How many times have you caught yourself or someone else
saying? “I promise to do all that God places before me to do!” or “I have
dedicated my life to doing the will of God!” or even “All that the Lord has
spoken we (or I) will do.”
Well if the last statement sounds familiar it is because it
is the statement that the Israelites said to Moses in Exodus 19:8 while they were at the foot of Mount Sinai. Now I’m
sure the Israelites had great intentions and they probably only meant to do
what they thought God wanted them to do, but without even realizing it what
they did was by the words of their mouth, they took themselves out of “the
Abrahamic covenant” of God’s grace
and place themselves under “the covenant of the law”. Basically they held themselves
to a standard that even God initially wasn’t trying to hold them too; but they
spoke it and so He gave it to them.
The original Hebrew meaning for “All that the Lord has
spoken we will do.” is “All that God requires and demands of us we are well
able to perform.” In laymen’s terms what they basically said is, “God stop
blessing us based on your goodness and start judging and blessing us based on
our obedience.
That’s right, what they did was by using their own words placed themselves in a position to be judged and blessed based on their performance. Sound familiar? I’m sure it does. This is what so many Christians today have done. God has given us “a way of escape”, an abundance of grace and mercy, and when you believe that God blesses you based solely on your works and your sinless life, you have chosen to stay under being blessed by what you do and not by what He has done!
Now you may ask yourself were the Israelites really under grace, I thought they had the Ten Commandments which placed them under the law? Well, yes, they were initially under Grace; think about it, they complained against God the whole journey through the wilderness
which was a sin according to the Ten commandments and yet he chose to give them
manna from on high, he parted the Red Sea for them, he brought fourth water out of a
rock for them, and he even spared their lives as they escaped from Egypt, that’s right
not one of them died during the journey. And He did all this in spite of their
murmuring and complaining, wouldn’t you say that was “Nothing but the Grace of God?”
Since the people desired to be judged by God and blessed
only by their obedience, then God did as He always does, obliged them, and gave
them what they spoke into existence. After they spoke these words, He gave them
the Ten Commandments; and it wasn’t too soon after they received the Ten
Commandments that they did what we all do in our sinful humanness, broke the
first one, “Thy shall have no other gods before Me,” by making a golden calf and
worshipping it. What happened to that obedience?
Now do I think they did this on purpose, of course not, I
truly believe they, just as so many of us do, desired to please God and be obedient
to His words. But this is a symbolic picture of how important it is for us to
not put our trust and faith in our own walk as Christians but to place in it
Christ’s finished work at the cross!
I choose to believe that we all have a heart to want to
please God and do what is right in His sight, but we are human, sin every
day, and can do nothing without Him. Don’t put your faith in God blessing you based
on your sinless life. Your Christian walk is supposed to be a “Walk of faith” and that faith should be in
Christ and not in yourself!
God has freely given you the opportunity of a lifetime to be
blessed only by receiving what He died to bring you, “Truth and Grace”. Why
would you want to put the blessing of your life back in your own hands? The gift of GRACE is yours for the taking
all you have to do is receive it! Take His gift of GRACE, RECEIVE and begin to LIVE LIFE AND LIVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY!
Choose to BE BLESSED BY HIS ACTIONS AND NOT YOUR OWN!
Forever In His GRACE!
Toinette Neube
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