HEBREW WORD STUDY – WE WILL (ALL) GO – NELEKE נלכ
Exodus 10:9: “And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we [must hold] a feast unto the LORD.”
Dennis Prager in his new commentary on the book of Exodus (which I highly recommend) tells how, as a young man, he visited the then communist country of Bulgaria. The family he stayed with introduced him to their friends and neighbors. At one point he mentioned he was a Jew. This created some silence among the people for very few had ever met a Jew. They did not know what to say until one person asked: “Are they the people who take care of each other?”
The Jews were chosen by God to awaken the conscience of the world with the laws of God and following them into righteousness and when one’s conscience is struck you either change or turn against those who raise your conscience. Thus, the Jews are hated by many in this world. Even the Christian world finds their conscience pricked by the Jews and their pursuit of righteousness. Their devotion to the Word of God strikes the heart of every Christian who is not devoted to the word of God, their leadership in humanitarian pursuits strike the heart of every Christian who seeks to avoid their obligation to their fellow man.
What should really strike the conscience of the Christian community is a phrase which has entered the Jewish language as a commitment of Jews not to abandon other Jews in times of need or persecution – ba’ne’a’reinu u’z-kai’kai’neinu – We will all go, young and old. When Pharaoh asked Moses in verse 8 who would go to worship God he figured he would hold the ones left behind as hostage to ensure their return. Moses, however, said: “No way Pharaoh baby, we are all going, no one will be left behind, no one gets tossed under the bus.”
There is the lesson we Christians must learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters. The role of the pastors, the structure, form and traditions of our Christian churches are rapidly changing in this new digital age. Like the old ma and pa storefront grocery stores had to give way to the supermarket chains and big box stores so the traditional denominational and family run churches are giving way to the movement of super churches and their satellites. The church I grew up in is no more. This traditional family church dwindled down to just a handful of people and rather than fight to cling to old traditions, the church and building was donated by the few remaining members to one of the superchurches and became a satellite. The church is now thriving and ministering to the families and community in a new and more effective way.
But something else has happened, there are people who are being caught between this transition, they neither fit the new mold nor are they welcomed in the old traditional churches. Many pastors desperately trying to breathe life into their dying churches often ignore the “trouble makers” demanding change and they even pressure or encourage them to leave the church hoping the remaining faithful can rebuild their church to its old glory days.
I am not condemning the old church structure or the rising new structure nor declaring the demise of the traditional church, I am only saying that during this time of transition we must seriously follow the example of our Jewish friends and embed into our community the words ba’ne’a’reinu u’z-kai’kai’neinu – We will all go, young and old. In our desperate attempts to save our old family churches or build our new community churches we must never, ever pressure or encourage one Christian to leave our fellowship. Let them leave on their own accord, but in times of need or persecution we must never leave one believer behind.
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