Lent 3

Lent 3 TRUST WITHIN THE TEST 2/27/05

Do you know someone who seems to be eternally-unhappy…someone who has developed complaining to an art-form…someone who can grumble and murmur about anything and everything at anytime? (Be careful, lest someone right now be thinking of you!) The fact is, there are people just like this in the world. Apparently, even being in the family of God does not seem to eliminate this deep-seated dissatisfaction. Our Old Testament text provides testimony to this fact. Our lesson today is already the fourth time in these early chapters of Exodus that we read of God’s people grumbling.

God has sent Israel on a camping trip, sort of like Outward Bound, except the campers on this epic trip would learn to trust not in themselves, but in the One who sent them on their way. Our lesson begins: “The whole Israelite community set out…traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded.” As part of their training, the people were being taught to trust in God, as a paradigm for their future life and future generations.

The wilderness stories, in the 15^th–18^th chapters of Exodus, record Israel’s journey, traveling somewhere between promise and fulfillment. Today’s lesson indicates the pattern in these stories: the people are unhappy, they complain, they blame their leadership, Moses prays for the people, and God provides. Dear Moses, who never wanted this leadership position in the first place, frantically---yet, faithfully---calls out to God: “What am I to do with these people?” Moses knew that the coalition of complainers was coming together with a plot to stone their leader to death.

The issue in the wilderness is the same as in the byways and highways where we spend our days: the people continued to confuse God with Santa Claus! It seems an innate human belief that if our deity doesn’t produce on demand…giving us what we want when and how we want it…we look for a new “god.” If this self-centeredness had become extinct with these campers in the wilderness, we would not be reading/talking about it today. The fact is, professing believers

in God continue to complain when God doesn’t perform as expected! People quit praying, people leave the Church, people bad-mouth God and His leadership when God does not immediately grant our every desire as expressed in our paltry prayers! In our consumer mentality, perhaps never greater than in our current day, if the God of Scripture does not allow us to be “lord” over Him, we are tempted to find---or create---a “god” who will.

When the people complained, Moses told them that this was a sign of their lack of faith in the power and promise of God to take care of them, asking them: “Why do you test the Lord?” They just complained all the more because not only was God not giving them what they wanted, now God’s appointed leadership on this trip was less than complimentary…not much of a host or travel guide…not very accommodating. It is, then, with a sort of selective amnesia, that the people mistakenly imagine how wonderful life had been before they trusted in God. They actually accuse God of bringing them into the wilderness to execute them, when previously the Egyptian Pharaoh had been so generous in his provisions! Hah! The good old days weren’t “good,” just “old”!

God is, indeed, trustworthy. The question is, “Will you trust Him?” When life doesn’t go “our way,” might it be that God has a better way? When we don’t get what we want, might it be we want the wrong things? When we don’t get specifically what we pray for, might it be that our wishes are countered by God’s wisdom? When we argue with God, might we have chosen the wrong position. Life is hard, but God is good! I received testimony to this truth earlier this week, standing at the open casket containing the lifeless body of a 9-year old girl who had lived her entire life with cerebral-palsy. Her paternal grandmother came to me, held my hand, thanked me for my funeral message, and said: “Perhaps my granddaughter’s mission in life was to help us all develop a stronger faith in God.”

No complaining, no grumbling, no arguing with God…only trust. Amen.

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