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Episode: Moses, the Intercessor on Mount Sinai

Author: BibleProject Podcast
Duration: 01:02:08

Episode Shownotes

The Mountain E5 — Moses has a complicated identity. He's an Israelite, but he was raised in the house of Pharaoh. He was born in Egypt, but he flees to live in the wilderness with the Midianites. And there in the wilderness, he meets God on two separate occasions on

Mount Sinai. The first time, God commissions Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery. And the second time, while Moses is up on the mountain with God, the recently freed people down below are already breaking the covenant by worshiping a gold calf. Will Moses stand in the gap for the people in this moment of crisis? In this episode, Jon and Tim discuss Moses as a successful mountaintop intercessor, showing what can happen when a human trusts God on the cosmic mountain.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Chapter 1: Recap of the Mountain Theme So Far (0:00-13:37)Chapter 2: Moses’ Identity and Commissioning on Mount Sinai (13:37-35:34)Chapter 3: Moses Rescues Israel and Intercedes for them on Mount Sinai (35:34-1:02:08)Official Episode TranscriptView this episode’s official transcript.Referenced ResourcesCheck out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music“Sum Sum” by Ben Bada Boom“Garden Trees” by T.Check & Kofi AnonymousBibleProject theme song by TENTS Show CreditsProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer. Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and also provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Summary

In this episode titled 'Moses, the Intercessor on Mount Sinai', hosts Jon and Tim discuss Moses' complex identity as a pivotal intercessor between God and the Israelites. Raised in Pharaoh's house yet identifying as an Israelite, Moses confronts God's anger after the Israelites worship a golden calf, illustrating the significance of trust in divine guidance amidst crisis. The episode highlights Moses' journey of transformation as he pleads for forgiveness on behalf of his people, ultimately showcasing the sacredness of their covenant relationship with God and the role of intercession during their most profound failures.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Moses, the Intercessor on Mount Sinai) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_04
Moses is a character with a complicated identity. He's an Israelite, but he's raised in the house of Pharaoh. He's born in Egypt, but he flees to live in the wilderness with the Midianites. He even starts a family there. Moses has moved on.

00:00:19 Speaker_04
But out in the wilderness, God meets Moses on a mountain in a tree of fire, and he calls Moses to go back to Egypt and rescue his people Israel from slavery.

00:00:30 Speaker_02
It's as if from this moment forward, he's going to be asked to trust that who I am is a part of this family that I was born into but have no relational connection to anymore.

00:00:40 Speaker_02
And I'm just supposed to go back and dive in as if I'm this people's leader.

00:00:45 Speaker_04
Through Moses, God leads Israel out of Egypt and through the wilderness all the way to Mount Sinai. This is the same mountain Moses met God at when he called him to rescue Israel.

00:00:56 Speaker_04
Moses goes up the mountain to be with God while Israel stays at the base. They lose patience and they create a false god to worship. And so God tells Moses,

00:01:07 Speaker_02
He's done. This is a moment to disassociate himself from these people. What Moses does is he identifies himself with the people. He says, listen, you can't ditch these people. You made a promise to my ancestors and you can't break your promise.

00:01:23 Speaker_02
This people has sinned a great sin. And now, if you would, forgive their sin. And if not, please wipe me off of the scroll that you have written.

00:01:36 Speaker_04
Moses is a human who can ascend the cosmic mountain. And up there, he becomes the faithful intercessor, beseeching God to make atonement for his people, even if it costs him his life.

00:01:49 Speaker_04
And in response, God brings his presence and life down off the mountain.

00:01:54 Speaker_02
The last paragraph of Exodus is about how the cloud that covered the mountain moves down off the mountain and it covers the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord fills the tent.

00:02:05 Speaker_02
That's what this whole thing is for, is to partner with not just individuals, but with all humanity.

00:02:11 Speaker_04
That's today as we continue to explore the theme of the mountain. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hey John, hi. We're in the middle-ish part of a series.

00:02:27 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:02:27 Speaker_04
On the mountain.

00:02:29 Speaker_02
The mountain, the cosmic mountain. The cosmic mountain. Of the Bible. We have in our culture this phrase to have a mountaintop experience. Whether or not you've ever been to the top of the mountain, of a mountain, we have this sense

00:02:44 Speaker_02
that being at a mountaintop is this kind of transitional type of experience, or transformative type of experience, where it's not your normal realm. You go up there into this in-between realm. The tops of mountains are both kind of intense.

00:03:01 Speaker_02
You walk away changed, but also it gives you this vantage point out onto the landscape where you can see connections and see the lay of the land and how things work together in a way that's hard when you're down in a valley.

00:03:16 Speaker_02
And so these mountaintop moments that we can have are like unto these mountaintop transformational moments in the lives of biblical characters.

00:03:28 Speaker_02
And it begins, the Eden story is like the template for the relational union between God and humans on the cosmic Eden mount. Adam and Eve would have had to surrender their own desires

00:03:43 Speaker_02
to eat the fruit of the tree, trusting that God's word would bring them life instead of taking from the fruit.

00:03:49 Speaker_04
For their own intuition, this must be good. Yeah. Yeah. There's a surrendering. Yeah. And then we talked about how Adam and Eve's kids immediately start offering at the door of Eden.

00:04:04 Speaker_04
And so there's this idea of to get back into Eden, there must be some sort of sacrifice made.

00:04:09 Speaker_02
Yeah, this isn't about sacrifice in terms of appeasing a fickle, volatile God, like to put Him in a good mood.

00:04:17 Speaker_02
The offering up of something precious, or what's most precious, is about surrendering my vision of the good life and my limited wisdom, leaving that behind, and ascending to the holy hill where God will give me what I don't even know what to ask for right now.

00:04:37 Speaker_02
Like, what's the version of the good life that I can't even imagine because my vision is so clouded with my own distorted desires and so on.

00:04:46 Speaker_02
And so we traced that developing motif through the stories of Noah's sacrifice or his offering on Mount Ararat and then through the Abraham story.

00:04:59 Speaker_04
And with Noah's offering, God is like, I can work with this guy.

00:05:04 Speaker_02
Yeah. He surrenders these blameless animals, which are very precious when you're getting off the boat.

00:05:11 Speaker_04
And then we looked at Abraham and he was making decisions that was causing oppression towards others. And he wasn't discerning good from bad correctly. And he was doing it on his own terms and it was causing chaos. He and his wife. He and his wife.

00:05:29 Speaker_04
And he was called up a mountain. to sacrifice the one thing that was precious to him, this promise through a son to have a great family. God promised it and

00:05:47 Speaker_04
Abraham took it on his own terms, and now God's saying, like, you're gonna have to give it back.

00:05:52 Speaker_02
Yeah, whatever future there is for God and Abraham's family, it's gonna have to move forward from a posture of surrender and total trust, even when life and death is at stake.

