Strength for the Journey: “A Season of Discontent” (Part Two) – Numbers 11

franklinBenjamin Franklin once wrote: “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.” It is possible that you have complained once or twice in your life… or this week… or before you arrived this morning? We seem to live in a world designed for our convenience, and filled with our complaints. What is happening to us? For many of us, the problem is simple – it is a MARGIN problem. Dr. Richard Swenson wrote a book in 2004 that sold hundreds of thousands of copies called simply: Margin. The byline on the front of the book read: “Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Resources to Overloaded Lives.” I bought the book a few years ago, as I was studying stress and its effects on marriage and family. It opens this way:

The conditions of modern-day living devour margin. If you are homeless, we send you to a shelter. If you are penniless, we offer you food stamps. If you are breathless, we connect you to oxygen. But if you are margin-less, we give you one more thing to do…Margin-less is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the bank, because you were ten minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station – and you forgot your wallet. Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.

Margin-less is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time; margin is Grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin-less is being asked to carry a load five pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a friend to carry half the burden. Margin-less is not have time to finish the book you are reading on stress; margin is having the time to read it twice.

Margin-less is fatigue; margin is energy. Margin-less is red ink; margin is black ink. Margin-less is hurry; margin is calm. Margin-less is anxiety; margin is security. Margin-less is culture; margin is counter-culture. Margin-less is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.

Most of us understand exactly what Dr. Swenson was writing about. We live in a time when bleeding ulcers and irritable colons are becoming commonplace – and we cannot seem to slow life down and set up the systems necessary to deal with the constant onslaught of hassles. When we are stressed to the limit, we find ourselves complaining. Sometimes we even turn to Heaven with a bitter heart. Yet, not all complaints are a reflection of a bad heart, or a struggle with evil. Sometimes even the best of us become overworked, and overburdened – and the cloth of life wears thin.

I deliberately broke the teaching of Numbers 11 into two lessons, because the passage contains two distinct kinds of complaints. In our last lesson, we highlighted the complaints that came from a heart that didn’t trust God – a believer that failed to understand the goodness of God in their daily life. In this lesson, I want to highlight a believer that was beat down – overburdened and in serious need of a time of “honest praise”. Honest praise is the ability to empty ourselves before God and let Him build up what has broken inside us. Here is the key…

Key Principle: Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get. Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

On the surface, all complaints may look the same – but they really aren’t. There may be similarities, but that doesn’t mean they are truly the same. Look at yourself in the mirror. Now look at a chimpanzee picture from a local zoo. You get the idea…

How complaints are similar

In our last study, we noted the first mentioned complaints that got an answer from the heavens were about the discomfort of the journey (11:1-3). The people were about eight miles into the journey, and they began to harangue God about discomfort. Because the sound of complaining is about something that hurts us or makes us uncomfortable – it may seem like all complaints are alike. On closer inspection, we noted in our last study the people were leaving the “domain of the gods of Egypt” and were now forced to show trust to the God of Abraham for the trip. These were complaints that assumed God could not do something, that doubted His character – and Heaven viewed those harshly. Next, when the people complained about the conditions –they again were complaining about the character of God. At first glance it appears the people complained about the MENU, but on closer inspection, they asked WHO will feed us – for they were complaining about the CHEF above. Their complaints were doubts of God’s goodness and God’s ability.

Yet, there were other complaints in the text that we did NOT address – those from Moses himself…

A different kind of complaint

Moses offered complaints about the workload to God, and God did not rain down fire from heaven. My question is “Why?” What was different about the complaining voice of Moses?

Look at the text again in Numbers 11:10 “Now Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, each man at the doorway of his tent; and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly, and Moses was displeased.

The complaint of Moses to God came from the painful sound of whining and complaining in others. He wasn’t telling God about the conditions, but about the people. The SINS OF OTHERS became the weight on his heart. He was “made MISERABLE” (the word “displeases is Ra’, or evil) by the sounds of the camp. His complaint wasn’t the food or the chef- it was a complaint that the work was TOO HARD for him – he lacked the resources to deal with the problems.

Every believer will face what Moses faced – a sense of overwhelming need and limited self. People can sin faster than we can sort it all out. One lie becomes six while we are dealing with the effects of the first. Gossip can light up phone lines, even when the substance is flatly false or the details mangle the original intent of the story. I don’t have a way to illustrate this more vividly than this: Recently I spent significant resources of time explaining that I wasn’t leaving Grace Church or the ministry – simply because of a story of another Pastor at another church. Gossip flew about, and my name got attached to situations I had no knowledge of, let alone participation in. The bottom line was this: a fire was set by tongues, and resources were needed to put that fire out. I began answering inquiries and making it clear that lines were crossed in communication. I tried to do it with humor, and even that backfired a few times.

Note that Numbers 11:10 made clear that God wasn’t happy with what He heard either. He understood the burden of Moses, and let Moses learn to take his hurt to God…

Numbers 11:11 So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me? 12 “Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’? 13 “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ 14 “I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. 15 “So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.

