The Wedding of a King (Psalm 45)

The heading for this Psalm calls it a love song, and in it we see a bride and groom prepared for each other. But with Paul’s words in the New Testament I think we can also see Christ and the church.

In large part this is because of verses 1-9, which describe a king. This could just be a king, a king like David or Solomon, but the language points to Christ. Verse 1 is almost a statement of worship:

“My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;

I address my verses to the king;

my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.”

Here I am to praise the King. The King described here has “grace poured upon his lips” (verse 2) which leads me to think that from his mouth grace is shared, and certainly Jesus’ words are full of God’s grace.

Also in verse 2: “God has blessed you forever.” Verse 3: “Gird your sword on your thigh, O Mighty one, in your splendor and majesty.” These are words that could be describing an earthly king, but they are also fitting to describe the King of Kings.

Verses 4 and 5 begin to blur the distinctions between this King and God. In fact, it seems as if the writer is writing about God here, because the King is doing things God does:

“In your majesty ride out victoriously

for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness” (verse 4)

God is the one who fights for the weak and the righteous. But this passage is addressed to the king:

“You are the most handsome of the sons of men” (verse 2)

This is about a man, and Christ is a man. This is about God, and Christ is God. If we continue to read Jesus into this text we will find more and more how He fits perfectly. His strength destroys evil:

“Your arrows are sharp

in the heart of the king’s enemies;

the people fall under you.” (verse 5)

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, uses the same language:

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’” (1 Cor. 15:26-27)

But then (returning to Psalm 45), in verse 6 the writer addresses this King (and I believe he is still addressing the king, because of verse 7) as God:

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness” (verse 6)

This can’t be describing David, because he died. This king is righteous, so that rules out a lot of succeeding kings…and they also died. No, this has to about Jesus, who rules by righteousness and whose throne is forever and ever. No other king can claim that.

Also, the writer calls him God, and in verse 7 he makes a distinction in Trinitarian language:

“You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.

Therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions”

“God, your God” is addressed to the king the writer just called God. It’s Jesus and the Father. “God, your God has anointed you” – “Christ” means “anointed one.”

“…with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” The New Testament describes Christ as the most exalted, the most beloved, beyond anyone else – He is given a better seat than anybody else, He is held in a place of honor higher than anybody else. This can’t be talking about God the Father because God the Father doesn’t have any companions, which I mean as “equals” or “contemporaries”. Nobody else is like God, God has no peers or classmates from ’00. But Jesus, having become a man – while staying fully God – He can call other men and women peers and companions, and in Mark 3:34-35 Jesus calls those who do the will of God his brothers and sisters.

One last detail on verses 1-9: “your robes are all fragrant with myrrh” – I need to find out more about myrrh, like what the heck it is, but I can’t help seeing the Jesus connection here.

Now the psalm shifts to a bride and a wedding. Who could this great king be marrying? The language here also points to more than what’s on the surface, it points to the Church.

The writer tells the bride to “forget your people and your father’s house” (verse 10). That seems to be a small detail wedding in a regular wedding, but in Christ-Church language it is a call to the broken, the weary, the sinners. Forget where you came from, because you now belong to Christ.

For some reason the writer ties that into this idea: “and the king will desire your beauty” (verse 10). If we abandon sin and lift our lives and our hearts to God – if we accept Christ – we will be made righteous like Him. We, as a church, will be beautiful and pleasing to our King. And, “Since he is your lord, bow to him” (verse 11).

This leads to a wedding, and the Bible is full of wedding imagery. Jesus’ first miracle is at a wedding. In Revelation, at the end of time those made righteous by Christ (His church) are led to Jesus in the biggest wedding ever. A wedding is happy, and joyous, it’s about a covenant (and Jesus is the new covenant) and commitment. It’s a time of happiness – “With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king” (verse 15). We are happy at weddings because two together made into one are better than two apart. The Church needs Christ, and when He is finally here we will wonder how we ever got along without Him – that is, Him in the flesh, because He is already ever present (Matthew 28:18-20).

This marriage between Christ and the church, God and man, is celebrated throughout scripture. Isaiah writes:

“Fear not, for you will not be ashamed…

For your Maker is your husband,

the LORD of hosts is his name…

For the LORD has called you

like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,

like a wife of youth when she is cast off,

says your God.” (Isaiah 54:4, 5, 6)

Finally, the writer of Psalm 45 turns back to addressing the King:

“I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations;

therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.” (verse 17)

Since He was born Jesus has been sought after to worship, His name has always been the most important and He is the most important person in all of history. “Nations will praise you” – just like Rev. 7:9-10 we see:

“…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (verse 9).

Three Observations in Exodus 6

Three things stick out to me in this first part of Exodus 6 (read it here), before the genealogy. First is the way God identifies Himself. It never really stuck out to me, but God often identifies Himself throughout the Bible as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think this little detail says a lot about God Almighty (Exodus 6:3).

Other false gods, gods created by human beings, are often the "god of" something. Venus is the goddess of love, Mars the god of war. These gods have power that is specialized and limited to a certain area, often an aspect of culture (Dionysus, the god of wine). Sometimes they are simply the personification of an emotion (Cupid).

The true God is Lord over all emotions or aspects of culture, Lord over all of creation. He controls the seasons, the weather, the planet's rotation and orbit, and He makes the crops grow, and on and on. He has a claim to any number of titles for Himself - any number of ways He can identify Himself to Moses, but He chooses two.