00:06:05 Speaker_04
So it sounds like right now, with the way we've talked about Noah and Abraham, it sounds like this is the theme of sacrifice.

00:06:13 Speaker_02
Or even the test.

00:06:14 Speaker_04
Or the theme of the test. Yeah, yeah. But this is the theme of the Cosmic Mountain. Yes, yeah. So round that out for me. I mean, because I guess these tests or these sacrifices could be made anywhere.

00:06:27 Speaker_04
Why is it important that we're talking about mountains?

00:06:29 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's a great question. Many, many stories take place in the hills, on hills, on mountains. The whole of Israel's history in the land is up in the hill country.

00:06:40 Speaker_02
And there will be many cycles of this pattern of a character being tested, having their trustworthiness tested. that don't take place on tall hills and that are also patterned after the Garden of Eden story in different ways.

00:06:56 Speaker_02
So what is interesting is that there is a handful of moments where the volume is really turned up, where the action is happening on a mountain. where the volumes really turned up on this test of somebody's character.

00:07:10 Speaker_02
And so I had to make a judgment call in selecting what we're focusing on. What mountain of experiences? Yeah, totally. It was over the course of many weeks working through all these texts that you and I are talking to, I worked through.

00:07:23 Speaker_02
with our Bible Project Scholar team, reading and studying these texts together.

00:07:28 Speaker_02
And we were discerning that the thing that we would really want our audience, you all listening, to hear about the cosmic mountain isn't just that it's a cool overlap of heaven and earth, though that's true.

00:07:39 Speaker_04
Or the source of all life. Totally.

00:07:40 Speaker_02
For the world. That's right.

00:07:42 Speaker_04
Yes. Which is cool.

00:07:43 Speaker_02
Which is cool. But also that the biblical authors turned the volume and focus on these key stories where a character

00:07:52 Speaker_02
It has a mountaintop experience that forces them to like lay everything down and surrender everything only to find that God gives back to them the good life above and beyond what they could have asked for.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
And so I think that's the thing I want to focus on is that the mountains have this role of a transformational journey.

00:08:20 Speaker_02
And it's not just that they're overlaps of heaven and earth and sources of life, that that overlap of heaven and earth encountering the source of life forces us to make a decision about the meaning of our lives and embrace trust in God's wisdom rather than our own instincts.

00:08:38 Speaker_02
I just think that's a, it's just a compelling story.

00:08:40 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:08:41 Speaker_02
And that's what's going on with these mountains.

00:08:43 Speaker_04
For Noah and Abraham for sure. Mm-hmm. And for Adam and Eve. They, yeah, they had the test on the mountain, but it was also their home. There seemed something significant there. That's true.

00:08:53 Speaker_03
That's right. That's right.

00:08:55 Speaker_04
Abraham and Noah, Noah gets plopped on a mountain, Abraham ascends the mountain, and it's not their home. It's the place they go to do the cosmic task, which is the surrender. So if we focus just in on the surrender motif, did we miss out on the,

00:09:15 Speaker_02
Well, I mean, the Adam and Eve, it is their home, and that home, living in such proximity to God on top of the cosmic mountain, just the nature of the relationship forces them into a position of trust, and that creates the drama of the test.

00:09:33 Speaker_02
Everything after that is going to be about God inviting people or plopping people onto these mountains where they have these moments of trust or failure to trust.

00:09:46 Speaker_02
So, God wants to invite people back in to his Eden presence and release the blessings of Eden to the world.

00:09:54 Speaker_02
But after Adam and Eve pull their move, all their descendants are going to have to go through some kind of recreation of their heart and their mind and desires if they're going to ascend the mountain of the Lord and be in His presence there.

00:10:11 Speaker_02
Because it's what we're made for.

00:10:13 Speaker_04
I think that's the difference I want to understand. Is ascending the mountain in order to be in God's presence, or is ascending the mountain in order to be tested?

00:10:23 Speaker_02
Oh, both. Because when you encounter the source of all reality... It's a crisis. Yeah, it's a crisis. Because we have our own versions of reality down the mountain that we're making down here, and it's good in our own eyes.

00:10:37 Speaker_02
But then you get up onto the mountain, and you encounter a storm cloud, it makes you reevaluate your life decisions, that kind of thing.

00:10:44 Speaker_04
Okay. But that's what's interesting because you can get this story of this is our home, we're meant to be there, that's a send back to this place of belonging and joy and peace and home. But then you're saying actually to do that,

00:11:01 Speaker_04
What you're really doing is you're entering into a crisis.

00:11:06 Speaker_02
Yes, because what Eden represents is a setting where humans are in union with their Creator, trusting and living by the Word of God and the wisdom of God and His commands.

00:11:20 Speaker_02
But the reason anybody's outside the garden is because we embrace our own definitions of the good and of life and then create little pseudo gardens out here. And so these invitations up into real life

00:11:36 Speaker_02
force us to reckon with our own pseudo lives that we've made for ourselves and to surrender what we think is life. And that's the crisis that going to these mountains represents for these characters.

00:11:53 Speaker_04
Okay, so this is helpful. So to ascend the mountain, it's not just going home to where true life is, which- No, that's true. That's true.

00:12:01 Speaker_02
But it's as if we become so estranged from what real life is that when we see it and what it requires to embrace it, it freaks us out and it forces a crisis.

00:12:14 Speaker_04
Yeah. I remember talking with Tracy Caldwell Dyson. Oh, yeah. About like, if you're in space for so long, your body starts to acclimate in a different way.

00:12:23 Speaker_04
The way your blood flows and the different things in your body atrophies, you don't use your feet at all.

00:12:30 Speaker_02
You're recalling our conversation with a NASA astronaut.

00:12:32 Speaker_04
With an astronaut, yeah. Here on the podcast. Yeah, you're not using your feet in space. Yes. And then you come back home, and it is home. But you've been in space for so long that your body freaks out on you. That's a better example. It's a crisis.

00:12:48 Speaker_02
Even though you're coming back to your home. Even though you're coming back home. Yeah. That's the image.

00:12:51 Speaker_04
That's the image. OK.

00:12:52 Speaker_02
Yeah. So we're going to get from Moses as a baby to the cosmic mountain taking up residence in the middle of Israel's camp. That's our mission in this conversation. A lot of ground to cover. Okay.

00:13:05 Speaker_02
Should we start with a little baby getting put into the ark? Yeah. Deal. All right, Exodus scroll begins with the Israelites down in Egypt. They came down in the days of Joseph, in the famine at the end of Genesis. They fruitful multiply.

00:13:50 Speaker_02
Pharaoh is, I was about to say he was afraid, but it's not just that he's afraid, he sees these people as a threat. And so he enslaves them, starts killing them off while exploiting them for slave labor. And in the middle of that,

00:14:07 Speaker_02
age of oppression, the Israelites cry out to God, and their cry rises up to God, and we read this story. Exodus chapter 2, now there was a man from the house of Levi, And he went and took a daughter of Levi. So a Levite man marrying a Levite woman.

