Do Not Be Shocked Nor Fear Them

I could just as easily title this post “Lessons from Deuteronomy,” but then it would have to be the first in a twenty-five part series. The book is a mixture of Moses’s summary of the exodus, his recap of the law, and a few of his gems of wisdom.

Some time ago I pulled out a handful of those gems and memorized them. They were hard because the ones I picked happened to be similar to one another. One, however, I recently put into context, and I don’t think I’ll forget it again.

Moses was recounting to the people of Israel weeks, maybe days, before they were to enter the promised land, what had transpired during the past forty years. Some of them hadn’t been born when Israel broke free of their slavery to Egypt. Some were too young to know or remember all that happened. Only the oldest, who would have been teens at the time, would nod their heads and say, I remember that’s how it was.

At any rate, Moses came to the part of the story about sending spies into the land and about their report when they returned. The people were in a near panic at what they heard. So Moses jumped in to calm them down:

Then I said to you, do not be shocked nor fear them; the Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf. (Deut. 1:29-30a)

No matter the age of the person listening to Moses, they knew precisely what he meant when he said, “The Lord your God who goes before you,” because Israel didn’t break camp unless the Shekinah glory of God–a visible pillar of cloud or fire–rose from the tabernacle and went ahead of them. Then when God’s presence stopped, they stopped.

But here’s what I think is the cool part of these verses. The people of Israel had just heard the report that there were giants in the land. Giants! And they were supposed to go up and conqueror.

Then Moses said, Do not be shocked nor fear them.

Can you imagine? That’s like saying, yes, you are surrounded by poisonous snakes but do not be shocked nor fear them.

Really, Moses?

If he’d stopped there, his statement would make no sense. But he went on to explain why the people weren’t to be shocked at such shocking news: God, the very God they had witnessed leading them from place to place, would Himself fight on their behalf.

Oh. Well! Maybe giants weren’t so fearsome after all.

Interestingly, my thoughts about this verse dovetailed with my pastor’s sermon about Mary. We’re studying the book of Luke and this week we looked at the prophecy from Simeon when he told Mary, “A sword will pierce even your own soul.”

We can speculate about the scorn and ridicule Mary had to live with as an unwed pregnant woman. We know she faced the very real possibility that her betrothed would divorce her before they ever married. He didn’t because of God’s intervention. But before the rumors had begun to fade, she and her husband were fleeing before Herod’s jealousy in order to spare the life of this infant son of hers. A sword would pierce her soul.

I wonder what she thought when she got word that any number of babies the same age as Jesus had been killed in the region.

I wonder if she felt a pang of rejection when, as a budding man at the age of twelve, Jesus said He needed to be about His Father’s business, and He wasn’t talking about carpentry.

Pastor posed the question: if Mary had known all the grief she’d go through when Gabriel first announced to her that she, a virgin, would give birth to the holy one from God, would she have been so quick to say to him, “May it be done to me according to your word”?

It’s easy to say, of course she would have. But she hadn’t seen the giants in the land. She didn’t know, the way the people of Israel knew, what she was up against.

Pastor walked us through various events recorded in Scripture–things such as Jesus’s rejection in His home town (a mom would feel that for her son, but might the hatred for Him have spilled out on her?), His declaration that those who believed His words where His mother and brothers (a practical repudiation of His relationship with her), ultimately His crucifixion (the death of her first born)–which show just how acute the piercing of Mary’s soul must have been.

But Pastor pointed out that what we know of her story ends in the book of Acts. After the resurrection, the disciples, and with them Mary and Jesus’s brothers, were together when the Holy Spirit came upon them. All the heartache she went through ended up to be worth it.

The same fact the people of Israel experienced. They wandered the wilderness because of their fears, but in the end, they experienced the joy of the God who went before them fighting on their behalf.

How much more can the Christian say with joyful triumph, there might be giants in the land, but I’m not shocked, and I don’t fear them. My God already has won the victory through Christ my Savior and my Lord.