1) "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14). God chooses not to say I am the God of (fill in blank). That right there would seem powerful enough. A god who controls volcanoes would be pretty powerful. But for God, the real God, that association alone limits His power. He is not just a God who controls volcanoes. He does much, much, much more than that and His power is far, far greater. The best way God can describe His greatness is by simply saying "I am who I am." Beautiful and incomparable.

2) God reveals Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God associates Himself with people. This is incredible! This says volumes about who God is.

First, we see humility. God is far greater than Abraham, yet He identifies Himself with him. This kind of humility is a part of who Jesus is.

Second, we see God's grace. Who were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the God of the universe identifies Himself with them? They were nobodies! They were sojourners in a distant land (Exodus 6:4). Abraham likely worshipped the moon and other false gods before meeting the true God. Then there's Isaac, a man who makes the same mistakes as his father with his wife (Genesis 26) and we see him playing favorites with his children; Jacob is so messed up that he doesn't get married until he's seventy - which he does after stealing his brother's birthright and tricking his father into a deathbed blessing. These guys were messed up and evil.

And yet God changed them. Because of God we who are in faith are called children of Abraham. The nation of Israel is named after Jacob. These men are some of the most famous men who ever lived because God changed them. When God says He is the God of Abraham, ISaac, and Jacob not only can MOses connect that this is the God of his ancestors but also that this is the God who took these messed up guys and made them into men of God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their changed lives are a testament to God's wonderful, all-powerful grace.

So when God says He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob He is choosing what He will be identified as having dominion over. Now, unlike false pagan gods He does have power over everything, but He chooses here to show that it's people He cares about and His dominion is over their hearts. Praise God!

"I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." (Exodus 6:7)

This is the second thing that stuck out to me. Here is another big difference between all the world's false gods and the one true God. God is the only God who has ever said, "I will be your God." What an invitation and a promise! Here we see that God is not a distant, uncaring force to be discovered, He is a loving Creator inviting His children back to Him. "I will be your God." He says this throughout the Bible, often talking about the change that happens when we believe in Christ, are regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and changed from the inside out (Deuteronomy 30:6, Ezekiel 36:26-29; 37:23; 37:27). God initiates, we respond. We don't search for God, nobody truly does! It is only by God's Holy Spirit that we come to God, only by His promise that He will be our God that we become His people. In other religions you have to make up your god and appoint them head over you. But with God it's the other way around. He appoints us under Him and as His people.

The last thing I noticed was something I underlined when I first read through Exodus:

But Moses said to the LORD, "Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?" (Exodus 6:12).

I wrote down near it 'God is patient'. Moses has already presented this fear to God. Sometimes the same things and fears come back, but God is very patient. We won't realize just how much until we get to heaven. But even now God's patience is seen in the dawning of each new day - because really the world should be destroyed for its evil but -

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

Thanks God for these revelations of Your character in Your word.

The Everlasting (Exodus 1)

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, so let’s do it. God, draw me nearer to You, help me think and meditate on Your beautiful word, for man cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from You (Deut. 8:4).

Exodus chapter one: our favorite family returns in the sequel to Genesis. God told Abraham in the book of Genesis everything that would happen to his descendents (the nation of Israel) in the book of Exodus and the following books of the Bible:

“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nations that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.” (Genesis 15:13-14)

One reason we can know that God is God and trust that He is in control is that He knows the future. At the end of the Bible Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). There, I just quoted from the beginning of the Bible and the end. God knew the very words that would be in Revelation when He spoke to Abraham in Genesis. He knew the events of the world and the Bible in between, He knew every person that would live, how that person would act, how all those actions would lead to the birth of His Son and He knew how people would react to all these events now, 2,000 years after His Son was born. This is incredible! He also knew every name that would be added to His kingdom, He knew our names before He even spoke to Abraham. In Paul’s words:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

Before God made Mount Everest He knew my name and that Jesus Christ would die in my place, also dying in many others’ places; so that I could stand blameless before Him, so that my heart’s purest desire – to be with my Lord Jesus Christ – may be fulfilled. Praise God! Why does He do this? Paul goes on: “In love.” God does this in love for us, so that we may be blessed and so that He may be glorified. Before the sun was lit, He knew He would save me so that I may delight in Him forever.

Praise be to God! Our God is in heaven, He is in control forever! Never will His throne be shaken, never will He be defeated or overthrown, never will He be anything less of value than He is now, has been, and forever more will be.

In comparison the universe – all of God’s creation – is always expanding, according to astronomers. If the universe, which is simply God’s creation, is always growing, stretching to infinity, how much more infinite is its Creator! How much farther His power and might expands beyond the beyond, beyond the farthest reaches of space.

This reminds me of an old fear I had: What if God isn’t that great? Let me rephrase, I don’t mean to say, “not great at all”, but what if He is only great to a degree, and then it levels off? What if His power does cap off, even if (if God can be “measured”) it is at the millionth zero? Even at that power God would still have a number, a cap that He could not surpass. To me this is extremely unsatisfying – even if God still was the greatest Being in the universe, if He wasn’t infinite, but finite, only powerful and great to a certain degree, that would be disappointing (to say the least!).

Thankfully, this is not true. The Lord is as great as your feeble imagination can imagine, and He is infinitely more so! Our brains can’t even handle how deep and beautiful our God is, how many mysteries of His character have yet to be revealed, how unending He is!

Lord, you have been our dwelling

place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or even you had formed the earth and

the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you

are God. (Psalm 90:1-2)

From never-beginning to never-ending. This is hard for me to grasp at times simply because I’m human and have a very limited perspective. Everything humanity knows has a beginning and an end, the houses we live in, the food we eat, even our own lives have a start and end date. History has a beginning, time itself has a beginning. And God created it all, so He gave creation its start date. Its hard and unnatural to imagine something without age – but God is! He tells Moses, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). He is who He is. He cannot be compared to anything. In fact, that may be why its hard to understand Him sometimes, because He is incomparable.

