But when the song is over, it is time for the children of Israel to begin making their way to Mt. Sinai. God is not done with them yet. He desires to enter into a more formal partnership — a covenant — with them. It's as if God would say, “I am glad that you call me your Savior, but will you call me your Lord? Will you enter into a relationship with me and speak my ‘love language’ of obedience?” And on their way to the mountain, God has some experiences for them. They are called tests and God speaks of them in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
Apparently, God wanted to test the Hebrews on their way to Sinai. This word will require some contextual adjustment for us, because “testing” in the Hebrew mind is much different than our own. For us, a test is a pass/fail assignment given to us to gauge our proficiency in that area. But this understanding wouldn't be logical for a God that would know all things. God said that He wanted to test them in order to know what was in their hearts.
Doesn't God already know what is in their hearts?
It comes down to the Hebrew word for know. The word is yada and it means “to know experientially.” To put the idea in context, the word is used in Genesis when we are told that “Adam knew Eve and she conceived and bore a son.” The word is so experiential that it is used to describe the “knowing” that happens between a husband and and wife.
God wants to know — experientially — what's in our hearts. He already knows it (in our understanding of the word ‘know’), but He wants to experience it.
And so God leads them through a series of tests. And this is profound, because what this means is that when God desires to test us, it is not an attempt to gauge our proficiency. In fact, God is wanting to experience what He already knows to be true of us. It's not about whether you or I pass or fail.
A test is our opportunity to show God what is in our hearts. To let God experience what is really true about us on the deepest level — for better or for worse.
But a test is also our opportunity to learn something about ourselves and let it change us for our future relationship with God.
Every test is a chance to relate to (and with) God. And every test is an opportunity to learn and grow.
What continues to amaze me is that this God would desire to experience life with me. That He would love me enough to say that it's not enough to be God and have my obedience and see my worship, but that He would pursue me through my deserts and lead me to moments where He could experience life with me. What kind of a God is this?
It sounds like the God who would create the world of Genesis 1 and stand back with a giddy admiration over the creation He had made, calling it very good and resting in its completeness. It sounds like the God who would stroll through the Garden of Delight (Eden) in the cool of the day, looking for people to hang out with, wanting to experience life with them.
It sounds like a God who is just waiting for us to trust His story.
But we have three tests to go through before we get to Sinai, and God wants to experience our hearts. And so we set off from the bank of the Red Sea, into the dry heat of the Sinai desert. Walking through 120-degree heat we find that our hearts are getting heavier and our throats are getting drier. Certainly God wouldn't rescue us from Egypt to let us die in the desert from thirst, would He?
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