00:14:27 Speaker_02
She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and she saw him that he was good. That should sound familiar. Genesis 1, it was good. God saw the light. God saw the land. God saw the green growth from the ground.

00:14:42 Speaker_02
She saw him that he was good, and she hid him for three months.

00:14:47 Speaker_04
Because Pharaoh's killing the babies at this point.

00:14:49 Speaker_02
Pharaoh's given a decree that all baby boys should be- You don't usually hide things that are good. Killed by being thrown into the water. Yeah, that's right. But in this case, Pharaoh's after it. That's right, yeah.

00:15:02 Speaker_02
So when she was no longer able to hide him, she took for him an ark made of reeds. She tarred it with tar and pitch. and she placed the child in it, and she placed it in the reeds by the lip of the Nile River. So an ark? An ark, yes. With tar and pitch?

00:15:22 Speaker_02
With tar and pitch, yes. This is Noah's ark. Yeah. So this word ark appears in two stories in the Hebrew Bible. So the Hebrew word is teva. It's actually an Egyptian loan word. Hmm. In the Hebrew? In the Hebrew, which is fascinating.

00:15:38 Speaker_02
So it's also confusing because it's translated in English, ark. which makes us think that, oh, could this be the same word as the Ark of the Covenant? Oh, right. That's a different word. Different Hebrew word, yeah. So the Hebrew word's tevah.

00:15:52 Speaker_02
And this is very similar to what God tells Noah to make. He says, make for yourself an ark of gopher wood, and she makes an ark of gomeh, of reeds. God told Noah, you will cover it inside and out with pitch. and Moses' mom tars it with tar and pitch.

00:16:19 Speaker_02
And then this sets up a whole set of analogies, intentional hyperlinks, that the authors put there in the Moses story to link back to Noah, to portray Moses as a new Noah figure.

00:16:31 Speaker_02
So both are rescued through waters that bring death, but they are carried through them alive in these arcs. There's just a little hint right here, and it's very odd. She's like, why this word?

00:16:45 Speaker_02
And so he floats right into a bathing session of Pharaoh's daughter. She goes down to the river to bathe, and she hears, like sees the ark, hears the boy crying, and she takes him into her home. And so this, I mean, this is a famous story.

00:17:04 Speaker_02
But just right there is a little, what do you say, Easter egg? A little hint placed there that somehow Moses is going to replay in some way the vocation of Noah that's set out in the flood story.

00:17:20 Speaker_02
Okay, so Moses grows up in the house of Pharaoh, and all of a sudden, fast forward real quick, he's just like a young man, and interestingly, he somehow just knows that the Israelites are his kinsmen, his brothers. You can tell.

00:17:37 Speaker_02
And he goes out to see his brothers one day, the story says, and he sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and so he strikes and murders that Egyptian. And it's the same word used of Cain murdering his brother.

00:17:52 Speaker_02
What's interesting is, and this will be important for what comes later, the identity of Moses becomes really complicated because he's an Israelite. He's a Levite. But then he gets adopted into the household of Pharaoh.

00:18:06 Speaker_02
So then he's raised and part of the family of the Egyptian royal family. So who is he? Is he Israelite or is he Egyptian? He has an Egyptian name.

00:18:16 Speaker_04
Wait, so the name Moshe?

00:18:18 Speaker_02
The name Moshe is an Egyptian word. So he's got this ambiguous identity. He's both Israelite and Egyptian.

00:18:29 Speaker_04
So he's a Levite, in which case he knows how to make the right sacrifices. He's from that family. He's kind of like Abel in that way. And then he goes and murders his brother.

00:18:42 Speaker_02
He murders an Egyptian man, which is his brother on the surface. to defend his biological brothers, and his biological brothers reject him. They're like, who made you a ruler over us? What, you gonna kill me like you killed that guy?

00:18:58 Speaker_02
So the whole story raises this question of like, did he just kill his brother? Or did he defend his brother in a way he did both?

00:19:06 Speaker_04
His identity conflict with Moses. Yes.

00:19:08 Speaker_02
Yeah. And it's going to get even more complicated because he flees. He goes into exile by Cain from Egypt and he ends up going to the land of Midian and sits down by a well.

00:19:20 Speaker_02
And like Abraham's servant in Genesis 24, and like Jacob when he goes into exile from his brother who wants to kill him in Genesis, he's down by a well and he meets a wonderful lady.

00:19:34 Speaker_02
And she is a daughter of the chief priest of Midian, and he ends up marrying her. So now he's also a Midianite. So it's like the story is playing with you. Like, who is this guy?

00:19:46 Speaker_04
Yeah, who's this guy? What's his real identity? Where does he belong?

00:19:51 Speaker_02
Where does he belong? He kind of belongs nowhere. So he puts in a 40-year exile, shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law. That's 40 years? Oh. And this is where our story picks up in Exodus chapter 3.

00:20:06 Speaker_02
But all that's important context for, like, who is this? What's this guy about? We know he's marked out for some Noah-like vocation. He's like a remnant saved through the waters to be the birth of a new creation. But man, he's complicated. Hothead.

00:20:25 Speaker_02
Violent. Hothead. Exodus chapter 3. Moshe was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock behind the wilderness.

00:20:38 Speaker_02
Ah, west of the wilderness, because the Israelite compass, your face is east and then... We talked about that a couple episodes ago, yeah. And he came to the mountain of Elohim, that is, to Horeb. Horeb is not the mountain, but it's the region?

00:20:57 Speaker_02
Ah, Horeb is the name of the mountain. Oh. Yeah, so this mountain is going to be known by three titles. The Mountain of God, Horev, which means a dry place, and then Sinai, which is going to draw its name from this bush, which is called the Sinai bush.

00:21:16 Speaker_02
But right here it's called the Mountain of God. And just that right there, like, oh, a God mountain. Like everything should be firing. Cosmic mountain should be leaping off the page at us. And the messenger or the angel of Yahweh became seeable to him.

00:21:34 Speaker_02
You're like, oh yeah, that happened to Abraham. Yeah. Yeah. At a tree. At a tree and at a mountain when he went into the land. So the messenger of Yahweh became seeable to him in the flame of fire from the middle of the Sneh bush.

00:21:55 Speaker_02
so that I've transliterated the species name of the bush, but it is conspicuously spelled with the same letters as how you spell Sinai, which incidentally are the same letters of the Hebrew word test. Really?

00:22:10 Speaker_04
Yes. The testing bush. Yeah. What's the word?

00:22:15 Speaker_02
Nasa. Nasa. And this is Sene. It's the same letters, just with the S and the N swapped. So this would be Mount Tset, T-S-E-T, right? You take the word test and you scramble it. Does that work? Mount Tset. Tset, yeah.

