On the threshold of the Promised Land, God told his people that even though they had seen him do many wonderful things through the rescue of the Exodus, and through the provisions of the Wilderness, they didn’t get what he was doing for them.
More specifically, Moses wrote, “To this day the LORD has not given you minds that understand, nor eyes that see, nor ears that hear!” (29:4).
This quote sounds similar to what the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy when he told him how to reason with false teachers, “If God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses…” (2Tim 2:24-25).
Both texts together with many others in the Bible make it sound as if God is responsible for what people cannot see about the truth. Yet the Scriptures also make it clear that God holds us accountable.
The Word Biblical Commentary acknowledges that Deuteronomy 29:4 seems to indicate that God is responsible for what that generation of people could not do. But it goes on to say, “However, a similar thought is expressed in 30:6, where Moses promises that after Israel repents in exile, God will open up the people’s hearts and enable them to love Him. This seems to imply that God does give the heart the capacity for faith, but that He does so for those who seek it. . . . as the Talmud says, ‘When a person seeks to purify himself, he receives help in doing so’”
(on second thought, it seems that the quote from the Talmud above might miss the point… depending on what is meant by “purify himself”)
This is another example of “truth in tension” that reminds us of two very important thoughts, both of which are true, even though we don’t and cannot understand how God brings them together:
1. All that is good, including the ability to know God is a gift from God.
2. Yet somewhere in the mix of knowing or not knowing him, we have choices to make that he holds us accountable for.
Maybe together they remind us why we need to honestly keep asking God for the ability to see… to hear… and to do… what he wants to do in us…
And is it possible that together 1. What God can enable us to see, together with 2. What he is looking for in our hearts… may help us to see why it is so important to stop… and ask God for the ability to know what our hearts are really longing for, so that we can in turn ask him for the ability to choose what honors him… and is good for others?
Would be interested to hear how you are processing the tension between the how we are looking for the “gifts/grace” of God… in light of what he is looking for in us…
note: Have used the picture at the top of this column in the past. Reminds me of the “cloud of God’s presence in the wilderness :-)… But thought of it again this morning. It was actually a single cloud that passed over a crevice in a rugged area just west of the Dead Sea (in the area of this picture to the left)…Our guide said that the strata in the rock (in the top pic) represent layers of sediment that once formed the bottom of the Dead/Salt Sea.
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