Moses and the 10 Commandments Do Over

Moses lost his temper and broke the first set of tablets. So God told him to do it all over again. The first set of tablets was made and written by God. The second set was made and written by Moses at God's direction. Why do it again? It is such an interesting story about anger and pleading and forgiveness. God and Moses worked together. In this episode, I tell you the amazing behind the cooperation of God and Moses. God is God, Moses was God's servant, but they had to find another way to work with the people.

Exodus 32:14
14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Exodus 34:1
34 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you broke.

Exodus 34:28
28 He was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to the Real Bible Rob Team Cast. Do you know about the Ten Commandments? You probably do. You've probably heard about them. You know, if you live a moral life, you're a good person, you follow God's law, the Ten Commandments. Only trouble is we're not exactly sure what the Ten Commandments are and exactly how they fit together. Um, that the Ten Commandments happen twice in the Bible. Um, they're a little bit different. And what's most interesting is that the Ten Commandments we are told come on stone tablets. So you might have even seen pictures of Moses coming down the mountain with stone tablets, right? The only problem is that was the second set of stone tablets that had the Ten Commandments on it, and it tells us something so interesting about the relationship of Moses and people with God, and how God, the character of God that we read about in the book of Exodus, is so um changeable and um you know hard to understand in a way. Now we can say, well, maybe God doesn't change, but maybe our perception and the way we write um uh God into um our books and stuff like that changes, but it's a little bit more complicated than that. And I think that that's a how we can see that God is working with people, and people are working with God through the centuries, through all of this time, ever since um Moses, like 3,000 years ago, and uh how things change over time. And what we end up with, if you think of it that way and you understand it that way, then you'll begin to see that God is far more loving and involved with people than just being somebody who's sitting in a throne far away and you know, throwing lightning bolts and having smoke and all of that. And it's kind of uh interesting. I think if you can do that, then you can be more comfortable praying, you can be more comfortable reading about God, and you can uh understand that this is a big just about being a big relationship. It's not so much like having a dictator with lightning bolts than it is just about a God who's very interested in you and me and uh and is working with us. So I'll I'll talk a little bit about uh what happened because there was one set of tablets that Moses came down the mountain with, and then he broke them. He threw them to the ground and broke them to pieces. He lost his temper, and then he persuaded, he asked God, can I have another set of tables? Can we do do a do-over? Can we start over again? So that's why he said Moses and the Ten Commandments do over. We don't know exactly what was written on those first tablets. We don't we have an idea what was written on the second set of tablets, even though we're not sure exactly which Ten Commandments they are, but at least we have some idea that we're told in scripture, that's what in um in Exodus what they are. But why do we have two sets of tablets? Well, uh, let's start with uh in the beginning. In the beginning, um uh in um chapter 24 of Exodus, Moses goes up to the mount mountain, the people are down in the valley, um, they have already left Egypt, they're on their way to the promised land, and they're getting the people are getting very worried. They thought maybe, okay, we've been freed, you know, we're we have crossed the Red Sea, we're marching on our way to the promised land, but this is taking a lot longer than we thought it would. Yeah, sure, God, every time we've complained, like, you know, we're thirsty or we're hungry or or whatever, God has provided for us. But here we are, we're kind of stuck in the desert. That's the way the Israelites were thinking. They thought maybe it would take a couple weeks, you know, to march from uh from Egypt up to Palestine or um, you know, the land of uh Israel that they would eventually go to, but it ended up taking 40 long years. So here they are, maybe they're a month or a few months into their journey here, and they're on the uh plain right in front of Mount Sinai, and they're going, Ah, what's going on? You know, we're stuck here. And Moses is up that mountain. There's, you know, God has called them there. There's clouds, there's thunder, and all of this. And um, we've lost track of Moses. He's gone. So, what happens is they get antsy and they get worried. And, you know, uh, instead of thinking they're so bad and we're, you know, we wouldn't do that. Of course we would do that. How would you like to be stuck in the desert for 40 days and not knowing what's going on, that your leader has been, you know, stuck in the mountain with God? Um well, you start going a little crazy, and that's what they did. And so they asked Aaron, who is uh Moses' um brother, and the sub and the um he would become the head of the priests, the Levites. He they asked