March 26 Seeing the Old Heart
Numbers 20
It’s both tragic and comical that our same spiritual weaknesses keep coming back. When God first called Moses, he was reluctant to journey back to Egypt. But God showed Moses – in both action and Word – that He and His Word were true, where the Egyptian gods were not.
Moses did not just “speak to the rock” to bring water. Instead, he went beyond God’s clear words, and he struck it twice with his staff. Then, we get God’s clear description of what was going on in Moses’ soul: an old cocktail of the sin of doubt, mixed with anger.
God said: “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” (Numbers 20:12)
God was revealing something we could not see: Moses’ heart. My “take” on explaining Moses’ blunder, by reading into his words and actions, is that his mistake sprang from anger and self-justification. He was sick of the people’s lack of faith in him and in God. But that explanation is insufficient.
God reveals that Moses and Aaron “have not believed Me.…” This veteran of listening to God’s miraculous Voice… doubted it! The Word was going to do the work! But Moses’ unbelief in the Word to do the work (at this end-of-the-road moment) ruined God’s potent object lesson. When God spoke and created the universe, no one was there to hear or see it. This rock episode was a microcosm of that ancient truth and event. If Moses had listened, water would’ve come out of the rock as a fitting pre-conquest reminder that their Lord’s Voice could do anything!
Jesus is the Word of God. That Word is miraculous. But doubt can creep into the hearts of seasoned soldiers of the cross. Age and perpetual spiritual tests can grow old so to speak. The good news in the account is that Moses was forgiven. But the bad news was Moses would share in the same chastisement that the people did: “No holy land for you!” Moses was forgiven because the Word really did do the work! On the cross. All of it!
Prayer: Lord, Satan can use age, infirmity, perpetual resistance, to wear down our faith in You
and Your Word. Deliver us from unbelief. And finally forgive us when we trip and fall.
Do the work we cannot do. Forgive us out of Your mercy alone. Amen.
