Hewers of wood and drawers of water

When Moses was on Mt. Sinai, he received much more than the ten commandments. The ten commandments are central and essential, and the principles they teach still have application today. However, Hollywood has given many people a false representation of what occurred at Mt. Sinai. Moses made eight trips up Mt. Sinai:

     1. God offered the people the covenant (Ex 19:1-6).

     2. They agreed to the covenant (Ex 19:7-8a).

     3. God told Moses to tell them to be ready for the third day (Ex 19:8b-17).

     4. God told Moses to tell them to stay off the mount (Ex 19:18-25).

God spoke directly to the people and verbally gave them the ten commandments (Ex 20:1-20), but the tablets were not written yet. Moses reminded the people years later that they heard His voice but saw no similitude (Deut 4:12, Deut 5:23-28).

     5. God gave Moses various commandments (Ex 20:21-23:33).

     6. The 70 elders saw God (Ex 24:1-11).

     7. God gave Moses the tabernacle plan and the two tablets with the ten commandments (Ex

         24:12-31:18).

     8. The tablets were replaced and God gave Moses other commandments (Ex 34:1-28).

After the tabernacle was built and set up, Moses did not go back up Mt. Sinai. The tabernacle became the place to meet with God.

     Israel repeatedly fell into complaining and idolatry in the wilderness and even planned to return to Egypt (Ex 32, Num 11:5-20, Num 14:1-4 Eze 20:10-26, Acts 7:39-43). This behavior started almost immediately and continued throughout their wilderness journey. Moses had to intercede four times for them, because God was going to destroy them all and start over with Moses (Ex 32:1-18 & 31-35, Ex 33:5 & 12-17, Num 14:11-24, Num 16:20-22 & 41-50). Yet despite all that, there was one period where we see no complaining or idolatry. It was when they participated in the building of the tabernacle. In fact, they were so enthusiastic, they had to be restrained from giving because they brought too much (Ex 36:4-7).

     King Ahaz was a bad king and led Judah into sin. After his death, his son Hezekiah too over and immediately began reforming everything. When he was orchestrating restoring the temple system, he gave commandment to bring in the tithes. As soon as the people heard his commandment, they began bringing them in (2Chr 31:1-12). They did this for four months until they didn’t know where to put it all. It was all just piled up in heaps. When Hezekiah saw the heaps, he commanded that they make storage places in the temple for it all.

     These two incidents illustrate something some people miss in their relationship with God. The old saying says, “The idle mind is the devil’s workshop”. God wants us to live a balanced life wherein we manage our time and resources so that there can be times of rest. However, taking rest and being idle are two very different things. One of the most valuable things a Christian can do is to get involved with a local church and to participate in this community. In 1624, John Donne wrote a poem called “No Man is an Island”. The church is the body of Christ. If a body part is severed, it must be reattached quickly or it will become impossible to do it. Who are the complainers in the church? It is usually the armchair quarterbacks who don’t lift a finger to help.  The quickest way to get over that is to get involved. Do you see something that can be done better? Do it. Responsibility is not a curse. It is essential to our moral, emotional, physical, and financial health.

     When the nations in the promised land heard about Israel’s victory over Ai, they gathered together to form a massive army to attack Israel all at once (Josh 8-9). The Gibeonites tricked Israel into making a covenant of peace with them by pretending that they were not inhabitants of the promised land. Three days later, the Israelites found out they had been duped. They knew they couldn’t break the covenant, so instead they made the Gibeonites hewers of wood and drawers of water for the tabernacle. The priests needed a constant supply of wood to keep the fires in the altar from going out (Lev 6:12). They also needed a continual supply of water to ceremonially cleanse themselves when performing their duties (Ex 30:20). These menial tasks were allocated to the Gentile Gibeonites (Josh 9:21-27).

