My Third Birthday - Part 2
- Bible Prophet
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you [Deuteronomy 11:22-23].
The Lord wanted to give them the land unconditionally. That’s what He covenanted with Abraham to do. We know this as the “Abrahamic Covenant”. But the Israelites didn’t want to know the Lord or learn His ways, so they could accurately represent Him to the world. They were full-fledged whippersnappers, you see, regular teenage know-it-alls in their prime.
They told Moses to keep the Lord away from them. Let Moses go visit with the Lord and bring His Word back to them. Then they would do everything the Lord told them. See! They already knew it all and didn’t want the Lord to come near them. Let Moses the priest do the church work. They were busy fellows. They had important business to attend to.
So the Lord said, They claim they will do everything I say, huh? Their words are good. Would that their hearts were too!” The Israelites, you see, needed to recognize they were not good enough to be like the Lord, not even close! They could not live like His family, until they were mature enough to know their own limitations. To borrow Clint Eastwood’s line, “A man needs to know his limitations.”
How to teach the facts of life to the Israelites? That was the million dollar question. The Lord answered it by creating another covenant with them. No, He didn’t annul the Abrahamic Covenant. But He did add an additional covenant to the mix to teach the facts of life to the puerile Israelites.
The goal of this new covenant was to make them realize their limitations and depend on the Lord, not on themselves. So at Mount Sinai the Lord established the “Covenant of Law” with the Israelites (aka the “Law of Moses” or “Torah”). Basically the Abrahamic Covenant presented the Israelites with the Promised Land, all wrapped with decorative paper inside a rectangular box, with a pretty bow on top. Alas, but the Israelites were too young, too immature, to treat the Promised Land with the respect it was due. They were unable to behave in a godly manner in accordance with membership in the family of God.
So the Lord withheld the rectangular box, telling them they first had to live up to their family responsibilities, and that perfectly. Only when they did so would they be accounted worthy of receiving the rectangular box based on their own performance.
Yikes! Time is up again. Wow! Time flies when we’re having fun! Let’s continue the fun in our next lesson. Sounds like a plan. The Lord Jesus requests our presence now. See you there.
To further research this issue, I direct you to my books in the Heavenly Citizens in Earthly Shoes Bible study series. To purchase my books please click on the "Shop" tab at the top of this page, where you will find a complete list of my books. Each book is available in both paperback (Createspace) and eBook (Kindle).
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