On first glance, Moses words sound pretty bad– don’t they? He sounds like he is accusing God of dumping people on his lap, and then sticking him with the role of provider. Yet, there is a difference. If we don’t rush past this passage, we will see it, and in the process pick up some vital lessons about an overburdened life. Let me suggest FOUR LESSONS:

Lessons for the Overburdened Life

Lesson One: There is a place we can take the pain of life.

Verse 11 simply says “So Moses said to the LORD”. Note the word at the beginning SO. Because problems overtake us, there is a God-given response. Moses knew it – it was to fall before God. Our Maker is NOT worried that He won’t have all the answers we need. Remember this: “God believes in me; therefore, my situation is never hopeless.” ’We are allowed and heartily encouraged to bring our complaints to God, if we recognize Who God is. Moses didn’t LIKE the position he was in – it was painful and disappointing. At the same time, SHARING SORROW makes half a sorrow. We are designed to feel weight lift when we verbalize it – even if the conditions don’t change in that instant. Sometimes talking a problem through helps us to work through the issue. Often, when we verbalize a complaint to God, we – maybe for the very first time – can hear how dumb we sound! Don’t lose track, though, of the point. There is a place to take our pain – and God will hear us. Complaining voices are often people in desperate need of an extended prayer time. Because of that, I want to deliberately encourage you to get on your knees and watch the burdens get lighter.

Lesson Two: Straight talk to God about our feelings is what God wants to hear.

Verse 11 continues with questions of Moses: ” “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me?” Look at the two questions. The first one is not quantitative – it is emotional. Why have you placed me in a position that seems beyond my ability to deal with? This is an important question because many believers have been improperly taught God’s Word.

People misquote God on the issue of TROUBLE all the time. They claim that God promised never to put them in a situation they cannot handle. That is flatly untrue. What the Bible consistently says is this: 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” This gets pushed into statements like ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’. The basis for such interpretation is this: the term peirázō originally meant either test or tempt. One Greek lexicon used for study (found in Biblos.com) of the New Testament notes: “Context alone determines which sense is intended, or if both apply simultaneously.”

What is the context of the statement of 1 Corinthians 10:13? Look at the verses just before it: “6 Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, “THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.” 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. 9 Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 10 Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.

Let me say it clearly: God didn’t promise to keep you from any circumstance you cannot handle.

In fact, the truth is the opposite – “Without Me, you can do nothing!” the Savior said in John 15. If we could pull off life without God’s power, without His presence and without His purposes – we wouldn’t need Him. We can’t do it, and God didn’t promise it. Let us pause for a moment and remember: Life is too big for us. It is too hard for us. We cannot do it alone, but as Paul reminded the Philippians “we can do all things through Christ who empowers us.” IF YOU FEEL OVER YOUR HEAD, YOU ARE IN A PERFECT POSITION TO TAKE GOD SERIOUSLY.

Stop thinking that you should be able to “do life” as an adult on your own. You don’t have the power, and you don’t have the ability. Get over yourself and get into Him! He will provide an escape from temptation, but will NOT make it possible for you to accomplish your life mission apart from constant, desperate, and thorough leaning on HIM.

Lesson Three: We learn that PRAISE is a word about intimacy – not just a “feel good time”.

Listen to the words of Moses. Can you hear exhaustion and desperation bordering on collapse? How can we speak of “praise” in such a context? He said: Numbers 11:12 “Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’?

Moses appears to be laying down some heavy complaints – but he is actually praising God. The ancient Hebrew vocabulary included seven different words that are all translated in our Bible as “praise”. One of the most common ones, “tehillah” is a word that implies to “pour myself out” before God – often in a quiet and reflective way, or perhaps even through tears and pain. “Yadah” implies that I will use my hands in clapping, “barach” is pronounced praise with a strong or loud noise. “Halal” and Shebach are “boisterous boasts” in the Lord, showy praise for God’s goodness and character. The point: Not all praise is happy. Some of it is an honest leveling with God as to where we are in life’s journey. God doesn’t get angry at us – even when we are a bit dramatic and over the top. Remember, from where He sits, none of our problems are particularly hard to solve – no matter what they appear to be to us. The reason the Psalmist could “continually praise” the Lord is that he didn’t define all praise as happy.

Moses pointed out that the people WERE NOT HIS. In this he is exactly correct – they are God’s people. Moses pointed out that God made the promises to the fathers – not him. Again, he was correct. When our hearts are broken and our lives are stressed out, we must remember that the burden of life is not ours to carry, but rather ours to marvel as God carries it all. We must be faithful to serve our one and only Master, but we must not fall victim to OWNING the work. My children are not my own – they are His. I am a steward – nothing more. I must remember that my wife, my cars, my home, all that I have –also belongs exclusively to Him. I am the manager, but He is the owner. When something happens that I cannot and do not control – the owner knows. When I do not follow through on responsibility – the owner also knows. No matter what it looks like, no matter who blames me – God knows what IS my fault, and what is not, what IS my responsibility – and what is someone else’s improper boundary.

