Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

The Lord God is a selflessly loving God. He does not bring bad things. He brings only good things. But clearly bad things occur. It is because we leave His protections. He HATES sin. He brings JUDGMENT on sin. Sin is REBELLION. The Law showed the need for a Saviour (because no one can keep it perfectly when your nature is broken). Jesus had a perfect nature and kept it perfectly. ALL judgment on sin went onto Jesus. He paid the price. If you reject that, you are outside the zone of blessing and living in the wrath come the end of all things. If you accept that, you are INSIDE the zone of blessing and living in His grace come the end of all things. This is a principle caught in the Law. If you obeyed, you were under a temporary grace of blessing. If you disobeyed, you were outside a temporary grace and under a curse.

Moses pleads with them again and again to remember that. To choose to stand under the blessing and to avoid being under the curse. To choose to obey and live in the marvellous freedoms of being harmony with Yahweh and reject the bondage of going your own way. If you don’t steal, no one looses their stuff. If you don’t commit adultery, everyone enjoys their own spouse without fear of loss, betrayal, or hurt. If you don’t covet what you didn’t earn, no one needs to fear or feel jealousy and resentment. If you obey, you get supernatural blessing on your work instead of laboriously toiling. You get peace, not strife. Love, not fear. Joy, not depression and anxiety. There are literally ZERO negatives and 200% positives following the commands of Yahweh (Then AND now).

God’s PLAN was for the people to enter the Promised Land and learn to live off His Word. Instead, they rejected that (cause), rejected Him, and slogged around in the wilderness (effect) where He had to let their own choices (cause) give them opportunities to prove they trusted Him (effect). They went into periods of hunger, but He had manna waiting. Their feet didn’t swell. From the marching? Yes. But also, if you have a mono-diet with limited nutrition (or nutrition of only one type) you can get a disease/condition called Beriberi of which one evidence is the swelling of your feet. They ate manna – just manna – for forty years, but had total and complete nutrition. They refused to humble themselves (cause), so opportunities came by that He did not save them from (effect) in order that they could learn it is better to be humble than proud. Remember that even though they had no authority to stand against him, the devil was still there in the world seeking to destroy them (John 10:10). Anytime they chose to leave the blessing zone, he was ready with something to hurt them. But they were ignoring and leaving behind the system God was teaching them to stay protected. God didn’t NEED to send them trials. They were choosing to inhabit them again and again and again.

God was bringing them into a good land, with fruit and year-round abundance. In which they would lack NOTHING. Moses was pleading with them not to forget who brought them there. Who was their source. Who they needed to depend on to keep the good things, and not lose them. He reminded them of all the trials they had faced and who had offered a saving plan from them. Fiery snakes because of their grumbling, but God provided a bronze serpent. No water, but God brought them water. Lived in bondage, but God brought them out. Moses warned them if they forgot these things in their prosperity and chose to turn to other things to worship, they would be destroyed like the nations before them. Moses reminded them it was not because of their own efforts and piety that they were being given the land. God owned the land and was allowing them there. If they rejected Him, the land would reject them because the land itself would not tolerate idolatry.

Moses reminded them of the golden calf. Of their failure to appreciate what God was doing and how quickly they turned away. Of how Moses had to intercede for them. How the Lord was a consuming fire that almost consumed them – interestingly, Moses had them drink gold mixed with water – a cure used in radiation therapy – perhaps because God’s wrath was so hot and violent they were in danger of radiation poisoning (not too far fetched. The peak of Sinai in Arabia is blackened glass to this day). Moses went back up the mountain and fasted AGAIN as he interceded with God for them.

Moses reminded them that God wrote the commandments on stone tablets, which he destroyed in his anger at their idolatry. And then God wrote on a second set of stone tablets which were put into the ark as a reminder of God’s words to them (possibly along with the broken set as well). These were not God’s RULES, but His Devarim or “WORDS” to them. His ten utterances. The voice they audibly heard to build their trust in Him.

“And now, Israel, what is Yahweh your God asking from you, except to revere Yahweh your God, to go in all his ways and to love him and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of Yahweh and his statutes that I am commanding you today for your own good.” (Deuteronomy 10:12-13

Moses again told them the essence of the Law was LOVE. God’s selfless love toward them. That not only heaven and outer space belonged to God, but the earth and everything in it. He was the landlord. He might be giving dominion in the land to them, but it was according to His rental agreement. They had to keep the law. The covenant of love with them. NOTHING good was going to come of them rejecting His love. Moses told them to circumcise their HEARTS, not just body parts. To get the Word into themselves, not just use it as a book of words. To love themselves and those around them (foreigners), especially those who lived inside the nation of Israel as guests because they too had been foreigners and knew what it was to be mistreated.

Moses reminded them of the first commandment: Yahweh was THEIR God. Yahweh brought them out of Egypt. Yahweh gave them freedom. Their ancestors had gone down with seventy people into Egypt and in just two hundred years, look what God had done in accordance with His covenant with Abraham: they were three million or so strong.

Moses said that they were to serve Yahweh, but he uses a different phrasing than he had on Sinai. Continuing to teach on the meaning behind the Law (instead of replacing the Sinai revelation with some kind of Deuteronical revelation), Moses told them to CLING to Yahweh. To reverence Him, yes. To serve Him, yes. But to CLING to Him. To make the conscious choice to REMEMBER. To make the conscious choice to OBEY. To make the conscious choice to alter their behaviour, thinking, and speaking, to be in harmony with Yahweh by CHOOSING to align with His values, His morals, and His commands. Why? Because Yahweh had done majestic and fearsome things IN THEIR SIGHT and deserved their love and obedience.

Essentially, Moses was saying: stay in the Blessing zone.

Summary

Key Players: God, Moses

Key Themes: Cause and Effect, Blessing and Cursing, Love God

Key Verse(s): Deuteronomy 8:1-2, 19-20; 9:4-6; 10:12-13, 20-22