Gtcotr/ss031625
Hebrews 3 NKJV
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice,
8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness.”
God is referring to the Children of Israel after He delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. He intended on bringing them up and into the land of plenty. They just didn’t want to participate and nothing could convince them. He called them stiff-necked, stubborn, and rebellious children.
Exodus 3 NKJV
7 ¶ And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.
8 “So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey …”
God delivered the Children of Israel from the enemies of their past, expecting them to help Him conquer the enemies of their future.
But the one enemy that kept defeating God’s children was their own stinking thinking. Their greatest enemy was their own attitude towards God. Now this is not you, but some people think these things. They say:
When the Children of Israel decided to leave Egypt,they walked to the Red Sea and camped there. Kind of out of Egypt but not really. Again, that’s not us. I don’t know if they would have ever left that spot if God had not hardened the heart of Pharoah to pursue them and pin them up against the Red Sea. It was either go forward or die. So God moved behind them and shielded them from the enemies of their past and opened a miraculous way for them to cross the sea on dry ground. God is good like that …
These same waters ultimately drowned and destroyed their enemy. Once on the other side safe and sound, Exodus 15 says Moses and the Children of Israel all broke out into singing and dancing and shouting for what God had done. Again, God delivered them out of Egypt expecting they were going to go up and go into the Promise Land. But they didn’t want to.
It is an easy choice to run from the enemies you’ve always known but not so easy to run towards enemies you’ve never known. The children of Israel got it half right … They came out but they were unwilling to go up. In today’s terms: They wanted to reap, but they didn’t want to sow.
God stood behind them at the Red Sea. He covered them in the wilderness. And when they finally crossed the Jordan River some 40 years later, God went before them and led them into every battle. God will go before you today. He will lead you against enemies you’ve never faced before.
God wants us to be as excited about the promises and the blessings as we were about salvation. For God, it’s all one covenant: Deuteronomy 28:1-13.
In Exodus they sang after being saved. In Joshua they marched around Jericho, blew trumpets and shouted,before the walls came down. How does this play into our lives today? What does God expect from us?
Well He was not happy with the attitude of His children in the Exodus. And He won’t be any more pleased with you and me if we don’t trust Him. He still has some ground to claim in our lives and in the lives of others.
We need to check our attitude towards God. Are we treating Him like God or are we treating like an option? Is He our Lord and Master or is He only our Savior and Servant? Are we onboard with God’s plan or do we have our own agenda? There is no future in worshipping a cow, even if it’s a golden cow! There is a difference between having a problem and being a problem.
We have come out … now let’s go up and into the will of God for our lives.
