Deuteronomy 7:6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God
It is always a bad feeling to not have enough, especially when you are in a tight situation. I can remember years ago, hiking with some college buddies from the North Rim to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Somewhere down in the middle of the canyon, one of my friends became dehydrated. We didn’t know what the problem was at the time, but he just felt very ill. I remember salt deposits forming on his temples where sweat had dissipated very quickly. He was without water in basically desert environment and he didn’t have enough water. Gratefully we had water with us and he only had to drink it.
Another time, I remember driving in the desert in West Texas and running out of fuel a mile from the gas station. We had been in a long stretch of open desert and we just did not have enough. That turned out alright, but it is a bad feeling to not have enough.
Maybe you are in a desert right now. Let me tell you that being in a desert doesn’t mean being deserted. Maybe you feel like you are going through a dry spell in your life. You wonder where God is, if there is a God, and if He cares. I want to encourage you that there is a God and God is enough. When God’s people remember God’s sufficiency, they need neither embrace nor fear the alternative.
In Deuteronomy 7 we read the story of God’s people. They had gone through the wilderness and were on the verge of a new land. Verse 1 says, “When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee…” It lists seven nations that were”“greater and mightier than thou.” Then he gives them instruction for what should follow.
These were God’s people and God was taking care of them. In verse 6 Moses says, “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God.” They were special and set apart. They were God’s people and were to remember God’s sufficiency. Moses basically says, “God didn’t love you because you were greater than any other people. He chose you and brought you out of Egypt.”
He goes on to talk about the sufficiency of God. God is loving and faithful, a God of justice who repays those who love Him and those who hate Him. He is sufficient. Verse 18 says, “Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shall well remember what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt.” God has a track record. Over and again the people were reminded of what God did do and therefore what God would do.
Verse 19 says, “So shall the LORD thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.” Verse 21 says, “Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is among you.” I don’t need to fear. We live with changing times, changing faces, and changing challenges where the changes are exponential. They are happening more rapidly and broadly then they have ever happened in human history. Many people could live fifty, seventy, or eighty years, if they were lucky, back in the old days and very little changed in their world. My grandmother died at 101 years old, and literally there has never been a hundred-year period in human history where change has been more profound or rapid than the years in which my grandmother lived.
I am just saying that when God’s people remember God’s sufficiency, they don’t need to fear the alternative. Yes, times, faces, and challenges are changing, but God has not changed. If God did, God can. If God can, then God will. That is the message given over and again as Israel was coming to this new land. They were not facing anything where God could not provide.
When God’s people remember God’s sufficiency, they need not fear or embrace the alternative. The real threat to Israel was not an external threat. It was an internal threat. These people were called holy. They were set apart by God. They were different, His own special people. By faith in Jesus, you belong to God. It is not something you do; it is something Christ did when He died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Anyone who acknowledges they are a sinner unfit for perfect heaven and a holy God and turns to Christ, who alone is fit and paid the price for our sins, they can be God’s person. We don’t need to fear or embrace the alternative.
Again, God’s people were reminded to not make a covenant with these people and not to marry into their families, “for they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you.” We don’t need to fear them or embrace the alternative, which is probably a greater danger than any external threat.
Twice God says that if they followed the heathen’s gods and way, those will be a snare to them. We live in a day with a proliferation of so-called experts on marriage, home, anxiety, finance, and more. Let me be clear. All wisdom is God’s wisdom, so might there be some good instruction that does not come from a preacher? Of course! But there is only one God and it is not as if God is relegated only to the religious part of our life. No, the physical, spiritual, sociological, financial, and everything else are all under God. There is one God who made one world that all works together. God is not relegated to one part of life; God is life. God is true and real. If we embrace experts who deny the truth of the world God has created, then we have snared ourselves.
Today, is God really enough? Is God enough in your life? How would you know? Ask yourself whom you fear and whom you embrace. When you have God, you have everything you need, because traveling through a desert does not mean being deserted when you belong to the Lord.