My neck feels stiff…
And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people!”
Exodus 32:9
This verse is from the infamous Golden Calf incident in the wilderness. The Father is none too pleased with the Israelites, nor should He be. In his anger He describes the people as “stiff-necked.” This simple, yet odd expression allows us to see the severe difference between godly views on life and worldly views.
On the surface, stiff-necked seems a strange physical description. The image of one of those people from National Geographic magazine with the rings all up and down their neck comes to mind. But there’s something deeper to that description.
Your neck has such definition
Stiff-necked, according to dictionary.com, is defined as:
1. having a stiff neck; having torticollis.
2. haughty and obstinate; refractory.
Obviously our God wasn’t stating that his people as a whole had torticollis (whatever that is). The second definition sounds a bit more fitting. Let’s have some more fun with diction, shall we?
Haughty is defined as “disdainfully proud; snobbish; scornfully arrogant; supercilious.” Obstinate is defined as “firmly or stubbornly adhering to one’s purpose, opinion, etc.; not yielding to argument, persuasion, or entreaty.” Refractory is defined as “hard or impossible to manage; stubbornly disobedient.” What a mouthful of ugly words. And that’s how God described us.
The power of pride
What jumps out to me is that, when boiled down to it’s core meaning, stiff-necked fittingly describes us Americans. Now don’t get me wrong, I love this country and all it’s freedoms. At the same time, most Americans pride themselves on being “fiercely independent.” Additionally, they nearly spit when they say the word “dependent.” At the heart of dependence, however, is humility. And humility is what God wants from us. How else will He mold us into who He needs us to be.
It’s pride that got us into the mess with the Golden Calf. It’s pride that drives a wedge between us and God as well as us and others. It’s pride that keeps us haughty and wanting to impress others with our possessions and accomplishments. But God did not make us to work independently of Him, not at all. In fact He desires we depend on Him for everything. After all, isn’t that what faith is?
Everybody get loose now
It may be time for us to do a neck check. How stiff have we become? Have we allowed ourselves to get so prideful that we openly announce how self-made we are and that we don’t need to depend on anyone? A little caution in that area could serve us well. We are never self-made. In fact, nothing good that is created by us is made by us but by the Father working through us. If we make it ourselves and glorify in that, we’ve made an idol – it is not of God.
Our necks grow stiff. And, the more stiff-necked we get, the prouder we feel about ourselves. Ironically, the whole thing makes us a pain in the Master’s neck.