Let us rehearse this aloud: If I am a steward, I must live this life seeking God’s approval, and doing God’s bidding. I should not own responsibilities HE does not give me, but I must also not shirk the responsibilities He HAS assigned to me. Life is simpler when I recognize WHOSE approval I ultimately seek.

Lesson Four: We grow to recognize that as we lay things out before God, we reveal the real problems at the heart of our complaints.

Moses needed resources, and Moses desired assistance. He was a man in desperate need of a good team of ministry around him. He said: Numbers 11:13 “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’ 14 “I alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too burdensome for me. 15 “So if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”

As he verbalized his feeling before God, it became perfectly clear – he wasn’t trying to take on more than his job – he was unfairly matched to the size of God’s appointed responsibility and was throwing himself on the mercy of God to get him through the day. If you have every found yourself in this position, you know there are some good things that can come from it. It is a humbling experience, and God gives grace to the humble. It is a clarifying experience, and good leaders need to learn to be clear about the problems in order to affect solutions. Many will find symptoms of the problem, but the leader needs to carefully follow the symptom trails all the way back to the actual problem. Time pouring out before God helps to set it all in front of both God and I, so He can do His work in and through me.

These four lessons are helpful, but the passage offers more. It pulls back the curtain on God’s response, and that is encouraging!

How did God respond to a believer who was honestly broken by the load?

Response #1: God assigned the part that Moses should complete.

16 The LORD therefore said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you.

God didn’t simply wave His hand and make the problem go away – that isn’t His way. God instructed Moses how to respond, and gave him an opportunity to participate in the answer to the problem. God let Moses help build a system that would alleviate the struggle in the future. He added to Moses ability by TAKING AWAY some of his control and participation. Moses gave up control in exchange for peace. Micromanagers cannot build teams – because they need full control. Disciple makers and mentors need to be able to surrender parts of the work to others – or they will burn out.

That isn’t as intuitive as it seems. The spontaneous response of our modern culture is to add detail to our lives – more choices, more options, more commitments, more purchases, more jobs. God did the opposite for Moses – and TOOK HIM OUT of the path. True, Moses had to gather the men together. Yet, after that, God took work OFF of him through this process. The key was that God gave Moses the choice to obey and simplify or fully control and keep all the stress.

Let me ask you a question: Are you overburdened because you won’t give up control of everything?

There are two truths that must be carefully pondered about modern life. First, Humans have a limited capacity for meaningful productivity, and second, few modern men and women seem to know when they are reaching their capacity. We commit to too much, want too many options and live in too much complexity. We sleep too little and waste too much time in meaningless entertainments that we cannot even remember. Tell me how many TV shows you can even recall the next day? For most modern people, there is a nostalgic longing for simpler times…One of the great secrets of days long past was that in fewer choices is less anxiety. I am not arguing that we don’t like having greater selection – but the higher level of choice brings with it greater stress.

Think of driving down a street in a nearby small town. The houses are set back from the street with green lawns. The sidewalks run beside both sides of the lane. You can drive thirty-five miles an hour and still see the picture of the lost dog stuck to the side of the telephone pole… Now put yourself in southern California on an eight lane highway with two overpasses – one above the other. Signage on the lower overpass indicates the various destinations of each lane – and the choices are many – but so is the stress level. Cars are whizzing by and you are trying to figure out what lane you need to make your way into. You have more choices, and they all sound exciting. At the same time, you are more likely to arrive at your destination frazzled and undone.

One of the biggest reasons we have too little margin in life is our own inability to choose what we SHOULD be a part of, and to say “NO!” to things that we should pass by on the highway of life. For some of us, we need to be warned: Busyness can become its own addiction – but addicts aren’t peaceful people by nature. Perhaps we need to look at the part God assigned to US, and let others do the other part.

Response #2: God promised a real and tangible answer to the backbreaking load – it was found in other people.

17 “Then I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it all alone….24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent.

God loves TEAM WORK. He multiplies the strength of a work by dividing the work among many. He didn’t chide Moses for saying the work was too great – He spread the work out. He took the load and re-distributed the weight with a system that would be more enduring. As we think about Moses with all his history with God and his great strength of character, forged in experiences with God’s power and enlightened with God’s Spirit within, we need to be warned – No person can tolerate ever-escalating overload without eventually feeling the pain of the weight. Dr. Swenson enumerated the levels of modern American stress:

• We live in a time with change overload – for millennia change was painfully slow – but now whole nations are felled in a single day. That makes the moves of any government administration more stressful, because we don’t know how far we can fall how fast.

• We live in a time of choice overload – in 1980 the average supermarket has 12,000 items; in 2010 that number averaged in excess of 30,000. There are now 186 different breakfast cereal choices alone. Satellite TV offered you 1,100 movie choices last month.

• We live in a time of commitment overload – most of us have too many relationships and too many responsibilities to do any well. We take too many courses, make too many appointments and try to be the solution to too many problems.

• We live in a time of debt overload – our whole country is awash in red ink.

• We live in a time of decision overload – each year we have more decisions to make, with less time to make them. This isn’t only about purchases, it is about health care plans, retirement options, real estate purchases, tax implications.. and that is just getting started.

