Video of the service from which this sermon comes can be viewed here - https://vimeo.com/user38606035
Or on Facebook, here - https://www.facebook.com/david.p.charlton.9/videos/10163406359010298/UzpfSTcyOTY1NTI5NzoxMDE2MzQwNjc4NzUwMDI5OA/
A group of four high school friends were on their way to school one morning when they decided to drive around a little longer, causing them to miss their first class. They decided they would tell their teacher they were late because they had a flat tire, thinking this would be a great alibi. Arriving just as the class had ended, they told their teacher their tale, and then started down the hall to their next class. The teacher, however, insisted they come into the classroom to take a test. Protesting that they didn’t have enough time, the teacher said, oh, this will only take a minute, as there is only one question on the test. So they walked into the room, where the teacher seated them in the four corners of the room, just in case they were tempted to help out one another. Giving them each a pencil and a piece of paper, the teacher then said, here is you question – which tire was flat? That’s a rather brilliant test, isn’t it?
I assumed that I was done with tests once I finished school, but I quickly found I was wrong. It’s not just school that has tests; life gives us tests quite often, and those tests can be quite difficult, as we have found in recent weeks.
Continuing with our series of messages called The Journey, this morning we come to chapter sixteen of the book of Exodus. In this chapter, we find, once again, the people coming to Moses and Aaron to complain. And to be fair, they had a legitimate complaint – they were hungry. Finding the food they needed as they continued their journey was proving to be quite a challenge, as food is rather hard to come by in a desert environment.
Hear this morning’s Scripture text, which is selected verses from Exodus 16.
Exodus 16:2-5, 11-18, 32, 34-35 –
2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.
5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
11 The Lord said to Moses,
12 “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.
14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.
15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.
16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little.
18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’”
34 As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna with the tablets of the covenant law, so that it might be preserved.
35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.
This morning’s message is titled A Test of Trust. I spoke about trust on March 29thas well, with a sermon titled Trusting God, Trusting Each Other. I’m speaking about trust again because it is a constant thread that runs through the wilderness wandering. When you are journeying through such a harsh environment, for such a long time, and with so many obstacles, trust doesn’t suddenly appear as the result of a single lesson. No, trust becomes a long, difficult lesson.
Let’s look at what we can learn about trust as we study this part of the journey of the people through the wilderness.
Lesson 1 – Difficulties Are Often the Result of Human, Not Divine Actions.
In the midst of difficulty, one of our first instincts is to ask not only,why did this happen?but to also ask, who is to blame? We don’t like the idea that something happens as the result of random processes, so we want to point a finger of blame at someone. This is what is happening in verses 2 and 3, as we read 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” The whole community, Exodus tells us, grumbled against Moses and Aaron. That’s not a pleasant situation for Moses and Aaron. When you become the target of the displeasure and anger of a group of people, that is a tough spot. But Moses and Aaron were not to blame.
One of the realities that we must acknowledge is the human element in the sufferings and difficulties we experience. Sometimes there is no one to blame. Other times, however, there is. The Hebrew people were in this difficult situation because the Egyptians had enslaved them. It wasn’t Moses and Aaron who had put the people in a place of hardship, but the Egyptians. Slavery, tragically, has been a harsh and cruel reality in human history almost from the beginning. We can all agree that no one should ever be enslaved, but our belief that it should happen does not mean it will suddenly disappear, unfortunately.
The Hebrew people had gained their freedom after more than 400 years of enslavement, but that meant they began their journey to freedom from a difficult point. How do you live as free people when you have no knowledge of what it means to be a free people? How do you decide what to do when you have been told for more than four centuries what to do and when to do it? How do you live as free people when you have to spend a generation wandering through the wilderness, wondering where you will find the resources you need in order to live? In a situation that difficult, you are not worried so much about your freedom as you are worried about where you will get your next meal.
The Hebrew people were in a difficult situation that was no fault of their own. They were the descendants of Abraham. Abraham had been promised by God, you’ll remember, that his descendants would number as the sand on the seashore, and they would inherit a land of promise (Genesis 12:1-3 – Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Genesis 22:17 – indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore.). They entered Egypt through Joseph, whose story you undoubtedly remember. The story of Joseph is one of the most fascinating in all of Scripture. He was favored by his father, Jacob, who gave him a coat of many colors. His brothers, in a fit of jealousy, sold him into slavery but told their father he had been killed by an animal (Genesis 37:31-33). Taken to Egypt, Joseph eventually rises to a position of great power and influence, second only to Pharaoh. Eventually, Joseph brings his father and his brothers and their families to Egypt and life is good. In fact, life is very good (Genesis chapters 37 – 50). But then a Pharaoh arose who did not know of Joseph, and he feared the growing numbers of the Hebrews, so he enslaved them. They had done nothing wrong. They had committed no crime. And yet they suffered because of the fear and insecurity of one man; one man who just happened to be the most powerful person in the land (Exodus 1:8-14 – 8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly).
