14. Hebrew Worship: The God Who Edits Prayers • by Arthur Burk • Sapphire Leadership Group, LLC • www.TheSLG.com • 1

14. Hebrew Worship: The God Who Edits PrayersSo Moses talks with Pharaoh. Pharaoh talks to the brickyard management. Hebrew labor forms a grievance committee to fuss to Pharaoh about unfair management practices. Pharaoh informs them this is a non-union shop. The Hebrews are angry.

Being pretty ordinary human beings, the first step in their anger management program was to find a scapegoat. Moses was nominated and won in a landslide.

Second step was to invoke God’s help in cursing Moses. “May the LORD look on you and judge you!” Exodus 5:21 NIV.

There was nothing ambiguous about their feelings.

Moses had no defense to offer the people. Clearly his actions had disrupted the status quo savagely. There was not any imaginable way to spin this.

Being a pretty ordinary human being himself, he defaulted to the oldest pain management tool known to mankind and passed the buck. In equally unambiguous terms, Moses told God, “You sure messed things up this time!”

The story continues. God pushed back at Moses. Moses pushed back at the people. The people pushed back against Moses. Moses pushed back against Pharaoh. Pharaoh pushed back against God, Moses and the people. Old news, I know.

But at the heart of the matter is God’s people cursing God’s people in the name of God. It wasn’t the first time it happened, and it wasn’t the last time either. Moses did what God told him to do. It brought immediate pain to the people of God. So they cursed him, asking God to punish him.

And, one doubts that it was a onetime mumbled imprecation. My guess is that a million men, women and children had some toxic things to say about Moses every day from that day to the Exodus itself.

Isn’t that special!

14. Hebrew Worship: The God Who Edits Prayers • by Arthur Burk • Sapphire Leadership Group, LLC • www.TheSLG.com • 2

Your sacrificial, cutting edge obedience nets you tens of millions of “prayers” asking God to judge you for your malfeasance.

So that is the pity party from our side. Now consider it from God’s side. You think YOU have spam in your inbox. Imagine all of the conflicting requests-for-urgent-curses-from-on-high in His inbox by the hour. Perhaps no one captured it as well as President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address.

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Nei-ther anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Today we will worship the God Who Edits All the Prayers People Have Prayed About Me!

And you.

14. Hebrew Worship: The God Who Edits Prayers

Copyright October 2015 by Arthur Burk

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