The right time had come, and Moses had the word of the Lord: in just a short while the Lord God would wonderfully and supernaturally deliver the children Israel out of the clutches of Pharaoh and Egypt.
What a promise, and what joy followed, and rightly so: they were getting out of bondage.
We all know what happened next. God miraculously intervened by ten plagues to deliver His people from slavery. They left with the wealth of all of Egypt. The Bible tells us that they “spoiled” the Egyptians and that God supernaturally destroyed the entire at my of Egypt in the Red Sea.
What a great deliverance! They sang God’s praises and celebrated their freedom.
Everything was looking up for the Israelites. Now God was ready to unveil the next phase of His plan for His people. He had prepared a “new day” for His people.
Moses stood up before the congregation of Israel and told them they were to cross over the river Jordan, engage and dispel the enemies of God from there, and take possession of their promised land of Canaan.
The people’s joy came to a screeching halt. Everything was going just fine, and then God mixed things up with unexpected challenges and commands.
Their response to Moses and to God was the wrong one, and it sealed their future outside of God’s purpose. They said to God and to Moses, “We’ve now got a serious problem here, Mr. Moses. We liked yesterday’s word better than today’s. In fact, we’ve decided to STAY IN YESTERDAY’S PROMISE. We feel that we don’t need this new word and all the hassle it would bring into our lives. So, thank you, but no thank you on this promised land business.”
”Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’”
Hebrews 3:7 -10NKJV
The children of Israel “provoked” and “tempted” God by refusing and rebelling against his today word for their lives. An entire generation was “passed over” by God because they refused to “move on” into His will.
This refusal DISQUALIFIED the children of Israel from living in God’s perfect will. God patiently waited for the entire generation to die (except Joshua and Caleb who believed the TODAY WORD). Instead of being entirely obedient to God’s purpose, they chose to do some of what God wanted, and not to do the part they were uncomfortable with.
Half-hearted Christians who pick and chose when to obey God, never please God with their lives. Just when we think we know it all and have got it all together— when we become comfortable and even complacent with where we are—God disrupts our comfort zone with a fresh revelation and a new direction.
This fresh revelation becomes God’s invitation to a new season of His blessings and grace.
The incredible thing about God’s dealings with man is that God gives a man the power to CHOOSE –the ability to say yes or no to God.
Deuteronomy 30: 14, 19 reads:
“ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it…call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live..”
Although God gives us this power, when we choose wrong, we must live with the consequences of disobedience. When we choose right by receiving and believing God’s today word, we receive the reward for entering into that promise from God.