“You murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.’” Deuteronomy 1:27
What was in the nature of the parents was also in the children. And what was in the nature of these people is also in us.
1. By nature, we rebel against God.
“Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God” (1:26).
Our corruption goes deeper than a few sins and mistakes. By nature, we resent God. We resist his authority over our lives. By nature, we want to assert our independence from God. We want to be our own savior and our own lord.
2. By nature, we treat God with contempt.
“You murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt…’” (1:27).
The deliverance from Egypt was the extraordinary miracle of grace in the Old Testament, but the people treated God’s grace with contempt. Sin made them so twisted that they saw God’s miraculous deliverance as some kind of plot that God was working against them.
Yet this same impulse is in us! By nature, we hold back praise for God’s goodness and blame him for evil instead. By nature, we say, “Here I am in a desert, and it’s all God’s fault.” By nature, we insult God and treat the goodness of God with contempt.
Where have you seen your own impulse to resist God’s authority or to treat God (and his goodness) with contempt?