Moses says it is on account of the people that he is not
allowed to enter the Land. A couple of
days ago we read in Numbers that the Lord said it was on account of Moses’ own
sin at Meribah that he was not allowed to lead them into the Land. Which is it?
In some ways it seems that Moses is blaming the people for his
impertinence and frustration in striking the rock to bring forth the
water. The water did come forth,
providing water for the people and their flocks and herds, they weren’t
punished for Moses’ sin, he was. Moses’
words here sound a bit like Adam’s in Genesis 3 don’t they, “The woman, you
gave me…” He was certainly provoked by the people’s grumbling against him all
those years but in the end he gave in to the temptation of striking out in
anger against them and against God.
Jesus, instead, prayed for those who persecuted Him, even from the
cross, and therefore did not disqualify Himself as Messiah.
What possessed the disciples to point to the beauty of the
temple given all the trouble they had already seen there? We are experts at idolatry. We always find things to represent God to us
and then make them our god. The reason
we are easily led astray is that we don’t seek the relationship with God
ourselves, we allow others to mediate our relationship with Him, we fail to
seek Him on our own, allowing leaders to hear from Him while we go about other
things and when that communication is broken on a personal level it isn’t
easily restored. We need to be connected
to the vine always through Jesus in the power of the Spirit operating in our
lives. We are responsible for our own
destiny, our leaders can only lead us astray if we lose communication with
Him. It is, in every way, our lifeline.
Is the law a stumbling stone, something in our path that
trips us up? It can be if we make it our
idol. Keeping the law requires a heart
that understands the Law from the perspective of the Lawgiver. Jesus was constantly accused of breaking the
Law by healing on Sabbath, when the disciples ate grain on Sabbath, causing men
to work on Sabbath, etc. and yet we believe that He was without sin. If that is true then He alone knows the
definition of true righteousness, there must be something more to the Law than
meets the eye. I personally believe that
the command against coveting explains much of true righteousness. Coveting is an internal act and is the cause
of many external acts of sin. If we
could somehow fix the thing that covets we could begin to see true
righteousness. The Spirit of God
dwelling in us is the fix. The law, as
Paul says doesn’t lead to righteousness, it leads to sin because it causes me
to covet, if we get that wrong and believe it leads to righteousness then we
have substituted the Law for God and then it has become a stumbling stone, it
keeps us from entering the Promised Land.
No comments:
Post a Comment