I have said before, and will say again, I do not believe God has inflicted this terrible virus upon mankind. I believe, in fact, that it is the result of both human action andinaction. It was human action that created an environment that allowed the virus to enter into the human community and inaction that took a bad situation and made it worse. Once the virus began to infect people it spread because of the human actions of fear, because of willful ignorance, and because of neglect. For many years there were warnings about the possibility of a pandemic, and they were largely ignored. They were mostly ignored for at least several decades, partly out of a false confidence and partly out of politics. And look at the price now being paid because of that inaction. This is a pandemic that has incalculable millions teetering on economic ruin. They are on the edge of financial ruin because of the actions, and inactions, of those who could have done something but did not. And how many will die before this is all over? So for those who want to ask God why did this happen, I think humanity needs only to look in a mirror to find the answer as to who is to blame. God often gets the blame for suffering that actually comes about because of human activity and human actions.
And it is not just this pandemic that is evidence of how human actions lead to human suffering. There are millions of people in our world who go hungry because they live under regimes who make it next to impossible to earn a decent living or to feed their families. There are people who suffer from diseases that can be cured without a lot of money but they live in regions of the world where those medicines are either not available or because even a minimal cost is too much for the people who live in crushing poverty. There are people who suffer because of state-sponsored violence against their own people, a violence that causes them to flee from their homes and to undergo treacherous journeys in search of safety and freedom.
When we fail to recognize that suffering often comes back to the actions, and inactions, of humanity, we are led down the path of bad theology and bad logic. Bad theology will lead us to the prosperity gospel, which says that we simply need to believe and we’ll get what we want and we will be protected from all harm. If we do not get what we want, or if we fall prey to harm, then we are told we simply did not have enough faith. That is a very unfortunate point of view, I believe, blaming people for their difficult circumstances, when those circumstances are not of their own making. But it is attractive to many people because they would rather hold to bad theology than to live with questions that are difficult to answer. And bad logic leads to the unfortunate and erroneous idea that God is to blame for all the bad that happens, overlooking in the process what is clearly the result of human actions.
Lesson 2 – Difficulties Help To Build Trust in God.
Trust is easy, I think we can all agree, when life is good. When you have everything you need, when life is going along very well, and when life is good, trust is easy, isn’t it? But can we really call it trust, if everything is going our way? Is it really trust if it is never tested? Perhaps not.
I understand the urge to ask, Dave, what you have to say is all well and good, but what happens when I lose my job? What happens when I lose my income? There is all this talk of how “we’re in this together” and “together we’re going to get through this time” and “we’ll win this fight,” but that doesn’t pay my mortgage. While I hear all of these nice sentiments, it doesn’t get me into the nursing home to see my love one. Can you give me something more substantial, something that will put food on my table and pay my bills? Will trust do that for me?
Well, now we’re talking about the gritty realities of life, aren’t we? I will be very honest and say that it is hard to maintain trust when it seems as though our world is crashing in around us. How do we trust when we lose our job, when we struggle to pay our bills, and when we find very little hope in the days ahead? Trust takes on a different meaning and function when you are uncertain about your next meal, your next mortgage payment, and your next car payment.
The hardships of the wilderness had the people looking back on their time in Egypt as better than it actually was. Hindsight might be 20/20, but sometimes hindsight is also highly inaccurate. The horrors of living as slaves had quickly given way to the trials of the wilderness, especially the need for food. As the stomachs of the people rumbled with hunger, they looked back on their time in Egypt through rose-colored glasses. There wesat around pots of meat, verse 3 says,and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. I believe it is safe to assume the people were greatly overstating what life in Egypt had actually been like. To hear the people speak of that life, it sounds as though they were sitting in front of large, flat panel TVs watching ball games and having picnics all day! The reality was, they had been slaves, and as slaves, their lives were very difficult. They had evidently forgotten – or ignored – the harsh realities spoken of in verses 11 – 14 – 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly
The people had forgotten an important truth, which is that the journey to a better life is not always easy. In fact, the journey to a better life can make life temporarily more difficult, rather than better. I often think about my grandfather’s family, as they set sail from Liverpool, England when my grandfather was a teenager. They came to this country with very little, and I’m sure it was not easy for them when they arrived. To build their new lives, completely from scratch, must have been incredibly difficult. I wonder what it was like, as they approached the shores of America, and thought about how they would build a new life. They disembarked from that ship, and faced so many challenges in building a new life. I think also of the evening when a group of us traveled to the Louisville airport, where we greeted the Burmese family we helped to resettle, working with Kentucky Refugee Ministries to do so. I remember them walking through the security section, and into the greeting area, and I wondered what they must be thinking. They needed an interpreter to communicate. They had no jobs. They had very few possessions, only what fit into their suitcases. It was not an easy journey, and it was full of challenges, just as it was for my grandfather and his family. But in the long run, life was better, even if it was more difficult in the short run.
