WAS ONCE LOST BUT NOW I AM FOUND
When seeing his chosen people turning away from Him and worshipping the golden calf made of their hands, God was full of wrath, dressing down Moses, “Your people whom you brought out of Egypt…” sounding like God is disowning his people. A blaming game when relationship in a family goes sour. God threatened to consume them all in his wrathful blaze. Poor Moses had to absorb the wrath of God.
Moses’ response was so wonderful. He gently tried to calm down the angry God by reminding God that they were God’s own people whom God had brought out of Egypt, not Moses’. Then Moses walked God back to the promise he had made to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and how God promised them the inheritance. God was eventually calmed down, and Moses won the day. Moses was a great mediator!
The beauty of the story is that God is personified with emotion, and that He can be pacified and change His mind. It turns out that God can be very forgiving. God is portrayed in a very human manner that we can relate to Him on human terms. All it took was a Moses who played well the role of mediator.
Moses reminds us of the role of Jesus as the mediator between sinful humankind and God. Our sinfulness and its consequence are so great that nothing we can do to redeem ourselves, but death. So, Jesus steps in to intercede for us on our behalf as Moses did for the people of Israel. The difference between Jesus and Moses is that Jesus, the new Adam, paid the ransom for us with his own blood shed on the cross.
The gospel of the lost sheep and the lost coin found takes us to a higher plane of the joy of forgiveness. The joy is so great to the point of exaggeration that a party is thrown out for the whole neighbourhood, or the whole heaven rejoices more over one repentant sinner than the ninety-nine who don’t have to repent. It is an overwhelming joy, too great not to celebrate. That’s the point.
The God of Jesus is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He, like the good shepherd or the woman losing the coin, takes the initiative to search out for us. Once He has found us, He rejoices over us.
“I was once lost but now I am found”.