• We won’t even detail fatigue overload, hurry overload, information overload, media overload, noise overload, personal interaction overload, possession overload, technology overload, traffic overload and work overload.

Even though stress and overload are everywhere in our modern world – it shows in different ways in different people. Moses internalized the weight and cried out to God to kill him – a sure sign of depression brought on by inner stress. Others show it in anxiety, outbursts of hostility and blame, or more subtle resentments. Overload turns work and fellow workers into the enemy – even if we love what we do! Part of God’s solution was the TEAM that Moses formed. Build one in your life. Cut out what you are doing that God hasn’t called you to do, and let others take a whack at it. Don’t be lazy – be intentional. Try doing less, but doing it better. Could it be that you aren’t HANDING OFF some work that should be someone else’s to complete?

Response #3: God offered Divine assistance to the men who were following Him.

God wasn’t done with the formation of the team – He did something that made the whole work hum… He empowered all of them with His Spirit.

25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again. 26 But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp.

For me there would be no greater joy than to see others learning to do the work, and empowered by God to do it well! I LIVE for such a day! The most exciting part of ministry is that God has a gifting in each of you, and He can energize you to do what no one else can do! Moses shared that sense of ministry, I know he did! How do I know? Keep reading!

27 So a young man ran and told Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28 Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, “Moses, my lord, restrain them.” 29 But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!” 30 Then Moses returned to the camp, both he and the elders of Israel.

Moses was excited (not jealous) that others had God’s Spirit. God took Moses into the work that was too big for him, so that God could work on Moses’ heart and show him His faithfulness and inexhaustible power. God held him tightly, and let him cry out when he couldn’t handle the pressure. He granted Moses more margin in his life, because he brought his problem to the Lord honestly, and poured himself out before God.

Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get.

Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centeredness spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

Breaking my Stubborn Resistance: “I Have Every Right!” – Jonah 3 and 4

arrest-attorneyYou haven’t been watching television for the last three decades if you haven’t heard an officer read a man his “Miranda rights.” These “Miranda rights” were enshrined into U.S. law in 1966 after the courts found the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of Ernesto Arturo Miranda had been violated during his arrest and subsequent trial for domestic violence. Ironically, Miranda was later retried and convicted, but not until his name became a household word on nighttime TV. In fact, American English eventually even formed the verb “Mirandize”, that means to “read the Miranda warning to” a suspect (at the time of arrest). Though these rights do not have to be read in any particular order, New York City police order has become the favorite of nighttime television. Most can recite them out loud:

• You have the right to remain silent.
• Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
• You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
• If you decide to answer any questions now, without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney.
• Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?

It is clear by now that as part of being an American, one understands they were born with RIGHTS. In fact, in my lifetime, I think it is a fair observation that rights have been far more emphasized than responsibilities. We know our rights – but many seem hold significantly less regard for their responsibilities. I wonder what would happen if we recited over and over the following, night after night, on show after show:

• I have the responsibility to respect the life, the property and human dignity of those around me.
• I have the responsibility to live up to my covenants and agreements, to do what I promise.
• I have the responsibility to work hard, pay my fair share of the common expense, and not seek to avoid this responsibility or hide my true worth.
• I have the responsibility to pay for what I take, and not to take what I cannot afford.
• I have the responsibility to testify to the truth, without the need to hide my true intent behind steeped and cryptic legal jargon.

What kind of America would we live in if we saw our responsibility in society was touted to be as exceedingly important as our rights? Do you believe our marriages would be more secured, or our mortgages be more properly satisfied? How would this affect our material prosperity? Would we be comfortable running up massive deficits for our children or systematically eliminating the unplanned unborn due to personal inconvenience? Would the number of people that feel they both need and are entitled to greater and greater assistance be increasing, or decreasing? I suspect we all know the answer.

I would love to tell you that believers are not steeped in their own rights. I would love to be able to share that as a result of their rich and real study in the Word of God – they have decided to emphasize responsibility, and not get caught up in the focus on the “rights” they perceive themselves to have. I would love to – but it would not be true. We are well studied in our culture – perhaps too well studied.

God gave us the privilege and responsibility to see the lost world around us through His eyes, and do all that we can to share His love and message of forgiveness to them. Yet, in truth, the focus on personal rights has hindered us. Our sense of JUSTICE has made a lot of us angry – and we think we have the right to be. Our country is being snatched away from us by men and women who have a different vision than one compatible with the Bible or the Bible believer. Increasingly, believers are being framed as intolerant, resistant, and recalcitrant. We who helped set men free in pulpits, pamphlets, and protests – are increasingly seen as the obstacles of freedom. The vision of some can only see us through tainted filters, and we feel justified in our anger at their distortions and constant attacks. In virtually every public forum, believers are being beaten back and blamed for the ills of society, and it makes us mad. The problem is, we don’t have the right to be angry and withhold love – no matter how many people come together to rationalize it. We are commanded to love, and we are obliged to share a message from God – whether it is well received or not.

