In Good Company

Moses is just fascinating me lately.  Here’s a guy who survived a holocaust at his birth by being miraculously hidden in some river weeds.  He grows up in Pharaoh's household and then identifies with his people, the Hebrews, and begins to be treated like they were – slaves.  Oh, he kills a guy.  Then flees to a distant land and gets married.  While he is there, God meets him in a burning bush and tells him that he (Moses) is His (God’s) chosen instrument to make His Name great among the Egyptians.  Who comes up with these journeys?!

Fast Forward to after God powerfully delivers the Israelites out of Egypt… (btw, here’s a thought… the Red Sea isn’t a barrier to getting out of Egypt. There are tons of land routes!  Jacob’s sons went between Egypt and Canaan a few times without ever having to cross this path.  God literally led them to this place where only His Power could save them…  whoa.)

Exodus 17.  The Israelites had grown to a group of about 1 million strong… and Moses was the leader of this crew!  So, picture this, 1 million people in a hot, dusty, sticky, shadeless desert. Oh but it gets better: They have wives, children and livestock too. So 1 million people plus families and livestock in a desert wilderness.

Now, sometimes it’s hard to lead people even when times are good, right? Moses had 1 million+ people following him in a desert.  The end of Exodus 17:1 introduces the obvious problem here: “but there was no water for the people to drink.” I mean, wouldn’t a “good” leader sort of expect this and plan ahead?  It appears that’s what the people of Israel thought… verse 2 Therefore, the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”  Dude, you brought us here – where’s the water?!  (For those of you who wondered, like me, if a generation had passed or died off since the Rea Sea crossing – no way, that was like a month ago!)

It’s evident as you continue reading in chapter 17 of Exodus that Moses is becoming frustrated. (Like in verse 4) But, as God often, nay ALWAYS, does, He’s got this.  He instructs Moses to strike a stone and makes water flow from it for the people to drink.  Deliverance. Again. How good is God!

And so we see this pattern that tends to emerge… in my life too… and most likely in yours… of God delivering us from death, hunger, cold, loneliness, fill in your blank, and then we grumble and wonder if He’s really with us, only to have him deliver us again.  And this cycle of deliverance/grumble/deliverance continually peppers our journeys.  

It’s beneficial for me to see that we are in good company with God’s chosen people!

But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. – 1 Corinthians 15:57

Alive.

This one phrase says it all, “And the people became impatient on the way.” Numbers 21:4 begins the narrative of the people as they wandered through the desert in the Middle East. The next few verses of the chapter describe what happened as a result of their impatience:

And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.  And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”  So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

The people of Israel, much like myself, had become impatient along the way and began telling God just how it should be.  They were breaking a number of the commandments He had given them as protection.  They were selfish.  They were honoring themselves above God.  They were not thankful.  They were sinners.  And they saw it.  Verse 7 says that they admitted their sins to Moses and desired to be free from them. 

God, in mercy, devised a way for them to live!  He had Moses make a fiery serpent (seems pretty easy, right?  Let me just go whip up a fiery serpent!) and raise it up on a pole.  Whoever looked on the serpent would live.

Fast Forward.

John 3:16… the most known verse of the Bible starts: “For God so loved the world,” I’d be willing to bet the “so” here isn’t like “so much” (though He does love us so much). It’s more like… “In this way, God loved the world” or “This is how God loved the world”… and it’s connected to verses 14 and 15 previously, which say, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Jesus is our serpent.  We are sinners.  Every single one of us.  But God loved us.  He made a way for us to live.  John 3:14 says that Jesus was lifted up (hung on a tree-like cross) that whoever “looks on him” (read: believes in him) will not die, but live.

This is the best, most freeing news in the world!  Let the glory of Christ on that tree dying your death sink into your heart today. When we admit that we are sinners and ask Jesus to save us, believing in Him, He will deliver us from our sin and the death it brings.

And you, who were dead in your trespasses …, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  Colossians 2:13-14 ESV

Happy Easter everyone!

On Overcoming Adversity

The scene is strange.  Eleven men found themselves dining with a stranger in a strange land.  Their father had sent them to Egypt to acquire grain from them during the drought.  The last time they were here, they were given grain, but also their money back in their grain sacks. Now, a trip to Pharaoh’s palace for a meal with a high-ranking official… what’s going on here?

And then, the master of the feast draws them to himself and says,

I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt!  And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.  For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have.

                                                        Genesis 45:4-10 

“So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”  

As Joseph’s brothers began to understand who this benevolent stranger was, they began to see the deep faith he had in God’s plan. He held no bitterness towards them for selling him into slavery.  He saw the bigger picture. He had an eternal view.

And that’s one of the things I learned from Joseph in Genesis.