Scripture readings: Numbers
14:1-25; Romans 11:25-32
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| Santa Monica Pier, Southern California June 2017 |
In the latest episode of
the Exodus, right when they seem to have arrived, right when they stand ready
to enter in, God’s people decide that entering into the Promised Land will be
the death of them. They want to survive at all costs, even if it means going
back to slavery in Egypt.
All through this saga,
God’s people never come out with the adult equivalent of the child’s question,
“Are we there yet?” They’re always thinking that they were better off before
they left Egypt. There’s a home of freedom ahead of them; but they’re always
hankering for the home they left behind them.
It’s Moses, for all his
maturity, who is always reminding the Lord of how important it is to get them
to their new home. He’s always reminding God to fulfill his promises.
The Lord’s reputation for
faithfulness was on the line at the expense of his anger. Moses warned the Lord
not to let the nations say, “The Lord was not able to bring these people into
the land he promised them on oath.” (14:16)
Moses kept insisting on
what he knew about the true heart of God. He had seen that heart many times.
Moses says to the angry God: “In accordance with your great love, forgive the
sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left
Egypt until now” (14:19) This was the real rule of God’s heart.
This had to be how Moses
knew that it was possible for God’s people to successfully, effectively enter
the Promised Land: their new home of blessing, their new home of freedom. Moses
knew God’s faithfulness, at its most tested, and he trusted that source of
strength in the heart of God.
This is what true faith
does. Faith has layers. Those layers go deep, or else they go high. Faith takes
us somewhere. Faith is more than knowing. Faith is trusting what you know. That
requires you to allow the God you trust to take you somewhere.
Chapter eleven in the
Letter to the Hebrews is called the faith chapter. It gives us a number of
working definitions and examples of faith. It contains a long list of the
people of faith and, in each case, it tells us where faith took them, or what
faith enabled them to accomplish that they would never have accomplished
otherwise.
One of the definitions of
faith is found in verse six of the faith chapter. It says: “Without faith it is
impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he
exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
In that sentence, you can see
at least two layers of faith. Faith begins with a conviction of the reality of
God. You meet God. You know, at some point, that there is a higher power that
requires some level of mutual recognition. That’s essential, but it’s not nearly
enough.
To say that “God is the
rewarder of those who earnestly or diligently seek him” implies change. It
implies a process of trust, and the crossing of a line, and entering in. The
reward is a goal. It’s the end of a quest. It changes you and it makes you a
new person. Hebrews will go on to tell you that faith leads you to run a race,
and that it’s the sort of race in which only faith will enable you to “not grow
weary and lose heart.” (Hebrews 12:3)
The people of Israel knew
that God existed. The Lord was right there in the pillar of cloud and fire. The
Lord never left them alone although it seems like they often wanted him to
leave them alone.
They knew that God
existed, but they took their faith no farther. They didn’t turn their faith
into trust in the heart and the faithfulness of God. They wanted survival, and
they thought that God’s chosen future for them would put their survival in
jeopardy. In spite of the faith of Moses, and Aaron, and Joshua, and Caleb,
God’s people lost heart at the thought of entering into a new world and a new
life.
They formed the majority,
and they won that day, and they also lost. Moses and his friends, in the
minority, won the day, but they had a very strange victory. Moses’ prayer for
the love of God to prevail was answered. The plan for God’s people to enter
into a new life was on track, again, but it would take a lot longer now.
One of the things we learn,
here, is that faith is not about survival, per se. Faith is about a higher
calling. Maybe we could say that survival, itself, at its best, is about more
than mere survival. Any survival that is worth of the name is about a higher
calling, or a farther calling.
Something that Jesus said
puts these things together. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life,
and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)
There can be a real
difference between life, and life to the full. Jesus said that life is not
about mere survival, because he said this: “For whoever wants to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)
Faith is about a higher,
fuller life; and God, in Christ, calls us to this kind of life. It’s part of
the life of a higher, fuller faith that trusts the heart and the faithfulness
of God. Such a faith steps forward. Faith crosses the border and enters into that
life.
This is essential to
simply being a Christian and following Jesus in a genuine commitment. I made a
commitment to Jesus when I was in the fourth grade and watching Billy Graham on
television. It wasn’t hard to do. I always love Jesus. I always prayed and read
the Bible, or Bible stories. And I tried to do what Jesus wanted me to do;
like, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12) I
understood that.
