human beings that he LORD uses to accomplish His purposes. The storyline is about these individuals who stood up and represented the LORD to His people. The culmination of that line of people is Jesus of Nazareth.
But how do we know if a person is standing up for the LORD or just speaking on their own, with their own motives, for their own purposes? How can a flawed human being possibly be a good spokesperson for the LORD? Isn’t everything they say and do tainted by their fallen humanity?
Our text lays out the LORD’s plan for a spiritual leader for the people of Israel. There will be military leaders, and political leaders, but the LORD’s greatest concern is for the person who will speak His message to His people. He needs an earthly spokesperson.
But this is fraught with dangers and perils. Humans have the tendency to start out leading from a good place, but then get corrupted along the way. Moses, the one speaking in our text today, knows this all too well.
But Moses was a great spokesperson for the LORD. Not only did he say what the LORD told him to say, he even placed his own life on the line for the people of Israel. He was willing to die that they might be saved. Now that is a good leader.
But Moses wasn’t a perfect prophet. His life was marred by murder and disobedience empowered by anger. He had failed a crucial moments, and therefore would not be entering into the Promised Land. And yet, despite these imperfections, Moses became the example of a godly leader.
Our text gives us insight into what leaders, godly leaders, are like. Their mission is to be like Moses, speaking faithfully, willing to enter the LORD’s presence and hear from Him. That takes courage.
Future prophets would be like that. They would be willing to risk everything to proclaim the message from the LORD to a people, often not willing to listen, locked in rebellion. That is not a place most people enjoy inhabiting. Most of us avoid rejection.
But even if the singular individual proclaims the Truth, people have to be willing to listen and obey. This intermediary position was one they had chosen. The LORD had wanted to be able to communicate directly to all of Israel, but they had been afraid of the presence of the LORD on the Mountain. The fiery cloud had scared them off.
So the intermediary became a compromise the LORD instituted. But this also created a difficulty. It is harder to obey a human than the voice coming from a fiery cloud! The fiery cloud voice means business. The human voice is just that, a human voice. The level of threat is derivative in nature.
It is a shame that we don’t obey without the direct threat of punishment! We see this in children. Unless the pain of disobedience is greater than the pleasure of disobedience, then the child will choose disobedience. Pain is a wonderful teacher.
But we as adults have too often forgotten, or have become used to the pain of disobedience. Or perhaps the pain of disobedience is delayed or deferred to some future moment. If we know the pain would come immediately after the disobedience, we would be much more likely to obey. Or is this just me?
Having a singular person speak the Truth can be difficult for us to obey. But this is what the LORD calls us to do. The LORD always uses humans as His instruments. Are we willing to listen to the tune He plays?
The Arnold Journey 