2024.08.04 | Walk in Faith
Walk In Faith
– a reflection by Ashley Moore. August 4, 2024.
Good morning. God is good all the time and all the time God is good!
Perhaps you’ve heard that parable about the baby elephant who was staked to the ground and tied to it with a rope. As any young elephant would, he pulled against the rope trying to free himself to no avail. His poor little body was simply not strong enough. He tried for many days until he finally gave up on the idea, convinced that it was futile. Of course by the time he grew up, he could have easily pulled the sake out of the ground but he never did. He’d been convinced that he couldn’t.
I remember listening to the Exodus story when I was young. In my innocence I found myself wondering, “how could the Hebrews forget that God was with them?” I mean, we read that “The Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night,” (1) pillars that never left their sight. In light of such miracles, how could they forget that God was with them? Where was their faith?
Of course, we who grew up hearing this story and/or watching the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic “The Ten Commandments” have the benefit of the entire Hebrew Bible and Christian Testament to shape our understanding of those events. We may even feel that the grandeur of DeMille’s epic is fitting because of the awesome glory of God which we understand because of that broader context. With that perspective, the Hebrew’s crankiness and lack of faith is confusing. After all, their prayers for liberation had just been answered, their oppressor vanquished and they were on their way to a promised land. Hadn’t God shown faithfulness? Shouldn’t they have been celebrating and giving thanks?
In the 16th chapter of Exodus, we are reading about newly freed slaves and need to consider the circumstances from their perspective. Yes, they had been freed, but certainly circumstances had not given them a chance to develop any psychological understanding of what that might mean. Generations of Hebrews had to learn how to get their needs met while under the rule of their Egyptian overseers. Provision came from and through the will of those in power. Anything beyond the bare necessities was only obtained by complaining and pleading; by being noisy enough to get what they needed and hoping they weren’t harmed in the process. For generations they had lived without autonomy or the opportunity to develop the skills of self-reliance. Sure, they had wanted freedom, but what enslaved person can know what that means beyond an end to ongoing oppression? Like the grown-up elephant, they didn’t realize that new options were available to them. So although God had freed them, when there was no food or water, they grumbled and complained as they were used to doing. It was what they knew to do.
In fact, the whole characterization of the Hebrews in the Exodus story makes much more sense when we read though this lens. Like the Israelites we encounter later in the Gospels, they seem to have this idea that God would send them a deliverer who would just wave a magic wand and all the oppression would instantly cease, the land would overflow with milk and honey and everyone would live happily ever after! But if there is ONE thing we are likely to learn by reading the Bible it is that God does NOT work that way. Even in the salvation brought to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, corporeal life has not changed. 2000 years later we still have empires, oppression, suffering and enslavement.
So it’s really no surprise that they didn’t trust Moses. They questioned his competence. Instead of delivering instantaneous liberty, he’d had to battle with Pharaoh unleashing one plague after another before Pharaoh had finally conceded. And even THEN Pharaoh had changed his mind and pursued them into the desert. He was sooo not the Messiah they were expecting.
He struggled for their acceptance as they continually challenged his leadership. But they rejected him over and over again. Why was this? Was it because they somehow still identified him as an Egyptian (2) or perhaps as “not completely” Hebrew? He had not toiled alongside them in Egypt nor walked in their shoes. He wasn’t one of them. He’d been raised in the house of Pharaoh!
What’s more, he was imperfect.
a stutterer
an orphan
a murderer
a fugitive who’d been living in exile
What kind of messiah was this?
On the other hand, even the most ardent skeptic would have to admit that Moses’ successes were impressive. Moses is the first person we see in scripture performing miracles in in the name of God. God instructed Moses to do these miraculous things so that others would believe. We read how God used him to unleash breathtaking plagues that finally convinced Pharoah to give the Hebrews their freedom. Moses, the orphaned outsider, had triumphed over the ruler of one of the greatest civilizations on earth. But that is only where the most amazing miracles began!
In Chapter 13 we read about how “The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night and neither left its place in front of the people.” (3) In chapter 14, they arrive at the Sea of Reeds only to find Pharaoh’s army coming up right behind them. They feel trapped and cry out to Moses in despair. Then Moses parts the sea and the Hebrews pass through unscathed while Pharaoh’s army is vanquished as the sea “closes” in around them. In chapter 15 Moses throws a piece of wood into bitter waters and they become sweet and drinkable. And in chapter 16 God begins sending forth manna, a daily meal of “bread from heaven.” Yet in the next chapter, we again see the Hebrews complaining, just as they had done in every previous chapter. “Better to had died in Egypt than to die in the desert,” they said. “Give us drink! Give us food!”
God had instructed Moses to perform miracles so that they would believe. And by this point they had witnessed what God could do and was doing every single day – and somehow they still did not trust. Where was their faith?
I’m sure we would all like to believe that we would behave differently. I know I would. I would like to think that if God was sending pillars before me and sending bread from heaven every day that I would not be able to forget that God is Jehovah Jireh (the God who provides) and Emmanuel (God with us)!
