COME AS A CHILD LESSON 110 THE IMPORTANCE OF MIDWIVES

(WRITTEN BY SHEILA GAIL LANDGRAF)

So Joseph lived out his days in Egypt, surrounded by his brothers; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher; twelve sons from Jacob’s loins. 

The Book of Exodus starts out by mentioning that 70 souls came from these sons.   

After the mention of the twelve sons of Israel we hear of no more names called until we come to the time of Moses, with the exception of two individuals named Shifrah and Puah, who were the midwives in charge of all those who delivered the babies of the Hebrews.  

By now Joseph and all of his brothers were dead.  The generations after them lived in the land of Egypt, becoming very fruitful and mighty.

The day arrived when a new Egyptian King came into power.  This was a king who knew nothing of Joseph, or the people of his family.  He looked out on his kingdom one day to see that the foreign Israelites living within the land were greater than the native Egyptians living within the land.  This troubled him.   He began to think about the fact that Israel’s descendants were foreigners and they might come closer to agreeing with some of Egypt’s enemies than with the ways and laws of Egypt.  He became fearful of the possibility that they might someday join in with Egypt’s enemies and overpower the Egyptians and help others to take over the country. 

This set the new king to thinking of ways to eliminate the Israelites.  He decided to treat them like slaves, hoping this would control the situation.  More than likely, this started with heavy taxation until the people owed so much that they had to go into slavery to repay their debts.   He put taskmasters over them and organized them into various labor groups which he used to provide manpower to build his treasure cities.  

His treasure cities were the places where he kept all of his nation’s treasures stored.  The two main cities were Ramses and Pithom.  They skirted the country’s borders and in order to enter Egypt one had to go through these cities first.  They were heavily guarded by the armies of the King.

Oddly enough, even after they were made to be slaves, the Hebrew people were still very fruitful and strong and they grew into an even greater multitude.  Multiple births were very common occurrences with the Hebrew women.  Some gave birth to four or five babies at once.  When Pharaoh noticed this he cracked down harder.  He put them under total bondage and made them serve by making heavy bricks and mortar.  He worked them for long, hard hours each day.  The work was hard and grueling. 

Still the people were fruitful and multiplied. 

The Hebrew babies were delivered by midwives.  Realizing how the Israelites were constantly increasing, Pharaoh told the midwives to kill all of the Israelite sons when they were born and to only leave the daughters alive.  This could be done from the birthing stool where the midwife sat during the birth process without anyone really realizing what was happening.  They would simply strangle the male children as they were being born and not strangle the female children.  The male child could then be presented to the mother as if it had been still born.  Two midwives were told to instruct all the others in this method.  It was to be done quietly but it was not to be ignored.

Still, somehow sons were being born.  It didn’t make sense.  Pharaoh questioned the midwives and they told him that the Hebrew women were very strong and did not labor as long as the Egyptian women when giving birth.  They told him that a lot of the babies were being born before they could arrive to assist with the delivery.  This wasn’t the whole truth.  In actuality, the midwives feared God more than Pharaoh.  They were deliberately stalling and even when they arrived in time, they would often allow the Hebrew sons to live despite Pharaoh’s commands.  God blessed these midwives because of their bravery.  He blessed them materially and financially with homes and provisions for their families.  He blessed them with protection from Pharaoh even realizing what they were doing.   The two head midwives that the scriptures called by name were Shifrah and Puah.  Why out of all the individuals that lived from Joseph till Moses did God inspire only their names to be recorded? 

One must consider that without the brave heroic acts of these midwives, much of the history of the nation of Israel would have been wiped out completely.  Because they listened to God over Pharaoh the midwives allowed a whole generation to be born that made a difference in the lives of the Israelites.  

One cannot help but compare these midwives to those working for pro-life issues today.  I wonder how many of the babies they have saved from abortions are the ones who will make a difference in our country one day?   