Key Principle: When our rights are more important to us than sharing God’s message of mercy, self-righteousness and anger replaces love and grace. God’s people lose their effectiveness, and eventually their testimony.

We are in danger of becoming too rights laden – too self-important to do what God told us to do. What’s worse – is that the problem is not at all new. Believers have had the attitude that they had RIGHTS that were more important than RESPONSIBILITIES for thousands of years – long before American Christianity was even on the scene. Let me show you in a story set perhaps as far back as eight centuries before Messiah – found in the story of an angry prophet named Jonah. His anger, his sense of justice, and his focus on his right to make the call that another face judgment are all strands that tie his story together…

Jonah 3:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk. 4 Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. 6 When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes. 7 He issued a proclamation and it said, “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. 8 “But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth; and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. 9 “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.” 10 When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it. 4:1 But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, “Please LORD, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. 3 “Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.” 4 The LORD said, “Do you have good reason to be angry?” 5 Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. 6 So the LORD God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. 7 But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. 8 When the sun came up God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die, saying, “Death is better to me than life.” 9 Then God said to Jonah, “Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” 10 Then the LORD said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”

“God said “GO!” Jonah said “NO!” He ran, and after a dramatic detour, he finally obeyed. Nineveh heard the message of God and repented. Why did Jonah run? We don’t find out until after they repented – it was hatred. Jonah’s deeply bitter spirit wanted Nineveh’s crimes to pull God’s wrath violently down on them. He admitted to God that he had a deep sense of dread over the prospect of Nineveh’s repentance and God’s predictable forgiveness. His Tarshish run wasn’t laziness – it was a sour spirit dressed in the toga and sandals of a man of God. The Lord’s question to Jonah was this: “Do you have a good reason to be angry at My forgiveness?”

Don’t lose track of the purpose of the narrative while reading the details of the story. The story wasn’t written to emphasize the details of God’s message, nor of Nineveh’s response. It wasn’t supposed to become a travelogue of Nineveh’s size and enduring tourist sites, nor a theological primer of God’s decision making processes – those details are only shadows around the real message. This story was about a prejudiced prophet and his bitter reaction to God’s message of grace. The clear intent of the events of the end of the story were for the purpose of God to instruct a man who he didn’t want God to deliver people that he hated. His prejudice was more sacred to him than his responsibility to be a man of God. He ran BECAUSE he thought it was his right to see bad people perish. Their sin gave him a GOOD REASON to skip obedience to share a message of rescue. He preferred them punished.

The truth is this: no one reaches an enemy for Christ – only a friend. As long as I can get away with demonizing and denigrating others while shining a light on sin’s disgusting symptoms– I can justify my inner anger and even withhold obedience to preach my God-given message to them. Jonah did just that. They were cruel, barbaric, and undeserving people. Their language was strange, and their dress was foreign. Their wicked ways were repulsive. God SHOULDN’T love them! How could He? In such an attitude, the messenger became the obstacle to the message.

Let me say it lovingly, but with clarity: If I spend my energy trolling the web for gross evidence of the sins of lost men, regardless of their abnormal behavior or religious label, I will find myself withdrawing from my mission to reach them. If I feed my inner repulsion of the other man’s ways so that anger within ferments into hatred, I shut down my heart and mouth as useful instruments in my Father’s hand. My flesh feeds on anger. In it, I toss away opportunity to allow love and grace to flow through my person – an essential corridor to bring a lost man to God.

Brothers, we hate too deeply and too easily.

I have discovered in my short journey of life, I may find far too many who help feed my anger, my prejudice, and my hatred – because they too are afraid. They are fearful of people who so aptly picture the blindness of the fallen world. They point fingers in panic at such men, who act so thoroughly enslaved to a broken system, their actions stab at my God and my belief system. My angry friend beckons to me: “They offend our way of life and show contempt for things we consider most sacred.” – and my friend is right. They are often even casual with hatred of me – and I am tempted to answer in kind. The problem is that I cannot be obedient to my Master if I will not love them, and I cannot love them if I withhold His message of rescue. Hatred blocks love, and anger denies release. It is not a sin to be resist evil ideas, but it is a sin to hate men – even evil men. There is a place for that battle that is fought in Heavenly places – it is on my knees. Placards cannot do what prayer will. Anger cannot prove irresistible like love will. Why can’t I see it? It is a sin to hate the people I am called to reach. Their rescue should be my goal, not their destruction. To do that, I must face my “good reasons” for being angry.

The story of Jonah in chapters three and four has a GLARING CONTRAST of two kinds of people. Chapter three pictures a city and its people WOUNDED over their sinfulness, seeking God for rescue. Chapter four depicts a hardened prophet – God’s messenger – overtaken in BITTERNESS and ANGER that God would show mercy to the sin-sick and decadent Ninevite. Let’s take a closer look…

The Desperate Hearers (Jonah 3)

The Proclamation of Judgment (1-4)

God gave the assignment. It included the completion of his journey to face the Assyrian people at Nineveh (3:2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city.. .3 So Jonah arose and went...).”