It was also easy to stop
going to church when my family stopped, when I was about fifteen. And my church
didn’t seem to know how to give me what I needed. I was the last to keep going,
but it was easier to let the majority rule. I suppose it still is.
Then, when I was eighteen,
God told me to go back to that frustrating church. I had to do that by myself,
on my own. It didn’t seem to matter to God what I felt, or what I expected.
This turned into something
completely different than I expected. There was a really good youth group
leader who seemed to understand what I needed. And he took the youth group to a
huge youth evangelism rally. And the Lord told me to go forward.
I told him that I didn’t
need to go forward, because I already trusted him and belonged to him with all
my heart. Which was true except for the fact that I was too chicken to do
anything for him out loud or in public. So, I had to go forward, for that very
reason.
I also had to go forward
because the Lord seemed to be pushing me to understand that the only
alternative to my not going forward was for me to be willing to be someone who
said no to him. I didn’t dare not go forward.
Faith requires you to do
things in order to know God better, and in order to move, and change, and enter
in. You can’t do that by saying “no”.
This applies to much, much
bigger issues in life. Marriage and family would be such a bigger issue. I
think I’ve really tried to get married before, but my best efforts never
worked. Someone once offered to help me get a bride from China, and I said no
to that, but I think it was right for me to say no to that.
I’ve been in the pastoral
ministry for a long time. I didn’t want to do it, but the Lord kept making a
point of his requirement that I not say no to him. No one who knows my life
would ever accuse me of being in the ministry as a matter of survival, because (a
lot of the time) it hasn’t been that easy. I certainly have learned much more
than I meant to. Faith (such as it is) will do that.
The people of God need a
faith that goes much farther than mere belief that God exists, and even farther
than believing that Jesus died for our sins. The faith of the people of God
must trust God enough to move out, and step over borders, and enter into larger
and higher callings. We must trust God enough to be ready to do the next thing
he shows us. Maybe he will point the way soon.
What if we fail? The Bible
teaches us that God doesn’t fail, and that his people remain his, and God’s
plan goes forward. Paul says: “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”
(Romans 11:29) The failure of one part of God’s people simply allows God to
include more people in the growth of his plan and his kingdom.
In the present episode of
the exodus, the Lord declared his pardon of his people. It was a strange pardon
that felt more like a punishment. God’s people, who didn’t want to enter the
land, would not be allowed to do so. They had complained that it would be
better for them to die in the desert than to try to enter the land and, so, the
Lord granted their wish. They would die in the desert exactly as they claimed
to prefer. But they took this badly.
They expressed the fear
that, if they tried to enter the land, they would be losers and their children
would be taken as slaves. So, the Lord promised a solution to their fears. The
Lord promised that their children would enter the land as conquerors, in their
place.
God’s people wanted to
choose a leader of their own choosing and, so, God really did punish them, this
time. God gave them back Moses to lead them for the rest of their dreary lives.
Moses was given the blessing of leading those pathetic, faithless people for
the rest of his life.
The punishment was that
there would be more hardship ahead, for a very long time. The forgiveness was
that there would be plenty of miracles, and the chance for their children to
learn the strength and the faithfulness of God that their parents had yet to learn.
The children had the chance to live a larger, deeper faith. It was part of the
punishment, to be sure, but it was also part of the forgiveness. It was God’s
faithful blessing of his people, in success and in failure.
The mystery is that God’s
people were pardoned because an overruled minority believed what they didn’t
believe. Even such a minority counts for something in the effectiveness of the
grace and power of God.
Moses, and Aaron, and
Joshua, and Caleb would faithfully walk the path of hardship, and delay, and
punishment with their people. Faith and faithfulness do this.
Jesus came to walk the
same path with us. God came down, in Jesus, to walk through the wilderness of
this world with us. He walked through the dangers, and injustices, and anger,
and hatred, and hypocrisy of a world torn by unbelief, and selfishness, and
rebellion, which are the result of sin.
God, in Christ, walked the
longer path of suffering that led to the cross, and sacrifice, and loneliness,
and pain, and death. The Lord does this in good faith, in the power of his love
to overcome all that is wrong in our hearts, and minds; all that is wrong with
the world.
The Lord died and rose
from the dead to open a door to a new life, a life of freedom from the power of
sin and death. By faith and by trust in the heart of God, we can die with
Christ to ourselves and we can cross the border, and enter into that higher
life, that abundant life.
We have this call, as
children of God and as the people of God, the church. Let’s hear the call, and
trust the one who calls us, and let us move forward.
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