him, Hey, well, make us a golden calf, make us a God that we can see and touch. And that God that is with Moses up on the mountain, you know, uh, he's abandoned us, he's left us here in the desert. Maybe we'll have this other god, uh, or and maybe, or at least we have something that we can feel and touch and and pray to here. So let's make the golden calf. So you may have heard that story. We can and we can talk about that in another episode too. But this golden calf um really is, you know, you and I don't uh worship golden images, at least we shouldn't. But that was very much part of their culture. That's where, you know, 3,000 years ago in that part of the world, they often did. They often had statues and um and things that were holy that they worshipped. So they just said, well, let's go back to the way we, you know, what we're comfortable with, and that's what they did. So when Moses finally comes down the mountain, and it says that uh God um wrote on the uh the first set of um tablets, and we don't know what he wrote, but he wrote the law, supposedly, on that to help govern the people, and that God gave Moses that set of tablets. Now when uh now that God says, you know, Moses, you better get down the mountain because your people are doing terrible things, they're doing abominable things, it says, They're doing things that are not honoring to me. So get down the mountain and take care of that. So Moses does, and he sees the golden calf, he talks to Aaron, he gets super angry at the people. Like, why are you doing this? And what he does is he throws the tablets down in a fit of frustration in a but in a temper tantrum. The interesting thing is that it's not just Moses that that that has the temper tantrum. If you look at it, it's God is having a temper tantrum, even bigger than Moses. God wants to just take those people and he wants to obliterate them, get rid of them, you know, kill them all. And Moses then says, No, you can't do that, God. If you do that, you've done this before. You did this with Moses or with Noah and the Ark. You, you know, there have been you've already punished the people enough that it's time to change. So Moses is actually asking God to change. Isn't that interesting? Moses is praying to God and having a relationship with God, and it's you know, it's not very far to say that's kind of like when we pray, when we say to God, you know, I I really want you to uh do this, you know, this per my mother is sick, and I want you to heal her. I want you to do this, I want you to do that. We're asking God to change, really. We're asking God to do things for us. Well, I think Moses is doing that, but he's doing it in a much bigger way. He's saying, God, please don't uh don't hurt my people, don't obliterate them. I understand why you're angry, I'm angry too. So this is when uh the second set of tablets comes, and it's just amazing. In Exodus 32, so this is many chapters later, Exodus 32, and then the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he had planned to bring on his people. It says right there. There's lots of ways you can look at this, and that that word about changed his mind has been something that people have debated, but um I I I will tell you, I read a little bit of Hebrew, and this was written in Hebrew originally, and um and I've looked at this really hard, and yes, that's ex that's what it looks like. It looks like that God has changed his mind, and that's what it says. So the Lord changed his mind about the disaster he had planned to bring on his people, and he decided to not destroy them. And um then two chapters later, uh in verse 30 or in uh chapter 34, we got two really interesting things. So once everything's cooled down, once uh the Lord has changed his mind, once Moses says, Okay, let's let's get have a new start, maybe, and and the people felt terrible what they did. They understood what they did. So, okay, let's let's start all over again, right, God? So it says here, it says that the Lord said to Moses, cut two tablets of stone, like the former tablets, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you broke. So God's God, uh, you can tell that there's still some emotion here, because it's not just like, well, here, Moses, this is what you're gonna do. If you read um everything around it, it still seems like God is still resentful and angry, but you broke it. It's your fault. And then Moses kind of goes back to God and says, Yeah, but you but you put these people in an impossible situation. Now that sounds to me like a relationship, right? It's not just God sitting in a throne telling Moses what to do. It's like um they're getting angry at each other and they're they're they're they're fighting a little bit. Um now, of course, Moses is the um, you know, is God's servant. God is God, and you know, Moses never um pretends that God isn't God. And there's this whole thing about can Moses look at the face of God? Um, no, he can only look at the after God passes by, and there's lots of uh disc uh talk about that in other parts of the Bible too. It but in the end, Moses brings God closer, and God allows Moses to be in relationship with him, and that's just amazing. Well, one of the m funnier things about this is that um the second set of tablets, so again, we're told by God that he's that he's going to write on the second set of tablets. Moses, you're gonna go and do the work of getting, you know, preparing the tablets. I'm not gonna