A History Lesson - Pt. 1

 

See, the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.’ Then all of you came near me and said, ‘Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.’ The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve men from you, one man from each tribe. And they turned and went up into the hill country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and spied it out. And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us, and brought us word again and said, ‘It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.’ “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 1:21-26 ESV).

 

I was not a student of history until I reached seminary. In fact, I always thought it was merely a subject that needed to be endured rather than mastered. Our meme today by Aldous Huxley speaks volumes to me as I age watching history repeated in the most destructive ways. Our Scripture today follows that same thought. It deserves some attention to the details of context and consequences. "You were unwilling," Moses accused the Israelites. "You," he said-not "they." But "they" were only children at that time, or perhaps not even born. Why were these children blamed for what their parents had done?

 

As with Adam and Eve and their descendants, so the sin of the first generation in the desert affected all their descendants. This story of the people's rebellion is a mirror in which Israel sees the truth about itself. It reminds them, encourages them, and pushes them in the right direction. It comes down to this: Don't repeat the sins of your past.

But we do. As true descendants of Adam and Eve, we listen often to the voice of the tempter. We touch what is forbidden and gaze at what our eyes should shun. We're experts at showing God and our neighbors how little we truly love them, and how much we've turned in toward ourselves. That's the burden of human history as the Bible reflects it to us: no one is righteous; no one is without sin before God.

 

"You did not trust in God," Moses says to you and me. "You did not trust the promise of his gift of life." Think about the current rhetoric and direction in our country. I am convinced we need to ask first whether we are trusting in God or government. I am not excusing the abuses of government. I am insisting that we turn first to our God if we truly want to have freedom. Notice I said “God,” not religion. Religion has often been the excuse men use to justify their evil intent. Let Jesus Christ be the mirror in which you see your true self reflected.