00:22:32 Speaker_02
It doesn't work very well orally, but if you spelled it, you would see it's word test backwards. But it's a tree bush named test set. Yeah, yeah. It's just called the testing bush. Yeah. On top of a mountain. And it's on fire with an angel in it.

00:22:55 Speaker_04
with an angel in it. Oh yeah, the message of Yahweh became seeable.

00:22:58 Speaker_02
Yeah, so this is, we got angels, that is cherubim, and fire. Anytime you get an angel and fire mixed together, you're thinking of the cherubim with the flaming sword.

00:23:09 Speaker_04
Angels and cherubim are separate creatures, aren't they?

00:23:12 Speaker_02
Yes, angels are usually sent from heaven to earth with a message, whereas the cherubim are like boundary guardians. They're certainly more alike than they are different. They're in the class of divine beings. Heavenly creatures. Yeah.

00:23:27 Speaker_02
So here it's an angel and fire, as we're going to see, that marks this boundary that, you know, it's dangerous. So we should be thinking Eden, cosmic mountain. Okay. Also notice the phrase from the middle. In Eden, the tree of life was in the middle.

00:23:45 Speaker_02
Oh yeah, okay. And here the angel is in the middle of the fire, in the middle of the bush of testing. So it would raise a question for the reader, like, well, what's the test? What's going to be this guy's test?

00:23:59 Speaker_04
Okay. When you read this in Hebrew as meditation literature, you immediately are like, we're in a moment of testing. Mountain, tree, that's called scrambled word test. Yeah.

00:24:14 Speaker_02
Okay. Yep. So he saw and looked. The sneh bush was consumed with fire, but the sneh bush was not eaten. This is another wordplay on the tree that is not eaten. So in Eden, you weren't supposed to eat from the tree.

00:24:33 Speaker_02
Here the tree is on fire and the fire is not eating. Come on, that's clever. Don't eat from the tree, and here the tree is not eaten. So Moshe said, I will turn aside so I can see this great sight. That word sight is used to describe the trees of Eden.

00:24:53 Speaker_02
They were good for seeing, good of sight. Why is the snebush not consumed? I mean, he sees the angel. Well, what he says is he's a great sight. Okay. Yeah.

00:25:07 Speaker_02
It also, that word sight looks like the tree of seeing the oak of Moriah that Abraham went to in Genesis 12 and the mountain of Moriah of seeing that Abraham went to. It's all colliding. Yeah. Somebody wants us to be thinking about Noah.

00:25:26 Speaker_02
and Adam and Eve and Abraham. And you're like, oh, I get it. Because those were all their mountain moments. So yeah, it doesn't say what he sees. Well, I guess he sees a snab bush that's not, it's burning.

00:25:39 Speaker_04
I guess I just, I figured he saw what the narrator told us was happening. A messenger of Yahweh became seeable to him. Which means, oh, he can see the messenger of Yahweh. Yeah, maybe, maybe. But then he's like, I want to see what this is all about.

00:25:53 Speaker_04
He doesn't go like, whoa, an angel.

00:25:55 Speaker_02
Yeah, maybe just sees fire. And it's weird because if you saw a bush, like, you know, at a campfire, maybe your kids throw stuff into the fire and it's just, there's a flash of burning, but it ends once it's eaten up.

00:26:08 Speaker_02
So this thing is just perpetual intensity and it's not eaten up. Our God is a consuming fire. And Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see And Elohim called to him from the middle of the snabush and said, Moshe, Moshe. And he said, look, it's me.

00:26:30 Speaker_02
That probably reminds you of something.

00:26:32 Speaker_04
Here I am. It's different, though? Not, look, it's me?

00:26:34 Speaker_02
Here I am? It's the same phrase. Oh, it's the same phrase. Yeah, yeah. So when God told Abraham to stop, both to go to Mount Moriah and then to stop his hand from killing his son, that's what he said. Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am.

00:26:51 Speaker_02
There's so many cross-references to things. It's just packed. And God said, stop! Don't take another step. Take off your sandals from your feet, because the place where you're standing on it, it is holy ground. It's a cosmic mountain.

00:27:07 Speaker_02
He just crossed into heaven, as it were. Heaven on earth. It's dangerous. What's the test? I think we're going to find out. But notice that God's words are, this is dangerous, but I invite you in.

00:27:23 Speaker_02
I think every time I've ever come to your house, I've taken off my shoes. I just know now. But taking off your shoes is a big deal in coming to your house.

00:27:31 Speaker_04
Yeah. Well, my wife is Japanese.

00:27:33 Speaker_02
Yes. American. Yeah. So it's a big deal to her. Therefore, it's a big deal to you.

00:27:38 Speaker_04
Yeah. Only because it's a big deal to her. I didn't grow up taking my shoes off.

00:27:43 Speaker_02
Yeah, me neither. But I like it. It's a feel of like I'm transitioning from the outer world into like this, it's like crossing a boundary. And there's something similar happening here. That or his sandals just smell bad.

00:27:56 Speaker_02
I mean, he was with a lot of sheep. Okay, so what's going to be his test? God said, I am the Elohim of your father. Okay, pause right there. Who's this guy's father?

00:28:08 Speaker_04
A Levi, we don't get his name.

00:28:10 Speaker_02
A Levi, but he became a son to Pharaoh's daughter. Oh, okay. And now he's the son of the priest of Midian. He's got three dads. Okay. I'm the Elohim of your father. Clarify? Oh, okay. The Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, the Elohim of Jacob.

00:28:28 Speaker_02
Those fathers. That father. And Moshe hid his face because he was afraid to gaze upon Elohim. And Yahweh said, I have seen, seen the affliction of my people in Egypt and their outcry because of their oppressors. I have heard it and I know their pain.

00:28:48 Speaker_02
I've come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and make them go up from this land to a good land, good and wide, flowing with milk and honey, where the Canaanites and Hittites and Amorites and Perizzites and Hivites and Jebusites are.

00:29:03 Speaker_02
Look, the outcry of the sons of Israel has come up to me. I've seen the oppression with which Egypt oppresses them. Now you go. I will send you to Pharaoh and you will bring my people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt. I think we just found his test.

00:29:24 Speaker_04
Well, it sounds like a calling, you know, it's the beginning of Mission Impossible. It's like, here's your mission if you choose to accept it. It's the beginning of the hero's journey out of their ordinary world.

00:29:34 Speaker_02
Yeah, yeah. That's right. Well, it's an opportunity for him to obey the word of God and to do what God said, even if it's very counterintuitive and he doesn't want to do it.

00:29:46 Speaker_04
I guess those moments are the initiating test.

00:29:49 Speaker_02
Yeah. At least, yeah, there's going to be many, a whole journey of testing and transformation. But the, what do you say, the offer, the invitation, right? I mean, in this case, it's just kind of a command.

00:30:00 Speaker_02
Notice also, God said, I have come down to deliver them. So now you go. Implicitly, you are going to be my hand. You're going to be the way that I deliver them.

00:30:13 Speaker_04
Imagine he might just be over Egypt at this point. I mean, he's been living out in the wilderness for 40 years.

00:30:18 Speaker_02
That's my form of life. Yeah, he's going to go on and object five times. Five objections to God's plan. Moses likes five. Moses said to Elohim, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?

00:30:39 Speaker_02
Surely there's like more loaded into this question. It's a wonderful question. Who am I? Now, God just said, you're the son of, implicitly, Levi, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham.

00:30:53 Speaker_04
So is all the Israelites.

00:30:55 Speaker_02
Yeah, totally. Why me? Who am I? But he's also the son of Pharaoh, and he's also the son of Jethro, the Midianite, and who am I? And God just ignores his question, and he just says, because I will be with you.

00:31:15 Speaker_02
And this will be the sign that I've sent you when you bring the people out of Egypt and serve God on this mountain. So we could keep on going. I actually want to push pause and we'll take our leave of the story right here.

00:31:30 Speaker_02
But Moses is going to have a crisis of identity all throughout his life, all throughout his story. And it all flows out of this first question, who am I? Who am I?

00:31:43 Speaker_02
And it's as if God's invitation and command to Moses links him to his original identity, who he is, but it's a family of such a distant past that it's hard to know, is that what defines who he is?

00:31:58 Speaker_02
But in God's economy, who Moses is, is connected to these promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to make them a blessing to the nations.

00:32:10 Speaker_02
And so isn't it just the height of irony that God chooses this guy who has three dads to become this surprising Noah-like, Abraham-like, Adam-like vehicle But his test on the mountain, it's not resolved.

00:32:27 Speaker_02
Like he goes down finally, he says yes and he does it after saying no five times. But his test isn't over. There's still more of it yet to come. But the seeds of his long-term testing cosmic mountain test are begun right here.

00:32:43 Speaker_04
What's interesting about this test is it is around identity, and it feels like if you've left your home and you spent 40 years now in another culture, married into that culture, he has no plans of doing anything else. Like that's life for him now.

00:33:02 Speaker_04
And for God to come and be like, I've got a plan for you. You're going back to Egypt. You're going to rescue the people that I'm sure he still identifies with in some way, but like he's not living as.

00:33:14 Speaker_02
Yeah. Not invested.

00:33:16 Speaker_04
Yeah. Yeah. Anymore.

00:33:17 Speaker_02
It'd be very jarring. Yeah, just think of that. You put in even just a couple decades. Yeah, 40 years. And that's 40 years-ish distant from your upbringing. And that's in Egypt.

00:33:31 Speaker_02
And then that's distant from just your birth family that you actually don't even know.

00:33:34 Speaker_04
You never even met. Yeah.

00:33:37 Speaker_02
And you're being asked to be reconnected to that.

00:33:40 Speaker_04
So the crisis is, who are you gonna be? Like, are you gonna embrace this identity or not?

00:33:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah.

00:33:47 Speaker_04
On top of, will you listen to my word? It's gonna require you to pick up an identity that is not activated right now. Yeah, that's right.

00:34:00 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's as if from this moment forward, he's gonna be asked to trust that who I am is a part of this family that I was born into but have no relational connection to anymore.

00:34:11 Speaker_02
And I'm just supposed to go back and dive in as if I'm this people's leader. Which echoes what the guy said to him when he murdered the Egyptian. The guy said, who are you? Yeah, you want to be our leader? Who made you like a ruler over us?

00:34:27 Speaker_02
And how ironic, now it's like, well, he's going to show up decades later and be like, I remember that question you asked? Well, it's me. God's the one who made me. So that's the complex character drama that begins here.

00:34:42 Speaker_02
And what's interesting is Moses' personal mountain top test gets split into two parts. So this first part is like a personal beginning of the test.

00:34:55 Speaker_04
In the beginning of the test, the crisis is a confrontation with his true identity and the task to be a leader. And that happens on a cosmic mountain.

00:35:03 Speaker_02
It begins on a cosmic mountain. Exodus chapters 1 through 4 come to a close, which is the first literary unit. Then what happens in Exodus chapters 5 onward is the people now go through what Moses as an individual has just been through.

00:35:52 Speaker_02
So he comes back to them in their slavery. Their slavery gets even more intense. And God hears the outcry and you have the confrontation now of the ten plagues.

00:36:05 Speaker_02
And then that results in the death of the firstborn and Passover, which matches the death of the sons. that Pharaoh was bringing about. So Pharaoh began this genocide of Israelite sons.

00:36:17 Speaker_04
Which is why Moses was hidden in the ark.

00:36:19 Speaker_02
In the ark, exactly. And then God's confrontation with Pharaoh culminates in the death of Egyptian sons. And after Pharaoh's order to kill the sons, you had Moses being put into the waters. After Passover, where the sons of Egypt die,

00:36:38 Speaker_02
The whole people goes through the waters and are rescued out to the other side.

00:36:41 Speaker_04
They don't get an ark.

00:36:43 Speaker_02
No, they get dry land.

00:36:44 Speaker_04
They get dry land. Dry land is the ark.

00:36:50 Speaker_02
After Moses was rescued through the waters, he found his way through the wilderness to Mount Sinai.

00:36:58 Speaker_02
or Mount Horeb, and then the Israelites, after they go through the waters, they go through the wilderness on a journey, and in the third month arrive at the same mountain again, just like God said.

00:37:10 Speaker_02
So, it's as if Moses goes through individually as an anticipation. The prophet Himself goes through what he will lead the people through later and their stories are matched in parallel that way. Isn't that interesting?

00:37:23 Speaker_05
Mm-hmm.

00:37:24 Speaker_02
Yeah, you know something important there about the leader living themselves What they lead the people through anyway, it's like somehow it's like qualifies him as to lead them through. So this is real big picture that we're flying right now.

00:37:42 Speaker_04
Yeah, we really flew through it. Oh yeah, we're flying super high. So he's rescued Israel, they've gone through the waters, they're now in the wilderness, they've traveled through the wilderness, and now they get to a mountain, Mount Sinai.

00:37:54 Speaker_04
That's right, yep.

00:37:56 Speaker_02
And there, God invites them into a covenant relationship, the whole people.

00:38:01 Speaker_04
And this is the same mountain? It's the same mountain. Mount Sinai. Yep.

00:38:06 Speaker_02
Now it's called Mount Sinai, and then sometimes called Mount Horeb. Oh, okay. So either the Mount of Set, testing, or the dry place. Okay. But that's it.

