LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
How God Gets a Man and a People
"For God has bound all in disobedience, that he may have mercy on all" (Rom. 11:32).
Explaining why God allowed Israel to become a slave people, and Moses to become a fugitive murderer, has to do with how God obtains us.
Obtaining for himself a people of princes was not an easy thing for God (if we can speak like that); in the same way, to obtain for himself a man exalted in the highest of human glory, either. But yes, God could obtain a people of slaves and a murderer. "God held everyone in disobedience, to have mercy on everyone". Not push them to disobedience, but allow their disobedience.
We must not think that there was a nonsense in God. On the contrary, what God did was only offer the conditions so that both his people and Moses could know themselves, and not presume before God. God had the highest designs for them, but God is not served by a conceited people or a conceited servant. Therefore, it is an act of mercy of God who has allowed Israel to fall into slavery and Moses to commit murder, so that in this way his essential nature would be revealed.
All men are sinners, slaves to sin. As a type of the church, Israel had to begin its history as a people in slavery, so that the Lord would rescue it from there, as an example and figure of all those whom God would later rescue.
Our story begins in slavery, because everyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34). Its history had to be written with Israel from there, so that later it could be said of us as well: "But thank God, that although you were slaves of sin, you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered; and freed from sin, you became servants of righteousness" (Rom. 6:17-18).
It was the same with Moses. He was a murderer, just like all of us are. The Scripture says: "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has permanent life in him" (1 John 3:15). No one with the slightest degree of honesty can deny that he ever hated his brother. Maybe someone is doing it right now, which is why he is, in the eyes of God, a murderer.
Telling someone that he is a murderer can be highly offensive, and will be reason enough for his most bitter defense. However, when we reach that abyss of degradation, we have no arguments to make. Before becoming a slave, the people of Israel could have sworn that he would never be one. Before his fall, Moses could also have been very confident in cleansing his hands. But then there were no reasons.
When God lets us fall, all degradation has its nest and all evil emerges through our fallen flesh. Then God introduces his mercy, forgives us all, and can use us. Since then there will be no presumption.