I have always been harsh to the Israelites while they were in the wilderness. I judged their wandering and failures from my viewpoint in history, and thought it was unbelievable that they would continually doubt and run away from the God who rescued them from Egypt. They had been rescued, chosen as His own people, and brought into a special relationship with Him. They were able to literally see the Holy Presence of God leading them through the wilderness, either as fire or as a cloud. They were daily fed from the Glorious Providence of His hand with Manna, and were witnesses to what must have been the hundreds of times he provided water in the desert. How are they unable to wait 40 days beside a mountain that was so covered by God’s Holiness that they were terrified to even look at it?
40 days. Barely over a month. Not even 6 weeks. In my life, 6 weeks seems to just scream past at a speed that I can barely comprehend.
These men and women are lacking faith. They are foolish and pitiful, and if I were able to see what they saw, I wouldn’t have failed the way they do. Surely I am better than they are, at least when it comes to Faithfulness.
The scriptures are filled with men and women who beheld the very Glory of God. Moses and the elders of Israel ate a meal in His presence. Moses and Aaron heard the very Voice of God. Joshua conquered nations and city-states that were numerically and technologically greater than the Israelites. The list goes on; we could spend hours and days talking about all the people that God revealed himself to deeply and personally, and how they were able to witness and be instruments of God’s incomprehensible power and authority.
And all of these people fail. They all fall short.
Moses disobeys God’s commands to speak to a rock, putting himself in the place of God as the provider of water, allowing the people he is called to lead to make him so angry that he loses focus on God.
Aaron, before he is the high priest, makes the Golden Calf.
The Levites, chosen by God to minister in the tabernacle and the Temple, grow jealous of Aaron and his family and rebel against their calling.
In my foolishness and pride, I look at what they have done and how they have failed and say, “I would never do that.” I look at Moses’ life and experience and say; when I have never seen a burning bush, a parted sea, or the very back of God Almighty; that “I wouldn’t fail where Moses failed.” That I couldn’t sin as Moses had sinned.
I say that my pride is so much more under control than Moses’ pride.
That my failures are so much less than his.
That I, as a ‘good’ person, would never succumb to what Moses did.
I don’t worship Idols; I don’t have a golden Calf; I don’t make water come from rocks; I don’t even hear the Voice of God coming from bushes — burning or otherwise!
I have realized that my failures and the Israelites’ failures in the wilderness are one and the same. In fact, my sinfulness and failures are WORSE than theirs.
Yes, they were able to see the glory of God physically and had the amazing experience of looking upon His mighty works, but that was all. I have been given a greater gift.
As a Christian, I have been given a gift; one of many given by God Almighty, a gift of the Holy Spirit of God; a portion of His Very Presence. The Spirit that calls us out of this world of chaos and ruin to a place of peace and rescue. The Spirit that lives in us and allows us to draw ever closer to the God that has brought us out of our own personal “Egypts.”
The Israelites were meant to be an example of God’s people to the world, and so are we.
Any follower of Jesus is meant to be a piece of His presence diffusing throughout the world that doesn’t know Him.
The Spirit is the proof that we are called to be something different than what we see in the world around us, that we are a distinct people, showing the way of life that aligns with the call of God.
The Israelites saw the Red Sea part, walked through it, and then left it behind them as a memory of what God had done.
I walk with the very Spirit of the Holy and Living God in my bones on a daily basis. And I leave Christ on the cross, choosing to say that ‘I am good’ or even ‘I am great’ when compared to the life and purity of Jesus Christ, I am less than nothing.
I am not saved because of my goodness; I’m saved in spite of it.
I’m not saved because of my sinfulness; I’m saved despite it.
My sins and failures in life are no different than the sins and failures of the Israelites before me, or of any other sinner in the world today. And if Jesus needed to die in order to rescue them from their shortcomings, then Jesus had to die to rescue me from mine. My ‘goodness’ doesn’t change the sacrifice required for my failing.
To save me, Christ had to die.