00:38:16 Speaker_02
And so what God invites them to become is a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, God's special possession among the nations, if they listen to the voice. This is Exodus 19 verse 5.

00:38:29 Speaker_02
Now then, if you will listen to my voice, that y'all, he's talking to all the people, and if you keep my covenant, then you will be to me a special possession among the peoples. You'll be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

00:38:42 Speaker_02
So this is holy ground, the cosmic mountains, the holy mountain, and you all have a chance to access once again the life-transforming encounter with God on the mountain and also recover the lost vocation of Adam and Eve as the royal priestly images of God.

00:39:02 Speaker_02
So all the people are now invited into a moment of decision. But what feels unique is the covenant.

00:39:10 Speaker_04
A covenant is more of a ceremony than a test in a way, right? Or is a covenant a test?

00:39:17 Speaker_02
Well, covenant refers just to the formalized partnership. Yeah. Implicitly, when God told Adam and Eve, he gave them a command saying, eat from all these trees, but not from this tree or else it'll kill you. That was just a relationship.

00:39:34 Speaker_02
But then once the relationship's broken, And when God wants to re-enter a partnership with humans, every partnership after the Garden of Eden gets a more formal terms brought to it, namely the covenant.

00:39:47 Speaker_02
And that begins with Noah and then with Abraham and so on. So, this is akin to God appointing Adam and Eve in the garden as his royal images, though. But we're formalizing it. But here's the thing, you gotta do what I say. You gotta listen to my voice.

00:40:05 Speaker_02
So, there's a couple things we could do here. I'm going to reference back to the previous series that we did on the book of Exodus, a couple years ago, on the Exodus scroll and the themes.

00:40:17 Speaker_02
Because one big part of the story is God testing the Israelites to invite them to ascend up to the mountain. Moses calls it a test. He says, God's testing you to see if you will fear him.

00:40:30 Speaker_02
And the people refuse to go up the mountain and they send Moses up instead. And God says, all right, then Moses, be sure to tell the people my commands. And here's the first two, have no other gods and don't make any idols. Just don't do that.

00:40:49 Speaker_02
And so God's telling Moses that while he's up on the mountain, for 40 days. And it's during those 40 days that Israel makes the golden calf. And an idol. An idol. Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:03 Speaker_04
Which is a God.

00:41:04 Speaker_02
Which is, yeah, as a representation of these are the gods that brought you up out of the Egypt. So we could do a whole focus on Israel's failure of the test. But I think for the video, I want to keep it focused in on these individual characters.

00:41:20 Speaker_02
So what I want to come back to is Moses up there on the mountain. So here's the scene. The people have just broken the covenant down there on the mountain. Moses is up on the mountain and God knows that they just made the golden calf and Moses doesn't.

00:41:38 Speaker_02
And so what's Moses going to do? That's the scene.

00:41:42 Speaker_04
What's Moses going to do or what's God going to do?

00:41:45 Speaker_02
I guess, yeah, both. So this is Exodus 32 verse 7. Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, go down because your people are causing ruin, the ones that you brought up from the land of Egypt. They've quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them.

00:42:06 Speaker_02
They have made for themselves a molten bull calf. They have bowed to it, they have sacrificed to it, saying, these are Elohim, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.

00:42:18 Speaker_04
Okay. So he's filling Moses in. This is happening. Go fix it.

00:42:24 Speaker_02
Yeah. Or just like, you should know what your people are doing down there.

00:42:28 Speaker_04
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:30 Speaker_02
Yahweh said to Moses, I have seen this people and look, they are a people hard of neck, like stiff. You ever had a stiff neck and you can't turn it? It's like that. Like you won't turn around.

00:42:44 Speaker_02
You just, all you know how to do is look one direction and you refuse to look any other. And this is the key line. Now give me rest. Give me rest. which is Noah's name as a verb. It's often translated leave me alone in our English translations.

00:43:03 Speaker_02
Literally give me rest, which could mean let me alone and let me be, let me rest. Or it could also mean to give me a reason to chill out. Like.

00:43:14 Speaker_04
Yeah, fix it.

00:43:16 Speaker_02
Yeah, do something, give me rest. So give me rest and my hot anger will burn against them. and let me bring an end to them. And I'll make you into the great nation." Moses. It's a pretty sweet opportunity.

00:43:34 Speaker_04
Give me rest. Yeah, I could shed this whole crew that's been complaining a lot.

00:43:40 Speaker_02
Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:43:42 Speaker_04
And me and the creator of the universe could start a new thing. Yeah.

00:43:46 Speaker_02
Wow. That is not a bad deal. And notice God just kept saying, your people, your people, your people. And that's true. Yeah. It's birth people. But he's also had a bond with Egypt and a strong bond still with the Midianites. And this is God's people.

00:44:04 Speaker_02
And the people, that's right, that's right. Oh, which is exactly what it goes on to say.

00:44:10 Speaker_02
So Moses sought favor from the face of Yahweh, his Elohim, and said, why, Yahweh, should your hot anger burn against your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt with great power and a great hand? Why should the Egyptians say,

00:44:29 Speaker_02
And he quotes what he thinks the Egyptians would say. Ah, it was with a bad purpose that Yahweh brought them out to slay them in the mountains and to bring an end to them from upon the face of the land.

00:44:44 Speaker_02
Do you want the Egyptians saying that about you? Like that you're a cruel deity?

00:44:49 Speaker_04
Yeah, that's the story that's gonna get back is you don't actually care about these people. You just let them out to destroy them.

00:44:55 Speaker_02
Cruel, bring them out, think that they're liberated and then slay them in the wilderness. Like you can't let other nations think that that's who you are.

00:45:06 Speaker_02
Turn from your hot anger and, it's the Hebrew word nacham, which links all the way back to the Noah story. It's also spelled with the letters of Noah's name. Comfort yourself.

00:45:17 Speaker_02
Give yourself comfort concerning the bad thing that you say you're going to do to the people. It's sometimes translated relent, or change your mind. But like, bring comfort to yourself. You're angry, give yourself rest. Yeah.

00:45:35 Speaker_02
This has come up a number of times. Yeah. This came up when Noah offered his sacrifice.

00:45:40 Speaker_04
That's right, he was settled.

00:45:41 Speaker_02
On Mount Ararat. He was comforted, yeah.

00:45:43 Speaker_04
Yeah. The smell of it.

00:45:45 Speaker_02
The smell of it brought God the surrender. When Noah surrendered the precious animals, God comforted himself.

00:45:54 Speaker_04
Oh, and here's what's coming. A moment of surrender is coming.

00:45:59 Speaker_02
So he just says, comfort yourself. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants. Remember that's how God identified himself to Moses back on round one here on the mountain.

00:46:13 Speaker_02
So remember Isaac, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, your servants, to whom you swore an oath by yourself. Oh, when did God swear an oath? to Abraham on Mount Moriah, on that cosmic mountain moment. So he's referring back to that story.

