All Too Human

Numbers 13-15:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=num%2013-15&version=NIV1984

            One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Lionel Blue, a reform rabbi and a British broadcaster.  He said, “An aged rabbi, crazed with liberalism, once said to me, ‘We Jews are just ordinary human beings.  Only a bit more so!’”  I like it because Israel was called to be a representative race; they were to model what lives in the image of God should look like.  And, boy, did they ever!  Called to be the Lord’s unique people, they were often human in a much-too-Adam kind of way.

            So, here they are, the recipients of God’s promises, delivered from Egypt, led through the Red Sea, confronted by the Lord on Sinai, named His holy people, granted a great deal of instruction about what it meant to be His holy people, living around the Tabernacle—in which their God graciously stooped to dwell.  And that’s all within 18 months!  Now, they send scouts into the land this God had promised, and the spies say, “It’s nice, but we can’t afford it.”  Imagine a rich uncle who says, “I’m going to give you a house.  I’ve picked out a nice 4,500 square foot one for you, and it has everything your family could ever want in a house.”  Would you say, “Sorry, I don’t think you can afford the house you promised”?  I don’t think so.  I think you’d take the house and say thank you.

            Not Israel!  They don’t think that the God who drowned the army of Pharaoh in the Red Sea can evict a few troublesome Canaanites.  No wonder God is so ticked off!  It’s not like He did His mighty acts of salvation so long ago.

            So, here we have Israel behaving just like the rest of fallen humanity—only a bit more so.  They can’t quite commit themselves to the Lord and His ways—just like Adam and Eve couldn’t, just like the generation of Babel couldn’t, just like we often can’t.

            Then, they do the natural thing (humanly speaking).  They decide to get it for themselves.  How human is that!  We don’t believe that God can get it done, but we believe that we can.  No wonder we seem to spend so much time ‘in the wilderness.’  It’s in the wildernesses of life that we finally give up on getting stuff done for ourselves and learn what it means to rely on the promises that God has made us, promises that find their focus in Jesus, who is everything Adam was supposed to have been, who is everything Israel was supposed have been, who alone demonstrates a heart living completely on the promises of God.
--reposted from 2/16/2011