These thoughts were just what I needed to hear today.
Os Guinness writes in his book, God in the Dark, "To believe in God is to 'let God be God'...In trusting God, we are living out our assumptions, putting them into practice all that we say he is in theory so that who God is and what he has done can make the difference in every part of our lives...This means that the accuracy of our pictures of God is not tested by our orthodoxy or our testimonies but by the truths we count on in real life. It is demonstrated when the heat is on, the chips are down, and reality seems to be breathing down our necks." (page 61)
Isaiah 30:20-21 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. It is from the Lord that the bread of adversity and the water of affliction are given. And yet, God reveals Himself in the allocation of these. He is made known to the partakers of these bitter victuals. While I gnaw on this stale, tough adversity-bread and wash it down with my pungent affliction-water, I find myself desperately pouring over the Word, aggressively seeking - while resting in the promise - that my eyes might see my Teacher.
Reading through the book of Exodus has really been working me over. As I've been reading, I've had the feeling of that akin to a spiritual Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face in that it's been slapping me around and hitting me hard. That's never pleasant, and yet, it's so good. It's an unpleasantly good experience. It produces sober happiness. It calls for me to be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. And it couldn't have come at a more opportune time.
Remembering the years long ago when I would read Exodus and find myself giggling at the evident stupidity of the Israelites exposed in this book, I realized we clearly must be born with an innate sense of a Pharisaic posture. For it had come as a shock to me when one day I realized I was just as the Israelites in their stupidity, in their stumbling. The following are some verses that have loudly echoed in my own heart, and made me cling ever so much nearer to the Lord for His mercy. He surely is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.
Beginning with a snapshot of Moses while talking to the LORD, who appeared to him through a burning bush, we see Moses shying away from the directive from the LORD to bring His people out of the land of Egypt.
Exodus 4:10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
And the LORD responds to this excuse of Moses' in Exodus 4:11-12 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”
The LORD's first response to this inane question is 'it's not about you, Moses. Let's remember who I am, shall we?'
Continuing on, we see the incredible power the LORD exerts in the form of plagues in Egypt in the passages Exodus 7:14-10:29 and 12:29-32. And not only so, but also the act of the LORD's in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart (so that He might show His power in him and that His name might be proclaimed in all the earth, Romans 9:17).
Then, in Exodus 12:51, we read the attestation of, might I say, the mightiest work of the LORD in salvation (until that of final salvation through Christ Jesus.) And on that very day the LORD brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.
The LORD brought them out. He brought them out of their slavery from the freaking mightiest nation in all the Ancient Near East. Egypt, at the time of the exodus, was not only the biggest and strongest of any nations in the world at that time, they were at the height of their own country's dominion, as well as being the biggest country thus far in the history of the world. And the people of Israel were told to remember it. How could one not?! Indeed, how could one not? And yet, the instruction is given in Exodus 13:3 that they not forget. Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the LORD brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.”
An assuring evidence that the LORD was ever present with them is stated in Exodus 13:21-22. And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.
And yet, here it comes...
The grumbling. The derisive complaining, recorded in Exodus 14:11-12. They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”
Wait--what? They wanted to...go back? They were envying their life of slavery? Did they not recall the centuries-long wailing and crying out for salvation? (This is one of the places that I would slap my forehead at their complete ignorance and foolish doubt.)
And oh! One of the sweetest verses, in Exodus 14:14, on the all-sufficiency of God and our own weakness and incapability. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.
And the LORD did fight for Israel and saved them, and Israel saw God's great power which evoked a holy fear in the people, as cited in Exodus 14:30-31. Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.
After they praised God and sang to the LORD, the next thing we read, in Exodus 15:23-24, is that because they had happened upon bitter water, they grumbled against Moses. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”
The LORD's recent history of water-related miracles, notwithstanding.
Yet, the LORD's mercy is shown evident in the following verse 25. And [Moses] cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
Oh, that the grumbling was put to rest, but no. Again, the people of Israel start to grumble in Exodus 16:2-3. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
Died by the hand of the LORD? They were just saved by the hand of the LORD! This would be another one of those forehead-slapping moments. Did they not remember the spectacular display of God's glory in leading them out of captivity? Their contemptuous belligerence had me in censorious astonishment.
But again, YHWH's merciful patience is displayed in Exodus 16:4-5, accompanied by faith-testing guidelines. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
And the reason for this grace is made clear in verses 6-7. Soli deo gloria. So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against the LORD. For what are we, that you grumble against us?”
The following definition of grumbling, in Exodus 16:8, is nothing if not terrifying. And Moses said, “When the LORD gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the LORD has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the LORD.”
And what grumbling isn't against the LORD? Any form of grumbling is made with an unthankful heart. Grumbling against the LORD. That's frightening. His response?
Exodus 16:11-12 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’”
"I am the LORD your God." That's it. The Israelites response? Unbelieving disobedience to the LORD's instruction.
Exodus 16:20 But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them.
And they weren't finished. More grumbling in Exodus 17:3. But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”
Unbelievable. But then in verse 6, we see GOD's faithfulness in mercy by providing for these grumbling people. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Reading the acts of the Israelites makes my heart quake. In righteous anger and amazed shock at their lack of trust, disobedience, self-reliance, disbelief, unbelief, unthankfulness, and pride. It becomes unrighteous anger when I think myself guiltless of this baseness. Only when I realize that I have the corner market on the execution of these sins, and am given a humble heart, and by God's grace given the attitude of the publican, I can beat my breast and beg forgiveness and mercy.
