March 30

OT – Deuteronomy 13:1- 15:23
I have found it all too easy to be an ‘armchair quarterback’ of the invasion of Canaan. *I* wouldn’t have killed everyone, *I* wouldn’t put people to death for trying to lure someone to another religion, *I* would not corral the people like Moses did.
But *I* don’t live in 1400 BCE, *I* don’t have 600,000 people depending on me for EVERYTHING, and *I* don’t know that I am about to die and hand these wayward, stubborn, ordinary people off to a 60+ year old man who has been #2 his entire life. Sort of like Prince Charles only with more military experience and less of an accent.
It does not mean that I LIKE the way Moses handled the invasion because I don’t. But it is nearly impossible for me to put myself in Moses’ position and imagine how I could accomplish what he did.
All this to say, I have an amazing respect for Moses. Much more so than I did when we popped into Exodus on January 25th – 2 months ago. Other than Jesus and Paul, we spend more time with Moses than we do with any other person in the Bible. And even in the Jesus and Paul parts, Moses constantly pops up.
In today’s lesson, I realized that Moses treats the Children of Israel as if they really were Children. With kids, you need repetition. You need structure. Punishment and reward. Accountablitity and clear, stated rules and regulations. Go here, do that, don’t play with them, don’t eat that. Do it and this is going to happen to you.
And he doesn’t appear to have politic’d. I think he said what God told him, regardless of how the people would feel.
If we assume that we are just as wayward, just as stubborn, and certainly, just as ordinary as those folks were, how would it play for us to have a ‘Moses’? And where would he lead us?



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NT—Luke 8:40-9:6
When we read that Jesus sent the Twelve out to preach and drive demons, my first question has always been, why? (Of course, that is *my* question to anything….)
But since this is the third time in 3 months that we have read this, I have come up with a possible answer. Jesus, being God, knew that the Twelve would do this after he was gone. And he knew that they would face rejection. I think he sent them out while he was still alive as a training mission. And then they could come back, talk about what had worked (or didn’t!), when they went hungry and when they had success. It was sending them out with smaller consequences and having backup.
My study Bible has an interesting note about shaking the dust off your feet. It says, “Jews returning to Israel from a foreign land would shake the dust from their sandals and clothing to avoid defiling the land they considered holy. The disciples were delivering a similar warning to the people of Israel. If they rejected the message of Christ, they would face the same future judgment as unbelieving foreigners.”