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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Pastoral Pings (Plus) ~ The God Who Delivers From Slavery Delivers To Salvation

          Many things in Scripture are only understood when we pair them up with the other half of the story. One example of half a story would be, do not be anxious about anything.” The other half is, “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.[1] When both halves are done together, we receive the promise, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.[2]

          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! 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.)

 



[1] Philippians 4:6
[2] Philippians 4:7
[3] Exodus 15:14-16
[4] Numbers 14:2-3
[5] Psalm 23
[6] John 14:1-3

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