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Moses can only get us so far. Eventually we will need to trust directly in God.
It is the LORD, your God, who will cross before you;
he will destroy these nations before you,
that you may supplant them.
This is difficult for us. We become attached to our human teachers, leaders, and role models. They become quite good at teaching us and showing us God's will. But as the analogy goes, they are meant to be fingers pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. If we become too fixated on individuals we miss the heavenly glory.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth (see First Corinthians 3:7).
It is easier for us to put a good amount of trust in human authorities. It is harder for us to put supernatural faith in the fact that the LORD God is leading us moment to moment. It is more than merely acknowledging who he was or what he did in the past. It is faith whereby we can follow and trust him in this current moment of crisis, whatever that might be.
Be brave and steadfast; have no fear or dread of them,
for it is the LORD, your God, who marches with you;
he will never fail you or forsake you.
What more do we need than that assurance? More teachers will come to clarify and to lead. But they are not the object of our faith. They come to show us how to trust God above all others.
Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Children tend to believe in the almost supernatural ability of their parents to set things right. The world is not vast and frightening when their parents are near. This level of trust belongs properly to God alone. We adults outgrew childlike hearts and found it necessary to become anxious. We now feel our anxiety and fear is necessary, keeping our grip on a world ready to spin out of our control. Yet God invites us to discover childlike hearts once more. In fact, he commands it.
Only with childlike hearts can we seek and save the lost. Otherwise we will be so preoccupied with maintaining business as usual we will be too afraid to go and seek them out.
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
God will never abandon either us nor the ninety-nine. He will not forsake us. We are free to follow the shepherd in search of the sheep, without fear, confident that God marches with us.
While the LORD's own portion was Jacob,
his hereditary share was Israel.
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