Moses is convinced that these forty years have been a time
of testing. The Lord is far more patient
and willing to wait than we are. These
years they have been sustained entirely by His grace in sending the manna for
their daily bread. They have been given
no choice but to comply with His will and His commandments if they were going
to survive. The time in the wilderness
was one marked by rebellion and disobedience from time to time, a microcosm of
the history of the people these last millennia.
Forty years would have been an incredibly long time to spend wandering
about in a relatively confined space waiting to enter the Land the Lord had
promised, long enough to say, I have had it, whatever He wants us to do is
better than staying here like this.
Moses is telling them that they must continue to observe these
commandments when they have plenty, when they are settled as a people. They are being given a second chance, a new
Eden, and for all this they are to bless the Lord at all times.
Jesus and His disciples aren't in step with John's disciples
and the Pharisees. Why the difference
between Jesus and the religious leaders?
Jesus certainly points directly to Himself as the reason. He is the bridegroom, and the friends of the
bridegroom celebrate not fast. For those
who doubt whether Jesus claimed to be more than a great teacher this is a clear
statement of who He is. He is a
game-changer, the rules that others have don't apply to Him. Something completely new is happening here
for those who follow Him. In essence a
new exodus is happening. The new
covenant is being inaugurated He is setting Himself apart from the other
religious leaders of the day. There
will, He says, come a time when fasting is appropriate, after He is no longer
with them in body. In Lent, Sundays are
feast days, we celebrate His presence among us.
So in Genesis 3 we ate the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and we thought we gained wisdom but Paul says that
the folly of the cross not the wisdom of the world is the way to know God. In
fact, he says that it is because we did not know God through wisdom that He
gave us the cross, the wisdom of God but considered folly to men. The cross is a stumbling block to our wisdom,
it makes no sense that the way to life is death, that the savior of the world
died on a Roman cross. Who can possibly
believe such things? Paul uses a word
several times in the passage for the believers, they are those who are
"called." They are the ones to
whom God has given wisdom and insight, the faith to believe that this is indeed
truth. Salvation, faith, belief, is all
a work of God because to the natural man it is nonsense to believe such things. That should keep us humble towards Him and compassionate
towards those who persecute us or mock us.
It should also call us to worship Him for all He has done for us.
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