God, Who Acts as He Promised

11The children of Israel did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, and served the Baals. 12They abandoned Yahweh, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; and they provoked Yahweh to anger. 13They abandoned Yahweh, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. 14Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. 15Wherever they went out, Yahweh’s hand was against them for evil, as Yahweh had spoken, and as Yahweh had sworn to them; and they were very distressed.

Before anything else, we must know who God is. If we do not truly understand his will, his plan, and his covenant, we cannot help provoking his anger. God is rich in love, but that love is a special grace he gives to those who strive to live by faith. Not knowing God’s nature, people fall into a misunderstanding: since I believe in God, he will bless me, and for the sake of my salvation he will bear with me even when I sin. It is this kind of pride that provokes God’s anger.

God had shown them great love and led them into Canaan, yet they worshiped idols in Yahweh’s sight. Israel had lived as slaves in Egypt, and when they saw how well the Canaanites lived, they could not resist the temptation and settled down among them. When something works to their advantage, people act wickedly, whether the one they wrong is God or someone who has shown them kindness. But a person who truly knows God does not sin or betray lightly, because they carry the good conscience God has given them.

Yet many people hold a mistaken view of faith: if I devote myself like this, God will be greatly pleased and will bless me. They treat their faith as a yardstick for blessing. When human reasoning weighs more than God’s law, it is impossible to live as a believer.

What would you do if God told you that everything you have came from him, and asked for it back? If we see our relationship with God only in terms of blessing, we will end up counting everything we offer him as a payment toward some return. We betray God in this way because we lack the true faith that confesses that Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away.

Matthew 20:12-13

12saying, ‘These last have spent one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!’ 13“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Didn’t you agree with me for a denarius?

Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. The master agreed with the workers he found at daybreak to pay them a denarius for a full day’s work, and brought them into the vineyard. At the third hour he went out and brought back more, and he did the same at the sixth hour, the ninth, and the eleventh.

Since the master had promised every one of them a denarius, he began paying wages with those who had come in at the eleventh hour. When the men who had started at dawn saw the latecomers receive a denarius, they fully expected to get more. But when the master paid them the same, they complained: how could those who had worked a single hour be paid the same as they, who had labored all day? The master replied that what he had agreed with them was one denarius, so he had broken no promise.

This parable gives us something to consider: God’s original plan was to bring into heaven everyone who sincerely believes in Jesus Christ, whoever they may be. So the thought that I deserve a greater reward because I worked longer than someone else is nothing but human greed. Had those early workers possessed a good heart, they would have looked at the people who found no work until the eleventh hour and counted themselves fortunate to have met the master so early. While others were in distress for want of work, they had been able to work in the vineyard, and so they had no reason to complain. Yet, thinking more of how much they had done than of what the master had promised, they resented him.

The people of Israel had the same heart as these grasping workers. They thought it only natural that, as the people God had chosen, they should live better than the Canaanites. So they assumed that even after God rebuked them, he would forgive them if they offered sacrifices, and that once forgiven they could go back to living as they pleased. Theirs was a truly foolish faith, trusting that whatever they did and whatever they chose, God would act on their side. Sadly, such thinking takes root because they put themselves at the center rather than God’s will.

But God did not hold back those who plundered Israel; he sent disaster and judgment and made them suffer. When God’s protection departs, that in itself is suffering. Had they lived by faith while God was pouring out his grace, they could have enjoyed peace and rest forever; instead they foolishly cast aside their faith and their loyalty. They had experienced how terrible God’s discipline is, yet they sank into pleasure and immorality and sinned grievously.

Israel relied more on idols they could see than on the God they could not see. Rather than the relationship with God that can be formed only by denying oneself, they formed ties with the Canaanites for the sake of a comfortable life. God had commanded them not to do any of this, yet because the people did not fear his word, they felt free to live as they pleased. Just as God does not change, Israel too ought to have held an unchanging faith, but sadly they did not live that way.

1 Corinthians 10:1-4

1Now I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; 2and were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 3and all ate the same spiritual food; 4and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

The apostle Paul says that when Israel crossed the parted Red Sea, the whole people was baptized. As befitted God’s people, they ate manna, the spiritual food sent down from heaven, and drank the spiritual drink that flowed from the spiritual rock. The rock that gave them that spiritual drink was Christ.

