From Prosperity to Success
Wow. We pick right up in Deuteronomy 9 where we
left off yesterday, do we not? Yesterday
we spoke of the danger of material prosperity.
Today Moses talks about success.
Moses warns the people to not think that they drove out the native
inhabitants of the land. Moses warns
them to be careful to not forget that the native inhabitants are driven out
because of God’s power, not because of their own power. Oh, how many paths there are to
self-glorification! Material
wealth. Occupational success. Bountiful families. All of these things can be good, but all of
these things can also lead us into self-centeredness. We must be careful.
In fact, in
cautioning the people about why the Hebrew peoples are going to be able to
possess Canaan Moses tells us another lesson.
The Hebrew people are not going to possess the land because of their
righteousness. This should get us to
recall back to Deuteronomy 7:6-8.
Deuteronomy 7 tells us that the Hebrew people are God’s people because
God loves them, not because they are righteous.
Deuteronomy 9 reinforces this and says that the Canaanites are going to
be displaced not because the Hebrew people are righteous but because the
Canaanites are grossly unrighteous!
There is a big
warning. None of us are righteous – no,
not even one. But when we are grossly
unrighteous, God will displace us. God
displaced the Canaanites. God displaces
His own people roughly 400 years after they displace the Canaanites. God then displace the Assyrians, the
Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, etc. History is full of nations that rise up in
power, become so self-centered and bloated that they become corrupt and they
crumble. And when they crumble, they
crumble hard and fast.
For the record,
history in other places besides the Middle East is also full of nations that
rose up, become self-centered and full of themselves, and then crumbled. None of us are righteous. When we rise up in life, we do it because of
God’s righteousness rather than our own.
When we get so focused on our own righteousness we actually reveal just
how unrighteous we are. When we think we
are great, we reveal just how much we deserve God’s judgment. That is the warning of history, and
specifically that is the warning Moses gives us through his comments regarding
the Canaanites in this particular chapter.
Reminder of Wrath and Intercession
This chapter ends
with the stories of the Hebrew rebellion and the intercession of Moses. Having spent so much time on rebellion over
the last few days, let’s talk a bit about Moses. Moses is the intercessor for the Hebrew
people. Now, I know where many of our
minds went when reading that last sentence.
Jesus Christ is our intercessor. {See 1 Timothy 2:5, right?} That is absolutely correct. But, I would make the case that Jesus Christ
– who was around when the world was created and thus around when Moses was
leading the Hebrew people – was still the mediator of the Hebrew people as
well. Moses is not a spiritual mediator, he is a
human intercessory agent.
Moses gets frustrated
with the people, but he ultimately cannot turn his back upon them. Moses has his heart corrupted by these people
– remember the striking the rock
instead of speaking it incident in Numbers as an example. Yet he still does not abandon them. Moses is prohibited from seeing the Promised
Land largely because of his being around the rebellious Hebrew people, yet even
now he stands here as their advocate.
Do we have people in
our lives who are always in our corner?
Do we have people in our lives that no matter how often we turn our back
to them or stray from their leadership they are still willing to embrace us and
walk with us and pray for us? Do we have
people in our lives who are willing to speak words of correction rather than
abandon us in our moments of being wrong?
Those people are an amazing lot of people.
Human intercessory
agents are incredible people. Those rare
spiritual beings who can be yelled at, back-stabbed, slandered, betrayed, and
sold down the river … and yet they continue to love for no explicable reason …
those are amazing people. The love
contained within people like Moses is simply astounding. I think it is time that today we thank God
for those intercessory people in our lives.
I think it is time we
lift them up in prayer and ask God to strengthen them. How many times in the story of Moses was he
attacked, abused, slandered, and the like?
In comparison, how many times was he complimented and obeyed? You know as well as I do that our
intercessory friends get the wrong end of humanity far more than they get the
pleasant end. They need God’s strength,
for their lot in life is perhaps one of the most difficult callings that God
can ask of a person. Moses – and those
like him – are a special breed of God’s people.
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