We often understand something by comparing two things. If, for example, I am looking for new music and find a band that looks interesting, I can get a quick understanding of what they are like if someone tells me, “They are like the Beatles” – a comparison helps me understand. Of course, once in a while you run into a band that is unexplainable, you simple have to listen to the, think about them, study them if you want to understand them. We like this, it is a rare thing to find something that is unique. But ultimately the bands we do think are unique aren’t, somebody else will sound like them (and, if nothing else, they are still playing music, which is not unique for a band). If it is the unique we are looking for, the only truly unique thing that has ever existed is God. Nobody is like Him. Nobody ever will be! If there was anybody else who has been around “from everlasting to everlasting” then they would already exist right now because they’ve always existed. But nothing besides God has existed forever. If somebody were to arise now to compete with God for His uniqueness and character they would automatically be disqualified from such a useless competition because they have a starting date. God does not and never will. And He never will have an ending date.

“I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14)

So back to Exodus. God, the Lord of history, brings the whole house of Israel to Egypt. Jacob, the father of Israel, knows God and is a believer. At the beginning of Exodus his family has become a part of a foreign culture with different gods and different beliefs. One of the themes of Exodus and one of the reasons I love it is because God uses the country, these people, these events, to show Egypt and the world who the true God is. How many Egyptians came to believe in the Lord at this time? I’ve never thought about that before, but in Exodus God is not only saving His chosen people from physical slavery and oppression He is also saving many Egyptians from slavery to idolatry and paganism by simply revealing Himself for who He is: “I am that I am.”

What we know about Egypt today is that they used to worship many gods. There were gods for the sun, moon, stars, life, death. It is interesting that this belief system has consistently been around in human history. Today people will pray to a stone god who is the patron god of (fill in blank) with sincerity the same way that people did thousands of years ago.

We are made to worship, we are made to glorify our Creator, but when we stop worshipping the Everlasting and start worshipping something with a beginning and an end date we are creating idols. And we do this all the time, whether we are bowing down before a carved statue or we are bowing down to the thing we love the most (like alcohol or sex.) We need to worship the right God, the One, the true God, who exists in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God who frees and redeems lives, as we will see in Exodus.

7/4/09

The Existence of God and the Problem of Evil

A common argument against the existence of God (or at least the Christian God, or a benevolent God) is the presence of evil in the world. If God is benevolent and omnipotent how could He allow evil? That is, if God is good and all-powerful why is there evil? This leads to many questions – we know that evil is real, therefore if we assume God is real and good, then what does the the presence of evil say about God's omnipotence? Is He simply a God with good intentions but unable and incapable of stopping evil? Or, in a more horrifying situation, is God malevolent?

This problem begins with five assertians, assertians about the character of God (and God here is often defined in the Christian sense) and the presence of evil. The problem is that they can’t all be true because they contradict one another (which is a narrow way of thinking, often times in nature we see things we qualities A,B, and C that should by no logic exist, but they do!). The five assertians are 1) God exists, 2) God is perfectly good, 3) God is omniscient, 4) God is omnipotent, and 5) There are instances of evil in the world. Let’s take this apart piece by piece. It is my argument that they are not only incompatible but all true, even in paradoxically. In fact it makes less sense that less than all of these are true. Either they are all true or only one is true (number five).

The first assertian that is undisputably true is number 5: “There are instances of evil in the world”. Only a fool would argue otherwise. In a city like London all you have to do is turn on the news. So, with this one assumed as true, let’s move on to the other pieces, where philosophers begin to have problems.

The next important assertian is that God exists. Throughout human history the question of the supernatural has existed, it is still relevent today and (as far as I’m concerned) as long as we’re human it will be. What is meant by God? Many people from televangelists to men in clean shirts on bicycles going door-to-door would love to offer you an answer, but for now let’s define God by that definition that’s in our guts (the one we have when think of God), that is, the idea of a higher being who is much different than us. So, if we accept – for the sake of argument – that assertian number one is true, then we know two things: God is real, and there is evil in the world. Which leads us to the qualities of God.

“God is perfectly good” - this idea belongs to Judeo-Christian traditions and has not always been part of a culture’s conception of God (the Greek and Roman gods could hardly be called “perfectly good”, in fact, interestingly, they were as bad as humans). So now we are narrowing our definition of God, saying that He is not partly good, or not a cosmic mixture of good and evil, but all good. As in, there is no evil in Him. But an easy objection is raised: if this is true, how does that fit in with assertian number five (“There is evil”)? Assertian number five is undisputably true, it is the assertians that “God exists” and “God is perfectly good” that are a logical climbing further out on a tree limb. For now, let us continue along this tree limb and assume that somehow assertians one, two and five are all true (which is still concievably possible).

“God is omniscient.” To be omniscient is to be all-knowing, or infinitely knowing. In short, if God is omniscient He not only understands all things but is infinitely aware of them. If God is omniscient then He knows where I am as I write this sentence, and He also knows where a small pebble on the surface of Mars is, and what it’s doing (is it being blown upon by the wind?), but on top of that He’s also aware of information like how many pebbles and rocks there are on the whole planet of Mars, or how many neurons are in my brain and how they are sending commands to my fingers to type. If you think about it, there is a lot that could be known and a lot that could be observed. We are limited in both thought and observation, the moment we think of something we are excluding everything else we could be thinking of, the moment we observe something, say, the moment I fix my eye on Big Ben it makes it impossible for me to observe the Eiffel Tower (in fact, I can’t even observe all of Big Ben, but only one side or angle at a time out of an infinite number of sides or angles). But God, if He is omniscient, is both all-knowing and all-observing and conscience of everything in this universe, from this planet to the sun to the stars in the furthest galaxy.