It is not so clearly spelled out in the scriptures and you really have to read between the lines, but Israel at the time we are speaking of was decaying.  As a nation and a culture of people they were moving backwards instead of forward.  They had forgotten the teachings of Joseph, Jacob and Abraham.  They were not worshiping God; they were merely trying to survive. 

This time of the killing of the innocents in the history of Israel is said to be a type and shadow of the conditions of the nations during the end times.  Many think the Egyptian experience is a foreshadow of what the people of God will experience before their final redemption. 

We know that the people of Israel had been living in Egypt and existing through the horrible conditions of slavery for so long that they had become almost like animals.  Their world had been turned upside down.  All that was good had turned into a time of slavery and bondage.

Knowledge and righteous living was so silent that the connection between God and the people was almost severed.  Though many of the people still had the knowledge of God and His ways within their memories, they had not actually internalized it.  It was not a whole part of them. 

There, in the foreign land of Egypt, a whole nation had been conceived.  The nation was swollen in pregnancy, ripe and ready to give birth, but the nation was stuck without the ability to deliver.  Without the help of the midwives, new birth would not be possible.  They would remain in slavery and death forever.  The midwives provided the connection needed to bring new birth.  They changed a totally bleak situation into one of hope.  Many now think their names were inspired to be placed strategically between the Patriarchs and Moses because they had been the actual conduit of life that brought the Exodus which gave the people freedom and new life.  They were the actual link from death to life. 

If you look at translations of the Hebrew you begin to see that many of the words used to describe the Israelites in this period of time were not positive.  They translate out to mean animalistic, reptilian, insect-like in reproduction.  It seemed that through time they had taken on all of the cultural qualities of the greater Egyptian population.  Life and birth are sacred experiences in the Hebraic way of thinking.  Here in Egypt though, life was unimportant and birth was insignificant.   The grandchildren of Jacob seemed to have lost all of their distinguishing marks of being God’s chosen people.  Nothing appeared to be sacred anymore.   They did not remember their sense of purpose.  

Much like the generations living today, the quality and goodness of a godly life seemed to be completely removed from them.  They were slaving, mating and giving birth and repeating the process over and over.  Everything was rote, without thought or purpose of design or a plan.  The meaning behind the lives they birthed so frequently was lost in a foreign culture contrary to their God.  

Then the midwives entered the scene.  They were not merely assisting with the birth process; they were assisting in the birth of a new nation.  The midwives had not sold their souls out to tiredness and hopelessness.  They continued to trust in God.  They continued to believe in the promise and sacredness of life.  They were righteous in the face of death.  Because of the unselfish deeds of these midwives male children were born that would grow up to be the men who served God in leading the people to freedom.

It was Pharaoh’s design to destroy this very pregnant nation, but God had other plans.  

God had strategically placed these midwives in order to begin a re-birthing process for the Nation of Israel, just as God has strategically placed The Holy Spirit in place to minister to the Church so that people may be "born again."   

This is yet another proof of the evidence that God uses the lives of faithful women to do his work.  It is not a new notion that has only come about in recent years because of woman's rights, God has always used women to accomplish His will.  Not all of the greatest leaders were men.  Many women played a crucial part in the forming of a people for God as well as the forming of a Bride for Christ in the Church.   God did not overlook their faithfulness or let their names go unrecognized and unnoticed.  He recorded them in his book for all the world to know that they were faithful servants.

Pharaoh, seeing that the midwives could not or would not control the situation, charged the people of Israel directly.  He ordered them to cast their own sons into the river as soon as they were born.  He claimed that their daughters alone could live. 

Can you imagine the panic and the broken hearts of the people? 

Not only would they lose the lives of their precious children, a whole nation would now be snuffed out.  Without the male children the present generation would be the last of the Israelites. 

This was the plan of Pharaoh, but God had other plans indeed!

COME AS A CHILD LESSON 109 A WORD BEFORE THE EXODUS BEGINS

  

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

On a Thursday back on January 4^th of 2014 I started writing this series of bible studies we have called “COME AS A CHILD.”  

