Kingdom Conscious Reality

Good morning/day/afternoon/evening to you most beloved reader. I welcome you in the name of Jesus to Kingdom Conscious Reality. Here, I write about living a life that is continually concious of the King of Heaven and what it means to be in His kingdom. I hope today’s topic will give you insight and encourage you as I build onto the previous post(Do Not Forget God’s Faithfulness).

This week’s scriptures are Exodus 17v1-7 and Hebrews 3.

The people harden their hearts

Exodus 17v1-7 is a record of what the Isrealites faced on their travels. 6 weeks after God parted the Red Sea and delivered them with a mighty hand. The Lord had commanded them to Rephidim, and this location had no water, so naturally they were thirsty. He knew these conditions beforehand and still sent them here. In their thirst and distress, the people began complaining to Moses and accused him of murderous intent. Moses clarifies that their quarreling with him was actually testing God. He turned to God and God gave Moses instruction for providing water to the Isrealites. Moses did so and we know for certain that they drank water for the Lord said they would. But this particular scripture doesn’t reord their thirst being quenched. Moses instead records the failure of the people by naming the place Massah (testing) and Meribah (quarreling). How did they fail?

Psalm 95v7-11
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”

This was one of many instances when the Isrealites rebelled against God because of unbelief. Until finally, God swore that they would not enter His rest. The the conept of the nation of Isreal wandering in the wilderness for 40 years genuinely baffles me. It terrifies me thinking that they came so close and messed up so badly, God wiped an entire generation from His rest. And deep down it scares me because I am intensly aware that they were human just like me, I could make the same mistakes. But reading this Psalm I recognize that God tells us not to do as the Isrealites did. And what I have seen is that God doesn’t tell us to do something, that isn’t possible in Him. He has given us all we need to live a life that pleases Him by His divine power (2 Peter 1v3-4).

So what is our hope?

Jesus, obviously. But lets go into more detail.

When I was reading in Hebrews 3 I realized that there was a strong emphasis on holding fast to the faith. To the confession of Christ. I also realized that the Isrealites were a key theme, or rather their failure to enter into God’s rest. The Promised Land. The Psalm is quoted again here, drawing parralels between what the Isrealites faced in the wilderness and what believers may face in their day to day lives(various forms of suffering). There is still a rest that God has set aside for His people. Eternal life with God, in the new heaven and earth.

Truth be told it gets hard being a christian in the day and age we live in. Quite literlly, the systems, ideals and standards of the world around us are in opposition to the way we are called to live our lives.

Hebrews 3v12-13 motivates today’s post; “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil. unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day as long as it is called ‘today’, that none of you may be hardened by the decietfulness of sin.”

Unbelief

There is a clear warning to us, that we not fall in the same way the Isrealites did. It is revealed in Hebrews 3v19 that they fell by their unbelief. How were their hearts unbelieving? When the Isrealites stood at the waterless encampment in Rephidim they had seen SEVERAL of the Lord’s miracles and signs. Yet they still grumbled against God and Moses while accusing God of having malicous motives for delivering them from slavery in Egypt. God had promised to be with them, even from the times of their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They simply refused to have faith and to trust God. They looked to their surroundings for comfort and security and didn’t consider the God of the universe with whom they traveled.

Unbelief may show up differently but still causes us to question and doubt God in the same way.

The decietfulness of sin

What we need to be aware of is sin’s ability to make us harden our hearts by way of deception. Sin causes us to be stuborn toward God, painting Him with the paintbrush of tyranny and oppresion. Instead of believing God’s sovereingty, omnicience and His promises, we distort God’s character. The idolatrous heart of the nation of Isreal had them believing that they had it better in Egypt. That their slavery and bondage that assured them mere food and drink, had to be better than temporary thirst and hunger [faced in freedom] wandering the wilderness [with the very presence of God]. That is what the sinful nature does. It puts up a case for our land of slavery in an attempt to lead us back there. Sin hardens our hearts to the truth.

When looking at the fruit of my own sinfulness and recognize that God is holy, I wonder if He will be good to me. The guilt and shame causes me to become hostile toward God. I begin to wonder if He even wants to. Romans 3v25-26 says that God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when He held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for He was looking ahead and including them in what He would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate His righteousness, for He Himself is fair and just, and He makes sinners right in His sight when they believe in Jesus. In essence God’s goodness, mercy, patience, protection, providence [and more] towards undeserving people like you and myself was bought with the blood of Jesus. Our sins aren’t swept underneath the rug, they were paid for with the perfect sacrifice of Christ.

God was good to the Isrealites even when their hearts were unbelieving. Let us not be like them. Not because we are better, but because we have Jesus.

Jesus is our hope!

Friends, I will say it again, JESUS IS OUR HOPE. Our only hope. Hebrews 4v14 says ‘Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may find grace, that we may recieve mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’

Jesus Christ is aquainted with all our ways because He suffered in the same ways we suffer. In naming Him the Great High Priest, the writer clearly illustrates that He lives to serve as a mediator between man and God. Jesus knows when its harder to remember God’s faithfulness and that we are tempted to harden our hearts in order to absorb the blow of a difficult circumstance. He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, and help us to walk in the paths God wants us to walk on. He lived without sin and helps us overcome our sin.

Let is remind and encourage one another

God is Sovereign. God does He pleases and can ask of His people whatever He desires according to the counsel of His own will. (Psalm 115v3 & Ephesians 1v11)

God is good. He has made promises to be with us, for it is His presence that sustains us. (Psalm 63v3)

Jesus is our Savior. He has paid our debt and forgiven our sin that we may stand righteous before God. (1 Peter 2v24)

Jesus has given us a Helper. He has given to us the Holy Spirit and He help us overcome the temptations of life and fulfil God’s plan. (Hebrews 2v18)

All that to say; the lives we live, we live by faith and in light of eternity in Christ. I’m afraid we may have made it a little weird to speak of eternity and heaven when life and the troubles it comes with are real. Yet that eternal rest is the believer’s reality.

As for me…

…this theme has been an eye-opener. After watching a sermon by John Piper on YouTube, Our Only Hope In The Wilderness, I came to realize my rebellion in seasons past as well as the hope that is always available to us. I realized my own quareling and testing God in my wilderness. How I hardened my heart. But God in His kindness led me to repentance of my stubborness. Now I am continually encouraged to look to Christ and the cross for strength in uncertainty. I want to encourage you to look to Him as well, as long as the day is called today.

You may or may not recall from my previous post that I was waiting on the Lord’s provision for schooling. I am humbled to share that I am still waiting. Yet in the waiting I have seen God’s goodness and have been sustained by His presence. Small ‘coincidences’ and beautiful encounters that just prove that God is with me and that His steadfast love is indeed better than life.

There is so much hope found in Christ. Cling to Him. Until next time friends! I love you.

[P.S I’d love to hear from you regarding this topic or anything else that’s on your mind. Consider reaching me on the site’s email. XO]