If this is true, then God would be fully aware of every evil action in the world, in fact, He would be aware of every evil action ever. If we wanted a record of every evil thing ever done He could easily give us one. The alternative is that, assuming our previous assumptions are true, God isn’t omniscient. This is often an attempt to find an “easy” answer to evil and God by saying that if God exists and is good, He simply doesn’t know about it. This is comforting if we are trying to prevent ourselves from considering the idea that God is good and all-knowing of evil yet there is still evil. If God is God, aware of evil and benevolent, wouldn’t that mean that He would stop evil? This leads us to the final assertian.

“God is ominpotent”, He has unlimited power. Here all of our previous assertians come together and we can go one of two ways: we can believe that God is omnipotent, that all five assertians are true, even if they are at first glance difficult to reconcile, or we can believe that God is not omnipotent. This is what many philosophers argue. If God exists and is good and is omnipotent then there (according to their logic) would be no evil in the world. But there is evil in the world, so this undoes (for these philosophers) any notion that a an able, powerful, and benevolent God exists. But there is a flaw in this logic, in that it is logic.

Very often we find in nature things that should not, in a logical world, exist. Yet they do. For example, in chemistry there is a very logical order to the different states of matter: matter is (at any time) either a solid, a liquid, or a gas. They teach this very early on in school because it is highly logical and understandable, and its easy to understand the relationship between the three; if you increase an object’s temperature it will proceed from solid to liquid to finally a gas, and so on. But what doesn’t makes sense is the highly illogical but completely real nature of “triple point”. The “triple point” of a substance is when the “three phases [solid, liquid, gas] are in equilibrium” (Gold Book). For example, it is when H₂O is at the same time ice, water, and steam. I am told this is true and I believe it (because people much smarter than I believe it) but I can not for the life of me concieve of it. But this does not change its truth or its validity, it only means that I have a small mind and a small imagination.

To apply philosophical arguments on the existence of God based on the question of evil to an empircal discovery of something like “triple point”, it would seem impossible for something like “triple point” to exist, though it does. I do not pretend to know how it exists (logically), but I do know that it does. To argue against it would be against the human spirit of discovery, in fact, such phillistine attitudes are against all areas of discovery: they do not ask questions to seek the truth, they ask the questions to get better answers. If we applied such logic to all areas of discovery in biology, chemistry, and physics, or geology or space exploration we would never learn anything if our first assumption was that whatever we found must fit in with what we already know. Science is always contradicting itself as new discoveries are made that make no logical sense, but, do exist.

Now, to apply the “triple point” metaphor in a new way, we have the same paradox with these five basic assertains about God and evil, that some philosophers (with a small imagination) say cannot all be true. If all are true, that is, God exists, He is perfectly good, He is all-knowing and all-powerful, and there is evil in the world, how does evil exist? And if evil exists, does that mean God doesn’t? Philosophy says the discussion ends here, there are no logical alternatives, but what if we have another “triple point” on our hands? What if all five assertians are true, even though it may be hard to explain, even to comprehend?

Let us focus on Christianity, for the sake of simplicity and because it is the Christian notion of God (benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent) that is being discussed. Christianity believes in a God who created the universe, who is all powerful, who is all-knowing, and is all-loving, and who wants to call Him “Dad”. How does Christianity reconcile such a wonderful and hopeful portrait of God with the reality of evil, or suffering, or pain? First, Christianity’s response is that evil does not come from God, but it is still not outside of His control. He does not lose the quality of “perfect goodness” if He cannot twist evil for good, in fact, He loses His omnipotence if He cannot. In the Old Testement a man named Joseph says to his brothers who betrayed him: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20, ESV). Here is a profound theoligical claim of the Christian God: He is so powerful that evil is bent to His will and changed forever.

I would argue that if one were to inspect closely the claims of Jesus and the Christian God one would find the most satsifying answers of any philosophy in the world. The entire Bible is about the hope of hopes, a time in the future when God will return to earth and destroy evil forever, so that one day it will be a vague memory. In fact the promises of the Bible are that every evil ever done will be undone, because here is God’s true omnipotence, His power to undo every evil we have ever commited. We have ravaged the earth with deforestation and pollution, God will restore it in a new earth, we have destroyed our bodies through overeating, misuse and poor care, He will give us new bodies that will not wear out; we have blackened our hearts with evil actions and thoughts, God will give us a new heart and a new mind, one free from committing evil. If this is true, then this “triple point” is more exciting and hopeful than anything in the world, even if it is paradoxical. But sometimes that’s what’s needed to explain the truth: a paradox.

I’ll end my argument with the central paradox to Christianity: the image of Christ on the cross. Nothing could be more brutal and depressing, yet nothing is more hopeful. A symbol of death as well as life, a point at which evil seems victorious yet is sorely defeated. It really is fascinating to comprehend, and perhaps one of the greatest problems of philosophical thought today is a lack of imagination, a lack of considering the truth to be true in light of contradiction, nay, because of contradiction.

Our God is Sovereign (Deuteronomy 2)

There is a very dangerous idea creeping into the Christian church today known as “open theism”, basically the idea that history is partly open-ended. Or, to put it a different way, that God is making things up as He goes. Perhaps this allows that He foreknew events that were and are to happen, but at any rate He did not plan them. The God who created atoms and chemical combinations and osmosis and stars and the planets and light can not control history, but He’s doing His best to shape it how He wants it.