00:46:32 Speaker_02
And you spoke to them, I will multiply your seed like the stars of the skies. That's what God said to Abraham in Genesis 22. And all this land I spoke of, I will give it to your seed and they will inherit it perpetually.

00:46:44 Speaker_02
And Yahweh relented concerning the bad thing. That's the word, he comforted himself. He comforted himself, yeah. He is doing a Noah-like move here. He's bringing Noah.

00:46:55 Speaker_04
Yeah, but how? I mean, he's just kind of using an argument.

00:46:59 Speaker_02
Yeah. Essentially, he's telling God to change his plan in this moment. by sticking to his plan from what he said in the past.

00:47:11 Speaker_02
In other words, Moses brings to God's attention that this course of action that you just said in your anger would actually contradict the course of action you've said in the past. It's a wild story. It totally is.

00:47:26 Speaker_02
And what's interesting is Yahweh doesn't protest, He just does it. Yahweh wanted this interaction, it seems like. It seems like when God said, give me rest, did He mean leave me alone? Or is He bringing Moses into the conflict?

00:47:41 Speaker_02
God wants to work with these humans, but these humans are just really... Come and see this the way I see this. In other words, was this intercession for God? for a transformation in Moses or is it for both? I mean, there's a mystery here.

00:47:54 Speaker_04
God invites Moses in to the crisis to see the conflict that Yahweh's experiencing. I have made a promise to these people and I also can't work with them.

00:48:06 Speaker_02
Yeah, they're impossible to work with, but I made a promise. Yeah. Yeah. And notice he gives Moses this option. of being like, you know what? You and I could ditch these people. I'm going to bring an end to them, and I'll just work with you. You're my guy.

00:48:22 Speaker_02
I mean, rocky start. Was that a genuine offer? Or was that a test? Well, that's a wonderful question. It's a lot like God's words to Abraham, go and offer up your son as an offering. But narratively, Moses is already tired of these people.

00:48:42 Speaker_02
That's already happened in the book. God's tired of them now. And here's this moment, you and me, Moses.

00:48:48 Speaker_02
I've thought about this as I taught through this with a group of students recently in a conversation that we had, brought this to my attention that from what God says to Moses, this surely puts in his mind like, oh man, here's the thing, I didn't grow up with these people.

00:49:03 Speaker_02
I'm really not very attached to them.

00:49:05 Speaker_04
You know what I mean? You got me into this in the first place. Like if you're giving me an out, I'll take the out.

00:49:11 Speaker_02
I'll take the out. And what Moses does is he identifies himself with the people. He says, listen, you can't ditch these people. You made a promise to my ancestors. And you're the one who told me that these are my ancestors.

00:49:27 Speaker_02
And you can't break your promise. And then Yahweh's like, yep, that's right.

00:49:31 Speaker_04
This is getting into the theme of the intercessor. And Moses, almost unlike any other character, really becomes connected to God as this intercessor that God's bringing in. Yeah, to his counsel. Yeah, to his counsel. On a mountain.

00:49:43 Speaker_03
On a mountain. He's bringing an exalted human.

00:49:47 Speaker_04
Moses is contributing to the divine counsel on the mountain right now.

00:49:50 Speaker_02
Yes, he is. Yeah, he's up in the heavens. He's in the clouds doing this stuff.

00:49:57 Speaker_04
Okay, you're here. I trust you. Get in it with me. I'm going to bring you in. Fully in. Here's the crisis that I'm experiencing.

00:50:07 Speaker_02
And Moses has proven himself through great suffering and trust and trials in Egypt to be God's pretty faithful partner. Sometimes whiny, but a faithful partner nonetheless. And this is a moment to disassociate himself from these people.

00:50:28 Speaker_02
And what he does is he leans in and says, no, I am one of these people. I am human.

00:50:34 Speaker_04
You've invited me in like I'm part of the divine council. Yeah. I remember who I am. Yeah. I'm not going to like abandon who I am. Okay.

00:50:42 Speaker_02
So good. Okay. So this is just part one. Oh my gosh. Isn't this powerful? It's a lot underneath this first intercession. Okay. So we're almost to the, I mean this, we're on the mountaintop, but the next scene is the mountaintop.

00:50:58 Speaker_02
The mountaintop of mountaintops? So Moses goes down the mountain. He sees the people. He loses his temper, just like God. And he does the thing that God didn't do, which is unleash violence on the people. And a bunch of people die.

00:51:15 Speaker_02
That's a complicated story. But after that, he says, ooh, verse 30 of chapter 32 begins, and the next day, and if you've been counting the days, it's the third day. Oh, okay. Since the making of the golden calf.

00:51:29 Speaker_02
On the third day, Moses said to the people, man, you guys have sinned a great sin. And I'm going to go up to Yahweh. Maybe I can make atonement for your sin. So atonement is a dual layers of meaning. One is to offer a recompense payment.

00:51:49 Speaker_02
It's used of like paying damages. If you've done something that puts someone at a loss, you need to repay them. That's called a kofir. And then also, the word can mean to purify some sacred space that's been defiled or vandalized by somebody's actions.

00:52:10 Speaker_02
So, in one way or another, he's going up to purify what was made impure and to cover for damages on behalf of what they've done. So Moshe returned to Yahweh. This is the next conversation from the one that we just read.

00:52:26 Speaker_02
And he said, please, this people has sinned a great sin. They've made for themselves Elohim of gold. And now, if you would, forgive their sin. And if not, Please wipe me off of the scroll that you have written.

00:52:48 Speaker_04
Wipe me off the scroll you have written. What is this, a metaphor for something?

00:52:55 Speaker_02
Yeah. Themes, it's like a census scroll. They're going to be taking names in a little bit here, like records. It's a roster. It's a roster.

00:53:07 Speaker_04
This is a theme in the Bible that gets developed. Yep. The Book of Life.

00:53:11 Speaker_02
Yep. The scroll. Names written on the scroll. Okay. So it's of Yahweh's crew. I've got a crew. I've got my crew. Okay. All right. So you wrote me down as part of your crew. You want me?

00:53:22 Speaker_04
Yeah. You get them.

00:53:24 Speaker_02
Yep. Yeah. So once again, he leans in even more and says, so you've said I'm your guy. Yeah. So here's the thing. These are my people. These are your people. So you gotta take them if you're going to take me. And Yahweh said to Moses, you know what?

00:53:44 Speaker_02
Whoever has sinned against me, I will wipe that one off from my scroll. But now, you go, lead the people to where I told you, and look, here's the thing.

00:53:58 Speaker_02
I'll send my messenger to go before your face, and one day, on the day when I do punish them, I will punish them for their sin.

00:54:10 Speaker_04
Well, that's not very, like, relieving.