God provided the message. The judgment message was God’s Word – Jonah was only to GIVE the message God told Him to give (3:1 Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time…2…proclaim to it the proclamation which I am going to tell you.)

God included the SCOPE of the task. This was a LARGE city, and Jonah would need to courageously offer a damning message in the face of an enormous threat. (3:3 …Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three days’ walk.)

God had been at work. The people seemed tender and prepared for the message. Jonah wasn’t even part way into the city, and people listened intently. (Jonah 3:4 Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”)

Ancient Nineveh’s towering gate can still be seen near the banks of the Tigris river opposite the modern city of Mosul in Iraq. In ancient times, it a city of more than 100,000 people – extraordinary for the time. The ruins have been the subject of numerous excavations since the mid-19th century. Beginning with some basic attempts by French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta in 1842, and more aggressive excavations by a famous British archaeologist named Austen Henry Layard – with many others thereafter. The site has been a treasure trove of history. A string of important palatial structures have been found, including the lost palace of Sennacherib with its 71 rooms and enormous bas-reliefs, the palace and library of Ashurbanipal, which included 22,000 cuneiform tablets. Fragments of prisms were discovered, recording the annals of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, including one almost complete prism of Esarhaddon. Massive gates and mudbrick ramparts and walls were unearthed. The walls encompassed an area within a 12-kilometer circumference. Many unburied skeletons were found, evidencing violent deaths and attesting to the final battle and siege of Nineveh that destroyed the city and soon brought an end to the Assyrian Empire. (adapted from Popular Archaeology, June 2011).

For a city of this size and power, with a reputation for brutality and lascivious lifestyle to simply repent – God was already at work. Often He is. He calls a believer into a situation because He is opening the opportunity to both the person to be reached AND the person through whom He will be reaching the lost one.

The Pattern of Repentance: (5,6)

The people accepted the Word of God as true – He existed and He would act. (3: 5 Then the people of Nineveh believed in God…).

The people took responsibility – agreeing with God (believe) about sin. (Jonah 3: 5b “…and they called a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. Three actions showed the work of God in them:

• They changed habits (proclaim fast).
• They changed appearance (sackcloth).
• They eliminating distinctions (greatest).

Their leaders REPEATED THIS PATTERN! (Jonah 3:6 When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth and sat on the ashes.)

Don’t pass this by without a closer look. Repentance is part of coming to God, and being embraced by Him. The arrogant and self-sufficient cannot come to God and receive His pardon or His peace – for they have not truly grasped God’s person and have not seize a sense of the violation of God’s holiness. Only when the people BELIEVED, did they CHANGE. The changes were profound – affecting their LIFE PATTERNS.

Don’t forget there are some rules to the whole idea of repentance. In the moments we have on this subject, let me use the words of others that say it better than I could:

• First, time to repent of sin is limited. “If we put off repentance another day, we have a day more to repent of, and a day less to repent in.” – source unknown.

• Second, repentance is an act of inner surrender, not merely “turning over a new leaf” of behavior: “According to Scripture repentance is wholly an inward act, and should not be confounded with the change of life that proceeds from it. Confession of sin and reparation of wrongs are fruits of repentance.” (L. Berkhoff, Systematic Theology, p. 487).

• Third, repentance is a requirement of salvation and rescue: “In his book I Surrender, Patrick Morley writes that the church’s integrity problem is in the misconception “that we can add Christ to our lives, but not subtract sin. It is a change in belief without a change in behavior.” He goes on to say, “It is revival without reformation, without repentance.” (Quoted by C. Swindoll, John The Baptizer, Bible Study Guide, p. 16)

• Fourth, though it happens as surrender within, it can be easily seen without:The sure test of the quality of any supposed change of heart will be found in its permanent effects. ‘By their fruits you shall know them’ is as applicable to the right method of judging ourselves as of judging others. Whatever, therefore, may have been our inward experience, whatever joy or sorrow we may have felt, unless we bring forth fruits meet for repentance, our experience will profit us nothing. Repentance is incomplete unless it leads to confession and restitution in cases of injury; unless it causes us to forsake not merely outward sins, which others notice, but those which lie concealed in the heart; unless it makes us choose the service of God and live not for ourselves but for Him. There is no duty which is either more obvious in itself, or more frequently asserted in the Word of God, than that of repentance.” -M. Cocoris, Evangelism, A Biblical Approach, Moody, 1984, p. 65.

• Fifth, repentance is not sought as an option among others – it is only truly understood when we see it as our only real option: “Wabush, a town in a remote portion of Labrador, Canada, was completely isolated for some time. But recently a road was cut through the wilderness to reach it. Wabush now has one road leading into it, and thus, only on one road leading out. If someone would travel the unpaved road for six to eight hours to get into Wabush, there is only way he or she could leave—by turning around. Each of us, by birth, arrives in a town called Sin. As in Wabush, there is only one way out–a road built by God himself. But in order to take that road, one must first turn around. That complete about face is what the Bible calls repentance, and without it, there’s no way out of town.” – Brian Weatherdon.