Together, we have now studied the whole first chapter of the bible called Genesis.  It only took about two years!  If you are like me, you were amazed at what all the first book of the bible contained, and really, we didn't touch on everything because it would have been impossible to ever finish.

  

It has been fun!  

I hope you have learned as much as I have about God’s Kingdom and how to walk through it with the eyes of a child.  I want to extend my heart-felt thanks to each of you who have been brave enough to join in with me every Thursday!  I am humbled in the fact that I know some of you are much better teachers than I will ever be.  God just has a way of helping us all out.  I am so happy that you have taken this journey with me.  Everything is always better with a good friend at your side!

What you must realize now is that we have only just begun!  The journey through Exodus is about to start with our very next lesson. 

I thought it would be good to go back and review our goals and the purpose for all of this study.  Many of us have already read through the bible, some of us many times over.  The goal here is not just to read through, and not just to study, but to approach scriptures with new eyes.

 

I’ll be repeating some words for those of you who got in on the very beginning of our journey together, but I think they bear repeating.  The whole point of this particular study is to get you to look at the Holy Scriptures with the wide-opened, wonder-filled eyes of a child.  Hear the words all fresh and new and imagine a loving Father inviting you into His story.  Come as a child. 

Why?  

There are many reasons.  Some of them follow below. 

Let’s start with some scriptures:

Psalms 131:3:  But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast.  My soul is opened within me.

Matthew 18:3: And he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

That was Jesus speaking!  

He says we must come to Him as a little child.  Just what exactly does this mean?

Stop and think for a moment about what is involved in being a child. 

Everything is new to you.

You are learning every day.

You put your complete trust in your parents and all of those around you.  (For the purpose of this study that would be God, The Father.)

There are no preconceived ideas; you accept things as they are.  (Maybe you have been taught “this” and “that” about the scriptures.  That was probably someone else’s interpretation.  I simply ask that you erase all other interpretations from your thoughts for this study and listen to no one but God.  (Not even me!)  Let God speak to you and reason with you about these lessons.  Sit with him each time and LISTEN to Him guide you.)

As a child, you haven’t learned hate or caution or bitterness or manipulation yet.

You are not competing with anyone else.  Life is simply all about being yourself and relating to the world just the way God made you to be.

Everything is out in the open.  Nothing is hidden or fake.

 

The most important part of your world consists solely of you, your parents and the home you are making together.  You are completely dependent on this environment, for your food, for your comfort, for everything you have. 

You never worry.  You don’t even know what that is yet, because your Father takes care of all the details of your life.

You are not afraid.  Fear is a learned behavior, you do not know it yet.

You are innocent.  Sinful thoughts are not a part of your day.  You are pure.  You do not know the things that make up a sinful nature.  Your thoughts are uninhibited by these things.

You have not learned to be prejudiced.  You simply love everyone and everything. 

Joy is a delightful part of each day as you explore the universe that your Father has created.  

Every day is full of wonder and delight!

Are you getting the idea?  Welcome to true worship!  This is just the way that Adam and Eve lived in the garden with God before sin entered in.  

This is the way that God originally intended for us to worship Him.  

In true worship you simply come to God the way a child would, trusting, expecting, letting God do the leading and planning, simply being the person that God created you to be and worshiping God with love.

What could be better?  

What could be more simple?

Yet, in our humanity, we humans make this a complicated, complex mess by trying to do everything OUR way instead of leaving it all up to God.  If worship isn’t straight from God, can we truly call it worship? 

So the idea is to simply relax and find that child-likeness that takes you directly to God.  

Give yourself to be in awe of God.  

Let yourself be completely dependent on God.  

Worship!

We could all do this when we were children.  

Have you ever prayed with a child or watched a child in worship?  

What came to us naturally as children is often hard to achieve in pure form as an adult.  

We have to lay down what the well-meaning people of the world have taught us and look to God to be taught.  

When we truly take the time to listen to Him with a child’s heart we find ourselves learning and living what the scriptures say.  The wonder of it all overflows from our hearts into our lives. 

