He gives, we screw it up, and He gives some more.
The last couple of Sundays I’ve been writing about how God gives first.
With Solomon, the wisdom and wealth came before the instructions on what to do with them. With Israel as a whole, God repeatedly delivered, restored, protected, and provided before they promptly drifted again.
Once you see it, the same thing shows up lots of places you hadn’t considered.
Like with Moses.
Moses didn’t earn his position. God chose him, sent him, empowered him, and used him to bring Israel out of Egypt. The miracles, authority, provision, all of it was given first.
Then came the responsibility.
But God also promised to be with Moses in a way most of us can barely imagine. God met with him face to face, spoke to him directly, and answered his questions.
Most of us think that if we had an advantage like that, obeying would be easy.
By now you’re probably seeing the problem with that assumption.
By the time you get to the incident with the rock, Moses is worn down. The people are complaining about water again, which by that point had become a recurring theme.
God tells Moses to speak to the rock.
Instead, he strikes it. Angrily, while telling the Israelites what ingrates they are.
Water still comes out. The people get what they needed. If you judged strictly by outcome, it wouldn’t even look like much of a problem.
But God had been clear.
And Moses did something else.
That was enough.
He was told he would not enter the Promised Land. After everything else, after leading Israel for decades, that was the line.
We struggle with that because it feels disproportionate. We immediately start grading the sin ourselves. It wasn’t murder. It wasn’t idolatry. He didn’t steal anything. He got frustrated, lashed out, and did something he wasn’t supposed to do.
Sound familiar?
But the Bible doesn’t treat sin the way we do. Moses knew what God had said, and he did something different. That was enough.
And there wasn’t a way for Moses to fix it himself.
No second attempt. No chance to go back and do it correctly the next time. He led Israel to the edge of the land, and stopped there.
But don’t overlook something that happens later.
At the transfiguration, Jesus Christ is seen speaking with Moses and Elijah.
I used to glide right over that part. If you’re talking about the most important figures in the Bible, Moses is obviously one of them. Of course he’s there.
But then it hits you.
He’s in the land he was told he would never enter.
Moses never fixed what he did.
But somehow it was fixed anyway.
By God.
The consequence still happened. Moses did not walk into the land with Israel. But it wasn’t the end of the story.
Same pattern over and over. God gives. We fail. God restores.
Which is fortunate, because if the arrangement depended on us fixing ourselves first, none of us are getting very far.
It’s never too late.
Until it is.
P.S.- If you’ve been meaning to spend more time actually reading the Bible instead of just hearing pieces of it secondhand, you can join us at His Word Together.
No commentary.
No arguing denominations.
No pretending to have every answer.
Nothing to buy.
Just a steady habit of reading.