In Chapter 9 Moses provided a number of examples to prove to the Israelites that everything the Lord is about to give them is due to His mercy and goodness, not due to them having maintained godly living ever since they came out of Egypt. Today he underlines that point by speaking of the way God gave them a second chance following the golden calf incident. We will be talking about the Lord's awesome mercy toward mankind and how He reaches out to us even when we mess up horribly.
Moses broke the first set of tablets containing the Ten Commandments when he came down from the mountain to find that the people had fashioned an image and were holding a festival around it. He broke the tablets to symbolize that they had broken their side of the covenant they entered into with the Lord. But the Lord, in His great mercy, did not leave things that way! He reestablished fellowship with the congregation of Israel by providing a second set of tablets, thus signifying a second chance.
The Lord is always the one who initiates fellowship with us and who keeps reaching out to maintain fellowship with us. As our Creator and as someone infinitely wiser and more powerful than we are, He has the responsibility for making the first move. He invites us into a relationship with Him and, even when we make mistakes after entering into a relationship with Him, He makes overtures of peace to us. He doesn't berate us when we mess up or kick us while we're down; instead He reaches a hand out to us so He can pick us back up. Like a loving father whose young child is learning how to walk, the Lord understands that our whole lives long we are learning how to walk with Him, and when we stumble and fall He helps us back to our feet. What He wants for us is what any good parent wants for their child: for us to grow in strength and to stumble less often and less spectacularly. When the Lord provided a second set of tablets for the Israelites, He was setting them back on their feet and saying, "Let's try this again."
After Moses broke the tablets the Lord announced to him His intention to make another set. "At that time the Lord said to me, 'Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and come up to Me on the mountain. Also make a wooden ark. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Then you are to put them in the ark.'" (Deuteronomy 10:1-2)
"So I made the ark out of acacia wood and chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hands. The Lord wrote on these tablets what He had written before, the Ten Commandments He had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. Then I came back down the mountain and put the tablets in the ark I had made, as the Lord commanded me, and they are there now." (Deuteronomy 10:3-5) The Lord didn't say, "Sorry, you blew it!" Instead He made the tablets over again.
In a minute Moses will tell us where the Israelites went next after they moved on from the place where they received the second set of tablets. When we stumble and fall, the Lord wants to lift us back to our feet and help us keep moving forward. He doesn't want us remaining on the ground, wallowing in self-pity after our sin has been confessed and our fellowship has been restored with Him. He also doesn't want us getting up but standing like we're rooted to the spot, afraid to move forward in case we mess up again. Doing either of these things can actually be a worse sin than the sin we committed in the first place. We can't keep looking back at and grieving over the mistakes in our past. We also can't remain in one spot for fear of making more mistakes. What can we do for the Lord's kingdom like that? How can we grow in our knowledge of Him and in our trust in Him if we don't keep moving forward? So once the golden calf incident was dealt with, the Lord wanted the Israelites to start putting one foot in front of the other again. Moses says, "(The Israelites traveled from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died and was buried, and Eleazar his son succeeded him as priest. From there they traveled to Gudgogah and on to Jobathah, a land with streams of water. At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to minister and to pronounce blessings in His name, as they still do today. That is why the Levites have no share or inheritance among their fellow Israelites; the Lord is their inheritance, as the Lord your God told them.)" (Deuteronomy 10:6-9) As Israel moved on from the location where the golden calf had been made, the Lord was working on things for Israel's future, not dwelling on the past.
"Now I had stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as I did the first time, and the Lord listened to me at this time also. It was not His will to destroy you. 'Go,' the Lord said to me, 'and lead the people on their way, so that they may enter and possess the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.'" (Deuteronomy 10:10-11) Israel's idolatrous mistake in the past did not disqualify her to serve the Lord in the future. We may be tempted to think our past is too ugly for the Lord to ever use us for His glory but the Bible does not support such a doctrine. If our past has been dealt with between us and the Lord, we need to leave it there. The Lord isn't sitting on His throne in heaven looking over a list of sins for which we've already obtained forgiveness. He is looking ahead to our future. That's what we should be doing too! To do otherwise is actually a sin because it displays a lack of faith. It displays a lack of faith that the Lord does what He says He will do. We are promised "if we confess our sins" then the Lord "is faithful and just and will forgive our sins". (1 John 1:9) Do we believe the word of God is true? If we do then we must accept what He says about repentance and forgiveness. If we don't accept what He says about repentance and forgiveness then it will be quite difficult for us ever to do anything worthwhile for the kingdom of God because we're going to be wallowing in guilt and self-pity over things we can't seem put behind us---things the Lord has cast behind His back, as the prophet Isaiah so beautifully worded it. (Isaiah 38:17) If the God whom we sinned against isn't holding the sins of our past against us, why should we? If the God whose laws we've broken has accepted our repentance, why can't we accept His forgiveness?
Israel moved on and so should we. It's not true our past has disqualified us from doing great things for the Lord in the future. On the contrary, it lifts up and glorifies the name of God when everyone sees how He saved "a wretch like me" as the song goes and turned our lives around. His honor and renown grow when others see how He uses lips that used to speak blasphemy to speak words of praise, feet that used to run to sin to run to church instead, and hands that used to perform evil acts to be clasped together in prayer or reaching out to the lost and needy. No matter what's in your past, if you and the Lord have dealt with it, leave it there and walk away from it. He wants you to move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment