It seems amazing that the people would rebel and begin to
consider how to go back to Egypt, disbelieving and not trusting God but aren’t we
very much like them? We turn
recalcitrant and turn back when the going gets tough. We see the obstacles and we fail to move
ahead. The people are so angry that when
Joshua and Caleb tell them the truth, that God is on their side and that He
will do all He has promised, they make ready to stone them. Why did the Lord have Moses choose
spies? Remember, like when He told them
to double back so Pharaoh could see them and come after them, it was His idea
to send men to spy out the land. He knew
what would happen. Moses had chosen to
rely on elders, had ceased to fully lead the people because they had become a
burden for him and he was leading alone although the Lord was with him. He laid the groundwork for this fiasco in
that moment of weakness. When the Lord
says He will destroy the people and rebuild what is the basis of Moses'
prayer. In verses 17-19 he recalls the
Lord's own self-description and calls on Him to be true to that
proclamation. When in our worship we
proclaim forgiveness, we do so on this same basis, that His character is to
show mercy to repentant sinners. That does
not mean we do not pay a price, however, for our sins. Here, the people lost the opportunity to
enter the land.
Through Moses, the law concerning divorce had allowed men to
put away their wives at a whim. Women were
unable to divorce husbands, they were truly second-class citizens and yet Jesus
says that the two become one flesh just as it was said in Genesis 2. When two people become one flesh, united,
does that not change the social structure?
I know that Suzanne and I are greater and stronger as a team than if we
were separate from one another. We have a
strength that comes from that unity that neither of us would have if we were
single. Dissolution of the bonds of
marriage weakens not only the partners but also society itself which is enhanced
by the strength of the marriages in it. Jesus
says that if a man divorces and remarries he commits adultery if the divorce
was not for sexual immorality. In that
case the bond has been severed by the immorality, but that is not a checklist,
remember that Hosea was commanded by God to reunite with his adulterous wife as
a sign of God's faithful love to an adulterous nation. Marriage should not be entered into lightly
and those who cannot receive the Lord's teaching on this are, in some ways,
like the Israelites in the first lesson.
Paul has already argued that it is better to have the law
than to not have the law. The law brings
clarity, absolute knowledge of God's will.
The other thing the law brings is the knowledge of sin. If the law defines righteousness, it does so
by defining the obverse side of the issue, defining sin. When we know what sin is, failing to love Him
with all our heart, soul and mind and failing to love others as ourselves, we
know we have done these things. The law
convicts us of both righteousness and sin when we are honest, just as God's
presence did in the Garden. Jesus promised
that the Holy Spirit would do the same, but not for judgment unless we fail to
repent. There is none righteous, not
one. We can shake our heads at the Jews
who failed to enter the land, we can click our tongues at divorce and other
sin, but we cannot lay claim to any righteousness of our own. We all have failed and need mercy, fortunately,
as Moses prayed and we see in the cross, we have exactly the kind of God we
need.
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