Grace in the past shaping the present

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this.
Deuteronomy 24:22

God wanted Israel to remember her past. Both here and just a few verses up in Deuteronomy 24:18, God jostles the memory of Israel's past slavery in Egypt. There the nation was impoverished, a minority, and discriminated against by cruel slavery. That memory was to inform them in their treatment of the poorest of the poor (see Deuteronomy 24:17-18). and in the creation of a means by which the impoverished could work diligently to provide for themselves (Deuteronomy 24:19-22).

God's insistence upon this was not just so that Israeli society would not be blighted by poverty. There was a lesson of national trust and grace and salvation to tell. And by appealing to their past, God was helping them to realize that greater spiritual reality. Helping the poor by providing sustainable work that would meet the basic needs of the impoverished showed God's grace. God cared enough to rescue slaves from Egypt. They should care for each other with that kind of rescuing love and grace.

It is good for me to look at my present through the lens of my past. God has given me a lot from my simple roots. And I must invest my life and my time with the same grace He has blessed me to share with others. It is no bother to help others when you realize just how much God has helped you!


- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

Nobody Deserves God's Grace.

Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.
Deuteronomy 9:6-7

Israel was blessed solely by the promise of God and not because the present generation had earned the gift of the Promised Land. It was clear that they could not be righteous under their own power. God was helping them by the gift of the Law, by the leadership of Moses, and by bringing them into the Land He covenanted to give to Abraham.

Any grace we are given by God rests solely in His nature and benevolence. It does not come because we earned it (Ephesians 2:8-10). God loves us while we are yet sinners (Romans 5:8). He did so with the rebellious Israelites in the wilderness. He does so with rebellious post-moderns who must look to the cross of Christ for forgiveness, perspective, and life.

I too am a rebel heart. I must not forget that. I must not think that I ever earned anything. Hell is what I deserve. Separation from God was my destiny. But mercy and grace were offered by Christ at the cross. I accepted it, and Christ's righteousness has been the only fitness that could take me to God.

- Posted with my iPad. The Apple Kool-Aide tastes fine.

Victory for spiritual losers.

So they defeated him and his sons and all his people, until he had no survivor left. And they possessed his land.

Numbers 21:35

 

This chapter actually recounts the very initial conquests Israel experienced in battle as they began moving into Canaan.  They began by settling the western banks of the Jordan River. The territories they seized were a result of defensive warfare in which aggressive nations came to attack them. God eventually brought them the complete victory which resulted in Israel taking some of the land promised to them by God so long ago.

 

These initial victories came at the hand of God’s grace, because Israel still was not the nation they should have been in terms of spiritual commitment. What interests me is that after the first victory, there is an immediate failure (the infamous bronze serpent episode: Numbers 21:4-9). But God graciously responds to Moses’ plea for the people and once again they are back on track conquering their aggressors again. Moses is getting a taste of what the next generation of leadership will know.  And God is continuing to develop a faithful generation that will want to obey His leading in the conquest of Canaan.

 

Israel is advancing spiritually as a nation throughout the book of Numbers. But they are falling forward in stutter steps. They aren’t quite the noble heroes we would hope for. They struggle with unbelief and selfish complaining even after God has saved them from threatened destruction from a larger and established nation. They just can’t seem to stay spiritually consistent. But God is faithful. And that is the insight worth considering for today.

 

We may fail. We may struggle with consistency. Our faith may be small at times. And our sins may overwhelm us when we fail. But God is faithful. He will lead us beyond our failures so that He gets the glory. We experience profound grace when He does this.

 

Technorati Tags: Christianity,Discipleship,Religion

Complainers

The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.

Exodus 16:35

One of the greatest miracles of the Exodus was God’s grace at this moment in the story. Israel turned against Moses and God’s choice of him by grumbling against his leadership over the issue of not finding food in the wilderness. This really was an issue of not trusting God who had miraculously delivered them from Egypt and destroyed the armies of the most powerful nation in the region. They doubted that God could feed them and slipped into accusation, unbelief, and grumbling.

I think God had a plan to feed them all along. And I think it is clear from the miraculous manna that He was going to use a plan that would be bring worship of Him from the people. The rough part of this whole story is the spiritual ineptness of the Israelites. God gave them miracle bread. He even provided enough on Fridays so that they would not need to gather manna on the Sabbath. He told them to collect double on Friday, and they still went on on the first Sabbath only to find that God kept His word! They were a difficult people for Moses to lead. They were a difficult people for God to instruct.

But God was faithful. And entire generation would be cared for in this way with manna from heaven. God was showing a nation His grace. And even though they found themselves in a resource-poor desert environment, God brought them water and food daily. They had their needs met. And it was miraculous. They should have been drawn to worship and not to complaining!

God will work with complainers, though it is clear that He would prefer that complaining end. He gave the grumblers more grace than they ever deserved, even then they presumed upon it! But God was merciful to the complaining generation. He knew they were rescued slaves. And He kept being faithful to them, even as they struggled to be faithful to Him. God loves people, even complainers, with great love. There is thus hope for me, for I can be just like these people. I can get full of the wants of this world. I can get faithless. I can be deceived by my own forgetfulness and focus on just myself. And God will faithfully draw me back with His love and provision.

Technorati Tags: Exodus,Manna,Complaining,Provision,Grace

Awesome in Grace & Judgment

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.
Genesis 19:29

God was not obligated to do what the text simply summarizes here. But He graciously rescued Lot, who never learned what it meant to live in the world but not live for the world. God's grace has been prominent throughout His covenant with Abraham, and it spills over into the life of Abraham's nephew. The whole episode with the destruction of the cities of the plain was to show that God will ultimately judge sin. The city of Sodom was so wicked that not even Lot's influence made any visible impact. When Lot and his family are rescued, it is because the first real "sin city" was being obliterated. And there are not even ruins left to speak of.

The focus of the story is tragic from a human point of view. Lot gave in to the lust of the eyes by living within view of Sodom, then he moved into the city and should have learned his lesson when his uncle rescued him. But by the time God checks out the wickedness of the city, Lot has become an elder in the city gates. It is at that point that he could have had great influence. But he was more influenced by the city than he was an influence in the city -- the details of the story point this out: he offered his own daughters to the deviant cries outside his door... he later allows himself to be made drunk by his own daughters and unknowingly impregnates them.

But the story is powerfully full of grace from God's perspective. God remembered His covenant with Abraham. He honored the gist of His conversation with the old man on the road to Sodom. He spared the slim sliver of righteousness that was there: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. This was God being gracious, even in the midst of His wrath and righteous judgment. It is awesome in the truest sense, most reverential sense, of the word.