So as we approach each new passage of scripture we come realizing there are no wrong answers.  You might hear something in your time with God that I did not hear, and I might see something in a passage that you do not see.  The key is to listen to your Father.  He knows each of our own individual needs and like any good father, He shows us what he knows we will relate to.  We both might learn something completely different from each lesson, that is okay!  Neither of us are wrong, there are no wrong answers when you are listening to God.  There are only the answers that He is giving to you.  He shows us in the perspective that we need to know.

 

For example, three people might be looking at a chair.  One person sees the front, one the side and one the back.  It is still the same chair.  We all have seen it from our own perspective.  Trust God to help you have the perspective you need to live in your circumstances.  He will show you.  Have the trust of an innocent child.  Do exactly what God tells you because you believe Him.  He may ask something of you that He doesn’t ask of your neighbor, and vice versa.  This is OKAY – there are no wrong answers, just people who do not listen.  Children listen to their father’s voice.  They know it and they follow it.  That is what these lessons are all about, to help you listen for your Father’s voice and follow it with complete trust. 

As we come as a child with an open heart we want to give our lives away to God’s Holy Spirit and let The Holy Spirit be completely in charge of our learning and our sharing and our doing. 

We must die to ourselves and let God show us everything.  This all starts by approaching God with the heart of a child. 

So now that we have entered through the beginning, let’s go and take the Exodus together, God will go with us.  There will be a new lesson every Thursday – just bring your childish heart!

PEN ART - A BEAUTIFUL POEM AND A LOVELY SONG

(Commentary by Sheila Gail Landgraf, poetry and song lyrics by Allen Levi)

Today's Pen Art is not my own, I must give all credit to Allen Levi, who has blessed us with the following words of a very poetic song:

  

Golden Choir of Aubiere,

( by Allen Levi)

Rows and rows of bowing heads,

Sunflowers say their evening prayer,

A congregation of the field,

The golden choir of Aubiere.

Dawn to dusk, they only turn

Up to heaven where God lives,

Every face a separate light

Reflections of the love He gives.

 Lord of colors, Lord of light,

 Won't you teach me how to pray

 Like the flowers of Aubiere?

 Won't you guide me through the day?

Rose and lily grow so fair,

But, Lord, make me like the sunflower,

Looking always to your face,

Seeking you from hour to hour.

 Lord of colors, Lord of light,

 Won't you teach me how to pray

 Like the flowers of Aubiere?

 Won't you guide me though the day?

Rows and rows of bowing heads,

the golden choir of Aubiere,

the golden choir of Aubiere.

 As winter sweps across the landscape turning everything brown and gray, I long for the bright vivid colors of spring.  A song is forming in the caverns of my mind, and I catch myself humming....hopefully.  

I seem to need a large dose of it today as I look out the office windows and think of other places I would rather be.  The first place that comes to mind is the place in the song I hum, a place called Aubiere.  I know it is in the south of  France where the sunflowers and the lavendar are said to grow side by side for miles and miles.  

No, I’ve never been there, except in my imagination while listening to Allen Levi’s song.  If I could go though, I would head straight for the sunflower fields and check out the rows and rows of praying heads. 

If the sunflowers stand next to a contrasting purple lavendar field, all for the better!  The lovely contrasting flowers are like the two countries they hail from; each beautifiul in their own unique way.  Those beautiful yellow rows of color were such a sweet gift from America to France by the Spainards back in the 1600's.  Funny how people think of France when you mention sunflowers because it was the American Indian that first cultivated the flower.  What a gift to the land they have been, for both countries.

Everyone has a favorite song, poem, story, piece of art, right?  Golden Choir of Aubiere has always been one of my old favorites, as much for the words as for the melody.   Thank you Allen Levi for blessing us with the melody.  