     400 years before Israel asked for a king, God knew it was going to happen (Deut 17:14-20, Deut 28:36). He set some rules to govern the king. He had to be an Israelite, he was not to multiply horses to himself, he was not to return to Egypt, he was not to have multiple wives, he was not to multiply silver and gold for himself, and he was to have his own copy of the law of Moses and read it every day. This was to prevent him from having his heart lifted up from his brethren, and from turning aside from God’s commandments. The first king of Israel was Saul (1Sam 8-30). He started out humble, but he fell in love with his position more than God, and it caused him to err to the point that God had to replace him with David (1Sam 15-16). Nobody looks at the reign of Saul as a success. Later, God chose David’s son Solomon to replace him when he died (2Sam 7). Solomon’s reign is looked at by Jews as the pinnacle of their nation’s existence in the Bible. However, despite Saul’s fatal flaw, he never did most of the things spoken of in Deuteronomy 17. It was Solomon who had stables built for his 40,0000 horses (1Ki 4:26). He had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1Ki 11:1-10), and they led him away from God to worship idols, and even to build these idols within sight of the temple he had built for God. That is enough women to have a different one every day for almost 4 years. Thus, he did indeed turn from God’s commandments, and even from his own advice to his son to avoid immoral women (Prov 1-9). When Solomon began building the temple, he had a labor force of 150,000 Gentiles to do the menial labor (2Chr 2:17-18). 70,000 bore burdens and 80,000 were hewers of wood.

     Do we see a pattern here? When people become too good, or too important, or too spoiled by prosperity, to “get their hands dirty” literally or figuratively, they are in grave danger. Moses warned Israel to take heed, lest when they settle into their new life in the promised land, that they don’t let their prosperity be their downfall (Deut 4:23-28, Deut 6:11-12, Deut 8:11-20, Deut 11:8-21). When the end of Judah was coming upon them, the prophet Jeremiah tried to turn them to repentance, but they would not listen. God told Jeremiah to go to the family of Rechab and offer them wine (Jer 35). They refused because their forefather commanded them to never drink wine nor to build themselves houses. He ordered them to live in tents, so they would live long in the promised land. It wasn’t that the houses in Judah were in danger of collapsing on them. He did not want them to forget that they were just pilgrims passing through this life. He did not want his family to be destroyed by their own prosperity. There were seven feasts in the law of Moses. Three of them required all Israel to travel to the capitol – the feast of unleavened bread in the spring, the feast of weeks also called Pentecost fifty days later, and the feast of tabernacles in the fall (Ex 23:14-19, Lev 23). The feast of tabernacles involved the people building booths something like a brush arbor. They were to live in these booths for a week so they could remember how they lived in tents in the wilderness before they settled into the promised land.

     God wants to bless and prosper His people (3Jn 2), but He does not want us to prioritize the earthly over the heavenly, the temporal over the eternal. In Matthew 6, the Lord told us not to worry about the earthly things, because God already knows what we need. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you (Mt 6:33).” King Solomon is mentioned above, but early in his reign God essentially gave him a blank check (1Ki 3:1-15). Instead of asking for things a typical king might ask for, like long life, riches, or victory over enemies, Solomon asked for wisdom to do his job as king. God replied that because he asked that, he was given the most wisdom; and he would get the riches and honor he could have asked for as well.

     There are no big “I”s and little “you”s in the kingdom of God. God raises up people to different offices, and those are worthy of honor when done well (1Tim 3:13, 1Tim 5:17, Heb 13:7 & 17). However, we must keep a level head about these things (Mt 18:1-5, Mt 23:1-12). The apostles quarreled several times about which of them would be the greatest (Mk 9:33-41, Mk 10:35-45, Lk 22:24-30). The Lord kept telling them that the way the world operates regarding authority was contrary to how things would be in the church. When Peter went to the house of Cornelius to preach the gospel, Cornelius fell down and worshipped him (Acts 10:24-26). Peter told him to get up because he was also a man. When Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra, they had to stop the people from worshipping them (Acts 14:6-18). There is no dishonor in being a hewer of wood or a drawer of water in the kingdom of God. The Lord honors all His servants, and calls them His children and His friends (Jn 15:13-15, 1Cor 12:23-24). He keeps a record of all that we do, so that the small task of giving a disciple a cup of water will not go unrewarded (Mt 10:42). If we get too big for the little things, we have gotten too big indeed. Neither should we relegate these “menial” parts of our relationship and service to God to others. However, there needs to be balance in this and all things. When there arose an issue about the Hellenized widows in the church being neglected, the apostles said, “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word (Acts 6:2-4)”. It was not that they thought themselves too important for this, but they needed to prioritize their unique calling and place in the church. It is a heart issue as well as a works issue.