THURSDAY 17 February 2022 “WHY us?” Deuteronomy 9:1-3

Click To Download and Print Document or PDF

Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,

I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of finding yourself in an almost unexplainable situation and you ask the question ‘why me’? I think that’s what Moses faced often, but today let’s look at one very significant experience. You’ll find it in Deuteronomy chapter 9.

We’re traveling with Moses and he’s in the process of his farewell messages to the Israelites whom he has led for 40 years. This huge traveling nation of more than 1 million Hebrews are camped in the Jordan river valley, on the east side of the Jordan river, and Moses is preparing them to cross over into the long awaited land of God’s promise. In so many ways those people then are just like you and me today, and so God leads Moses to address an important issue... pride.

Moses records for us in Deuteronomy 9 an important message he gave to the people: “Hear O Israel. You are about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities… The people are strong and tall… But be assured today that the LORD your God is the One who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; He will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out, as the LORD has promised.” (Deut. 9:1-3) Now perhaps as we read that it seems unfair. Why would God lead one group of people to ‘dispossess’ another group of people who for nearly 500 years have made this area their homeland? Where is justice in this? What about God being a holy and morally good God? As I’m sure you see, my friends, this is the very same issue, in the very same place in the world, which we often see on the front page of world news today. It’s the Gaza Strip, it’s the Golan Heights, it’s the ‘west bank’, it’s divided Jerusalem. It’s the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. So what do you understand Deuteronomy 9:1-3 means?

There’s a great danger when we lift only one verse or small section of Scripture out from the entire Bible without looking at the whole. That’s true in life also, isn’t it? Looking at one small event, or one statement a person makes, without looking at the whole context, can give you a very skewed perspective of that person, right? As Moses was addressing the 1 million or so Israelites that day, yes the land of Canaan was populated by many different people groups. Yes, over the centuries they had built large cities and Jericho was among them, just over the horizon from where these people stood. These different people groups had developed their societies, road systems, trade, schools, businesses, even local governments etc. The year was about 1400bc. But we need to see it from God’s perspective, not simply sociology or anthropology or even geopolitical perspectives.

From the beginning, God, the Creator of all that exists, had a singular, overriding purpose for our species of beings called humans. It’s really quite simple… our Creator designed us to live in multi-faceted relationship with Him. Notice I said DESIGNED, not desired. It’s wired into our DNA uniquely as humans made in God’s image. Let’s consider the significance of that statement, my friends:

First, God designed humans to live in total dependence upon God for sustaining our lives… our bodies are designed by God to need, for survival and growth, what only HE can provide: air, water, nutrition, etc.

Our bodies, from the moment of conception to death, develop, grow, and mature only as God does that human growth work inside every part of our body, it’s the miracle of life! You and I didn’t create ourselves, nor once we breathe a breath can we distribute that air to the cells in our body, nor once we drink or eat can we take that nutrition to every part of our growing body. God creates and sustains life according to HIS design, right? Psalm 139:13-16 is so true! We are totally dependent upon a continual, moment by moment, biological, relationship with God for survival!

Second, God has designed us to have a conscience and the ability to discern moral right and wrong, but of course that demands some ultimate moral standard of holy and evil, right and wrong.

God is Himself that holy standard and He alone has the right to proclaim the morality standard, do you agree? In Isaiah 45:18,19 God says: “This is what the LORD says – He who created the heavens, He is God; He who fashioned and made the earth, He did not create it to be empty, but to be inhabited, and He says: I am the LORD, and there is no other… I the LORD speak the TRUTH, I declare what is RIGHT… There is no God apart from Me, a righteous (holy) God and a Savior…” From our infancy we learn that our distinctive as humans, from all other animals, is that God has designed us to live in community with each other emotionally, intellectually, and morally. That works well only as long as we agree to live in acknowledgement of God and HIS design of TRUTH so our intellect can think, and HOLY so our souls can process morality, and LOVE so our hearts can engage with our world emotionally.

But there’s one more very important element in this wonderful human existence which is central to God’s design of us human beings: Spirituality! Yes, God has designed us humans different from anything else in our universe except angels, with a spiritual nature and the ability to know God! Dogs don’t have it, cats don’t have spirituality, not birds or alligators or dolphins! Even more, God has designed us for finding our greatest fulfillment in life as we develop our spirituality in a vibrant, growing, dynamic, all inclusive relationship with Almighty, Holy God, our Creator! Now ponder that a moment, my friends. Do you believe it and understand it? Are you experiencing it or is it simply a concept, an idea, maybe you even think it’s a myth? So maybe you are thinking, ‘but what does this have to do with God’s instruction for the Hebrews to ‘dispossess‘ the people who lived in Canaan’? That’s a fair and good question. Here we go…

Our world started with a place of eutopia called the garden of Eden. Genesis 2 gives us the story. Adam and Eve, the first two humans, lived in perfection. They, and everything around them, was all perfectly created by God, living in perfect harmony and relationship with each other and with God. This was what humanity was designed by God to be and experience! But then tragedy happened, as Adam and Eve believed the lies of Satan and in so doing, turned away from the perfect utopia, inviting Satan into their perfect world. Satan only has one purpose: oppose God, God’s holiness, God’s perfection, God’s truth, God’s ways at all times, in all places… so it didn’t take very long at all and the utopia was destroyed, replaced by widespread evil, hatred and death, everywhere. God’s radical response was to wipe out every living thing by a great world-wide flood, and start all over with Noah and his family, and the animals on the ark. (Genesis 6-9)

But once again, it didn’t take long and our ancestor humans chose evil over good, hatred over love, anger over peace, and the world was a mess because we humans refuse to live by the design of our Creator! But God had promised He would never again destroy all life, so God for a third time, attempted to lead humanity in living as we are designed to live.

God chose an old man Abraham and his old wife Sarah and called them to nurture a great faith relationship with God, promising He’d bless them with a miracle son in their old age, from which a new race of people would descend… Hebrews. God led them to live in a place where there were few people, and told them to occupy that place and multiply rapidly there, learning to live in relationship with God, as designed. Famine came, they fled to Egypt for food, and after the famine ended, they chose NOT to return to this wonderful place, but settle in Egypt. Time passed, generations came and went and soon they became enslaved in Egypt. Meanwhile the few who had lived in that place called Canaan multiplied and other people moved there, so that now, as Moses and these 1 million Hebrews, stand looking across the Jordan river at the land their ancestors had abandoned nearly 400 years before, Canaan is a very different place! A great deal changes in 400 years, doesn’t it, just look at wherever you live in the world today. What was that place like in 1622?

I want us to stop right here for today, pondering the story of humanity that I’ve told you…

* What do you think of our God design and what we humans have done with our design generation after generation?

* What do you think God should do now, in our day, with the evil and wickedness and dysfunction that is the state of humanity all around the world today?

I urge us to talk with God about that, and see what He says to you, and we’ll pick it up, right here tomorrow…

Today’s Scripture is Deuteronomy 9:1-3.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

Archived back issues of “Walking with Jesus” and other resources are available by clicking here to open our ‘home page’ (or go to HOME at upper right of this page).

Share with friends. Subscribe below for daily “Walking with Jesus”.