I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase, “by the hand of God,” but I don’t think we really stop and think about what it means very often. There’s also the phrase, “act of God,” that’s used by insurance companies to refer to major environmental events like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc., which is interesting in a different aspect as well. Both of these ideas though, hinge on the fact that YHWH plays an active role in the lives of man, even if these terms are used colloquially in society in this age.
As we read through scripture, we can clearly see YHWH’s involvement in His creation. Obviously, there are the major events that affected all of mankind, like creation (Genesis 1-2), the flood (Genesis 6:9-9:17), and more recently, the sacrifice of His Son for the atonement of sins (Matthew 26:28). However, we also see His direct involvement in the lives of individuals. In fact, you could argue that the whole purpose of scripture, at the very least its main theme, is showing us that YHWH is not sitting somewhere distantly letting His creation operate at its collective will, but He is intimately involved in the lives of everyone in existence and who has ever existed.
We see very blatant statements in scripture like, “YHWH remembered Noah,” (Genesis 8:1), and “YHWH listened to Leah,” (Genesis 30:17), but that doesn’t mean that the omission of that statement indicates He’s not involved in other major events in people’s lives. If you read through the beginning of Jacob’s married life (Genesis 29-30), you find that regardless of whether or not it says, “YHWH…opened her womb,” (Genesis 30:22), those who had these major events in their lives like conceiving and giving birth recognized He was involved.
The women in these situations named their children after how they perceived YHWH came to give the children to them. Leah named one son Judah, because she was praising YHWH for giving him to her (Genesis 29:35). Rachel named a son born to her maidservant Dan, because she believed YHWH had vindicated her after preventing her from having children (Genesis 30:6). Other than naming, they also recognized His involvement by saying things like, “YHWH has given me a good gift,” (Genesis 30:20).
This practice of naming children based on YHWH’s involvement goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. Their first child was named Cain, based on the fact that YHWH had helped Eve bring him forth (Genesis 4:1). Seth was named based on YHWH providing another son after Cain had killed Abel (Genesis 4:25).
It’s not just children, or even just YHWH’s people, either. When we start reading about Abram (who later got his name changed by YHWH), we find that a “Gentile” (which is in quotes because at this time that term wasn’t used) not only was afflicted by direct involvement of YHWH, but also recognized that there was a reason for that affliction! We’ve looked before at how Abram was a bit of a worrier, and rather than rest in the fact that YHWH promised he would be the father of many nations, he decided to lie about Sarai’s relationship to him (Genesis 12:11-19). Of course, thinking she was just Abram’s sister, and her being beautiful, Pharaoh’s men tried to do something nice for him and bring her to his palace.
By no fault of Pharoah, he and his household started getting severe plagues. Of note, while we use this word interchangeably with afflictions of all types, the Hebrew word here means some sort of skin disease. A different Hebrew word is used to mean general events of divine judgment. I’m sure Pharaoh asked his mystics and magicians why they thought he was being afflicted, or perhaps he just put two and two together and realized that these diseases started when Abram showed up. He somehow figured out that Sarai was actually Abram’s wife, and subsequently sent them away in order to get relief from the plagues.
The point is, individuals that were not believers in YHWH nonetheless had their lives greatly affected by the hand of YHWH. Speaking of plagues, we can see a whole unbelieving nation was affected by His hand as we read through the account of the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 7-12). We see it also when Elisha captured the Aramean army, who was at war with Israel (2 Kings 6:8-23). Not only were angelic horses and chariots sent to help him, the army was struck blind by YHWH when Elisha asked for that. His request was short, simple, and asked in humility: “I pray You strike these people with blindness.”
Other than Yeshua’s life on earth, there’s not much more intimate of an interaction with man than what we find when we read about Jacob’s wrestling with YHWH (Genesis 32:24-30). Now, there are a LOT of questions about this particular event that we’re not going to get into this week for multiple reasons, the main one being there’s not really clear answers to them. The reason we’re noting it though, is because in this particular event, Jacob physically wrestled with YHWH for hours and at the end He changed Jacob’s name to Israel, which means “he struggles with God.”
Unbeknownst to Jacob, this name would define the nature of his offspring’s relationship with YHWH. They turned from YHWH, complained about the execution of His plans for them, were forgiven and welcomed back to Him only to turn away once again, and ultimately ended up rejecting His Son, Yeshua. While we certainly should not appropriate this name for us, don’t we, as Christians, sometimes identify with this nature? We struggle to stay out of the world, and not let its deceit and propaganda influence our lives, but as easy as it was for the Israelites to start melting their gold and making a calf to worship (Exodus 32:1-6), we fall into a pattern of letting social media, the drive of a job or career, or simply entertainment like television shows, movies, or sports, take over our lives and become our focus rather than YHWH.