This is a blatant lie and it completely obliterates God’s sovereignty. Does it really sound like the God who created time doesn’t control the events that happen within it? And on top of that He's not a machine who can simply predict all possible outcomes. God is not a computer that can simply calculate all the different possible events of history from which He chooses the best one, no, God is God and in complete control.

I think this theology is coming about as an easy response to the question of “Why does God allow bad things to happen?” At first this response is comforting: “Okay, God didn’t plan for that to happen, it’s not His fault, He’s trying to deal with it like me.” This comfort grows thing when we realize that in order to accept this we lose the person of God! How can you have a perfect Being with perfect power who can’t control the future? And if God can’t stop bad things from happening, who can?

When suffering and pain happens to us it is much more comforting to know that God is sovereign, God is in control, and He will see me through this. It may be harder to swallow at first (“Why would God allow this to happen to me?”) but in the end we have more hope and a firm foundation if we acknowledge our God is in complete control.

But somehow for us, just like Israel in Deuteronomy 2, its hard to know what God’s up to and its hard to know why He would allow us to face such trials. Here in Deuteronomy 2 the nation of Israel has been turned away from the Promised Land and forced to wander around for many years in the wilderness. This is a trial, and a hard one.

But once again, this is a trial that God is in complete control of – not as a bully who’s simply trying to see who can last or survive, or who can “pass the test”, but as a loving God who wants people with obedient and loving hearts.

When you think about it, if you look to your life or other’s lives you find that we often grow the most in trials, in the most difficult moments of life. We find strength or character we didn’t know we had; if you believe in God you come out the other side of trial with a fuller faith and a stronger conviction in God’s saving hand.

In the New Testament, after Jesus had rose again and the good news was spreading and people were becoming Christians daily, the Apostle Peter wrote a letter to believers who were being hunted and murdered for their faith. The Roman Empire was a little different than the United States and to say you believed in Jesus often meant death. This was largely because Caesar was God and to say Jesus was God was treason. But as Christians, we’re not really allowed to say anything else. So many Christians faced severe trials where they had the choice of leaving the faith or dying, often painfully These Christians were so changed and so convinced that Jesus had died for them and Jesus was God that they chose death over life.

Peter wrote to address such suffering. Imagine Peter, a church leader, a pastor, overseeing churches and seeing people’s lives change, and as his church grows people start getting murdered. Imagine being a pastor and not knowing who would make it to church next Sunday because your people were being hunted and killed – imagine officiating as many funerals as weddings.

Yet Peter does not write about the persecution of the church as a horrible misfortune that is out of God’s hands, but rather, he place their situation right in it. In fact, read how Peter begins his letter:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-2)

Look at his language! He doesn’t just call them “exiles”, he calls them “elect exiles”, as in, they had been chosen to be exiles, and Peter emphasizes “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” God appoints where we live and when we live there, and He is in complete control over the location of every one of these exiles. And with the benefit of hindsight we can now see that the gospel would not have spread nearly as quickly as it did if it hadn’t been persecuted and dispersed. So what was a horrible time where it seemed like God had no control, God had complete control.

The letter continues:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Look at what joy and faith Peter had in God even in the midst of persecution!

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise, and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-8)

For a letter written to a dying people this is unexpectedly joy-filled. This is not a depressing war-time speech to “Give it all you got” and “Hold on to the end”, no, the persecuted believers are heading towards Christ and His victory, through which they have gained everything! The future is unimaginably glorious and bright for those who believe in God. In comparison to such joy present sufferings are endurable and they will pass. As the writer of Hebrews puts it:

…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Christianity is one of the only religions that can offer an answer to suffering because it will pass. As it says in Revelation:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21:4)

Ever since Jesus rose from the dead and promised to return we have been in a situation much like Israel wandering around in the wilderness. They were longing to settle in the Promised Land, we long to be with Jesus. They faced daily trials in the wilderness and so did the Christians Peter wrote to and so do we.

But this period of waiting is not in vain: Jesus is perfecting our faith and growing us to be in His kingdom, just like He was growing and perfecting Israel’s faith before entering the Promised Land. During this trying time Moses is told by God to tell Israel:

For the LORD your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the LORD your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing. (Deut. 2:7)

God knows every struggle we go through and He will see us through it. Through struggle and trial we learn things we never could without struggle and trial, such as the beautiful truth that God is always with us, and He is all we need. Come what may tomorrow, should I lose my family, a place to live, food to eat, friends, everything I live by, I still have Jesus; and that can never be taken away from me:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all

the day long;

we are regarded as sheep to be

slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, no r height nor depth, no anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

Jesus is true comfort when pain and suffering strike, not only because He loves us but because He knows exactly what we are feeling, and He gave up His own life in obedience to God:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Hebrews 5:7-8)

And:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

God cares deeply about Israel’s suffering in the wilderness and about our trials today, and He will see us through everything because He Himself has suffered everything for us. In order to stay obedient to God the Father God the Son became flesh and took on all of our weaknesses and allowed Himself to suffer and be murdered in place of us for our sins. It is because of Jesus we have hope and confidence in what is to come, now that we have been made clean and pure by His death. Now we can press into God and long for the Promised Land – that is, to be in God’s presence, with Jesus – and know that any amount of suffering and waiting will be worth it. But even now we are not alone, and I’ll close with Jesus last words in Matthew:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

Sin (from my Bible Study notes)

These are my notes from when I prepare for my weekly Bible study. The theme is “Desiring God”, John Piper’s book, which argues that if we are serious happiness-seekers we will pursue God more than anything, because everything else cannot compare. Every week we look at a different topic (e.g. love, sin, truth…) and try to see differences between the way our culture sees it, we see it, and the way God sees it. It’s important to get God’s opinion on everything and realize if we are viewing something like “love” in a less than godly way.