do that for you again, but I'll write on them. Well, the funny thing is that if you look through uh the next uh 20 something verses, it maybe God changed his mind again. And we're not sure about this, but it says in verse 28, Moses was with there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, again, another long time on the mountain, while the people are sitting down in the valley, cooling their heels and and and waiting. Neither he ate bread nor drank water. Then he, Moses, wrote on the tablets the word of the covenant, the ten commandments. So you can see it doesn't say Moses wrote the words that were on the earlier tablets. It doesn't say that God wrote the words on the tablets, it says that Moses wrote the words on the tablets, and this would become the Ten Commandments. Now, of course, I think these are all related. There's no, you know, Moses didn't just dream up the Ten Commandments, he'd been with the Lord on the mountain for 40 more days. What do you think they were talking about? He may have even had it memorized, right? But what he does, it this is a a transfer of responsibility. It's so important for us to get that instead of God, this God, the God of the Israelites, the one that we, the God that we worship, is different than those other gods around. Instead of those other gods who uh sit back and throw lightning bolts and dictate to people and tell you exactly what to write in scripture, God, this God in trusts, gives trust to Moses to write. And that's a big important thing about the Bible that we believe is that we don't believe that God used pen and paper to write the Bible. Now some Christians do, and I would say that that's wrong because our belief is that humans wrote the Bible with God's inspiration, and inspiration means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It doesn't mean dictate, it doesn't mean God said write this word, this word, this word, and this word. It means that God had um informed and had inspired real people to like Moses, like all of the biblical authors, inspired them to write about their relationship with God. Isn't that important, isn't that interesting? And that way you can get out of the it if you understand that you can get out of this um thing that people do a lot. They'll say the word of God, or they'll say that the Bible is um absolutely inerrant, they'll say, or infallible, and that the the the Bible does not um is just what it is, and you can't wrestle with it at all. It's you just have to do it. Um that's not um what we learn here. What we learn here is that no, the Bible is written by humans, inspired with the Holy Spirit, and when we read it, we believe that the Holy Spirit is in us interpreting, listening, and understanding the Bible. Isn't that a isn't that a better way to think of it? And it's much more like the relationship that we're told about in the Bible. We're told about a God who's in that God's involved with our lives, that God cares, that God sometimes gets really angry, sometimes is very tender, sometimes um even changes his mind, and that's what it says. So um I think that if you do that, if you can always go, God, and when you're reading the Bible, you can go, God, I don't understand this. Um how can you help me understand it? You know, through the Holy Spirit. And I've been told that it's this way by some pastor or some leader or something like that, and it doesn't make sense to me. And it doesn't, it doesn't sound like something you, as a loving God who's involved with people, would want for me or for my family or for people who I care about, or for all of humanity. Well, when you have those feelings, don't feel guilty about them, don't feel bad. In fact, that's smart. What you're doing is you're using your God-given brain, and you are listening instead of just telling somebody else's words. So that I think is the biggest lesson that I see from this is that instead of tablets written by God or dictated by God, Moses in the do-over, in the big do-over, he's the one that writes on the tablets, inspired by God, just like writing on script, just like scripture, in that he's writing it out on the tablets with God's inspiration, with the Holy Spirit, with God understanding who God is, having spent 40 days with God. And then you see that even later, when Moses goes into the tent, what's called the tabernacle, then uh they talk, they converse, they it's kind of like prayer, right? God and Moses talk together. We, as so many years later, we don't have the tabernacle, we don't have this separation from God. We believe, as Christians, we believe, that we can talk to God whenever and wherever, and we can have that same kind of conversation, that same kind of inspiration from God that Moses had. Isn't that a wonderful thing? I think that's that is the one thing that's the best about understanding the Bible and understanding scripture, is that it's a conversation. It's working together. It's not just you are told and you must follow, you must do. So, with that, I'd like to just thank you so much for listening. I hope you're enjoying these um podcasts. Uh, please follow. Let me know uh if you want to me to cover any kind of topic, you can uh um leave comments or you can contact me. I'm Real Bible Rob and I'm on all kinds of platforms. I'm on uh TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. So uh I'm easy to get a hold of and find. So if you'd like to do that. So thank you very much and God bless you.