Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Exodus 17:1-7

Israel are well and truly in the wilderness and have been for some time now. The problem for them is that the wilderness “is no longer simply a place but a state of mind” (Fretheim). They are caught in- between promise and fulfilment and that poses significant challenges to their faith.

We, too, are like Israel, in the in-between – having been saved and yet being saved; called out from the world into the Lord’s kingdom but not yet in the fullness of all that will mean. And when you’re in the wilderness, it is often difficult to sort out what is perception and what is reality. In this passage, we see Israel still struggling with that.

1. Being Led
Israel, for all their faults, do at least display here some semblance of obedience, in that they respond to the Lord’s leading – they set out “as the LORD commanded”. The road of discipleship is a case of ‘one step after another’ and the hymn-writer was right that ‘each victory will help you some other to win’.

But you’ve got to keep putting one foot in front of the other, which is what Israel fails to do here. They are led to Rephidim but there is water there and, instead of seeking God in faith, they once more complain. But this is even worse than before; the term used here is very strong – they quarrel with Moses and again accuse him of having led them out simply for them to die in the desert.

The mistake Israel makes here is to assume that being led by the Lord means a life without difficulty; as one writer has helpfully said, “God’s leading does not always move directly toward oases” (Fretheim). To encounter difficulty and hardship is not proof that we have been mistaken is terms of the Lord’s leading – we must not think that we have taken a wrong turn if we encounter challenging situations.

In fact, it is part of God’s purposes to lead his people into this difficult situation, just as we see the Spirit leading Jesus after his baptism into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. That may have seemed a strange choice on the Lord’s part but he knows what he’s doing.

The end in view in all the leading of God is fullness of life and joy in his presence but there are many turns to be taken along the path that leads there and some of those turns will be into darker times in which the Lord’s purpose is to cause his light to be seen more brightly, for his grace to be seen as all-sufficient, for us to be built-up in our most holy faith.

But Israel has yet to see that. They test the Lord in their unbelief, making their continued belief in him to rest upon a demonstration of his power and provision. What they’re doing is trying to turn faith into sight – and, sadly, we can find ourselves unwittingly doing the same.

The Lord leads; it may even be into times of difficulty but his purpose is not to crush but to conform us; he wants us to know the riches of his love in the wastelands of this world, the delights of his grace in the darkness of a world in sin. We can trust him; he’s proved that he’s worthy of that trust in the cross of Calvary.

2. Being Gracious
When the people quarrel with him, Moses asks why they’re testing the Lord and then goes in person to the Lord for help, asking what he should do with the people. Whether we’re in leadership in some capacity or whether we’re not, Moses’ example is a good one to learn from – take it to the Lord in prayer.

The Lord doesn’t directly answer that question but instead tells Moses to take his staff and to take the elders with him and to go to the rock at Horeb where the Lord will stand before him. And at Horeb, with the elders as witnesses and with the Lord before him, Moses is to strike the rock and water will flow from it. The same staff that struck the Nile and brought about judgement is to strike the rock and bring relief and blessing.

So that is what Moses does and that is what we see – the Lord acting in mercy and grace, bringing the blessings of creation into the wilderness. Here is a beautiful demonstration again of why he has brought Israel out of Egypt – his plans are to heal creation and make fruitful that which is barren.

In the light of the fact that the people are now quarrelling with Moses (and hence the Lord), it’s all the more remarkable to see God’s patience with them here. This is the third time they have reacted badly and once more the Lord bears with his people and meets their need.

And he does so in person – Moses may strike the rock but the Lord is right there before him. When Paul reflects on this incident in the NT he tells us that the rock was Christ, the Messiah – the people are given physical drink but, more than that, they are drinking from the spiritual rock that is Christ (1 Cor. 10:1ff).

Just as the manna points forward to Jesus, so this water also reflects that perspective. Yet it is more than that; the people drink of Christ himself – God is present with them and feeds them with himself and satisfies their thirst in ways that are deeper than the physical.

That is the measure of the grace and the provision of God for his people. He gives not just gifts but himself – that is at the heart of his mission. That is to be our goal and aim too – to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.

3. Being named
The Lord is gracious to his people but that doesn’t mean he is indifferent to their sin in quarrelling with him and testing him in their unbelief. And so this place is memorialised as Massah and Meribah, ‘testing and quarreling’.

In time, this incident came to stand as one of the chief evidences of the hardness of the people’s hearts – they had been recipients of great mercies, blessed so signally by the Lord and yet they failed him so badly. And so the failure was marked down and used as an object lesson for generations to come, just as we have seen Paul using it in 1 Cor. 10:1-4.

Maybe there are places in our histories that also deserve just such a name – times and places where we have quarrelled, where we have made our hearts hard and distrusted the Lord. If we know that there are such places in our own history, does that mean we can no longer walk with the Lord?

Such places are named not in order to shame but to teach, to humble and to encourage fresh faith and obedience. Israel would always remember Massah and Meribah and would be exhorted to listen and to learn from this incident.

As we look at our own stuttering discipleship in the light of Israel’s failure, we need to take to heart their example and humble our hearts. We also need to do what they singularly failed to do: look to the Rock in faith and trust.

The message they heard and that they witnessed in the great exodus events was not combined with faith; if we’re Christians this morning, we have come to faith in Jesus and we share in the true exodus in him, but we must make sure that our faith is an ongoing reality, that our trust is living and real.

And take heart from Paul’s words in 1 Cor 10:13 – “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to us all. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

May God work in us what is pleasing in his sight. Amen.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Exodus 16:1-36

A desert is a hostile environment. Even for those used to living there, life in the wilderness poses severe challenges. And that is a picture the Bible often uses to describe the Christian life.