In the beginning, God made us and it was good (Genesis 1:31).

Look at Genesis 3: THE GARDEN

The serpent tempts Eve by twisting God’s word. Compare God’s words to the serpent’s words:

GOD:

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 3:16-17)

SERPENT:

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1)

Eve’s response is not entirely accurate:

“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Gen. 3:2-3)

MISCONCEPTION: When I was growing up I thought in Genesis 3 God was pulling the wool over our eyes and that He was holding back “knowledge” and “wisdom” from us, lest we be like Him.

Is what the serpent says in 3:4-5 true?

The tree’s qualities: “good for food”, “a delight to the eyes”, “to be desired to make one wise” – this tree isn’t freaky looking and scary.

Is what Eve wanted a bad thing?

What makes eating the fruit wrong?

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen. 3:7)

What does this mean? Nowadays we think its good to have clothes on (I for one am not a fan of nude beaches!). But here their nakedness is associated with shame. They’re a married couple with no one else around – they don’t need to wear clothes! But apparently they need to cover themselves from each other.

GENESIS 3:8: Sin makes us hide from the Lord.

What does sin do to Adam and Eve’s relationship with God?

With each other?

Both Adam and Eve avoid responsibility. Compare this to Christ, who takes responsibility for that which He didn’t do (taking on our sins).

How would the incarnate Jesus have acted in Adam and Eve’s place?

GENESIS 3:15: The “protoevangelium” (means “first gospel”). God promises to fix the problem. Sin is still the fundamental human problem and will be through all history and God promises to take care of it. We can’t.

GENESIS 3:16-19: Sin brings a curse. In order to demonstrate to us our rebellion against God, God has made creation rebel against us.

Think about technology: do we really have things under control? Stuff always breaks and needs fixing. Computers crash.

We often say “Crap happens”. Does God want it to be this way or does He want to bless us?

GENESIS 3:21: Think about this: God makes the first sacrifice in order to cover up the shame of sin – Noah imitates God when he does the same thing.

What’s the deal with sacrifice?

Why such a bloody system?

What is your reaction when you see blood?

Do you think God is just as repulsed by our sin?

Later in Genesis, God tells Cain: “And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:7)

Look at Cain and Abel: What does sin do to our relationships with the people we love?

HUMAN REACTIONS TO THE SIN PROBLEM

1) Personal atonement (I will read my Bible if…)

2) Physical mutilation

a. "At first, flagellation became a form of penance in the Christian church, especially in ascetic monastic orders. For example, the 11th century zealot Dominicus Loricatus once repeated the entire Psalter twenty times in one week, accompanying each psalm with a hundred lash-strokes to his back"

3) By being religious (Pharisees)

4) Spiritual quest or journey (to the top of the mountain)

5) Emptying your mind of everything

6) Fundraisers/events/political movements

7) Killing people who disagree with you

8) Ignoring it (sin doesn’t really exist)

9) Building up humanity (we can conquer sin, tower of Babel)

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)

“For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21)

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6)

Jesus’ Crucifixion: Matthew 27:27-56, Mark 15:21-41, Luke 23:26-49, John 19

Love (from my Bible Study notes)

These are my notes from when I prepare for my weekly Bible study. The theme is “Desiring God”, John Piper’s book, which argues that if we are serious happiness-seekers we will pursue God more than anything, because everything else cannot compare. Every week we look at a different topic (e.g. love, sin, truth…) and try to see differences between the way our culture sees it, we see it, and the way God sees it. It’s important to get God’s opinion on everything and realize if we are viewing something like “love” in a less than godly way.

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT LOVE?

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. (Proverbs 10:12)

Look at 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, kind, it does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, does not rejoice in evil, rejoice in truth, love bears all things, it never ends.

How do we use the word on a daily basis?

“I love crepes” (I say that quite often). “I love that show,” is different from “I love you, mom.”

Love is a good thing, we love to love.

Who do I love the most?

How do I love them? How could I love them better?

Love is built on time. One reason I am closer to my parents than casual acquaintances is the amount of time we’ve spent together. If you love someone you crave to spend more time with them.

Do you only love people who are similar to you or who you easily connect with?

There is more to love than connection or emotion. Love is also an action – I can take in a man off the street, feed him, clothe him; and maybe I have nothing in common with him, but I still love him by feeding him and clothing him.

According to “Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible” love in the Old Testament is “the basic character of the relationship between persons, a relationship with the qualities of devotion, loyalty, intimate knowledge, and responsibility. It is not simply an emotion but is the total quality of relationship.”

One aspect of love is that you delight in the person. It is also about respect and responsibility.

Read 1 John 4:

1) Love is from God. (verse 7)

2) To be born of God and to know God is revealed in love, that is, it manifests itself in love is a sign of being born of God (verse 7).

3) God is love. People who don’t love don’t know God. (verse 8)

4) God’s love culminates and climaxes, reaches its greatest point in the sending of Jesus to earth and His death, burial and resurrection for us that we might be saved (verse 9).

5) God loved us first (verses 10, 19) through Jesus.

6) If God loves us, we should love each other (verse 11). Love should fill us and spill over to all peoples.

7) Although God can’t be seen, He is in us if we love. (verse 12)

8) Perfect love casts out fear. (verse 18)

9) You cannot love God if you hate your brother (verse 20). Also look at 1 John 3:15: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that c no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”

10) If you love God you keep His commandments – especially those to love your neighbor as yourself.

