D12-4: Why We Need To Have More Understanding For The Israelites’ Failures In The Wilderness 

Let’s try to understand Moses’ perspective for a minute here.

Understand that we’re dealing with a man who had witnessed up close the best and worst of Israel’s behavior over a period of about four decades.

It must have been one of the most daunting and frustrating experiences any anointed leader or prophet of God ever went through.

And even now, in just the few days before his passing away, Moses is struggling and doing his very darn best to get this second generation of Israelites to properly comprehend the astounding covenant they had just entered into with the Creator of the Universe.

Imagine, the King over all Kings and the Lord over all Lords had stepped down from heaven (metaphorically speaking) and entered into a relationship with this rag-tag mob of people whose forefathers just a few generations earlier were slaves.

And what’s more amazing is these Israelites had done nothing of their own merit to earn their great salvation.

It was all 100% God’s Grace.

Moses is taking the revelations and instructions he had received from the living God and he is doing his darnedest to communicate it to the Israelites who in many ways were still steeped in pagan ways of thinking.

This is the struggle that we’re essentially reading about here in Deuteronomy.

From this perspective, I think we modern believers need to have more compassion and understanding for the Israelites’ failures and their constant falling into temptation and wickedness during their time in the wilderness. 

Belittling the Israelites and contempt for the ancient Hebrews seems to be more the rule than the exception in the gentile churches these days.

We need to remind ourselves that when God presented Himself to the Hebrews, He was unlike any god or entity the Hebrews had ever encountered before that time AND…

…that His Teachings were such an incredibly radical departure from anything they had ever been exposed to in the past.

I think a lot of us mistakenly assume that had we been in their situation, we would have acted differently.

I hear it all the time.

“If I was part of the Exodus generation who had personally witnessed the great miracles that God performed, there’s no way I would have rebelled”.

HOGWASH!

Chances are pretty good that you would have fallen into sin and temptation just like you probably fell into sin and temptation last night, last week or the week before.

Remember what Yeshua said…

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust
in your brother’s eye and pay no attention
to the plank in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’
when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye,
and then you will see clearly to remove the speck
from your brother’s eye.”

Another important shift we need to make in our thinking is to stop viewing the Law as a burden like the Christians do.

Let me remind you that for the People of Israel, far from being viewed as a burden, the Law was and is their greatest joy.

It was considered to be one of the greatest of blessings.

And based on what I wrote in yesterday’s post, the reason why it was considered a great blessing should be readily apparent.

Because think about it.

At long last, a select specially chosen portion of mankind had encountered a God who had not only revealed Himself and His character but had made clear His demands and will through His rules and regulations.

Gone forever was the unease and anxiety attached to never knowing when some unknown god might show up in your life to wreak havoc just for their own perverse pleasure.

Finally, one could know with absolute and 100% certainty how to have a relationship with God that was based on divine principles and teachings that were the same yesterday, today and forever.

If you are a believer today, whether of Jewish or gentile extract, understand that you are a beneficiary of all that ancient Israel had to go through in absorbing a set of instructions that were so mysterious and otherworldly to them at the time.

This is the very reason why Rabbi Shaul (otherwise known as the Apostle Paul) cautioned gentiles to maintain an attitude of humbleness when it come to their newfound relationship with the Lord.

Using the Olive Tree analogy, he reminded them that the only reason they were able to be grafted into Israel in the first place is because of a Jewish Messiah who sprang from the Chosen People.

CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

“What advantage, then,
is there in being a Jew,
or what value is there in circumcision?
Much in every way!
First of all,
the Jews have been entrusted
with the very words of God.”
-Romans 3:1-2