WORD STUDY – QUITING
Exodus 33:3: “For I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: Lest I consume thee in the way.”
The children of Israel were about two and one half months into their journey to the Promised Land (Exodus 16:1). All the food they packed away at the beginning of their journey was now gone. They began to worry where their food was going to come from. They had no idea how long this journey would take. I am sure most felt it would not take more than 75 days.
Let’s stop right there. The traveling distance between Egypt and Israel by a direct route is 250 miles. They had been traveling for 75 days. If they covered 3-4 miles a day they would have been eating milk and honey by that time. After all God gave a promise for a land, (that is why it is called the Promised Land – get it? Promise, land, oh well). Maybe you feel God has given you a promise, maybe not for land, but for something. I know I believe God gave me a promise and after over 35 years I am still waiting for its fulfillment. As believers we all have a promise from God, it is that which keeps us going; it is that which keeps us walking through the desert. It is that hope that one day we will reach our promised land. But the journey continues, our supplies are running low and we keep walking and we begin to even wonder if we even have had a promise at all. Discouragement begins to build, time keeps passing and no hope of fulfillment. Do you blame the people of Israel? I can’t, without condemning myself and I don’t think God did either.
We know we will not reach our promised land over night, after all 250 miles through a desert is a long walk. But we have our supplies, things are going quite well. There is that cloud by day and fire by night of God leading us. We watched the Red Sea part, we watched our enemies drown. But then we walked three days in the desert without water and just when it seemed all hope was lost, we arrived at Marah which had water only to discover that the water poisoned. We complained, who wouldn’t? How many times I believed God gave me a little sign to encourage me in His promise and then I find it to be poison.
But the Lord didn’t rebuke us or Israel for complaining, he only went ahead and freshened the water. Then He leds us to a place which had palm trees and more water than we needed. We were refreshed, firm in the knowledge of God’s care and guidance and ready to continue our journey to the His promise to us.
Then we found ourselves back in a desert, this time for sixties day. Our food supplies were running out, the promise seemed further away than ever. Once again we began to murmur. Again the Lord did not rebuke, he only did a greater miracle and sent manna from heaven and a supply of quail with these words “…then you shall know that the Lord has brought you out from your land of Egypt with a promise.” We are again refreshed with the knowledge that God is indeed leading us to His promise to us. Those little miracles and signs help keep our eyes on Him and His promise. Like Israel, God did not rebuke me, He understood that when the journey got rough that we would begin to question. We would not question his abilities, but we would question, like Israel, if it was really God bringing us out, if this really was a promise from God and not a work of our own imagination born out a desperate situation.
God was patient with Israel, He understood and He continually gave little love gifts and to supply their every need to assure them that, yes, indeed He was behind this move. This was not their imagination or a plot developed by Moses. A journey which should have taken only a few months expanded to a much longer journey. The problem was my problem, my focus was on the promise and not the journey, a journey where my faith was tested, when I learned to trust God in every situation. God was in no hurry to get the promise to His people, He wanted to make sure that they were ready for the promise when it came, which meant a high degree of faith to face the giants that they would confront when they reached that promise.
Then something happened. Moses went up to the mountain to meet with God and he did not return when he was suppose to. The people went into panic mode and built an idol. Exodus 33:3 God announced: “I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people.” It wasn’t the murmurings, or the idolatry that made God declare He would not continue to led the people into their promise. It was because they became stiffneck. That is the danger we face on our journey to our promise. All of our murmurings, complaining, idolatry (or leaning on the arm of the flesh) will make us stiffnecked and thus make it impossible for God to fulfill His promise.
Did you ever have a stiffneck? You cannot turn your head to see from side to side, you only see what is in front of you. You get so focused on the promise that you cannot see what God is doing to prepare you for the promise.
The word for stiff neck are two words in the Hebrew qasha and oreph. Qasha means to be hard or intense. It is a legal term for a very difficult case, the outcome which could have life alternating consequences. The word oreph means the nape or back of the neck which is declining. The word also came to mean to retreat to go back. Not only were the people seeing only their situation and problem but they were giving serious consideration to giving up and returning to Egypt.
This qasha oreph stiff neck really broke God’s heart. After all He did for them to give the confidence that there was a Promised Land, the signs and wonders in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea and now when things get tough they are ready to turn back and give up, not only give up on God’s promise but their dream. God wanted so much to give His people that promise, to bring them to this land of joy and peace, but if the people gave up God could do nothing to deliver on that promise. Yet, He could not just take them to the land until they went through that school of faith so they could occupy that land.
I have waited 35 years for God to fulfill His promise and I will wait longer. There were time I almost qasha oreph, became stiff necked and only saw the impossibility of that promise being fulfilled. But if I did give up I would not only lose that promise, but I would do something else that is worse, I would break God’s heart. So in Jesus’s name, I will press on.
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