Deuteronomy 4:29-31 – But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
THEME OF THE DAY. LET THE FIRE DO ITS WORK. If we are going to get a grip on the lesson in today’s nugget, we need a little background. The opening of today’s scripture is “But from there”. Where is “there”? Well, it wasn’t a good place. God’s people had drifted away from Him. They had been extremely worldly, even to the point of false worship. Oh, by the way, that can happen to us too. Always remember, we are creatures created as worshippers. We are “religious” by nature. Worship occurs every day in our lives. It is either worship of the One True God revealed in scripture or self-worship centered on ourselves with all our fleshly desires, pursuit of earthly pleasures, and the many other gods of our making seeking to satisfy our lives.
Back to the “But from there” . . . God’s people had corrupted themselves and in His “severe” mercy and “tough” love, He brought them under oppression, anguish, and basically, disciplined them for their rebellion and worldliness. And what was behind all these corrective actions by the Lord? Return and restoration . . . read what happens AFTER the words “But from there” . . . “you will seek the Lord your God and you will find Him.”
We are creatures not only created to be worshippers, but to be in fellowship with our Creator. Salvation is God’s rescue mission to return and restore us to Himself. The whole of the plan of redemption, the execution of that plan by the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and then the application of this plan by the Holy Spirit is for us to walk in a fellowship of holy love with our God. And as good as that sounds, we struggle. We are not yet in heaven and the pulls from the devil, the world and our flesh are just that . . . pulls away from this fellowship and into the “fool’s gold” and broken cisterns of the world’s pleasures. As we drift into these forbidden pastures and deep waters of fleshly worldliness, God will do what He did to His people of old. He will put us in the Refiner’s Fire of His correction and discipline. He does so not out of malice or unholy jealousy, but out of love and holy jealousy. He knows we not only break our fellowship with Him, but potentially ruin our lives by spending more time and energy in the things of the world than the things of Him. And I am not sure anything would create more sorrow, regret, and remorse in the life of a Christian than to come near the end of life and have it summed up in one word – “wasted”; wasted by the investment of time, money, energy, gifts, and talents in a passing world neglecting the eternal world. But oh, thank God for His rod of correction. Should we begin this slide into worldliness, He will bring the fires of affliction, suffering, perhaps even the loss of “things” to get us to see the foolishness of not maintaining Him as the chief delight in our lives. And the result will be us earnestly seeking Him, like the Israelites in today’s scripture.
Our God is a jealous God; a holy jealous God and it is a jealousy for our heart. Should we find ourselves occupied more with the world than Him in our thinking and living, like His people of old, His love will pursue us with the rod of correction to bring us back to Himself. And, that my friends, is one of the highest expressions of His love to us; to chasten us so that we will seek Him.
PRAYER: “Father, when I feel the pressure of life and Your Refiner’s fire of trials, help me to draw closer to You.”
QUOTE: “Suffering, sorrow, and pain are not to drive us away from God but are designed to bring us closer to Him”