They are things in this new place, like luscious olive trees and gigantic grapes, that they've never had before. Didn't plant them; didn't water them. They just walked into it. And so do we! Every day, God longs to fill us with His Goodness in our wilderness by deliverance of sin not circumstances. They started the trek to the Promised Land with 2 million people. More than half of one million will not make it to Canaan because---they are the people who were over 20 at the time of spying out the land and they all rebelled---and they lived during the 40-year walk; they grew to old age in the wilderness, but they'll never set foot in the Promised Land. What would that be like knowing that was your only home? And what about those who were under 20 and promised that they could grow up in the wilderness and walk out of it. How all of that meshed together in their minds is boggling to mine. "Watch yourself and don't forget..." Deut 6:12. Isn't the message the same today for me and you. Don't make any likeness that replaces God. God wants our holiness not comfort outside of a desert. Is our Christian world too set on the comforts of Christianity.
The LORD did not make a covenant with their fathers but says---the covenant is with you who are alive this day in the wilderness---alive this day right where you sit and read the most important words you'll ever know. "I am the LORD Your God" Who brought you here. C.S. Lewis knew what that meant: "I'm not safe, but I am Good." God is all about our holiness. God wants to release the beauty, the good, inside of each of us. He will destroy anything against Him. Crabb says it this way: "I know Goodness is in you, lodged deeper in your heart than badness. I know because I put it there. It is the Goodness of My Son." "I only kill to resurrect."
PRAYER FROM PSALMS
"Surely, God is good to Israel." Psalm 73:1. Surely! Though many forget that You have made them what they are this day. May we not forget Psalm 100:4 It is You, O God, Who has made us---not we, ourselves. If there is any good within us, it is You. And we give thanks!
OVERVIEW: Deuteronomy 5-7
Remember, be obedient...Moses' blessings and warnings
ReplyDeleteJames 1:23-25 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
So often we try to do things in our own power. As we read the words Moses spoke to the Israelites, we never see the words they broke free from slavery on their own. God did everything, the Israelites were to obey, just as we are to obey our Heavenly Father.
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