For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said, “It is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.” So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest. (Psalm 95:10-11)
The verse above obviously refers to those who journeyed through the wilderness and God’s agitation with them because of their unbelief. Actually, the word translated as “grieved” could be rendered as “disgusted.” How troubling to think that someone could be so obstinate and faithless that God would be disgusted with them — that’s a category of people I never want to fall into. That being said, it’s important to assess why He was so disgusted with them. In a nutshell I feel it is this — they didn’t believe that God could finish what He started.
They witnessed the plagues poured out on their captors, and heard the cries of their Egyptian neighbors when the Destroyer went through the land striking down the firstborn — they were delivered from it all. They saw the sea split and the waters stacked up in heaps allowing them to cross on dry land; they saw their former taskmasters swallowed up by those same waters. Even though they witnessed His favor and deliverance time and again, they chose to conclude that He led them into the wilderness to destroy them (Exodus 16:3). Instead of viewing the land of promise as a place of rest, they accused it of being “a land that devours its inhabitants” (Numbers 13:32).
Trials, tests and a call to obedience were too much for them in light of the hardships they faced. Consequently, their hearts led them astray which allowed their perception of God and His ways to be completely opposite of reality. Instead of seeing Him as a faithful Savior, they saw Him as a cruel Master and incapable of bringing them to a place of rest. As a result, they essentially opposed His purpose, and in response, He became disgusted with them.
Remember the Parable of the Talents: two men took what the Master had invested in them and caused it to multiply. A third servant, called wicked and lazy, said this: “Lord, I knew you to be a hard man … and I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground” (Matthew 25:24-25). In other words, his perception of his master prompted him to fail in the task he had been charged with; as a result, he was cast into outer darkness.
The point of all this is to say, it is potentially fatal to misjudge our Maker and develop a faulty perception of Him and His ways. Just because He allows hardship to touch our lives doesn’t mean He has abandoned us; to the contrary, it probably means He is refining us so that we might draw closer to Him. Rather than acting in a way that disgusts the Creator, let’s resolve to behave and respond in a way that delights Him so that, in the appointed time, we may enter into His rest.
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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