Here we discover something astonishing. The sin that provoked God’s anger so greatly that Moses could not enter Canaan is none other than the sin we commit every day. The children of Israel camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. They had seen countless miracles, yet they could not be patient; complaining that they had nothing to drink, they began to turn on Moses. When he heard their grumbling, Moses asked why they quarreled with him and told them not to test Yahweh, but the outcry only grew louder, and Moses too began to be stung, since from where he stood there was nothing he could do about any of it. Though they had known countless miracles and much grace, the people complained without end, asking Moses whether he had brought them out of Egypt to kill them with thirst. Here was the man who had freed them from slavery through the ten plagues and drowned the Egyptians who oppressed them, and now they were ready to stone him.

Overwhelmed by a flood of thoughts and feelings, Moses cried out to God: these people were about to stone him, and what was he to do? From where Moses stood, the situation must have left him at a loss, because he had simply fulfilled the charge God gave him, while the people, who had also seen God’s miracles, ought to have prayed or waited patiently themselves.

Yet, as though Moses had to remedy every hardship they faced, they blamed him whenever things grew difficult and were ready to stone him. He had spent his life persuading them and had at last freed them from the misery of Egypt, yet over something as small as a lack of water they wanted to kill him. They felt no gratitude at all for what he had sacrificed. This makes it plain that miracles do not change people. Because grace and miracles are gifts that come wholly from God and from the leader, they cannot shine unless the one who receives them has a good conscience and a sincere heart.

When Moses, who had obeyed God’s command with all his life, strength, and will, was persecuted by the people, God commanded him to take in his hand the rod with which he had struck the Nile. Why that rod in particular? It would have been a word of comfort: what you face now is nothing beside the miracle of parting the Nile, so do not be afraid. God then told him that he would stand on the rock in Horeb, that Moses was to strike the rock, and that the people would drink the water that came out of it. Moses struck the rock with his rod as Yahweh had commanded, and the people and their animals all drank the water that flowed from it. The place where the water came out is called Massah, or Meribah.

Exodus records that Moses struck the rock as Yahweh commanded and the people drank, but Numbers 20 describes in detail how grave a wrong Moses committed against God. It records that Moses gathered the people, who wanted to stone him, in front of the rock, called them rebels, and asked whether he and Aaron must bring water out of this rock for them; then he struck the rock twice with his rod, water gushed out in abundance, and the congregation and their livestock drank. Seeing this, Yahweh was angry and told Moses and Aaron that because they had known he would bring water from the rock and yet had not shown the people his holiness, acting instead on their own feelings, they would not enter the land of Canaan. Even though Moses had acted so proudly, God still revealed his own holiness and gave the people water to drink.

The apostle Paul says that crossing the Red Sea was a baptism, that eating manna was eating spiritual food, and that the water from the rock was spiritual drink—and that rock was Christ. If so, Moses should never have struck the rock twice in anger, as though he were the one giving spiritual water. Of course, the people did not know that God had baptized them on his own initiative, given them spiritual food, and poured out on them through Christ the grace of the fullness of the Spirit. But Moses, though he had experienced God’s grace and power, sinned by striking the rock as if he himself had been the one leading them.

God had told him plainly that he would be on the rock, and that Moses was to look to him alone and strike it; sadly, Moses looked instead at the grumbling people.

Moses would probably have been frustrated and angry to see Israel, after receiving such great grace, complain over small things. When the people he had brought out of Egypt at the cost of everything he had turned against God and raised stones against him, he may for a moment have been unable to master his human temper.

I have wondered whether Moses might have thought something like this in that moment. He had passed on what God told him and, as commanded, worked many miracles to help them, yet they complained whenever they met a problem; I wondered whether he did not despair of them. Granted, swept along by his feelings, he must have forgotten for a moment that the power was not his own. Worn out and weary from watching the crowd clamor, he would have closed his heart without realizing that before God this was pride and sin. Looking at the people with stones in their hands, Moses may have felt wounded by God for bringing such an absurd ordeal upon him. A people who would not change even to the end would have grieved him, and all his labor would have seemed to come to nothing.

We can well understand this human side of Moses, but before God our understanding counts for nothing. God had clearly said that he would stand on the rock and that if Moses only struck it with his rod, he would do the work; even so, Moses could not overcome the people’s unbelief. This is precisely the sin by which Moses failed to display God’s holiness.

Angered by the grumbling and unable to master his emotions, he struck the rock, and so Moses and the people alike became sinners before God. Through one man’s devotion the miracle of the Exodus came about, and one man’s unbelief made them all sinners. To be sure, what the people did is a sin that can never be forgiven. But we must not forget that God was working with Moses at that very moment.