CULTURAL LIES AND MYTHS ABOUT LOVE

1) Love is about me and serving my needs.

2) Love can arrive and go very quickly (the Romeo effect).

3) Love is about physical appearance and attraction. This is confusing love with lust. Once again, Romeo “loves” many women. He loves Juliet at first sight. We love the idea of “love at first sight” but consider what it really is: it means you love their appearance, not their person (you don’t know their person yet). For someone who lives by this kind of love it only moves from person to person, one can never satisfy, and each time it is “love”.

4) Love always feels good (and gives me what I want). As a kid I asked my parents for certain things and sometimes the answer was “No.” Do they love me? Yes. Maybe they can see that what I think is good for me is actually bad (or unnecessary).

5) Love works by rules. A lot of things people usually gripe about in romantic relationships is that certain “rules” of love aren’t followed. That is, “I say ‘I love you’, three times and you only say it once!” There’s no rules for love. Love lives outside of rules and not in them.

6) The best kind of love is romantic love. This is what romantic poetry is all about. The greatest pleasures the earth has to offer is in romantic relationships. God’s love is bigger.

7) Physical acts of love equal real love. Not true! Paul says, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Even if you perform the act of giving your life for someone else without actually loving them, then you haven’t loved! Love is more than action (but also not less than it).

Is love only emotional? Only practical? Is it always both?

DIFFERENT TYPES OF LOVE (IN THE BIBLE):

1) Human love (sexual, familial, friendship, and society)

2) Divine love

a) In Himself (between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)

b) For us

c) Us for Him

Human love does not compare with the love of God. Our love between each other is mangled by sin, hate, jealousy, etc. We are never wholly faithful to someone. Looking to God we are never wholly faithful to Him but He is always faithful. He ahs never sinned against anyone.

WAYS IN WHICH GOD LOVES US

1) He created us (“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” Psalm 139:13).

2) He sustains us, providing food for us every day. Every blessing is a gift from Him. “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). He blesses us day in and day out, continuing to bring the sun and life and the seasons. You could look at creation and spend forever listing the things God does daily for us. Right now I’m breathing – I don’t know how I can, but I know God has given me the breath of life.

3) Friends, family, spouses. These too are gifts from God and ways in which He loves us. I can see God’s love in my mother’s care when I’m sick. We are built to be in relationship and our relationships are supposed to be defined by love.

4) Jesus Christ. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” (1 John 4:9)

5) The Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6). We realize who God is and His love for us by the Spirit: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5). The Spirit “helps us in our weakness.” (Romans 8:26)

6) “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

ASPECTS OF GOD’S LOVE

1) It "endures forever”. (Psalm 136)

2) Nothing can separate us from it. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

3) He loves whom He chooses (Romans 9), that is, we are not more special than anybody else, God just decided to love us.

4) Complete joy! Knowing God is to love God, to love God is to be full of joy.

5) This list is too short, there are many more qualities of God’s love. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and realize that God does all the things listed in there.

We will love better if we first love God, and God defines love.

God's Promises (Deuteronomy 1)

I wrote this in the middle of the day, and this afternoon I had the fortune of seeing a rainbow, the first full one I've seen in years. I thought it was fitting after reading Deuteronomy 1, which got me thinking about God's promises.

In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the LORD had given him in commandment to them… (Deuteronomy 1:3)

Picture Moses standing in front of thousands of people, all of Israel, which is “as numerous as the stars of heaven” (1:10). I don’t know how public speeches worked back then without microphones or sound amplification but I can see Moses standing in front of his people, crying out with all his might for people to follow the God of all glory and saving power:

You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. (Deut. 5:32)

By now Moses is very old, and led a very long and fascinating life: growing up as Egyptian royalty, then living for decades as a quiet Shepard, then meeting the God who created him and leading his people out of slavery and out of bondage in Egypt, and then for the forty years before this speech wandering around in the wilderness with a bunch of ungrateful people that are too stubborn to enter the Promised Land. And now, finally, they can enter, but he can’t.

Moses was very intelligent, probably formally trained by the Egyptians, the best of the best; one can easily imagine that he was quite eloquent too. Somehow he managed to lead a group of people who were wandering in circles for decades who probably wanted to kill him.

Moses’ speech begins by reminding Israel that they have been on the doorstep of the Promised Land once before, and God withheld it from them because of their cowardice and lack of faith. Moses starts with this event, as if to say, “Remember that? Let’s not do that again.” He’s asking Israel not to rebel against God, and for the next few chapters he’s going to give us several examples from Israel’s history in which they rebelled against God, and we’ll see through all of Israel’s stubbornness and unfaithfulness God is merciful and compassionate and forgiving.

So Moses begins:

“The LORD our God said to us in Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.” (Deut. 1:6-7)

It’s easy to see who’s in charge here. God is the on – not Moses – who rescued Israel form Egypt and God is the true Leader. He says what Israel should and shouldn’t do and Israel – and, by extension, Christians – should listen to Him! God is not an impersonal, uncompassionate force imposing His will on us and pushing us to our extremes for His sadistic enjoyment. He’s a loving Father, and even earthly, lazy dads know how to provide for their kids – “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11).

God still speaks to us today and we are foolish to ignore His advice. Often His will doesn’t makes sense to us and we ask, “Are You sure, God?” We like – no, we love to feel like we’re in control and when God asks something crazy of us its hard for us to humble ourselves and admit our lack of control. But honestly, who are we to question God? Really ponder that. He made everything. He made up Chemistry. I got a “C” in Chemistry.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,

declares the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The next verses in Isaiah really shows what God’s word and instruction – like His instructions to Israel at Horeb, thousands of years ago, or His instructions to us, today – accomplishes, and it is exceedingly good:

“For as the rain and the snow come

down from heaven

and do not return there but water the

earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to

the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from

my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for

which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

So basically, it is good to do what God tells you to do. Here in Deuteronomy God’s commands are based on His promises. He has promised Israel land and He has promised them children and generations, among other things. Both of these larger promises are emphasized by Moses.

