Friends with God – Abraham and Moses
Friends with God – Abraham and Moses.
“There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24).
Why did God create mankind? He didn’t need to, because He is utterly and eternally complete within the intimate communion of the Trinity. So He doesn’t really need us as if we could complete Him in any way. One simple way to look at this basic question is this… God created humanity because God is love, He wanted to spread around His love. He is so full of love that He wanted to create people in His image with whom He could enjoy friendship. God created us to have deep fellowship with Him, and He gets great joy out of that fellowship with each of us. He didn’t create us because it would complete Him in some way, He created us knowing that friendship with Him would complete us! The Trinity is so full of love that they couldn’t resist sharing their love with beings made in His image.
A Friendly Stroll in the Garden of Eden. Creator God tipped His hand right from the start after Adam and Eve were created. He could have simply gone rogue and kept a distance from His creation. He could have been a basically impersonal caretaker of the universe. But He didn’t. God made the universe, and then He wanted to get personal. God personally keeps track of everything in the world, including us, with whom He desires a friendship, a meaningful personal relationship. In Genesis 3:8, we find an amazing passage, “Adam and Eve heard the sounds of God’s voice as He was strolling through the Garden in the cool of the day with its fresh breeze. But the man and woman hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.” It is truly astounding that Creator God simply wanted to enjoy Himself with His friends. He wanted to have intimate fellowship with them and develop a deep friendship. That’s what He has always desired from the very beginning.
Hiding in Shame. But the parents of all mankind knew they had disobeyed God by listening to Satan and doing his bidding. So they hid from God in guilt and shame. They knew they would be fully exposed in their sin before God, and they hid themselves from His presence. God then mysteriously called out, “Where are you?” Of course, God knew very well where they were hiding, and He wanted to give them a chance to voluntarily come to Him and confess what they had done. They were well aware of what they had done… They broke God’s trust, they were unfaithful to the One who made them. The result of their disobedience was a stain in their relationship with God, it was a loss of the intimacy they once enjoyed with their Lord. No longer will they enjoy a friendship with God as a loving parent. And God expelled them from paradise. But God didn’t give up on them, He actually exiled Himself and followed them out of the Garden in order to remain a presence in their lives. God loved them too much to desert them.
There were two old saints in the Hebrew Bible who were said to be friends of God… Abraham and Moses. And they both demonstrated the truth found in Psalm 25:14, “The friendship of the Lord is reserved for those who fear Him.” The Hebrew word for friendship here is “sod,” which implies confidential conversation, secret counsel, the counsel of those who enjoy an intimate companionship. That’s the kind of friendship God will share with us when we acknowledge His greatness, we stand in awe of Him, revere and worship Him, and completely trust in His character. Bible interpreter Dr. Brian Simmons puts this passage this way, “There’s a private place reserved for the lovers of God, where they sit near Him and receive the revelation-secrets of His promises.”
“Abraham was a friend of God” (2 Chronicles 20:7; James 2:23; Isaiah 41:8)
“My Friend Abraham.” Abraham is the Biblical champion of saying hineni, ‘Here I am,’ saying it three times in one chapter alone (Gen. 22). By this time he and God were building an intimate friendship. Many years earlier, Abraham left his home in Ur at the simple urging of Yahweh, and “Abraham went forth as the Lord had spoken to him” (Gen. 12:4). When he and Sarai and his possessions finally made it to the land of Canaan, he built an altar at Bethel and “called upon the Name of Yahweh” (12:8). He made a little side trip to Egypt and returned to Bethel, and once again “called on the Name of Yahweh” (15:4). Abram was then known as “Abram of El Elyon, God Most High,” and was blessed by Melchizedek (14:19), the mysterious king and priest of Salem, soon to become Jerusalem. Yahweh then spoke to Abram in a vision and promised him a son and countless descendants. Abram fully trusted God and took God’s words to heart, as he always did. Fast forward to the miraculous birth of his son Isaac, and the divine encounter with the Lord in respect to the doom of Sodom. Abraham and the Lord seemed to be bargaining as to Sodom’s fate at that time, and they seemed to trust each other as close friends through the whole exchange (Gen. 18). As we approach chapter 22, it’s clear that Abraham is a model of faith in God, and that he maintained, usually, an attitude of “Here I am” with Yahweh. Abraham lived with God in the spirit of ongoing availability and trust. It’s no wonder why Abraham became known in Scripture as “the friend of God.
“Then they turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, ‘Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:22,25).
