In this episode, the guys chat about the following questions and ideas:

• 0:30 - In Exo 32-33, we read of how Moses takes up the priestly role in interceding for a people who would have been a kingdom made up of priests (Exo 19:5-6) and its first high priest (Aaron), who choose to make for themselves a golden calf to represent the One True God, YHWH. In doing so, the failed priests of Israel commit a horrific desecration of the pattern that YHWH set way back in the Garden – that humanity is God’s Image. Instead, they have now reduced the sacred Image of God that should have been humanity into a beast. Moses’ intercession for the failed priests is no mistake. We recall that he, not Aaron, was YHWH’s first chosen representative – a priestly figure, if you will – in Exo 3-4. And he finally takes up the role he rejected as he intercedes, like a priest, for the failed high priest Aaron, and the failed would-have-been priests of Israel. 
• 2:30 - For the guys, we found that we grew up read of Moses’ intercession for Israel in Exo 32-33 through a ‘substitutionary’ lens – that Moses offered to give his life in exchange for Israel’s, so that YHWH may be appeased. We draw from popular sayings of how “Jesus died for us so that we didn’t have to”, and while there is a degree of truth to that, Phil 2:6-8 present us with a somewhat different image. In these passages and more, Jesus’ version of self-sacrifice is not portrayed as a substitution, or an exchange. His version of self-sacrifice is portrayed as a binding of himself to a failed people who don’t deserve him! And that’s what Moses is doing in Exo 32-33 – He is binding his life to those of his failed people. He is a priest for failed priests. And THAT is what self-sacrifice means.
• 7:12 - So what do Moses’ and Jesus’ versions of self-sacrifice mean for us as the people of God today? For the guys, this is a calling to be like the Good Samaritan, who sacrifices himself, not by exchanging his place with that of the man on the street, but by lowering himself from a position of privilege, and of being co-sufferers with him. That’s what it means to be a priest who sacrifices himself for the sake of others!

*

Connect with us at hello@ppcoc.org!