June 08, 2010
Body Building
My Sunday School class is doing a video series about the exodus of the Israelites. Our trek had us wandering around in the dessert for 40 years and we’re just now entering the Promised Land. Scripture is pretty plain that the dessert experience was a time of testing for the Hebrews, however the narrator went a step further and had us consider how the Israelites were strengthened because of the experience. I’m always relieved to have survived a personal dessert trial, but I had not thought about the strength I’ve picked up along the way.
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Gail;
-----God led Israel from Egypt to Mt. Sinai in short order, about three months. About ten months later, they left for the Promised Land. By the time the people had refused to take possession of the land, they had been in the desert for two and a half years. It seemed to me like a long time for a short journey. But considering that God was making a nation of these former slaves, it becomes reasonable. God had developed for them governmental and religious systems, giving them a library of history, law, and religious ordinances through Moses’ hand, and guiding them in the construction of their worship facility. He had purposes for these people. And they involved more than just being blessed by the Lord.
-----His testing revealed early how much development they needed to fulfill those purposes. After seeing their protection while God lavished plagues upon Egypt, they stood at the banks of the Red Sea fretting demise. After walking through the sea to safety they griped about the food and feared the lack of water. While Moses was on the mountain, they decided they had been abandoned. They could never look back at God’s solutions, then look forward at their troubles with joyful anticipation of similar solutions to come. In spite of being told they had a special relationship with the true God to be a special light to the world by the special care He would take of them, they faced their special problems anticipating only normal solutions.
-----Moses had intervened with God’s ambition to destroy them and make a new start from his family. But it remained that they had to be a special people to serve God’s purposes, and that these were not special. Indeed, it was punishment to lead them back into the wilderness for another thirty seven and a half years. But it was more a making of their children into special people while the disobedient parents were dying in the wilderness. As this generation grew, they became trained and disciplined by the ever present sight of the disobedient dying from among them. So they learned from it a new way. Forty years later, to the day, they had developed enough obedience to finally celebrate their first Passover in the Promised Land. They had become special enough to serve God’s purposes.
-----But this is where it gets interesting. The day God found Adam hiding in the garden, He knew salvation was only through Christ. He determined this before the foundation of the earth, as well as the good works in which we should walk. So then, why all the fuss in the wilderness? Why so much cost to develop such a special people who would only once again abandon obedience and return to normality? To show man is normally false, yet He is true - that this special problem of sin He gave place for in the earth has a special solution in not only His judgment, but also through His mercy. This manifold wisdom of His must be revealed to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places as we of the church percolate and boil through one problem after another. Then we must always be looking back upon the wandering of Israel as an example of how faithful patience through each trial serves both the death of the old man in us and the development of the new. It was just one piece of the mosaic for His heavenly host’s viewing. And it is an example for the rest of the pieces - you and me - to use. Never forget the special solutions God has brought your peculiar problems, never expect the normal way out of the twisted past as they did. For we are all, in Christ, pieces of a special mosaic having special solutions. And we are even more so as our obedience is made better.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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