The Humility test

When your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end – Deuteronomy 8:14-16.

This test was to bring them to a place where they would be able to see their weaknesses and cry for the healing remedy that was on offer. It takes humility to walk into the hospital and be told to strip naked in order to be examined by a total stranger. It takes even more humility to be told by a total stranger that the cause of such illness and the reason why the patient have been denied good health is because he or she have not taken good care of their body, have not fed well and not rested well enough, all of these coming from a complete stranger would require that the ego of the patient take a back seat, why? Because such a patient wants to come into the promised state of good health which correcting those faults would deliver.

Still on the hospital example, I have also seen patients refuse to change or even accept that the medical experts were right in their prognosis and out of pride they would storm out and refuse to acknowledge the need for change in the areas highlighted. Sadly these patients would suffer some serious health complications which could even prove fatal, some dying way before their time.

This scenario is no different from what God required from the Israelites and yes even from us too who are the recipients of the new covenant. How did the scripture put this so that both the one under the old and the new covenant may understand? I believe Jesus captured this succinctly well from the words of Prophet Isaiah:

He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, Lest they should see with their eyes, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them. – John 12:40.

Who has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts? The enemy of their soul of course and he did it with pride, the pride that refused to acknowledge the need for healing of the heart through the process of transformation. With humility so far removed from them, how could they or anyone in their position be able to see their faults? The truth is, there is a general consensus that there is not a man without fault, what each individual would perhaps struggle with, is the humility to see and admit those faults. As a result many continue to live with such faults until they are consumed by it. So God had to humble them? How you may ask? By what he made them pass through and what he made them to face in the wilderness. He brought challenges to them which they were powerless against, he made them hungry and he took them through terrains which they were not familiar with, these entire processes he subjected them to in order to humble them.

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. – Deuteronomy 8:3.

He humbled them in order for them to see the issues at stake from his own perspective, he humbled them that it might become possible for him to teach and instruct them, but did they pass this test? The answer is No they did not, because God declared them to be a stubborn people with a hardened heart. This was a heart that could not be taught, a heart that refused to be taught. You see instead of submitting to the humbling process they rebelled against their leaders, at some point they threatened to stone them if they did not take them back to Egypt. Instead of submitting to these humbling processes they rebelled against God by declaring that life was better in Egypt and not only that they asked for a god to be made for them that would lead them back to Egypt. As far as they were concerned Jehovah was not up to the task.

It is sad to note that many Christians walk around with this same heart today, like the Israelites they have rejected the humbling process with a cry for a return to their own Egypt, while pointing accusing fingers at God wondering what God had to say in their situation.