Exodus 34:1-18
Judeo people and Christian people are not like other religions, but have a way of life lived in a relationship with a living God. All other religions worship someone that has died or some object that has no life in it. In our relationship with the living God, He remains active in His relationship with us. In other religions, the activity is on our part, but we will not receive anything back from the so-called god being worshipped.
The relationship with a living God began when Abram connected with this living God at a time that God called him to a new kind of life. A true relationship with this one true and living God brings a new reformation to a person, nation, or church. In Abram’s call, this living God said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives and your father’s family and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make you famous and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
Abram believed the word of this living God and God brought a reformation — a changed life — because of Abram’s faith. “Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘I will give this land to your descendants.’ Then Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord who had appeared to him.”
As we read and study the scripture, God continued in reformation work in the life of Abram to the point that He gave Abram a new name – ‘Abraham.’ “Then God said to Abraham, ‘Your responsibility is to obey the terms of the covenant. You and all your descendants have this continual responsibility.” This living God kept working with Abraham’s family: Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, for they were not perfect people, but in their relationship, God brought a new reformation into each of their broken lives.
In time Abraham’s people forgot God’s covenant and promises. We have the same problem today with our memory bank. They became slaves in Egypt. Life became very harsh for Abraham’s people. God brought a new reformation for them out of the relationship He had with a man named Moses. This new reformation began in the life of Moses with an encounter with this living God in the burning bush. “When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!’ ‘Here I am!’, Moses replied. ‘Do not come any closer,’ The Lord warned, ‘Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your father – the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God.”
In this encounter, Moses experienced his own reformation from being a sheepherder to a servant leader of this living God. “Then the Lord told him, ‘I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land.’”
Moses was faced with a decision of whether he could, or would, do what this living God was asking him to do. In this relationship, God does what He always does. He reforms broken and weak lives. “God answered, ‘I will be with you. And this is your sign that I am the one who has sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.’ But Moses protested, ‘If I go to the people of Israel and tell them the God of your ancestors has sent me to you, they will ask, ‘What is His name?’ Then what should I tell them?’ God replied to Moses, ‘I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel. I Am has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you! This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.”
A reformation took place in the life of Moses when he had faith in this one holy living God.
“So Moses chiseled out two tablets of stone like the first ones. Early in the morning, he climbed Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him, and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him; and he called out his own name, ‘Yahweh’. The Lord passed in front of Moses calling out, ‘Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected – even children in the third and fourth generations.’”
By faith in the God he met at the burning bush, Moses became the leader that God wanted him to be. “Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘O Lord, if it is true that I have found favor with you, then please forgive our iniquity and our sins. Claim us as your own special possession.’”
This is the way the Judeo people and Christian people have something you can’t find in any other religion. It is in our own personal relationship with a living God that we find true life and live it out in a lasting relationship with this eternal God that made us for himself. God keeps bringing reformation into the lives of people. That reformation is seen in the life of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and all the other minor prophets in the Old Testament.
But the greatest reformation God has given to us was himself. He became one of us. His life, cross, death, and resurrection have the power to start a reformation in anyone’s life. It starts with faith in Jesus, the only living and true God. All other things we call ‘god’ are fake and phony. You can only have a real relationship to that which is alive and in God’s Holy Spirit. He still is able to change a life from sin and evil — when in faith we seek a relationship to the only God that can bring to life a reformation by His grace of forgiveness and love. We know that we belong to Him. For Judeo people and Christian people, we know we are dealing with the only God that brings a lasting make-over of life. God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. It is the only thing that makes us new people. God can always bring reformation into the life He has given us. So I worship a living God of love and live under His judgment.
Open your life to the Holy Spirit and receive from God a total make-over of your empty sin-filled life. God does reformation, one person at a time.
