Scripture Daily

Context No. 618 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 1:37-41: in context

37Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, “You also shall not go in there. 38Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, shall go in there. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. 39Moreover your little ones, whom you said would be captured or killed, your children, who today have no knowledge of good or evil, shall go in there. I will give it to them, and they shall possess it. 40But as for you, turn, and take your journey into the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.” 41Then you answered and said to me, “We have sinned against the LORD. We will go up and fight, according to all that the LORD our God commanded us.” Every man of you put on his weapons of war, and presumed to go up into the hill country.

Moses is recounting Israel's great failure at the border of the promised land. When God told them to go up and take it, they refused, terrified by the report of the spies, and rebelled. As a consequence God declared that this generation would not enter, that they would turn back into the wilderness. And then comes a fascinating twist in their response. Hearing the sentence, the people suddenly change their tune: we have sinned, they say; we will go up and fight, just as the LORD commanded us. And they strap on their weapons and presume to go up into the hill country. It looks like repentance and obedience at last. It is neither. They are defeated and driven back.

Look at what has actually happened. Their disobedience has now run in both directions. First God said go up, and they refused. Now God has said turn back, and they go up anyway. Both times they are doing the opposite of what God is currently saying. Their belated charge into battle was not obedience; it was self-willed presumption, doing the thing God had asked earlier, but now, on their own terms, after the appointed moment had passed and against his present word. It was an attempt to fix their guilt by their own action rather than by actually obeying God, and the text uses a pointed word: they presumed to go up. Right action at the wrong time, against God's current word, is still disobedience.

That names a subtle move I make. When I have failed to obey God in something, the temptation is to make up for it by charging ahead on my own terms, doing some version of the right thing belatedly and presumptuously, to relieve my guilt, without actually submitting to what God is saying to me now. It feels like obedience and zeal; it is really self-will, still not listening. Am I trying to atone for past disobedience by presumptuously doing things my own way and on my own timing, when what God asks is that I obey his word for right now, whatever it is?

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