See, I have set the land before you. (Deut. 1:8)

It’s important to see the way God puts this: He has set the land before Israel, Israel has not earned it or worked hard for it – in fact, they didn’t have intentions of going there until God told them He would lead them there!

Since the story of the great exodus of Israel is prototypical for God’s salvation throughout history, it’s easy to see how our situation is the same as Israel’s with our exodus from our slavery and bondage to sin, and how it is God who sets us free, not us! He does it all, we do nothing. We are too spiritually dead to even realize we need saving (or to dream of it!). God puts the greatest dreams of freedom and salvation into our hearts and then achieves it on the cross. God is not one to shrink back from His promises. His words and His intentions are the same – unlike ours are, very often – and if we look back to Isaiah 55 we see just what that accomplishes.

So, standing on the doorstep of its dreams, Israel gets cold feet. God commands:

“Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.” (Deut. 1:8)

Go in and take possession – that means there will be some fighting involved. Israel sends spies into the country before them, and upon hearing their reports many of the people become afraid: the enemy sounds too strong and terrifying.

This is an interesting situation, and I’m not sure whether the decision to send spies was necessarily sinful or an act of doubt, but it certainly leads to both sin and doubt. Before Israel knew the great enemies it was to face God’s promise had been made to Israel – He didn’t promise under the condition that the enemy would be weak, or non-present, God promised it, and Isaiah 55 says that’s going to do something. But even having this promise does not help Israel when they get an idea of the circumstances: they quickly see too many enemies, how could victory ever be possible?

Sometimes in order to be faithful to God we have to focus on His promises and reflect on them even when all circumstances point to failure. God intentionally creates situations that seem impossible for a few reasons: 1) to increase our faith, and 2) to reveal His power and glory.

In Judges 7 (Judges comes only two books after Deuteronomy) is an awesome story of such a situation. God has called a less than manly man, Gideon (“O mighty man of valor”) to lead his people in battle. Before battle God says to Gideon:

“The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand saved me.’" (Judges 7:2)

So God orders Gideon to send home whoever is afraid and doesn’t want to be there. 22,000 men leave and go home, still leaving a reasonable army of 10,000.

And the LORD said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there…” (Judges 7:4)

God’s test for Gideon is to see which of his men drink their water like a dog, lapping up the water. I wonder if Gideon was praying to see a lot of hands lapping up water, but things turn out a little differently. Only 300 men lap up the water, the rest kneel down to drink. God says:

“With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.” (Judges 7:7)

These 300 men win the battle against the Midianites because of God’s power and strength, which has no limits.

Now this event hasn’t happened yet in Israel’s history as Moses gives his speech, but the people have plenty to boast in God about, and plenty to be confident in, but they still rebel. The people, after all they’ve seen God do, say:

“Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.” (Deut. 1:27)

Does God hate His children? No. There are certainly situations where we may wonder that but it is no different than the confusion felt by a child who is taken to get a vaccination. A vaccination is painful, and the child has little idea why they are going through that pain – they may even blame the parent or wonder why they would allow them to suffer in such a way, but as we get older we realize that we needed that vaccination in order to stay healthy. It is the same with our heavenly Father, and our present sufferings, which will pass. God does not delight in our suffering, just like a human parent, and He will certainly see us through it.

As the people rebel Moses attempts to stir up faith among them:

“Do not be in dread or afraid of them [the enemy]. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.” (Deut. 1:29-31)

But Israel chickens out, so God is righteously angry. How can the people who saw Him split the Red Sea not believe in His power? As punishment God commands Israel to go back into the wilderness, where they will be forced to wander until the current generation has passed.

This chapter ends on a really interesting note because it’s a situation we can easily fall into and repeat. With God’s punishment facing them the people of Israel declare they will now do the Lord’s will, even if it’s a little late.

“We have sinned against the LORD. We ourselves will go up and fight, just as the LORD our God command us.” (Deut. 1:41)

Instead of being obedient to God’s will – which in this case would be accepting punishment as well as blessing – Israel tries to work its way out of its punishment by doing what it was supposed to have done in the first place, only now God is not with them.

We do the exact same thing with God’s punishment facing us – punishment for sin that we rightfully deserve. We say, “Sorry, God, I’ve screwed up. Let me make it up for you, I will feed the homeless, I will give to charities, I will read my Bible every day, I won’t fight with or insult my siblings…” We make up lists of good things to do to make up for what we should’ve been doing all along, and are “good” lists are full of things we should already be doing but don’t because our hearts are cold and dead. No, we can’t make up anything to God, which is why He came down as a man to accept our punishment for us.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

If we try to achieve God’s promises on our own – like Israel attempting to achieve the Promised Land without God, or us trying to achieve heaven and salvation on our own – we will fail. Israel, just like us, goes to battle against God’s will and is sorely defeated:

Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you [Israel] and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah. (Deut. 1:44)

Sin brings shame and shameful defeat. Sometimes even our attempts to do what is right can be sinful if we go against God’s will.

But for us there is hope in Christ, who bridges the gap between us and God and intercedes for us, and in Him all the promises of God are fulfilled. And Jesus sends the Holy Spirit who by we se God’s saving power not only intellectually, as a fact, but with a changed heart that longs to serve and love Him.