He Knew Every Mile of It and You Lacked Nothing

The fence runs from the corner post by the road, up over the rise, along the top where the ground gets thin, and down into the draw where you cannot see it from anywhere.

Sunset. The dog is a hundred yards ahead doing what she does. His son in law has the staple gun and is walking beside him and neither of them has said anything for about four minutes, which is comfortable.

He built this fence. Not all at once. Over about eleven years, in pieces, whenever there was money or time or a reason.

And here is what he is doing as he walks it, and he has been doing it for weeks now without admitting it.

He can date the sections. Not by the wire, by himself. That stretch by the rise, he was somewhere else in his head the whole summer he put it in. The corner brace, that was the year his daughter was applying to schools and he could not have told you which ones. The long run into the draw, which is the best work on the place, and he cannot remember a single day of doing it.

He is reading his own fence line like a court transcript.

Come and lean on the corner brace with me. Because there is a verse in Deuteronomy that God says about a stretch of wandering, and it is not the sentence anybody expects.

What God said about the forty years

Moses is going back over it at the end. Forty years in a wilderness, most of it going nowhere, and everybody knows how they got there and why it took that long.

And this is what he says about it.

For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.Deuteronomy 2:7

Read what God chose to say about that stretch.

He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness. He watched it. He was aware of every mile of the going round.

These forty years the LORD thy God hath been with thee. Present the whole way. Not waiting at the end.

Thou hast lacked nothing. And the summary judgement on a stretch that everybody, including them, would have called wasted, is that they lacked nothing in it.

That is not a small thing to notice. If any period in Scripture was going to be summarized as squandered, it is that one. And the summary given is about His presence and their provision.

You are walking a line that Somebody knew every mile of, and the verdict on the longest wasted stretch in the book was that nobody lacked anything. That is not a soft reading of a hard chapter; Deuteronomy 2:7 says he knoweth thy walking and thou hast lacked nothing about forty years of going nowhere, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that summary and lays it along a fence line at sunset with a dog running ahead. The stretch you are reading as an indictment already has a verdict on it and it is not yours.

Now the transcript, and let me be plain, because you are a plain man.

You are reading a fence like evidence. And the evidence is real: you were not there for a lot of it. I am not going to argue that with you.

But notice what a court needs and what you have not got. You have not got a charge. Nobody has brought one. There is no complainant. Your daughter did not file anything. God did not file anything. You have convened a court with an accused, a great deal of evidence, and no plaintiff at all.

You are standing in a court with no charge in it, and the only party present is a man reading a fence to himself. Romans 8:33 says who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect, it is God that justifieth, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that question rhetorical rather than open, which closes a hearing that never had grounds.

The fence is standing

One more thing, and it is not sentiment. It is a fact you are walking past.

The fence is standing. Eleven years of it, in pieces, some of it done by a man who was somewhere else in his head, and it holds stock, and it will outlast both of you.

That was done by your hands. Absent or not, present or not, the work happened, and it was real work, and Deuteronomy says God blessed them in all the works of their hand during the exact stretch they were going in circles.

Your hands were not asleep. Whatever else was, the hands were not.

You have real work standing in the ground from years you can barely account for, and He blessed the works of their hands during the wandering itself. Deuteronomy 2:7 puts the blessing on the works of the hand in the same verse as the wilderness, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a fact about a fence rather than a nice idea about the past.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than say the dog's name.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed a man puts in the ground. Not how much of the last eleven years you can bring back. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.