There seems to be some mystery behind the lyrics that I cannot get to the core of, something that has not yet been revealed, but it doesn't stop the lovely haunting music from capturing my heart.   The simple beauty of the song has resided a tresure inside my mind from the first time I heard the poetic lyrics so many years ago.    

I first experienced the rich, poetic words and the simple tune inside my welcoming ears during a time when I was missing the joy of being constantly surrounded by anything of  beauty or grace.  In my state of struggling through much day-to-day dullness, these words lent the essence of what I found missing from my surroundings.  The slow soft lyrics and the bright vivid word pictures helped me to hold on until better days arrived.  They made me lift my head and become grateful in the midst of all circumstances.  They made me long for the simple life of the sunflower, one of joy, one of worship and faith.  That is what sunflowers do, they pray and worship and look up to God.  They are always patiently beautiful and cheerful no matter their surroundings.  They pop up in the most unexpected places and make your day just a little bit more special.  I learned back in those bleak times how to be a sunflower.  That lesson has made such a difference in the outcome of my life.  

I can now look back on those days and smile and know that God was forming and shaping my character into the person He wanted me to be.  He was teaching me to leave my own visions behind and look at the better vision He had chosen to give to me, one of simple beauty, joyous praise and thanksgiving.  We never realize how important these qualities are until we have lived in the place where they do not exist.   I pray that your days are all filled with sunflowers!

 

There is a field somewhere  in Aubiere where constant praise is being offered.  

Oh that we could all live like that lovely golden choir all the time!  

Oh that we could teach out hearts to sing the song that Allen Levi sang while (I suppose) he was there observing the beauty of his surroundings.  

There is a place like Aubiere out there for all of us.  We must not get lost in the hurry of our days and forget to pause in the place of peace and beauty and give thanks for the simplicity of God's plan.  

It all becomes very simple when you observe the Golden Choir of Aubiere.

COME AS A CHILD LESSON 108 FINISHING GENESIS AND LOOKING TOWARD EXODUS

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

So we know that Joseph dwelt in Egypt throughout the remainder of his lifetime.  He lived happily in the land with all of his relatives surrounding him.  He lived to be 110 years old, and he saw his grandchildren and his great grandchildren grow up.   

Four generations had now come and gone since the great famine and the people of God were still living in Egypt.  They multiplied and filled the land but they lived in different ways from the natives of the land.  They were godly people, keeping the covenant of God with Abraham. 

For the most part, under the leadership of Joseph, the Sons of Israel and their ancestors remained true to the teachings of Abraham that had been passed down to them from their father.  They were prosperous shepherds.  There were many of them and they were blessed. 

The time came when Joseph knew he was going to die.  He turned to his brothers and his children and grandchildren and said “I am dying; but God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.”  

So, through Joseph, the promises of God to Abraham were passed on.  Nothing was forgotten or forsaken.  The children of Jacob knew their heritage and did not forget it.  They knew and understood all the promises that God had made to Abraham.  Each generation was taught by their own father.

Joseph was well known among them for his great gift of prophecy.  His people had all lived to see his dreams from God fulfilled with their very own eyes.  They now respected all that Joseph told them about the future.  They understood his words were from God.

 

Because of this “knowing” of Joseph, the Sons of Jacob were never completely at home in Egypt.  They were always thinking that the day would come when God would find a way to lead them back to the land where Abraham and Sarah had lived and worshipped.  They did not forget or forsake the ways of Abraham. This loyal line of thinking began with them in Egypt during the days when times were good for the people, way before any thought of slavery happened to the ancestors of Abraham in the land of Egypt.  Things went well for them for a very long time and they prospered under Joseph’s leadership.  

Joseph clearly had this vision of return to the homeland and he never let them forget it.  He made his people take an oath before him that when the day came, and they returned, that they would carry his bones with them. 

So after a long, full, blessed life Joseph died.  They embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.  His bones were not buried, but kept in a box that could be moved whenever the people moved.

With Joseph’s death the book of Genesis ends. 

What an amazing journey we have had walking together through this book with the eyes of a child!  Together we have explored the very old, old roots of Christianity.  

