Stiff-Necked People

We are not being asked to look at ourselves here. The children of Israel were not asked to look at themselves in that now time. No! The time for looking at themselves and asking whether or not they were pleasing God, had passed. They are to hear and see the anger of God against them, because they are a stiffed-necked people. Believe you me, I have taken this personally and I have accepted that our Heavenly Father is extremely angry with me, because what He is seeing of me now, in this moment and time called now, is idolatry.

However, if this is not true of you, if at present you know that you are not one of His children with whom He is so angry, He could wipe you out, then give unending praise and thanks to God and continue as you believe you are in Him. But, if like me, you can hear and see our Lord’s anger at you, as I see it with me, then let us also quickly seek His forgiveness in deep repentance. Let us give Him unending praise and thanks for His mercy and grace in affording us, even now, the blessed gift of repentance.

Our righteous and Holy Father in heaven, we are truly sorry for the ease and un-stemmed willingness in which we have so mindlessly turned away from You and Your given ways, and turned to the ways of the world. We have taken pride in giving up Your good, to put our faith and trust in that which has no life, to help us, Your saved children. We have made for ourselves an idol, just one huge idol, which we worship and adore. We have been worshipping the idol of unbelief and have been living the life of unbelievers, who do not believe in You, the One True God. Holy, Righteous Judge, You who are always right in all Your ways, we know and accept all You say about us. We, Your saved children are guilty and deserve Your fully unadulterated wrath, but we come because of repentance. We come because we have been prayed for.

Holy Father, thank You for Jesus, our Saviour. Thank You that He has prayed for us. Thank You for the grace of repentance. Thank You for the gift of repentance. Thank You for the way of repentance. We ask for Your Holy Spirit to lead us, teach us and take us through the way of repentance, to Your honour and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, who prays for us. Amen!

Stiff-necked

When I saw the description of people being stiff-necked, I began to have images formed in my mind. Many of you know, through first-hand, personal experiences, having a stiff-neck can be very painful and uncomfortable. For one thing, it restricts your freedom of movement with the head, as it keeps you stuck in one position, unable to turn to the right or to the left. Sometimes, to even touch the neck, to rub it or such like, is extremely tender and painful. I’m thinking about all that I know about a stiff-neck and wondering how does this apply to our Lord’s description of His people being a stiff-necked people. This is what I was shown.

The neck supports the head and when the neck is stuck in one place, so will the head be. The mind is in the head. Therefore, if the head, supported by the neck is stationary, stuck in one place, so will the mind be. This is indeed scary, because it means, when one’s mind is stuck to what is offensive to God, it will do so without turning to the right or to the left. It means that as a stiff-necked people, we are fully fixed and stayed in our chosen way and will not be moved.

Check the scene to which God tells Moses to rush to, as God was ready to act in anger. The full community of God’s liberated people are under the watchful eye of Aaron, Moses' brother and co-partner. Remember, Moses did not choose his brother, God did. See I have made you like a God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. Exodus 7: 1. This means that when Moses left the children of God, in that holy place, to answer God’s call to come to Him on the Holy Mountain, he did not leave the children without a shepherd. He left them in the care and leadership of Aaron. When Moses gets there and sees for himself, what God is talking about, he is terrified and greatly afraid for the children of God and especially for his brother Aaron. He sees Aaron leading them in pagan worship and pagan celebrations, which were nothing but pure revelry.

Moses became so afraid for the people and he so feared and respected God’s anger and wrath that he fell down forthwith in intercessory prayer for them. I feared the anger and wrath of the LORD, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the LORD listened to me. And the LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. Deuteronomy 9: 19 – 20