Humble Orthodoxy by Joshua Harris

Author:Joshua Harris [Harris, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60142-476-1
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

Don’t measure yourself by what you know. Measure yourself by your practice of what you know.

We can’t afford to grow casual toward our own propensity to sin. Even the great leader Moses let his guard down and earned God’s displeasure by allowing the disobedience of others to lead him into his own disobedience.

REBELLIOUS LEADER OF A REBELLIOUS PEOPLE

Moses and the people of Israel were in the Sinai Desert, and they ran out of water. They started complaining to their leader, “Why have you brought the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink” (Numbers 20:4–5).

Annoyed with these grumblers yet also understanding the need for water, Moses asked the Lord what to do.

The Lord told him to assemble all the people and “tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water” (verse 8).

So Moses took the people (whom he called “rebels”) to a rock and struck the rock twice with his staff (verses 10–11). The text doesn’t fully explain what was taking place in Moses’s heart, but what seems evident is that when Moses struck the rock, an energy and a passion were motivating him that had nothing to do with the glory of God. He appears to have been more concerned with vindicating himself, more preoccupied with the waywardness of the people than with the holiness of God.

Despite this, God was faithful to his promise. Sufficient water came out to meet all the people’s present needs.

The people were happy.

Moses finally may have been happy.

But the Lord wasn’t happy.

You see, Moses hadn’t strictly obeyed his instructions. The Lord had told him to tell the rock to yield water. Instead, Moses, in his anger against the grumbling people of Israel, struck the rock. So God chastised Moses: “You did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel” (verse 12).

I don’t know about you, but I want to give Moses a pass on this one. His seemingly minor trespass pales in comparison to the outrageous behavior of the people he led.

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