Suggesting that God is incapable of doing what He says He can and will do just seems a tad on the side of being a bad idea. Especially when your nay-saying affects others around you and influences them as well. Numbers 13-14 would be good chapters to review at some point.
Paul pointed to this piece of history in more blunt terms. He flat out tells us that the ‘Rock’ that followed them in the wilderness providing them water was Christ. (1 Cor. 10:4). And even though they all drank from that ‘spiritual Rock that followed them’, Paul goes on to write “With most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.” (5)
Why is any of this relevant to us today? Paul answers that in vs. 6: “Now these things became OUR examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.”
He goes on in the next few verses listing other areas of sin and disobedience that brought swift judgment on them. We talked about this a week or two ago. Then Paul again drives home the point reminding us “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” (11)
It would seem to me that there are some valuable lessons for us as NT believers to learn from all this we read about during this era and is nicely documented there in our OT’s.
As I mentioned earlier, this next generation of people learned a few lessons after a period of suffering. I think we can all identify with that process of living. Others, well, maybe not so much. Interesting side note found in Hebrews 5:8 that says Jesus Himself ‘learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”
So Moses spends a good amount of time rehearsing with these people who are on the cusp of a new life in a new land and experiencing a life they never had known before. After years of bondage and slavery in Egypt (a type of the wolld we were enslaved to), God is ready to lead them in to a new way of living. Does this sound vaguely familiar to what it means to repent, turn, and become a follower of Christ as we are transformed in to a ‘new creation’ and promised a ‘new and living way’. (Heb. 10:20)
This was a covenant these people were entering in to and there were conditions to this covenant to be learned and expected to live up to. After all, it was the God of creation they were entering this covenant with, so not taking this seriously would have a bad outcome. IF you had a chance to read through those chapters in Deuteronomy (4-11) you probably notice where so much is repeated over and over, stressing the importance of hearing God’s voice, doing what He says, avoiding the things He tells them to avoid and embracing the goodness of all His promises that will follow these people IF...they obey. When God repeats Himself, there are good reasons for Him doing so.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, at the close of this book, Moses hands over the reins of leadership to Joshua, one of the two who were confident that God could and would do what He promised back there in Numbers 13-14. Moses’s life comes to an end and the book of Joshua opens up with some words of exhortation and reminders as God commissions Joshua to lead the people in to possess this promised land.
There was just one obstacle that needed to be dealt with before they could cross over. This few million people were camped out on the banks of the Jordan river. To the south of them was the Dead Sea. This was the only crossing point for them to pass over but it was harvest season which meant...the river flowed out of its banks. We would call it being at ‘flood stage’.
There was no bridge, nor ferry boats. IF God does not make a way, they are not going in to fulfill God’s plans for them.
I want to pause here and talk about this picture or idea of ‘floods’. We obviously are familiar with and understand floods in a natural sense, but there are some spiritual truths and insights we glean from the word as well. I want to just cite come examples with references, draw a conclusion for you to give thought to, and then move on.
Floods usually had a negative connotation to them in the bible. Our first encounter with one had to do with a flood that came and wiped out everything on the earth as God brought judgment for all the evil that persisted and had spread. I think many of us are familiar with that story recorded in Genesis 6-8. However, there was one man along with his family that escaped the judgement and wrath that this flood brought. His name was Noah and we read that he ‘found grace in the eyes of the Lord’. (6:8). We read this about Noah in the next verse where “Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations and he walked with God.”
God explained His plan to Noah and had him build and ark in which he and his family along with ‘all the pets’ would escape the destructive floods that would cover the earth.
It’s hard to not read this story and then recall the words of Jesus who pointing back to this time period, tells us in Matt. 24 that the conditions and unfolding scenario that will lead up to His return will be much like the ‘days of Noah’. Jesus even warns how the ‘flood came and took them away’ there in vs. 38-39. For those who think that ‘taking away ‘ meant ‘rapture’, you might read Luke 17:27 that says they were all ‘destroyed’. That does not sound like rapture. But the haunting comment made by Jesus is when He says the people will not even be aware of what is happening until it is too late. “They did not know”.
When we read about God’s wrath and judgements throughout the OT, it often is likened to either ‘floods’ or ‘fires’. Both, instrumental in bringing destruction. It’s important to note here that in this time we are living in, that we need to move away from looking at the ‘natural’ displays of floods and fires we hear about all the time in the news, and ask God for spiritual insight as to what these ‘floods and fires’ might be representing. I simply will put this out there for your prayerful contemplation but I have a hunch that when we hear of all these ‘natural disasters’ from earthquakes to hurricanes to floods and fires, that they are merely a ‘shadow’ of what is being unleashed in the ‘spiritual world’. That is all I will say for now on this.
Look at Psalm 78:49-50 where we are told explicitly what the ‘wrath of God’ is. It is bands of destroying angels of destruction’. Paul refers to them as ‘spiritual wickedness and powers of darkness’ in Eph. 6:12.
Now jump back to Revelation 12:15. We see some illustrative language where the ‘serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood’. If you back up to vs. 7-12, you read where Satan and his minions are on the earth and they ‘deceive the whole world’. There is even a warning uttered there in 12:12 of ‘woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea for the devil has come down to you having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.’
This would be the same ‘devil’ that Peter tells us to be vigilant and alert to and to resist (1 Pet. 5:8-9) ;and Paul tells us to ‘give no place to’. (Eph. 4:27). When Jesus tells us in John 10:10 how the ‘thief’ comes to ‘steal, kill, and destroy’, one does not need a degree from seminary to rightly conclude Jesus is talking about the devil.
Remember the word picture Jesus tied up His sermon on the mount with there in Matt. 7:24-27? He talks of two men, one wise and one foolish who built homes on rock and sand. Both houses were subject to...destructive floods. Jesus did not say ‘if’ the floods come’, He said ‘when’ the floods came. The house that stood unscathed was likened to the man who not only ‘heard the words of Jesus’ but ‘put them in to practice and Did what Jesus said to do. The house that collapsed belonged to the man who was familiar with the sayings of Jesus...he simply did not get around to ‘doing’ what he heard. And the destructive fall of his house was ‘great’.
One more verse to tie in here...Isaiah spoke of how ‘when the enemy comes in like a.....’flood’. (59:19), God would ‘raise up a standard’ or some protective barrier against him.
So now we have this new generation of people standing on the banks of a flooded Jordan river and the only way they can cross over is God has to make a way and stop the flood. And guess what God does? He stops the flood. You can read about it there in Joshua 3:13-17. I’ll pick up on this tomorrow but want to leave you with this final thought.
God’s wrath is on the earth today and on everyone who is not a follower or believer in Jesus. (John 3:36). The whole world is under the sway and influence of the ‘wicked one’. (1 John 5:19; Eph. 2:1-3; Acts 26:18). And most don’t even know it. But they sure experience and suffer because of it.
There is only one way to escape this ‘flood of wrath’. You have to come to Jesus with your whole heart. There is no salvation in anyone or anything else other than Him. (Acts 4:12). When you do, the moment you ‘enter this ark of covenant’, the floodwaters are stopped and you enter in to peace. This...is the ... BEGINNING...of your salvation. Learning to walk in this peace is where I believe so many have fallen short of learning. See you tomorrow?
Comments
Post a Comment