• Sixth, one who repents has the open hand of God as his resource: “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.” – Andrew Murray.

The Proclamation to Repent: (7-9)

3:7 He issued a proclamation and it said…

Fast: “In Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste a thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. Change what you are focused on – what you are gathering together for. Meals should be stopped, and mourning should replace them. Be SICK over what we have been. Cast your appetites aside and fall before God.

Mourn: 8 “But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth.” Everyone and everything must be made to recognize our dependence upon God above. We are in His hands, and we must mourn our ignorance and hard-hearted forgetfulness of that truth!

Pray: “…and let men call on God earnestly.

Change: “…that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands.

Humble: 3:9 “Who knows, God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish.”

To a nation that worked for itself, and ignored God’s Words and warnings – the message was not some smooth talking “Divine psychotherapy” to help people feel better about themselves – it was repentance.

The message from above was not about how to continue in rebellion but attempt to gain the fruits of blessing – it was about humble surrender. To a people who sought the material over the real, the “quick fix” over Divine exaltation, the “now” over the future – God’s message was simple: “Stop!”

Why? Because God’s message is directed at the real need, not the temporary symptoms. The real need is a change of heart brought on by humble surrender. It is a change of focus from “me” to what God has said. Self-absorbed people aren’t set for a great future. They will violate God’s standards on their way to inflicting great harm to each other – only to end alone and broken. Each man dies alone, and faces God alone. A turnaround is the only real hope – facing both my sin and God’s provision. Yet, in an effort to avoid that turn, men will devise more and more elaborate legislation and administration to help them stem off the results of poor choices, while continuing to walk further from the truth. We are broken, and we need healing. Only God can do that.

The Point of Repentance (3:10)

Repentance implied a change in “works” and repentance demanded a turning from “evil” – but repentance also included a change in penalty. 3:10 “When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, then God relented concerning the calamity which He had declared He would bring upon them. And He did not do it.”

God relented on the impending doom. The chain of cause and effect was broken by GRACE – God’s unmerited favor. Their humility didn’t cancel out all the damage they caused, but God saw hearts and God pulled back the judgment that threatened them. That was the VERY REASON Jonah got depressed.

The Depressed Prophet (Jonah 4)

The text says that Jonah was DISPLEASED with God’s actions, and ANGRY in 4:1. He offered God a bitter “I told you so!” (4:2). Jonah knew God’s character so well that he could recite Exodus 34 and tell God what He would do if people humbled themselves. God is NOT NEARLY AS UNPREDICTABLE as people who do not walk with Him think He is. God’s character is unchanging, and His Word lacks little clarity when it comes to His love and His standards.

In the face of forgiven Ninevites, Jonah just asked to DIE. A deep depression settled on his soul. That depression started like it usually does – it began when he felt mistreated by someone. (4:1). It was really an issue against the control of God- Jonah didn’t like the way God was working His plan for people. (4:2). His pain led him to the wrong conclusion – the impulse to RUN! Here is the problem: You CANNOT RUN from God (4:3). Even in death, God is still there. Even if you don’t like Him, you will still have to face Him. If you resist Him – He will not budge. In a depressed state of mind, Jonah failed to really hear God’s questions to him (4:4), and failed to see the provisions God had given him. (4:5). It is not in our nature to see God’s hand while we are licking our wounds and feeling abused by God.

When Jonah couldn’t get God to respond to his request, he sulked. He sat on a hill and got pre-occupied with HIMSELF. A depressed person spends much of their time occupied with personal comfort and satisfaction. (4:6-8). God sent the plant to comfort, then the worm to inflict. It is not in comfort that God’s Word is best heard – but in desperation. Self-sufficiency kills dependence. Need sharpens the ear to God’s call. From God’s voice, Jonah got the hard challenge:

4:9 “…Do you have good reason to be angry about the plant?” And he said, “I have good reason to be angry, even to death.” 10 Then the LORD said, “You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. 11 “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?

God has a message for the stubborn, depressed and angry believer: I will keep teaching you (4:9). I will keep softening you because I need you to see the world the way I see them (4:10-11).

Why do you suppose God gave us one of the sixty-six books in the library of His love to depict a believer who was embittered, rights-bound, and justice dependent – a man with standards that gave him self-justification to withhold love to others and obedience to God above? Could it be that God knew the peril to the cross that would come in the hands of believers like US today?

We watch our TV and we become angry that God won’t smite the ungodly and bring peace and prosperity to our land anew. We hunger for the destruction of those we are called to LOVE. Something is wrong!

We forget that God never promised us that the world would HELP US bring the Gospel to the world. He never said that a believer should anticipate a government that will speed him on his way. It is time for the church to understand that we cannot sustain cultural Christianity any longer – we need real surrender to Christ. We need real love for God and real compassion for lost men and women – no matter how they act, what they wear, or where they live.