Here, we see Israel is a physical desert but it is also more than that. For them, it is a place of spiritual challenge. And in the scene before us, a food crisis turns into a faith crisis.

1. Community challenge
We have already seen the people face an issue similar to this one but there is a key difference in how this chapter opens and then continues: four times we read about the “whole community” (vv.1,2,9,10).

They have been brought out of Egypt by the Lord to be a real community, to be the first-fruits of a whole new society, a people belonging to the Lord. And in that community they are to help and support each other, they are to encourage and strengthen one another as they journey on with the Lord.

But it is just at this point that they singularly fail. Instead of urging each other to remain faithful to the Lord they complain and grumble as a whole community.

It’s all too easy for us to be guilty of something similar, of failing to stand for faith in the face of difficulties. The days we live in are full of challenges that demand a robust faith from the church as the church. We all have a part to play in that; it is vital that strengthen each other to face those challenges. The last thing the world needs is a church that falls like a house of cards under the first breeze of trouble.

Are you looking to be an encouragement to others? Do you pray that others’ faith will not fail them? Our calling is to be faithful as a whole community.

And it is at that point that Israel failed here so badly. They judged their lives (and their God) by their appetites; all that mattered was getting food and the lack of it signified to them a lack of care.

We are very physical creatures and have been made that way by the Lord but we must not allow our appetites to govern our thinking about the Lord and his purposes for us. He does not intend to harm us; his reason for calling us to be his own is not in order to keep us chained in misery. The lesson they had to learn (and learned painfully slowly) was that people do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God’s mouth.

And because they judge their God by their bellies they end up making a preposterous charge against Moses and Aaron (v.3b) and presumably think the same about the Lord too. It’s almost laughable but we might see something of ourselves in their words if we look closely enough. Have there been times when you have thought that the Lord had it in for you, that he didn’t want you to prosper, that for some reason (usually because you weren’t holy enough) he needed to treat you harshly?

We need to tell ourselves to grow up. The Lord is not like how we portray him in our thinking. Such attitudes and fears on our part are deeply immature and tragically insecure. How can we ever think he is variable and his love for us unstable once we have truly seen the cross?

2. Testing and teaching

As before, the Lord’s amazing response to such immature thinking and behaviour is to be patient with his people and to graciously provide them with food – with manna and quail.

The reason the Lord does so is stated in two ways. Having given his people manna, the Lord is going to test them, to see if they will follow his instructions (v.4). But alongside the testing of the people – and, perhaps, in this context more prominent – he is going to teach them. They will “know” that the LORD brought them out of Egypt (v.6) and they will “know” that the LORD is their God (v.12).

There is more that we can and will say about that teaching in terms of its details but we need first to grasp what is being said here because it is utterly vital to genuine and healthy Christian living. We are called to know the Lord and he will do all that is necessary to bring us every more deeply into that knowledge.
Here we get to the heart of why he called Israel out of Egypt – that they might know him, that they might be restored into relationship with the Creator and, in that relationship, that they might then be a witness, a light, to the nations.

We need to know that it is the LORD who has rescued us and that the LORD is our God. We need to know that he is not a tame God but the self-existent, eternal and all-glorious God. There is no rival to him and we need to know that afresh and ever more deeply.

And we need to know that this God of glory has pledged himself to be our God, to be our Lord, to take complete ownership of us and responsibility for us. We need to know that more deeply and more truly. Grasping those points will greatly enhance our walk with him, encourage our faith and make us a blessing to others.

3. Further lessons

But this incident allows us to go further into the nitty-gritty of knowing the Lord and responding to his ways with us (it was, after all, a test for them). I want to say a number of things quite briefly on this point.

ii) Having enough – In a way that is not explained, they all collected just enough for themselves. None had too much; none had too little. Quite how it happened, we aren’t told – it just did. But when Paul refers to it in the NT, he uses it to encourage those who have much to share with those who have little (2 Cor. 8:13ff). That’s how a growing maturity shows itself.

ii) Having enough daily – The LORD provides for his people daily and so they are to trust him every day. This, of course, is the lesson Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s prayer – “Give us today our daily bread”. We are to rely on the Lord not periodically but perpetually; it is not maturity to think we can somehow go beyond that.

Some of the people test that out and get a shock – the manna has gone off. The Lord has tested them and they have failed the test. They want to do things their way; they want to go the road and God’s promises plus their own efforts. It doesn’t work for them and it won’t for us either.

iii) Having enough daily within God’s rhythm of work and rest – The Lord tells the people to collect extra on the 6th day and they’ll have enough not to need to collect any on

Whatever your take on the whole Sabbath issue, whether it continues into the NT unchanged or is modified (and I think it’s the latter), this scene at the very least shows us that as people created in God’s image we need to live within the pattern he sets for work and rest.

This incident comes before the giving of the law on Sinai; it is clearly linked to it but it is also linked backwards to creation and the Lord resting on the 7th day – which is just what he does here. They aren’t to try to collect manna on the Sabbath because there won’t be any – the Lord is resting from that activity.

The rhythms of work and rest are important for us as the Lord’s people. He has made us that way. We do well to learn that lesson.

iv) Passing on the lessons – All this is taught in the specific situation of Israel is the desert needing to be fed and the Lord responding in grace through manna and quail. When the situation changed (entering the promised land), that provision stopped (v.35).

But while the situation is specific, the lessons learned are suitable for every generation to reflect on. And so a sample of the manna is kept as a kind-of exhibit for future generations to learn from.

Some say that we have to learn from our mistakes; no doubt we do. But alongside that, we can and should also learn from the mistakes and the experiences of others. The manna in the jar would allow future generations to be taught important lessons about knowing and trusting the Lord – they would need to make those lessons their own but they ought to help them not to make the same mistakes.

The NT says the same to us as we read the OT. God grant us grace to do so. Amen.