Let’s stop here for a moment and think of all the things that this awesome first book of the bible called   Genesis has taught us:

We have learned that God exists and he existed first, before anything else ever existed.  We know that he created the world and all that is in it and he formed man from the dust of the earth and drew woman from his ribs.  We have seen that God is the original source of all life.  We know that originally God walked and talked with man in paradise and intended that we always be in such communion with him forever.

We discovered that Satan also exists, and through Him sin entered the garden.  He was in the garden and he tempted the man and the woman to disobey God.  We discovered how sin came into the world and how mankind fell to a state that kept them from communion with God.  We learned that the wages of sin is death.   

 We learned  that the only way God could exist with sinful men after the fall was through a “covering” or a holy sacrifice that would blot out sins from God's eyes and provide a covering for men making them acceptable to stand before a Holy God.  This was first accomplished in the Garden of Eden with the sacrifice of an innocent animal and the blood and covering of animals has been used by men since that time as a way of sacrifice to draw closer to God.  At that time offering a sacrifice was symbolic of repentence. This symbolic, yet unperfect act, would prevail until the perfect, once for all, sacrifice of a Messiah happened.  Adam and Eve and every generation after them looked for such a Messiah.  God had given them that hope even as they left the garden in shame. 

We learned of the generations of Adam and all the stories of both good and evil sons who lived up until a time when evil prevailed on the earth in the days of Noah.  That was when God sent a flood to destroy so much evil and give those few left who were good and righteous a new life on a renewed earth.  A covenant from God was given to Noah after the flood in the promise of the rainbow.  

 After Noah, we watched generations of mankind progress up through the days of Abraham.  Abraham offered God sacrifices and worshipped God and turned from the evil idols worshiped by his family.   Abraham was willing to leave all he knew and step out into the unknown in pure obedience to follow God.  God loved Abraham and gave Abraham a covenant promise that his ancestors would fill the earth as many as the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky.   God promised to give Abraham and his children the land where God had led him through faith.  

We saw the generations after Abraham come forth.  We saw how each patriarch contributed to the formation of the Great Family of God.  We watched as God led them out of Canaan and into Egypt through an odd occurrence of events.  We saw how the life of Joseph was a foretaste and a perfect shadow of The Messiah to come.  

We have left the Children of God in the land of Egypt now, after Joseph’s death with the promise that they will one day return to the land that was long ago promised to Abraham by God. 

After Genesis we come to Exodus, both as the title of a book and as a way of surviving life as a child of God. 

This is a perfect time to go back and review any of the lessons you missed.  They are all available anytime you need to read them in the archives found within the indexes of this blog.  I am also condensing them together into a book format and I will have more details about that later in my freelance writing blogsite called Wordcastle Publications.  If you are interested in obtaining the condensed book called A CHILD'S WIDE-EYED WALK THROUGH GENESIS, please send your contact information to wordcastlepublications@gmail.com.  If I receive an e-mail note from you, I will let you know when the publication is available and provide ordering information at that time.  

I'm excited to be opening my own freelance content writing company where I will be sharing more and more of these stories as well as other Christian writing samples to the public.  I will keep you posted; but in the meantime I'm also excited to be starting the next part of this COME AS A CHILD blog study on Exodus within this blog beginning on next Thursday!  The Exodus posts will come out on Thursdays, in a similar fashion to how the Genesis posts were revealed, once a week.  

Let us continue this journey together and take the Exodus through the wide open eyes of a child.  

Let's step out bravely to see what God will teach us along the way.  I'm sure if we studied for a million years, He would always have something else to teach us.  That is what happens when your God is eternal and forever!   

Dear readers, be kind and have courage; for all things are possible when we put our trust in God.    