Trust is not a magic formula that will automatically make our lives better. The lives of the people, wandering through the wilderness, were not easy, and it would be wrong to portray that journey as anything else but difficult. But trust in God’s provision was what moved them forward, that trust was what saved them from a despair that would have left them to perish in the wilderness, that trust allowed them to draw upon the strength God had placed in their hearts and souls that enabled them to continue on their perilous journey, and it was what kept them from going back to Egypt. Because here is the reality – the people could have returned to Egypt. I’m sure Pharaoh would have been very happy to have them back. I’m sure Pharaoh would have welcomed back this large pool of free labor. And I’m sure the people of Egypt would have been happy to have them back as well, as they would no longer have to do the work of slaves. The people could have gone back to their pots of meat and to their lives where they knew exactly what would happen each day for the rest of their lives. But trust moved them forward, away from the security of the known in Egypt and into the unknown of the wilderness. Trust moved them away from a guarantee of daily bread and into the wilderness, where, early in their journey, they feared they would starve to death.
Without difficulties, it is doubtful that we would ever develop a true and meaningful trust in God. Until we are wandering through our own wilderness, genuine trust never has an opportunity to grow in our hearts, our minds, and our souls. It is in the wilderness of difficulties and in the desert of struggle that we truly learn how to place our trust in God. It is in the crucible of suffering that the deepest level of trust is born.
Lesson 3 – Trust Leads Us To Understand the Difference Between a Want and A Need.
How much is our relationship with God dependent upon us receiving what we want from God?
I’m not sure what the Hebrew people expected when they left Egypt, but they obviously were not prepared for the difficulties they faced and they were not expecting those difficulties. The wilderness through which the people wandered was a tough, unforgiving environment, and one of the first hardships the people faced was the need to secure food for this large group of people. God made provision for the people by way of manna in the morning and quail in the evening (that evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor – verses 13-14).
God made provision for the people as they wandered through the wilderness, but it wasn’t the equivalent of eating at a restaurant with three Michelin stars. The idea of quail, to me, is not too bad. But manna; I don’t know. Especially for forty years. That’s a lot of manna! I really love shrimp. I love shrimp if it’s fried, boiled, or however it is fixed (just don’t serve it to me in a casserole!). But would I want to eat shrimp every day, for forty years? I imagine I would get a bit tired of it.
But the provision the people received begs the question, what is it that we really need? I’m not talking about what we want, but what we need. Those are not the same. Now, honestly, I have a lot in my life that I want, but don’t actually need, as you could see from a glance at our garage, basement, and my closets.
As I have said, I do not believe that God has caused this pandemic. I do, however, believe very strongly in the hand of God working through what is happening, as God always does. Could God, perhaps, use this time to cause us to think much more carefully about the differences between wants and needs? Could God be working to bring us to a greater awareness of the needs and the suffering of others? Every time I find myself complaining about restaurant’s limited carry-out menus or the difficulty of placing a food order online, for instance, I have to ask myself, Dave, how often do you think about the people who not only can’t order something online, but have no options in life to provide their families with food?
If you are a listener to Christian radio, you have most likely heard the song Scars, by the band I Am They. I will quote some of the lyrics to that song, as I find them to have a great deal of meaning, especially in regard to our difficulties. Life is not easy, and we often resent the difficulties we experience. Let us remember, however, that through our trust in God those difficulties can teach us many important lessons.
Scars, by I Am They –
Waking up to a new sunrise
Looking back from the other side
I can see now with open eyes
Darkest water and deepest pain
I wouldn't trade it for anything
'Cause my brokenness brought me to You
And these wounds are a story You'll use
So I'm thankful for the scars
'Cause without them I wouldn't know Your heart
And I know they'll always tell of who You are
So forever I am thankful for the scars
Now I'm standing in confidence
With the strength of Your faithfulness
And I'm not who I was before
No, I don't have to fear anymore
So I'm thankful for the scars
'Cause without them I wouldn't know Your heart
And I know they'll always tell of who You are
So forever I am thankful for the scars
How is it possible to sing a line about suffering that proclaims I wouldn't trade it for anything? On the surface, such a line seems absurd, but it is not, because our trust in God transforms even our sufferings. This is why we trust in God, because God is worthy of trust, and that trust will transform our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment