Have you ever wondered what would happen in your life if you heard God clearly and followed His directions exactly? Moses spoke to God and God spoke to Moses. Yet, Moses and his brother Aaron sinned and did not follow exactly what God told them to do.

Shortly after this passage, Aaron died. Later, Moses got to go to the top of a mountain and look and see the Promised Land, but he was never allowed to enter it. “Unfair!” I can hear the outcry already. What in the world was God thinking that He did not allow Moses and Aaron,who had faithfully led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert, to enter the Promised Land, their destination the whole time?

Well, my answer is that God was thinking that He is holy and what He asks for specifically is for a specific reason and He expects complete obedience, not a partial, half-hearted, “I’ll do it my way” kind of obedience. One of the big problems in our world today is that so many people are trying to do things their way, the way that their minds came up with, and not the way that God has said it should be.

For example, the Bible tells us that God made male and female. Now, there are people in our world who say that one can decide their gender. Really? Is that what the Holy Bible says? The Bible says that man and woman marry and become one flesh. Man today, in all of his own wisdom, has decided that homosexuality and the resulting relationships are okay. Hmm. I’m sure that is NOT what God thinks is best for our world considering He destroyed Sodom for such sin. Nevertheless, men think that they know better than God and go their own way. Like Moses, they are headed in a direction that will not allow them to go into the Promised Land.

In the time of Moses, the Promised Land was an actual, physical place. Today, the Promised Land is Heaven, that place in which we have eternal life and live in the presence of God forever. People who think that they can “do their own thing” all of their lives and then live in the presence of a Holy God are just fooling themselves. God does not respect some people more than others, and if Moses, a great leader of the Israelites, could be denied entrance into the physical Promised Land, who are we to think that we can do whatever we want and still go into the Heavenly Promised Land? How presumptuous is that!

In my opinion, the big thing that we are missing in the picture of sin and choices is TRUST. We don’t trust that God will fulfill His Word, every jot and tittle of it. I trust that God loves and shows mercy and forgives. But I also trust that He is the righteous Judge who will one day hold all men into account for their own choices and actions. Once again, remember that Moses and Aaron were not allowed to go into the Promised Land. They changed one word of what God told them to do and that made all the difference.

God says what He means and means what He says.

I hope that you have a blessed day and that you feel God’s presence leading and directing you in the way you should go.