Page 34 - The Christian Life and the Church Life_Government of God

The Christian Life under the Government of God 33

Many of us are saddened by the end of Moses. He committed one mistake
in the entire forty years of his serving life. Can you imagine this? After forty
years of serving the Lord, he made the mistake of calling the people of the
Lord “rebels” and then he struck the rock with his rod. He had struck the
rod once before so he might have thought, “Since I did it before, I can do it
again.” But his actions were against what the Lord was doing. Moses called
God’s people rebels, but the Lord was not calling them rebels. Because of
this, Moses was not allowed to enter into the good land. Moses even tried to
negotiate with Jehovah to see if he could enter the good land just for a short
time, but the Lord would not reconsider. If the Lord can discipline Moses
in this way, will He not discipline us much more? Thus, we should consider
much before the Lord how we are living our church life today. We should
pray for the Lord to be so merciful to us. Many of us have been in the church
life for a number of years and we have been serving the Lord. May the Lord
save us from doing things that would require His governmental discipline.
Even I myself am praying for this because after seeing the example of Moses,
I believe we all need to be careful.
The fear of God requires our deep realization of the redemption of
Christ. If we have a deep realization of the redemption of Christ, it will lead
us to the real fear of God. If we recognize how our God has paid the highest
price with His own blood to save us and redeem us, then we would become
fearful of this Person. This is why after verse 17, verses 18 and 19 speak of
our redemption.
To be Humbled under God’s Mighty Hand Being to Be Made Humble
by God; However, Our Needing Also to Cooperate with God’s Operation
and to Be Willing to Be Made Humble, Lowly, under His Mighty Hand
To be humbled under God’s mighty hand is to be made humble by God.
The Lord judges us and disciplines us because we do not become humble
by ourselves (5:6). We are made humble by God. God uses many things in
our environment so that we can be humbled. However, we must cooperate
with God. He may use things in order to humble us, but we may remain very
strong against Him. Hence, we must cooperate with God’s operation and be
willing to be made humble and lowly under His mighty hand.

If we go back to 1 Peter 5:5, Peter tells us that we need to gird ourselves
with humility towards one another. In our church life under God’s government,