Today
I learned some lessons while standing between two significant halves of a story.
One of the major events of the Old Testament was God delivering Israel out of
their slavery in Egypt. However, that event was only the first half of what God
was doing. The other half was all about God delivering Israel into the Promised
Land.
God
used ten plagues in Egypt as the sign of his sufficiency to do what he had
promised Abraham. When Israel found themselves at the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army
attacking, it was time for one more sign to show God’s sufficiency to deliver his
people from their enemies, and deliver them into the land of Promise.
What
stood out to me today is what Israel believed at the time that God delivered
them from the Egyptian army by parting the Red Sea for Israel, and returning
the Red Sea to its place to destroy the Egyptian army. This is what they sang
out in their new song of praise:
The peoples have heard; they
tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of
Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of
Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them; because of the
greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone, till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased.[3]
I had not noticed this before, that, at the
time of Israel coming through the Red Sea, they knew that their enemies in the
land of Canaan were trembling with fear because of what the LORD did to deliver
Israel, and destroy the Egyptian army in the process.
However, by the time the Israelites arrived at
the Jordan River and spied out the land of Canaan, the ten spies were able to
convince the whole nation that God could not be trusted to give them the same
victory going into the land of Promise as he did in bringing them out of the
land of slavery. The whole nation began grumbling and complaining to Moses:
“Would that we had died in
the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3 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?”[4]
I
found this whole realization quite scary. How often do we sing God’s praises one
moment because he answered a prayer, and then complain about him another time
because he put us in a situation that could only be handled by faith? How often
do we sit in church singing songs we can’t relate to because we have stopped
believing that God is everything the Scriptures have gloriously revealed?
The
conviction for me was to consider that God can be trusted in the valley of the
shadow of death as surely as he can be trusted when he sets a bounteous table
of blessings before us in the presence of our enemies.[5] He
has revealed himself so wonderfully in his word that we do not need to see one
more miracle to believe that all the promises of Jesus’ coming to take us home
will be fulfilled to the letter of God’s words.
The
book of Revelation calls me to believe in God’s protection and deliverance of
his church as surely as I read of Israel’s deliverance out of Egypt, and their
victorious habitation of the Promised Land. Jesus himself is preparing a home
for his bride, and will most certainly come to gather her to himself forever.[6]
Even
though Joshua and Caleb were the only two of their generation to enter into the
Promised Land, they are a wonderful example of trusting God for the second half
of the story as much as they trusted him for the first. If we have trusted Jesus
Christ for our salvation out of sin (the first half of the story), let us not
waver in trusting him for our eternal experience of the promised home of heaven
(the rest of the story).
From
my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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