Why does this happen? What causes us to start looking elsewhere for our worship, while convincing ourselves we’re still only worshipping YHWH? Well, let’s take a look at how this happened with the Israelites, right after the biggest act of YHWH to ever come upon their lives.
They had just gone through the plagues of Egypt, which by their nature was already a sign YHWH was involved in their lives since they were unaffected while the rest of Egypt suffered. They escaped across the sea (Exodus 14:15-31) and were walking through the desert on their way to the land promised to them by YHWH (Exodus 16:1). As they traveled, they went through some hardships, but YHWH provided for the Israelites through all of them.
You’re probably thinking, “wait a minute. I thought you said we were going to look at how they turned away from YHWH. These are all things that obviously would make them love Him more.” Well, sometimes the obvious you realize is not so obvious when you put yourself in the story and start focusing on otherwise unimportant details.
When we do that, we find that we are told exactly why the Israelites ended up turning away from YHWH and building that golden calf: they no longer saw YHWH in the events that occurred in their lives. As they walked through the desert, hungry after running out of food, Moses and Aaron became the focus of their frustration (Exodus 16:2). Perhaps, this was rightly so, because either of them could have prayed for food and YHWH would have given it to them. However, the point is that they could have prayed to YHWH themselves had they recognized that He was the one that saved them and was leading them to the promised land! Not only that, they had correctly identified that YHWH was involved in the plagues (Exodus 16:3), but were unable to also realize that He was intimately involved in their exodus as well.
In fact, in giving the provisions to the Israelites in this situation, YHWH knew their hearts and the fact that they didn’t know He was involved in their situation and tried to get them to realize the truth. He showed Himself to them as Aaron was talking, in an effort to make it clear that He was the one doing all of it, not them (Exodus 16:10). Moses and Aaron even tried to get them to understand it. They said, “who are we? That you should grumble against us?” (Exodus 16:7-8)
Whether the Israelites got the picture or not, we are not told in scripture. I would hope that if they praised YHWH for what He provided them it would have been recorded, but we cannot make the assumption they didn’t just because it’s not written in the account. Regardless, nearly the very next event in scripture is the Israelites once again grumbling at Moses, and YHWH once again providing the thing they’re grumbling about (Exodus 17:1-6). This time, they seemed to acknowledge that YHWH was supposed to be there taking care of them (Exodus 17:7), but rather than pray to Him about what they wanted they grumbled to Moses.
This brings us to another key point about how we walk down the path of turning away from YHWH. Rather than look to Him for the things we need, we have a tendency to look to man. There’s a ridiculous old adage that goes, “God helps those who help themselves.” What a lie straight from Satan! What better way for him to get us to stop looking to YHWH for even the mundane things in our lives but to convince people that we first need to do it ourselves, and only then YHWH will help us?
We have a problem where we don’t see enough of the hand of YHWH in our lives, and to be honest, it’s really because we’re just not looking. We’ve been conditioned to believe that pretty much everything is pure happenstance, and there’s no rhyme or reason to anything. We save our praise of YHWH for when huge things happen, like maybe emerging unscathed after a major storm, or perhaps the election of your preferred political leader. No doubt, He has His hand in those things (as long as it’s a part of His plan), but He is involved in so much more of our day to day lives.
Do you know what He said to the Israelites shortly after they crossed the sea? He said, “I am the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). In context, He said this would be a result of the Israelites doing four things: 1. Listening carefully to His voice, 2. Doing what is right in His eyes, 3. Paying attention to His commands, and 4. Keeping all His statutes. Now, I’m not saying that failing to do those things is the only reason someone gets sick, but what I am saying is that we rarely look anywhere but to man to try and figure out why we’re sick and how to get better.
I’m sure you’ve seen the faith healers that call on Yeshua's name to heal those that come them. I have no doubt that some, not all, of those healings are real, but YHWH is not just involved in those healings. I listened to a recording of a pastor recently, and it was clear he had physical damage to his vocal cords caused by something that happened to him. As he preached, you could hear his vocal cords being healed as his voice sounded more and more normal. He got choked up about it because he wasn’t expecting it, and it was clear that it was nothing short of a miracle from YHWH.
His hand is not just in the big things, it’s in literally everything. If we recognize that and identify it, we’re one step closer to keeping our face toward Him instead of turning away. It also has the added benefit of us trying to seek out why certain things happened to us, to figure out if He’s trying to tell us something or lead us somewhere.
We hope you have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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