Word of Encouragement (10/13/2022)
The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Num. 13:2b-3)
This complaint was the final draw. They were at the brink of entering the promised land, for which Abraham and his descendants had to wait 400 years! But when they heard the report of the ten faithless spies, this was how they reacted, and they refused to enter the promised land. But they did more than that, didn’t they? They wished that they had died in Egypt or in the wilderness than go into the promised land and face the Canaanites there. They would rather go back to Egypt and put themselves under the bondage of Pharaoh.
What a thing to say! The LORD brought them out of Egypt with signs and wonders, He parted the Red Sea and drowned the Egyptian chariots in it, He descended on Mount Sinai and spoke to them in an audible voice, He established a covenant with them to be their God and have them as His people, He provided water for them out of a rock, He rained manna from heaven and fed them, He provided meat for them, He led them through the wilderness with a pillar of cloud and fire, He shielded them from the heat of the sun and the cold of the night with the pillar of cloud and fire, etc. Yet, they accused the LORD that He had done all these things to trick them and brought them to the promised land only to kill them by the sword of the Canaanites.
Should we be surprised that God’s wrath was kindled against them? Upon hearing these words, God announced to Moses that He would destroy them. But at the plea of Moses, He relented and declared to do this instead—“As I live, declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.” (Num. 14:28-30).
You know what God was doing, don’t you? He was saying in effect, “I will give you what you wish for. If you think I’m such a horrible God, it will be done according to your faith.” This is the most terrifying thing we can hear from God, isn’t it? Indeed, hell is the ultimate expression of this: those, who refuse to have communion with God, will be separated from His blessed presence and subjected to His righteous wrath for all eternity.
What do you believe about God? Deep down, are you saying to Him, like the servant with one talent, “I knew you to be a hard [God], reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed” (Matt. 25:24)? And is that why you are afraid to get closer to God? That’s understandable. If we want to hold on to our idols, we will not want God to be our Lord. We will see Him as an adversary, not an ally and helper. We will have a hard time accepting that He is good because we don’t think He will give us what we want. That’s what an idol does to us, driving a wedge between us and God, making us prefer anything and everything but God.
As you can see, when we hold on to an idol, it perverts our perception of God. We ignore the great love He demonstrated to us by sacrificing His Son for our salvation while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). We even doubt whether God loves us or not. And we keep our distance from the One, who loves us more than we love ourselves and desires to give us what is best from the vantage point of eternity. Pray that you would taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8). As you do so, may you experience and enjoy His goodness more and more!