Challenging God? A prime example of Abraham’s friendship with God occurred when Abraham challenged God regarding Sodom’s destruction. What gave Abraham the right to challenge the almighty God? Call it the “right of friendship.” Abraham was known down through Biblical history as the friend of God (2 Chron. 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23). The Lord had just stated before the Sodom conversation that He “knew” Abraham (Gen. 18:19), which underlined an intimate personal relationship between the two of them. Besides that, God had just introduced this whole episode with a rhetorical question, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” (Gen. 18:17). In other words, like all close friends, God wasn’t about to keep a secret from His bosom buddy Abraham. And, as in any solid friendship, they are free to challenge each other in a spirit of respect and trust. God didn’t consider Abraham to be insolent or impudent. Abraham had chutzpah, was audacious, but not disrespectful. God and Abraham seemed to be reasoning together, which is what good friends do. God and Abraham enjoyed a faith-fueled friendship. “True faith requires bold perseverance. Sometimes it is expressed by brazen impudence. Faith can be defined as chutzpah. Persevere with unyielding tenacity.” (Brad Young, Jesus the Jewish Theologian).
“And it came to pass, when Moses entered the Tent, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the Tent, and Yahweh talked with Moses. So the Lord Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” (Exodus 33:9,11).
Moses, Face to Face. When God and Moses were said to have spoken to each other “face to face,” a few questions come to mind. God is said to be a spirit (John 4:24), and spirits do not have a human form. Since God is a spirit, He then has no body, no less a face. Besides that question, we find a little later in this same chapter Exodus 33, that God told Moses not to try to see His face, and that he wouldn’t survive the experience if he did (Ex. 33:18-20). God is implying here that His face, His whole Person, would overwhelm Moses’ human capabilities. A mere human being would not be able to tolerate the fullness of God’s glory. God’s full presence is heavenly, not earthly. We can only experience a portion of God’s glory, so Moses would be limited to the “back” of God’s presence, only a portion of His glory. God is a “consuming fire” (Ex. 24:17 and Heb. 12:29). So to approach God in His complete presence would be similar to our attempting a journey to the surface of the sun. We earthlings are simply not made to be able to do that. So God covered Moses’ eyes and passed by him as he was hidden in the cleft of a rock. At that, Moses could only sneak a peek at the “backside” of the Lord (v. 22).
Presence to Presence. In the ‘face to face’ interaction between God and Moses, there are many, if not most, who would say that “face,” as it does in many other passages, is meant to be translated as “presence.” Face to face is a metaphor, a figure of speech, that means “presence to presence.” In other words, God and Moses were intimately present with each other. Face to face is a way of describing the strong bond of friendship that God and Moses enjoyed. Face to face is not meant to be taken literally. That phrase conveys a two-way relationship, with no third party involved. It meant one person able to personally communicate clearly and directly with another person. It’s not unlike another phrase we don’t use literally but we know what it means… a “heart to heart” conversation. Of course, our hearts are not actually interacting with each other. Face to face is similar to that, in which there is the implication of deep personal contact. Moses reported a similar figure of speech in Numbers 12:8, when the Lord said, “With Moses I speak mouth to mouth.” With Moses I can have a meaningful conversation, says the Lord. Face to face means it was a real exchange between them in real time, not in a vision or a dream. The conversation actually occurred in the context of reality, but it wasn’t literally face to face. If Moses looked at Yahweh God full in the face, He wouldn’t be merely radiating God’s light as he did so often. He would have been burnt to a crisp.
Friendship with God. When we become friends with God, the qualities of true friendship are of course present, since the whole idea of friendship was invented by Him. God is the original source of all the qualities that make a friendship, such as: Trust and Faith in each other; Loyalty and Faithfulness to each other; Transparency and Openness with each other; Mutuality and Reciprocity between each other; Sacrifice and Self-denial for each other; Patience and Intentionality when building a friendship together; Willingness to Obey what the friend has requested to demonstrate the friend-love, the trust, and to serve the friend’s best interests.
As we study this idea and the reality of our friendship with God, we will explore what Jesus meant when He told His disciples in His last days, “No longer do I call you servants… You are my friends.” (John 15:14-15). We will also discuss the stunning idea that the pure and righteous Son of God was also “a friend of sinners.” And then to complete the Trinity, we find that the Holy Spirit is a Friend as well, wonderfully described with the name used in John, the “paraclete,” “one who is called to come alongside of.” (John 14:15-26). So there we have it. God the Father had friends in the Hebrew Bible. The Son Jesus had His friends in practically everyone He met. And the Holy Spirit is now our Friend as we grow in Christ. Do we need any more proof that our Creator has maintained a desire to build friendships with mankind ever since the Garden? Yes, indeed, we do have a friend that sticks closer than a brother, and that friend is God!
Enjoy this amusing film clip from Jungle Book, and the meaningful lyrics that could be obscured by the comedic setting. Read/listen to the lyrics, and interestingly enough, we will get a pretty clear picture of the type of friend that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit desires to be for each of us.
That’s What Friends are For (The Vulture Song) (From “The Jungle Book”/Sing-Along)