Before God there is no heavier or lighter sin. Whether they entered the vineyard early in the morning or at the eleventh hour, in God’s sight they all did the same work. Coming in early does not mean you worked more, and being a leader does not mean you did more. Moses would have been crushed less by any proud notion that he had done more than they had than by the sight of a people who had received grace and still did not change.

But there was something Moses did not consider. Just as those who came early and those who came late all received one denarius, the responsibility Moses and the people received from God was the same. Since the Israelites would answer for their sins in the end, Moses needed only to be faithful in his own work; instead he gave more weight to his own responsibility than to God. This people never entered Canaan but all died in the wilderness, which tells us that they too died for their own sin. In God’s eyes, the people who complained after seeing countless miracles and Moses, who could not bear with them, are sinners alike. That is why God told Moses that he could not enter Canaan.

How wronged Moses must have felt! The life he had lived until then would have seemed empty, and the thought that all he had sacrificed to give such a people a land of blessing was vanity of vanities would have driven him to despair. He had longed to see Israel living in Canaan and to watch with his own eyes as God fulfilled his wonderful plan; how bitter, then, the heart of a man who had to die without ever setting foot there. Even so, Moses knew that if God had commanded it, there was a clear reason, and so he climbed the mountain of Abarim, looked out over the land of Canaan, and departed this world. His death is all the more grievous because he never lived the ordinary life everyone else enjoys, but spent his whole life for Israel alone. His later appearance with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration tells us that he had gone to be with God. The people who would not believe Moses and did not trust God, by contrast, all perished in the wilderness. The faith of the people and the faith of Moses differed, and so did their spiritual stature; for this reason those who go before must set an example and always live with humble faith.

I tell you about this event—how Moses, who served so faithfully, failed in the end to display God’s holiness—to show you what kind of God it is that you believe in.

The rock that gave spiritual water is Jesus Christ himself. The spiritual water did not come out because Moses struck it. God had already planned for the spiritual water to flow, so if Moses had only prayed and asked him for water, God would have given it in overflowing measure. Yet people always think it is up to them. With the self always at the center, they treat God’s grace lightly and fail to fully reveal Christ, who carries out the work of salvation.

What calling have you received from God? Some of you will have received a calling as hard to bear as Moses’; others receive God’s grace simply by coming to church. Some, like Moses, must give their whole lives; others, like the people, receive grace just by following Moses. But we must never forget that all of them are God’s children. Even when the people complained and took up stones, Moses should never have forgotten that every miracle he had performed was God’s power. And had he remembered that even those grumbling people had been entrusted to him by God, he would never have asked whether he must give them water.

The work of God will be done by Christ, and Christ sees us and the world from a different vantage than we do. He did not save us because we had served God well; it was God’s will, and he gave himself to accomplish it. Adam was not a spiritual man but a natural man, of the earth, made of dust. The second Adam, however, is a life-giving spirit, a spiritual man who bears the image of the heavenly. We ought to be humble, knowing that he is God, far beyond anything a human being can stand against; yet we treat Christ far too lightly.

We must give our very best to become like Jesus in his holiness, living it out with all our life, all our strength, and all our will. We need to strive to see and think about the world with God’s heart, and to lean on the Holy Spirit so that we may have an unconditional love like God’s. Such faith marks the believer who, though still living in the world, gives themselves to bearing the image of the heavenly.

As you look at Moses, who had to die so unjustly, and at the people who tormented the man who had given his life for them, what goes through your mind? Looking at a people who lived only for themselves, we must hold to a right faith. When Israel repented, God raised up judges for them and, as long as each judge lived, rescued them from the oppression of their enemies. Yet after receiving such love, the moment the judge died they fell straight back into corruption.

Perhaps the people’s betrayal and God’s anger and forgiveness will repeat until the end of this world. Why did God have to go this far? He could have ended everything with a wave of his hand, as when he swept the world away in the flood—so why does he keep on bearing with us to the end? It is because of the promise God himself made, and because of his love that longs to save even one more soul. Because of God’s righteousness we can go on living even though we sin, and Israel and we are still being given the chance to repent.

I hope you will turn back while God is patiently waiting. If we learn that it hurts only once we are struck, and learn to fear God only once we have lost everything, we may not be given another chance.

May you, like Moses and Joshua, make your decision with mature faith and live it out. Then God will call you, ready as you are, entrust his work to you, and carry out his holy work together with you.