But we humans tend to have short memories and even shorter attention spans. The passage of time has a way of normalizing just about anything and everything. Sure, the first day the pillars appeared we’d be dazzled. Maybe even after a week we’d still feel impressed. But after a couple of months of trudging thru the desert and eating the same meal day in and day out, we’d become so focused on our daily struggles we’d begin to take those pillars for granted. A miracles that happens every day becomes mundane.
Consider for example that we live and breathe on the only planet in the known universe that can sustain life? We know this, yet we are so focused on our short-term goals that we fail to care for her. We just keep wanting more from her. Or consider how many of us walk around with smart phones now. Not long ago these phones seemed completely miraculous. Now we completely take them for granted. We all have seen people grow irritated when the information they seek doesn’t download instantaneously...even though THAT data is coming from a satellite way out in space. I know I‘ve done it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the distractions of daily life and start taking things for granted. We get caught up in the hustle and bustle, the voices in the media that are constantly giving us bad news and telling us how all is woe. The noise creeps into our minds, worry begins to replace our peace and we start to see storms on every horizon. Concern for our own safety and survival sabotages our trust in God’s providence and our compassion for others. But I digress...
Returning to the Exodus story, how did all of this thankless complaining make God feel? What were God’s thoughts on the matter? Why DID the God of providence wait to make provisions until the people complained? And how did God respond?
Psalm 95 provides us with an unusual opportunity to hear God’s perspective on the Exodus story many years later. It reads “For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.” In my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.” (4) And then WE are advised to not harden out hearts as the newly freed Hebrews did.
Psalm 78, goes into detail and examines these points at length. I won’t read all of it to you, but part of it says: 13 He divided the sea and let them pass through,
14 In the daytime he led them with a cloud,
and all night long with a fiery light.
15 He split rocks open in the wilderness,
and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.
16 He made streams come out of the rock,
and caused waters to flow down like rivers.
17 Yet they sinned still more against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
18 They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
21 Therefore, when the Lord heard, he was full of rage;
a fire was kindled against them,
22 because they had no faith in God,
and did not trust his saving power. 23 AND YET he commanded the skies above,
and opened the doors of heaven; 24 he rained down on them manna to eat,
and gave them the grain of heaven. 25 Mortals ate of the bread of angels;
he sent them food in abundance.
So, despite the fact that their complaining filled God with rage, he STILL provided for them. THAT is the love of a parent, a creator. These Psalms make clear that it was not their asking for help or complaining to him, but rather their lack of faith that God found offensive. It says, ”Because they had no faith in God,
and did not trust his saving power...God’s anger mounted against Israel.” YET he still commanded the skies to rain down the bread of heaven for them to eat. For God is Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides.
God wants us to have faith, to rely on Her and come to Her with faith in our hearts. Romans 4 says that God’s promises come to us and are realized though faith. Hebrews 11 tells us that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Psalm 37 says":
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
Similarly, in John 16 Jesus says “Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”
And so beloved, I encourage you to fortify your faith, trusting that God is with you and will always be at your side. Even if you make some bad choices and protest about your circumstances, God loves you, cares about you and will provide for you. Just remember that God does not just waive her virtual hands and make things the way we’d like them to be. Something is required of us - that we show up in our faith and allow ourselves to become a vessel for God to use. Like Moses, we have to show up in our faith and speak the words, or raise the staff or strike the stone or forge a path into the unknown.
Moses could have made other choices. If he hadn’t been willing to return to Egypt, the Exodus might never have occurred. If he hadn’t kept going despite all the complaining, we might never have known the whole story. God uses unusual, imperfect and unpredictable people like (point) you and you, even me. Thank God it is people like Moses that God uses instead of people like Pharaoh or Caesar!
1 Corinthians 1 tells us:
“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of us were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to confound the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to confound the mighty; “Let those who boast, boast in the Lord.” (5)
When we stop to reflect on the miracles in our own lives, we realize that something was required of us too...a prayer, an action, a willingness to respond, the faithfulness to act in spite of the odds, and the tenacity to carry on. God works WITH us and THROUGH our faith.
Like the adult elephant, we can pray all we want, but God is not going to pull up the stake for us or make it dissolve. We have to discern that God is with us, that other options are available to us and believe that we can pull up that stake, walk away and have a different life.
As the saying goes, God has no hands but our hands, no feet but our feet...no agents but...all of us. The miracles we have witnessed serve to help us believe, but we are truly blessed when we walk by faith, not by sight. For faith is the assurance of things unseen.
So be mindful of the ways in which God has revealed herself in your life, has responded when you called out, blessed you in your need and worked through you to bless others. Remember the miracles YOU have witnessed. And Walk in faith knowing that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains!
Amen.
(1) Exodus 13:21-22, NSRV
(2) Author Michael D. Coogan disputes that Moses was ever an Egyptian, positing that Moses humble manner is uncharacteristic of “a Pharaoh’s adopted grandson!” I find it difficult, however, to believe that Moses would have been given an audience with Pharaoh, nor allowed to address Pharaoh so brashly if he was merely a Hebrew slave. Pharaoh would just have locked him up after the first, or even second, plague was lifted.
(3) Exodus 13:21-22, NSRV
(4) Psalm 95: 10-11.
(5) 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, KJV