The God Who Does What He Has Promised

Though Israel had been delivered out of Egypt, the people looked at how well the Canaanites lived, mingled with them and served their idols. When the people complained that there was no water and took up stones against Moses, he could not master his feelings and struck the rock twice, even though God had said that he himself would stand on the rock.

Just as the landowner paid a denarius even to those who came to work late, before God no sin weighs more or less, whether between those who labored early and those who labored late, or between leaders and the people. It was not so much a sense of having given more of himself as despair at a people who would not change that kept Moses from displaying God’s holiness. Grace and miracles cannot transform anyone who does not receive them with a sincere heart.

Because of the promise he himself made, and a love that would save even one soul, God remains patient through betrayal, wrath and forgiveness, over and over again. Moses died without entering Canaan, yet he later appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, his faith acknowledged. Only by persevering until the moment they meet God, and giving themselves up to the very last, will God’s people be spared a bitter end.