Deuteronomy Chapter 1

I've been having an interesting thought lately. It's multi-faceted and I warn you, it may NOT be as interesting to you as it is to me. But none-the-less, I'm writing it out because it creates a new thought wave pattern to study and analyze in the future.

The precept is basically this;

On what level did the ancient Hebrews know, or not know God that they would openly accuse him in such of the following ways;

1. Has God brought us out of Egypt to die?

2. God is set against us, he will surely destroy us.

3. It would be better that I was not born, for you have delivered me to afflict me.

4. Because the Lord hates us, he's delivered us out of Egypt into the hands of the Ammorites to be destroyed.

If you're anything like me, you quake at the very idea of accusing God of something. This is the flip-side of the phenomenon that I'm interested in.

Why are we so afraid to say that God is against us, when the ancient Hebrews seemed so willing?

Back to my precept; How did they know God? Perhaps the following contributed to their mindset;

1. Traditions and ungodly notions learned from civilizations being in captivity?

2. Truly depraved and the question is neither accurate, nor based in a knowledge of God?

3. It's accurate but misapplied?

4. It's accurate and properly applied, leading to repentance, and thus a nation enjoined to God for obedience?

Just considering these ideas makes me tremble. They all seem possible all at the same time, and yet, wrong, and yet, right...it's sounds confusing, but I guess this is how I compile it.

God in his history did to the ancient Hebrews, the very things that they accuse him of. God handed over the Hebrews to the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Ammorites, and Edomites, just to name a few. The book of Judges is pretty clear that because of  the disobedience to God's holy days and ordinances, in other words, idol worship, God delivered them to judgement. He did however, always redeem them.

Part of what I'm wondering about, is the freedom that the Hebrews seemed to feel in expressing their opinion about what God's intention was. Now we recognize that shooting your mouth off doesn't require an established relationship or nor the explicit permission to do so. Obviously it would be easy to assign this to the Hebrews and move on, but! Moses did it too, so did Abraham, Jeremiah...NO ONE would say that these gentlemen didn't know God. Abraham was God's friend!

I cannot rightly divide where to come down on this, except to say that in our desire to pursue a relationship with God, we shouldn't be afraid to express how we really feel. God isn't afraid of our opinions and he's not looking for our approval. He's not going to get mad because you don't understand, if you're trying to understand. I think, in that paradigm, and certainly under his exceptional grace, there is room to have an authentic relationship with him.

I'm posting a short video to help fill in the tenor of this post.