05/15/2024 – Why God Allows Affliction
Deuteronomy 8:2 You shall remember the whole way by which the LORD, your God, has brought you these forty years in the wilderness, to grieve you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether or not you were to keep his commandments. 3 He afflicted you, made you hungry, and sustained you with manna, food that neither you nor your parents had known, to let you know that not only of bread will live man, but of everything that comes out of the mouth of Jehovah will live man.
God teaches in many ways, and there are many lessons we only learn in affliction. Trials compel us to demonstrate our faith and obedience to God’s Word — to do what we profess to believe. Not in vain the unparalleled promises of our Lord Jesus Christ in the sermon on the mount are for the one who heeds his words and obeys them. The Lord Jesus Christ always placed great emphasis on the need to put into practice the teachings of scripture. This was a central reason for his message. Our life is built on the rock when we obey his commandments.
Living the Word is not just about a personal effort to behave better, nor about the fulfillment of the letter and ritual of the commandments. It is about being led by the Holy Spirit to live according to the Word of God, with passion everywhere as Christ did.
The Lord Jesus lived the Word of God. While the scribes and Pharisees lived rigidly and criticized The Actions of Jesus, the Lord was simply living with passion the Word of God. His actions were the very fulfillment of the Word. He lived the Word passionately every moment of his life among us. We find our Lord Jesus Christ living the Word of God from the beginning of his ministry. His ministry did not begin with an evangelistic campaign, but with 40 days of fasting in the desert. He was taken there by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit led him into the wilderness according to God’s Word. The forty days in the wilderness were not only a sudden decision by Jesus, but the fulfillment of a process prepared by God and described in the Word long before. This is the same process that the people of Israel lived through in the desert.