The Way: Desert

The Israelites were funny people. One second they sought the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. The next second they were bowing down to false gods and graven images. We all know the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt into the desert to take over the Promised Land. In Exodus 13, God leads the Israelites supernaturally with a pillar of fire at night and with a pillar of cloud during the day. In Exodus 16, God gives them manna and quail, every day. Yet in Numbers 11, they complain about only eating manna and even wish that they could go back to Egypt, where they had fish, vegetables, fruits, and spices. Seriously? Did y'all forget that you were slaves there? It gets better though. In Numbers 13, they send out spies. This is to be the triumphant time where they take over the land and fulfill God's promise. Upon return the spies had this to say:

"We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are."..."The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (Numbers 13:31-33)

But God had promised that they would overtake the land. Did they forget God parting the Red Sea? Or God drowning the pursuing Egyptian army? Or his supernatural guidance with the pillars? So how did the rest of the Israelites respond:

"Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, 'Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?' And they said to one another, 'Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.'" (Numbers 14:1-4)

Can you believe that? How stupid must they have been to forget what God had done for them before? Did they really think that God didn't know that there were giants in the land? Hello! He created them. Well, we know how it ends. It ends with the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years before getting a second chance to enter into the Promised Land. Once there, they conquer the land and eventually become the largest and most powerful kingdom in the world. Yet, for the rest of their existence they would exemplify 1 Chronicles 5:25: "But they broke faith with the God of their fathers, and whored after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them." In Jeremiah, God uses the word whore to describe them eight different times. Constantly, they turned their backs and forgot what the Lord had done for them.

When I was a child, I would laugh at the Israelites' stupidity. I thought to myself, "I will never forget what God has done for me." How wrong was I!

Francis Chan once asked, "When was the last time you stopped and thought, 'I should be in hell right now...but Jesus.'" See, we really should be in hell right now, if it wasn't for God's grace. It's by God's grace that I my heart is still beating long enough for me to write this (which takes even longer than it does to read it, sorry it's so long.) It's by God's grace that he sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross and take away the sins of the world. But how often do I allow that to dominate my thinking? How often do you allow that to dominate your thinking?

So often, I fail. I completely understand and identify with Paul's words in 1 Timothy 1:15: "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost." Day in and day out, I forget what Jesus has done in my life. What he has saved me from.

My prayer is that we would be people who are consumed by remembering the cross. By remembering what God has done for us. By remembering where we would be now if it wasn't for his love. I challenge you to dwell on Francis' words. To remember the grace that we have been shown, which was not given to us to give us the ability to continue sinning but to stir us on to more passionately follow Christ. Never forget.

-Trace