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE - THE MYSTERIOUS STORY OF THE RED HEIFER

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Have you ever felt compelled to study the details of the sacrifice of The Red Heifer?  The study is fascinating and I keep coming back to it year after year.  If you’ve never heard of it, this was a sacrifice of a perfect Red Heifer that God commanded of Moses to make for the people in order to cleanse them before entering the Tabernacle in the wilderness.  Apparently, the ritual was put into place immediately as the Tabernacle came into use as God had instructed Moses. 

The requirements were that the heifer must be three years old and perfectly red; it must be physically free from any blemish or defect; it must never have been used to perform any physical labor; it was to be taken to a specific place outside the camp where it was slaughtered and burned; its ashes were mixed together with pure spring water to make a mixture to be sprinkled on the people for purification.

This practice started with Moses and was carried on all throughout history until the last temple was destroyed.  There have been nine red heifers and the nation of Israel is waiting on the 10^th to appear. 

Originally the people were contaminated and became impure because of the making of the golden calf.  You can read the story in Deuteronomy, Chapter nine of your bible.  To make it very short here it was a time when Moses had ascended to the mountain of God to receive the commandments of God.  The people were tired of waiting on their leader to return.  They were bored and restless, and they appealed to Aaron, whom Moses had left in charge to create a golden calf.  Miriam’s son Hur tried to persuade the people that this was wrong and they killed him for standing up to them.  Now bulls were a pagan symbol of worship in the land of Cannan and also in some areas of Egypt from where the people had just been released from slavery.  Aaron, probably afraid of the same fate as Hur, complied with their wishes and made the calf that they wished for him to make. Many scholars have pointed out too that there were Egyptians that had tagged along with the crowd as they left Egypt and that they had been secretly conspiring, persuading the people to make the calf.  Aaron was said to have stalled for time, thinking that Moses would soon return.  When that didn’t work he was said to have commanded that the people bring all their gold for it, thinking they might be stingy and not want to give it.  They complied.  It is unlikely that Aaron actually intended this calf be an idol, as he proclaimed a Feast for Yahwah after he finished making it.  (Exodus 32:5). 

At first it appeared that the people worshipping the calf seemed to associate it with the God who brought them out of Egypt.  It was said by some that the Egyptian conspirators knew magic tricks that made the calf appear to jump out of the fire.  Many believe that this was when the people’s hearts turned from worshipping God to worshipping the golden calf.  They allowed themselves to be tricked into believing a lie by sensational magic.  What ever the circumstances leading up to this, there are many theories, as time went on the truth came out.  Most of the people had wanted Aaron to make them a God to lead them because Moses had tarried so long on the Mountain.  They had allowed themselves to be deceived.  Whatever their original intentions, it becomes clear in Exodus 32:8 that the people immediately fell to worshipping the calf and violated the first commandment that God was giving to Moses on the Mountain (Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me.)

Now, God is omnipresent.  He could see the people in the camp and tend to Moses on the Mountain at the same time.  He KNEW this was going on the whole time, yet; He was giving Moses instructions of His will.  God informed Moses of his displeasure with the people and that they would die for their sins.  He told Moses that a new people, descendents of Moses would take their place and carry His will with them to the nations of the world. 

Moses was very distressed.  He prayed for God to forgive the people, reminding God of the covenant with Abraham and begging for mercy.  God decided to be merciful. 

Moses had promised the people that he would return in 40 days.  When the 40^th day arrived, Moses returned at sunset with the Commandments of God in his hands.  His assistant, Joshua was waiting on him at the foot of the Mountain.  They returned together at the end of the 40^th day after receiving the Revelation of God, just as promised.  When they approached the camp and saw what was taking place Moses threw the tablets of the commandments on the ground in frustration, breaking them into a million shattered pieces.  He took the golden calf and ground it to dust and spread the dust over water and made the people drink it.  This was his way of showing them the worthlessness of their idol and the lack of power it had.  Moses then stood at the entrance of the camp and told everyone who worshipped God to stand with him.  The entire tribe of Levi came. He then commanded those who were of God to slaughter those who had worshipped the golden calf, no matter how important those people were to them.   That day three thousand of the children of Israel lost their lives because of the sin of idolatry.

