The Lord takes care of His people. We see how He takes care of them in so many ways.
He wants to take care of them spiritually by having them circumcise their men. It’s an act of obedience identifying themselves with their God. It’s their mark of allegiance. Obeying made them strong spiritually, but it was their weakest moment physically.
When we are weak, then He is strong. Sound familiar? The Lord teaches Paul, as recorded in 2 Corinthians 12, that His power is made perfect in weakness.
Circumcising the men put them in a place of weakness, of vulnerability. That’s the trick Abraham’s sons used to weaken the men they wanted to kill to avenge their sister, Dinah.
The Israelites had to humble themselves and make themselves weak and rely on their God for protection. They had just walked into enemy territory. They could have made excuses and justifications as to why now was not a good time, and we wouldn’t have a story of the walls of Jericho falling down.
God moved them into a place of weakness. They had to rely on God to provide protection from their enemy.
On the other hand, God had been providing food for the Israelites for 40 years, manna from heaven. The day after they eat from the food of the land they are going to settle, the manna stops. God didn’t stop providing. He started providing in a new way. He provided a good land flowing with milk and honey.
Here’s where we might start to get off track. God provides the land, the job, the car, the house or whatever it is, and we start to think we earned it or we are the ones working to provide for ourselves. If the job, the land, the home, the car is lost, then we’re devastated. We don’t know what we’ll do. If that’s our reaction, then it means we’ve forgotten Who gave it to us in the first place.
It was the Lord’s provision in the first place. He was providing for you by giving it to you. He can provide in some other way now. And if you reacted by being upset or anxious, you needed the reminder!
He will bring us to a place of weakness, so we can remember to rely on Him for our salvation. Our weakness is a gift. Everything is a gift. God’s grace is in every part of our lives. See it and thank Him for it!