Misrepresenting the LORD when called to represent the LORD can result with loss and ruin in our physical life on earth.
As servants called by the LORD GOD we are to truthfully and faithfully represent Him.
I know that I have not always represented the LORD in the way He called me to. But from the beginning of my relationship with Jesus Christ – He has been faithful and truthful to finish what He started in me so that I would not lose what He is keeping in heaven for my faithfulness to Him.
Hebrews 12:11 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but PAINFUL. Later on, however, it PRODUCES a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
Hebrews 12:7 “Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?”
1 Corinthians 11:32 “But when we are judged by the Lord, we are being discipline so that we will not be condemned with the world.”
I remember the day that I came to a dead end on the path of religion that I was on. Jesus my Savior visited me in person and with an audible voice said, “Carol, I love you. Just walk with Me.” He showed me His back, head to toe, as He was walking a narrow path and with His right hand reaching back to me to come alongside Him. I’ve written a book about what His visitation has meant to me and done to me over these 16 years since. (Book called: JUST WALK WITH ME)
We can not serve the LORD any old way we want. We are not to teach what we simply want to believe about God that is not true of Him. (We have both the Old and New Testaments for knowing the whole character of God.)
God told Moses to write down the song found in Deuteronomy 32, and teach it to His people, so that it may be a witness for the LORD against them when they reject Him to worship foreign gods. We all have the natural tendency that after God has blessed us and we’ve been living out that enjoyment with our families – that we slowly forget God. We also have the natural tendency that after we’ve been forgiven by Jesus Christ – to do what the pig does after washed clean: return to the mud.
After the Lord has blessed us for His purpose on earth, we His servants are responsible to represent the LORD GOD in this world truthfully and faithfully.
God judged Moses for not representing Him in the right way. In anger towards God’s grumbling thirsty people Moses struck the desert rock instead of speaking to the rock as God told him to do. Water still came out of the rock for God’s people, but Moses did not uphold God’s holiness among them and lost something for misrepresenting the LORD. The LORD was not angry with their complaining about food and water; He always met their need. The LORD GOD was showing them His mercy and grace, not His condemnation and judgment. They were to learn to trust Him to meet their needs just as He promises.
When God calls us to represent Him in the world (and both the Old and New testaments bring out the whole character of God), if we misrepresent Him as His servant called to lead and influence people – we are going to be judged by Him more strictly because of it.
James 3:1 “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach (lead and influence others) will be judged more strictly.”
Moses was ruined for an earthly life when God called him to lead His people Israel out of their slavery in Egypt and into the wilderness all those years as they learned to trust in God. From day one, Moses’ physical life was threatened as a baby when the king was having all the baby boys killed to prevent prophecy from being fulfilled about a deliverer of the Hebrews; he was sent down the river and then found and raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter – Egyptian style; later as the prince of Egypt – Moses fled Egypt having killed an Egyptian slave-master for cruelly beating a Hebrew slave; Moses, now ruined as a leader in Egypt, wandered in the wilderness alone – a broken man in search of his God; he lived with the Midianites, married the daughter of their priest and had two sons that he didn’t get to raise to adulthood having to do God’s will in leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. Moses led 600K men with all their wives and children (millions of people) in the wilderness, roaming a desert for 40 years with grumblers all the way, living on what God provided (bare necessities) and no home to settle in; then God denied Moses entrance to Canaan, and told him to go up on the mountain where he could see God’s people enter the land, and there die on top the mountain.
Just because Moses misrepresented the LORD GOD before the people just that once the LORD GOD denied Moses from going into the land of promise. What a ruin and loss on earth for Moses yet God called Moses “His friend whom He talked to face to face.” (Numbers 12:8)
Moses was faithful to God all the way to the end of his life on earth. Moses was denied an earthly reward but not the heavenly eternal reward with Christ and His Kingdom which is far better.
God has never changed in His character or with His standard of how His servants are to represent Him in this world, truthfully and faithfully – with a heart after His.