Thursday, November 1, 2007

Day 16 - Deut 1:26-40 & Exodus 1:21

Do not Fear

Deuteronomy 1:26-40 - 26 “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. 27 And you murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. 28 Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.” ’ 29 Then I said to you, ‘Do not be in dread or afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, 31 and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ 32 Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, 33 who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go. 34 “And the Lord heard your words and was angered, and he swore, 35 ‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers,

Moses is doing a little instant replay, reminding the Israelites of their sin of fear and unbelief. It is a powerful journal of sorts of where and how they went wrong and the punishment that followed. It is important for us to watch this from afar, to see how easy it is to fear and yet how angry it made God. Look at the words that Moses used here: They rebelled against what they knew was right, they murmured or complained against God, they accuse God of hating them, and of having not a good will, but an evil will to hurt them. And maybe the worst is that they did not believe God, either his promises to them for the future or in spite of the miracles he had done in the past. The Lord hears our words and he is angry when we fear in such a way that we do not do his will. That is perhaps the worst thing about fear is that it keeps us from doing His will as we are supposed to live by faith and not by sight. When we fear God appropriately, we believe His word, we trust his goodness and we worship Him in his sovereignty.

Fear God

Exodus 1:21 - And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.

I love this verse. There is blessing when we fear God by trusting him in faith.