Daily Lesson for Tuesday 20th of February 2024
Read Psalms 81:7-8; Psalms 95:7-11; and Psalms 105:17-22. What does divine testing involve in these texts?
Meribah is the place where Israel tested God by challenging His faithfulness and power to provide for their needs (Exodus 17:1-7; Psalms 95:8-9). Psalms 81:1-16 makes an intriguing reversal and interprets the same event as the time when God tested Israel (Psalms 81:7). And, by their disobedience and lack of trust (Psalms 81:11), the people failed God’s test.
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The reference to Meribah conveys a twofold message. First, God’s people must not repeat the mistakes of past generations. Instead, they are to trust God and to walk in His way (Psalms 81:13). Second, although the people failed the test, God came to their rescue when they were in trouble (Psalms 81:7). God’s saving grace in the past gives an assurance of God’s grace to new generations.
Psalms 105:1-45 shows that the trials were God’s means of testing Joseph’s trust in God’s foretelling of his future (Genesis 37:5-10, Psalms 105:19). The Hebrew tsarap, “tested,” in verse 19 conveys a sense of “purging,” “refining,” or “purifying.” Thus, the goal of God’s testing of Joseph’s faith was to remove any doubt in God’s promise and to strengthen Joseph’s trust in God’s guidance.
The goal of divine discipline is to strengthen God’s children and to prepare them for the fulfillment of the promise, as shown in Joseph’s example (Psalms 105:20-22).
However, rejection of God’s instruction results in growing stubbornness and hardening of an obstinate person’s heart.
“God requires prompt and unquestioning obedience of His law; but men are asleep or paralyzed by the deceptions of Satan, who suggests excuses and subterfuges, and conquers their scruples, saying as he said to Eve in the garden: ‘Ye shall not surely die.’ Disobedience not only hardens the heart and conscience of the guilty one, but it tends to corrupt the faith of others. That which looked very wrong to them at first, gradually loses this appearance by being constantly before them, till finally they question whether it is really sin and unconsciously fall into the same error.”—Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 146.
What has been your own experience with how sin hardens the heart? Why should that thought drive us to the Cross, where we can find the power to obey?
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