The Race We Must Finish

Of the two to three million Israelites who left Egypt with Moses, only two of the original adults made it to the Promised Land. What caused them to finish well while so many others got lost in the wilderness?

Idolatry was one of the pitfalls of the Israelites who got lost in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. At the root of their problems was a lack of relationship with God, a lack of intimacy with Him. Interestingly, their first idol was Moses. When he was away receiving the commandments of God, they turned to worship a golden calf. They remade God in their image, rationalizing their blatant idol worship by saying it was a feast to the Lord.

People do the same thing today. They give God a makeover, looking to conform Him to our perverse society instead of the other way around. But once we lose that set of absolutes in our lives, all kinds of problems will develop.

Most people today who have fallen away from the Lord and into various problems and sins would be able to trace this to a point in their lives when they began to let go of the Lord. They were no longer walking as closely with Him as they should have been.

The same thing happened to the Israelites. Because God was not on the throne of their hearts and lives, they needed something or someone to take His place.

Then they tested God and complained. They exploited His goodness, pushed Him to the limit, and griped about His provision. As a result, they never made it to what God had prepared for them. They had so much potential and possibility, yet it never came to fruition in their lives.

The Christian life is not a sprint; it’s a long-distance run. We are in it for the long haul. So we need to pace ourselves and persevere.