Our Versions of God's Care

The people refused to enter the pleasant land, for they wouldn’t believe his promise to care for them. [Psalm 106.24]

Here is the problem, not only with ancient Israel, but with God's people, the Church, today. Like Israel, we refuse to believe God's promise to care for us.

I don't care what argument anyone would bring here, I will not be convinced otherwise: the Church today, by and large, is just as much, if not more, unfaithful to God than ancient Israel.

God has promised to care for us and yet we trust our versions of God's care (medicine, technology, science, education and money) instead of God Himself. I say "our versions of God's care" because we quickly defend our idolatrous relationship to these things when confronted with the idea that perhaps we are not trusting God but these things instead. Our defense mechanism is this response: "God uses these things to care for us." Do you realize that this response sounds very similar to Israel's praise of the golden calf at Mt Sinai?

The people made a calf at Mount Sinai; they bowed before an image made of gold. They traded their glorious God for a statue of a grass-eating bull. [Psalm 106.19-20]

And, what did Israel say after making the golden calf? 

Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded it into the shape of a calf. When the people saw it, they exclaimed, “O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” [Exodus 32.4]

Why would they do that? I would be thinking about "what pulled their wagons" loaded with the bounty of Egypt as they left... They didn't have horses.

Israel did exactly what we do today. We worship God's tool used to care for us rather than God who gave the tool. We make God's care dependent upon the tool. In other words, we don't trust that God is capable of caring for our needs without the tool - making the tool more important than God. Again, exactly what Israel did!

Do you want proof of our idolatry? How many of us have said, "I believe the science." Or, "God uses the science."

When will we raise our hands over the "Red Sea" impossibilities that lie before us and witness what science can neither accomplish nor explain? When will we understand that the miracles of Jesus Christ were intended to make this very point - making it clear that His followers would do likewise?

We will see God's power manifest when we repent of our gross adultery with our idols.

Father, forgive me for my idolatrous relationship with "tools." Forgive me for not looking at the impossibilities of my life with full and complete confidence that You care for me.