Moses went back up the mountain and prayed to God for the next 40 days while the people mourned their dead and atoned for their sins before God.  When the 40 days were up God told Moses to hew another set of tablets.  Moses ascended to the mountain a third time for God to inscribe the commandments.  Over the next 40 days God inscribed the commandments and told Moses that He had forgiven the children of Israel.   As Moses stood on the mountain with the commandments in his hands God taught Moses how the people could make atonement for their sins through repentance and prayer.  God proclaimed thirteen attributes for the people to recite in the days of their repentance.  These are a story unto themselves, but you can read of them in Exodus 34:6-7. 

After all of this Moses invited God to go before them and to use them as His people again.  God promised a covenant to Moses.  On the tenth day of the month of Tishrei (Yom Kippur) Moses returned to the camp and brought the commandments and told the people of God’s covenant with them.   God had promised them many blessings and miracles.  Moses’ face shinned so bright that the people were frightened and looked at him in awe.  Moses veiled himself and proceeded to teach the children of Israel the Torah.

Well……I tried to make that explanation as brief as possible, but you can’t leave much out and have the whole story.  Getting back to the reason for the Red Heifer, can you see how this ritual would signify the reversal of the sin of the golden calf? 

There are many mysteries surrounding the thought and ritual of The Red Heifer.  It was originally used to purify the people, especially from the contamination of death.  Death was considered the worst impurity of all impurities, life was considered the most sacred of all pure.  Sin had brought the death of three thousand people.  Think of the form of sin here.  They let others in the culture persuade them of untruth.  Can you see that around us today?  They didn’t just get up one day and decide to be disobedient to God, it seeped in on them from worldly influences.  Are you getting a picture of this now?  Could we in the United States of America be guilty of the sin of idolatry too?  The answer is not hard.  Do we too need to be made pure from the water and ashes of a red heifer?  Well, it did happen.  Just like God was merciful to the People of Israel who followed Him, He has looked down on us today and provided a way for us to be cleansed of the impurity of death from association with the ways of our current culture.  Our Red Heifer came in the form of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. 

After years and years of God teaching His people the story in a million different ways, God sent His Only Begotten Son.  The Son of God lived out the story in every aspect of His life on earth.  Can we not look upon His life and see that He was our sacrifice, our salvation, our only hope?  The church stands like Moses and says, you who believe in God come to my side.  Take a stand and live out what you believe no matter how hard the turn may be for you.  You may have to give up some things that are dear to you in order to come out of the world.  The answer though, on the other side of the cross, is life!  Life is worth it all. Eternal life is the final gift of God to His people.  Jesus died that we may live forever.  It is a pardox, much like the paradox of the Red Heifer.

Those who administered the ashes of the Red Heifer had to contaminate themselves outside the camp with the death of the cow.  This made them impure.  In taking on these impurities from death though, they were able to cleanse the people that they served. 

In considering this I think of the people today who have willingly made the sacrifice in risking their own lives to give medical help to those who have possibly fatal diseases, such as the doctors and nurses who have recently been in the news for treating cases of ebola.  I have noted that those who know God and have gone to their jobs with the backing of prayer and the heart of a servant of God have fared much better.  Is this a coincidence?  

Such was the case with our dear Jesus who took on our sins before God on the cross.  Sin is the greatest disease there is.  He took on all of our sin.  He was pure, but he became impure for a time  with our sins on the cross in order to cleanse us from the sin we have brought on ourselves.  

The priests of the temple went through the same ironic service year after year, always teaching in their actions the mercy and justice of God.  Mercy and justice existing together are yet another form of paradox we must consider in this story.

This is only a small sampling of the stories behind the mystery of The Red Heifer.  It is said that the whole Torah can be explained just from this one story.  It contains so much more than man can even begin to understand.  It is all about being obedient and faithful to God even when you do not know or understand what is going on in your circumstances.

The amazing story of The Red Heifer is a wonderful thing to consider as we make our way through a pagan world.