00:54:14 Speaker_02
Yeah, well, yeah, how do you mean?

00:54:17 Speaker_04
All right. Moses asks God to forgive them.

00:54:21 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:54:22 Speaker_04
And if not, you can take me instead. And then he goes, you know what? I'm just going to deal with people the way they deserve.

00:54:29 Speaker_02
Yeah. And I'll do it eventually. And I will do it one day. One day. Yeah. It's coming. It's coming. Now this is just intercession two. Okay. Then Moses goes up a third time and says, man, you've really, really shown me favor. And you said that I'm your guy.

00:54:46 Speaker_02
But you keep saying you're not going to come with us. We can't really leave if you don't go with us. So will you come with us? And what God says is, I'll come with you. Oh, this is great. So good, John. These stories are so powerful.

00:55:00 Speaker_02
This is intercession number three. This is in chapter 33. And after Moses intercedes that time, God says in 33 14, he says, well, okay, my face will go and I will give you singular rest. Noah's name is a verb again. I'll give you rest.

00:55:18 Speaker_02
So I'll go with all the people. But I'll just give you a really nice piece of real estate and they can live in the desert, something like that. I'm just imagining.

00:55:26 Speaker_04
You're going to enjoy the trip. It's going to be miserable for them.

00:55:29 Speaker_02
Totally. Yeah. And then Moses says, listen, if your face is not going, don't bring us up from here. And how can it be known, if I've found grace in your eyes, I and your people, isn't it by you coming with all of us? So he keeps leaning in.

00:55:48 Speaker_02
Like, you can't single me out. If you have to treat them the way you're treating me, or else this is not gonna go. And so eventually, then Yahweh says, all right, I've done this thing that you've spoken.

00:56:01 Speaker_02
So there's more elements to the story, but I think I just want to focus in on this transformation of Moses' character as a person. That his first question is, back at chapter three, is who am I to do this thing? Like, I've got three dads.

00:56:19 Speaker_02
And then now, at this moment, he's willing to give up his life. He's willing to take great risks.

00:56:28 Speaker_04
Yeah. He's not taking the easy way out. Yeah. He's identifying himself so much with the people that he's going to lay down his life for them, and he's not going to go with God without them.

00:56:41 Speaker_02
That's right.

00:56:41 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:56:43 Speaker_02
So this is a whole twist. We've done another twist on the twists of the cosmic mountain.

00:56:49 Speaker_04
And Moses is invited deeper into this mystery of being the image of God, like he's brought into the divine council.

00:56:57 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's right. And that's the one guy who's willing to surrender everything. He's willing to surrender his life. There's something that makes Moses the unique one who can ascend the hill of the Lord. And then once he's up there,

00:57:14 Speaker_02
He's still being true to his character, but he's being changed even more up there, as he's invited into the mystery of God's partnership. But also, Moses is also going to fail after this pretty grand success. And then it's going to be like, well, man,

00:57:31 Speaker_02
If that's what it takes to rescue this partnership, then I guess we're going to need another one of those.

00:57:36 Speaker_04
A greater one.

00:57:36 Speaker_02
A greater one. And this is what the prophets really focused in on. Painting a portrait of that one. In what's in Isaiah, it's called the servant who, well anyway, we'll get there.

00:57:49 Speaker_04
So this is all part of this theme.

00:57:51 Speaker_02
Yeah, that's where I'm trying to take us. But what's with Moses is he's not satisfied with just being up on the mountain alone and having it be just for him.

00:58:01 Speaker_02
He's like, there's all those people down there that don't deserve it, but you've got to treat them the way you treat me or else this is not going to work. He wants God to bring the stuff from the mountain down to the people.

00:58:16 Speaker_02
And five times, matching his five objections, the first time on the mountain, he five times intercedes on behalf of the people.

00:58:25 Speaker_02
And then the last paragraph of Exodus is about how the cloud that covered the mountain moves down off the mountain and it covers the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord fills the tent.

00:58:38 Speaker_04
So the reason why the Kozak Mountain comes down is because a human who is able to ascend and intercede.

00:58:46 Speaker_02
This thing that is available to the very few up on top of the Mount Danoa, the Abraham, me, Moses, You've got to bring it down to the people, because that's what this whole thing is for, is to partner with not just individuals, but with all humanity.

00:59:04 Speaker_02
So in this remarkable act of intercession, Moses invites God to come down. And now all of a sudden this crisis that everybody who ever ascended the mountain faces, the crisis has come to us.

00:59:22 Speaker_04
It's now in our neighborhood.

00:59:23 Speaker_02
It's now in our neighborhood and that sets up the drama. It's good news and it's a crisis. That's right. So the tabernacle is a symbolic cosmic mountain coming to dwell in the middle of Israel's camp.

00:59:38 Speaker_04
Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we'll continue discussing the theme of mountains in the Bible. We'll get to the story of King David, who establishes ancient Israel's capital on Mount Zion.

00:59:52 Speaker_02
David finds this Canaanite city. He goes and he takes it, and then he brings the Ark of the Covenant to that mountain. It's a move to connect a new, central, cosmic mountain Eden at the center of all the tribes.

01:00:07 Speaker_02
For a few chapters, David does awesome, but then it doesn't go well.

01:00:13 Speaker_04
Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit, and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you.

01:00:25 Speaker_04
Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.

01:00:27 Speaker_00
Hi, I'm Lina, and I'm from Quito, Ecuador.

01:00:30 Speaker_06
Hi, this is Craig Hawkins, and I'm from Heyhira, Georgia. I first heard about Bible Project when I stumbled across the Heaven and Earth video on YouTube.

01:00:38 Speaker_00
My favorite thing about Bible Project is how they make the Bible accessible to everyone and how they focus on the literary structure and design of each book.

01:00:47 Speaker_06
My favorite thing about Bible Project is listening to the rich conversations and depth of information shared on the podcast while I paint in my studio. As an artist, the visual storytelling in the videos is also really inspiring.

01:00:58 Speaker_00
We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.

01:01:01 Speaker_06
We are a crowdfunded project by people like me.

01:01:04 Speaker_00
Find free videos, articles, podcasts, classes, and more on the Bible Project app and at BibleProject.com.

01:01:12 Speaker_01
Hey everyone, this is Tyler, and I'm the supervising audio engineer for the podcast. I've been working at Bible Project for two and a half years, and I get to oversee the recording, editing, and sound design of this podcast.

01:01:23 Speaker_01
My favorite part about work is stewarding the sound of this show to be as clear and compelling as possible. As an added bonus, I get to learn along with you as I work.

01:01:32 Speaker_01
I look forward to learning more about the significance of high places in the Bible as both a metaphor and mechanism in the biblical story. there is a whole team of us that bring the podcast to life.

01:01:41 Speaker_01
For a full list of everyone involved, check out the show credits in the episode description wherever you stream the podcast and on our website.