The book of Deuteronomy is the account of Moses’ last instructions to the Hebrew people in the Moab Plains, just before they were to enter Canaan, the Promised Land. They had, of course, been in this position before. Forty years earlier the Twelve Tribes had waited at the banks of the Jordan River to hear the reports of the twelve spies they had sent into Canaan. What was the land like? Would they be able to take it, as God had told them to?
Now they stood again on the brink of promise, steeled by years of wilderness wandering, ready to enter the land. And Moses began by reminding them of what had happened forty years earlier. The people had listened to the reports of the spies, and had decided that what the Lord was asking them to do was too dangerous. They chose to believe that the Lord had brought them out of Egypt only to see them destroyed by the Amorites and those living in Canaan. In the end they got scared and would not trust and obey the Lord who had carried them up out of Egypt.
But this was madness. The Lord, Moses said, would have fought for them, just as he had in Egypt. The Lord had already proven himself as a trustworthy provider and caretaker. According to Exodus 19:4 the Lord had carried his people on eagles’ wings to himself. He had gone before them as a cloud by day and fire by night, securing good places for them to pitch their tents. The Lord their God, in fact, had carried them, as a man carries his son, all the way they went until they had come to this place. God, like a Father, had carried his people out of Egypt and through the wilderness until they came to the place he had promised for them. But they rebelled, and as a result they had to wander forty years in the wilderness until the unfaithful generation had passed away. None of them would see the Promised Land.
Moses brings this painful memory up as if to say, “Do not again forget who the Lord God is to you.” The Lord God is not a god who would bring his children out of slavery in Egypt only to see them killed by the Amorites. He is a Father who carries his tired, grumpy, disobedient children. He carries them away from danger, away from slavery, and into promise and rest. The God who carries his children like Father is a God who, above all, is one to be trusted. They are not to trust in their own military or financial or cultural might, nor to despair over the lack of it. They are to trust their Father.
But his people initially did not trust. And later on they came to put their trust in other things, things that were not remotely trustworthy. Isaiah 46 is a passage comparing the Lord to the silver and golden idols of Babylon. What were they? Constructed things, useless things, deaf things, immobile things. These “gods” needed to be carried around by their worshippers. They couldn’t even save themselves, let alone save those who cried out to them for help.
God is telling his people here not to set their hope and trust in the things of the world, the systems of power and wealth and religion that promise salvation and care but simply cannot provide these things. The temptation was not just the golden statue, but participation in the system of Babylon, the ruling power, the Empire with the mighty army and the cultural and financial influence.
God does not want his people to trust in this Empire, in this system of control wherein the priests place their gods wherever they want them to stay. This is a system that is a burden to the weary. This power relies upon the backs of the people to carry it around, and is oppressive. But the Lord God may not be controlled like that. The relationship he has with his people is the exact opposite. God will not be a burden to the weary. He will not force people to carry him on their backs. It is God who has carried his people since their conception and birth, and it is God who will carry them even into their old age. God the Father is the great sustainer, the rescuer, the maker, the saviour, the carrier. And he will still carry us today.
(Much of the information used in this and the other blog submissions about Knowing God was derived from studying Knowing God the Father Through the Old Testament by Christopher Wright and From Paradise to the Promised Land by T Desmond Alexander).
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