Gratitude and obedience. These two words were what came to mind this morning as I read chapters 16-19. Or should I say, a lack of those two words is what came to mind?
We will see Israel’s grumbling, disobedience, and outright rebellion many more times through our reading this year. But again, we cannot get lost in focusing on how blind they seemed to be, without examining our own hearts first.
What strikes me most about these passages, especially when I ponder how I can take them and apply them to my own life – is that gratitude and obedience go hand in hand. My gratitude toward God for my salvation, his mercy, grace, love, and care for me increases my desire to live a life of obedience to him. Not because I am trying to earn anything from him, but simply because of all that has already been done by him on my behalf. When my focus is on HIM, rather than on myself and my circumstances, I am more inclined to be more mindful of my obedience. It is when I take my mind off of HIM and put it on ME, that I find myself grumbling or doing something else that is disobedient.
And this is what we see time and time again with Israel. Something would happen, they would grumble or rebel in some way, God would deliver, heal, or reveal himself, and they would worship and praise him, and be obedient…until they took their eyes off him again and focused on their circumstances or their own desires. It is the same with us now. Why?
Sin.
Sin dwells in us just as sin dwelt in the hearts of Israel. Even though we have been washed clean by the blood of Christ, we still must battle against our sinful nature. Our natural inclination is not to obey God. Before salvation, when we were slaves to our sin and following the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), we were unable to obey God. But now, in Christ, he has given us the ability and we are willing to live righteously through the Spirit. But because of the sin that still infects our hearts, we are easily pulled off course. But we have a choice. It is a choice we must make moment by moment every day. Will we meditate on the word of God, his attributes, his promises, and his righteous rules and strive to live in the light of those truths or will we allow ourselves to go on autopilot? Will we continually come before the throne of grace and preach the gospel to ourselves to be reminded of what great things he has done for us or will we turn our eyes to ourselves – our wants, our desires, our troubles?
While we, as Christians, may have the same sin nature as those of Israel, we have some things they didn’t. We have the entire Bible. We are able to read these accounts of Israel in light of the coming of Christ and his work on the cross. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us – the very Spirit of God himself – who empowers us to live righteous, holy lives of obedience and gratitude. But we must walk in those things. God gives us a new heart and we are enabled to live holy lives through his Spirit, but we have a part to play in actually doing it.
We must make time today (and every day) to preach the gospel to our hearts. We must remind ourselves of God’s grace in our life. We, sinners deserving death for our sins, were redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ who was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus was fully God and fully man. He lived the perfect, sinless life that we could never live, died in our place, and took on the full wrath of God that we deserved. And being resurrected after three days, defeating sin and death, he gave us newness of life and brought us into a right relationship with God the Father. This constant reminder is what breeds gratitude in our hearts and obedience will flow from that. Will we be perfect? Absolutely not. But that does not excuse us from walking in a manner worth of the gospel (Philippians 1:27).
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