I want to finish with a simple statement by a former police officer, now a preacher:

When I was a police officer, I responded to several traffic accidents, some of them with very severe injuries. At the scene of these accidents there are three groups of people, each with a different response toward those involved in the accident. The first group is the bystanders and onlookers. They are curious and watch to see what happens but have little active involvement. The second group is the police officers, of whom I was one. My response was to investigate the cause of the accident, assign blame, and give out appropriate warnings and punishments. The third group is the paramedics. They are the people usually most welcomed by those involved in the accident. They could care less whose fault the accident was and they did not engage in lecturing about bad driving habits. Their response was to help those who were hurt. They bandaged wounds, freed trapped people, and gave words of encouragement. Three groups – one is uninvolved, one is assigning blame and assessing punishment, and one is helping the hurting. Which group are you in?” (Pastor Larry Sarver, taken from sermon central illustrations).

When our rights are more important to us than sharing God’s message of mercy, self-righteousness and anger replaces love and grace.

Breaking my Stubborn Resistance: “House of Mirrors” – Jonah 2

distorted,jpgHave you ever been inside the carnival “house of mirrors”? The idea of a “house of mirrors” or “hall of mirrors” appears to have originated as an extension of the visit of then Governor Peter Stuyvesant to the Palace of Versailles north of Paris in France in the mid-seventeenth century. Peter went to discuss colonial land agreements and was amazed at the Baroque architecture in general, and in particular the so called “hall of mirrors” in the palace. He determined to bring this amazement to the newly founded colonial city of New Amsterdam, which he later built and charged one Dutch gulden for admission. In time, the oddity became a part of carnivals and amusement parks. The basic idea was to build a small maze of mirrors including some that were bent and distorted with convex or concave curves that would give the visitors odd and confusing reflections of themselves. It was an exercise in deception and obstacle.

I mention this because there have been times in my life that have been filled with confusion and obscured views of reality. Things looked to me like I was gazing into mirrors of a fun house – but it was NOT fun. You see, in those times I was not right in my heart, and I was running from God’s conviction. When I snatch away my soul from God’s uses in my arrogance and selfishness, I am forgetting God and running from His care. In those days, I am unable to see clearly for a time, things in my life as they truly are. I see life through dark glass, and I see myself in the bend of a convex or concave fun house mirror. I am deceived and darkened inside. What holds me back from swift repentance is the deception of the distorted images. Some aid for the lies come from the enemy who feeds into me more trickery – making complex the return to the arms of my Creator. He finds in my fallen flesh an ally, abhorring the discomfort of guilt and being trained to instinctively avoid any humbling. In my broken and fallen state the simplicity of the process of return to God is obscured.

The problem isn’t new to me- and it isn’t unique to you, either. Long ago, the prophet Jonah found himself in the bottom of the ocean, in the belly of a fish – with a seaweed headband. He learned it didn’t matter what he had done – he could repent. It didn’t matter where he was at the time – God would hear. It didn’t matter how he felt – his distress could be resolved. It didn’t matter how much time he felt he had left – the proximity of the grave need not slow his restoration. It did not matter how far from God he felt – the deepest sea was but a minute distance from the hand of an ever present Creator. In the end, he held a life changing prayer meeting on his knees in a fish – because he saw through the distortions he had followed. He recognized the singular truth of it all:

The only wall separating me from God in sin is the one that I built. Humbly, all I need to do is take it down…

Key Principle: The way back to God is not a long one or complex one – but I must understand and respond as God requires.

When I resist repentance, I allow false walls to keeping me from repentance:

Most of what holds people back from repentance is really well camouflaged deception –distorted ideas about God and tangled images of what He truly desires. The enemy feeds us trickery – making complex the return to the arms of our Creator. Our fallen flesh, abhorring discomfort of guilt and being trained to avoid any humbling, obscures the simplicity of the process of return to God. We make things harder than they are because a mirage makes repentance look tougher than it truly is. Let’s see what God’s Word says to clarify the simplicity, and blow away the fog:

First, it doesn’t matter what you have done, you can turn back to God.

Jonah 2:1 Then Jonah prayed…

Jonah knew God, and Jonah HAD times in his life sometime of real obedience. People may have KNOWN he was a prophet – that isn’t clear. What IS clear is that he knew the voice of God, he knew the call of God, and He knew the purpose of God for his life – and he didn’t want any part of it. He ran from God – as if that were even possible. The truth is that is what makes his character to so common – so believable. He didn’t just hear from God and march lock step into his future. Those kinds of stories only work in the surreal Sunday School environment. Here is the real “kicker” to the story: Even when it was apparent that God wanted him to turn around, in the rocking of the boat and the wind on the water – Jonah opted to get tossed into the water rather than turn the boat and drop to his knees. It wasn’t until he found himself on stomach gases for life support, and suffered the supreme humiliation of a seaweed headband that he re-thought the course of his life –but then, I guess you would too.

The fact is that it simply didn’t matter what went before. Jonah, just like you and I, was born into the world at enmity with a Holy God. He had to START a relationship with God intentionally. That same relationship required obedience to make his life work. Without following God, finding God will only make you miserable. Let me explain:

When Jonah was born – he needed a relationship with God – because he wasn’t ready to face God. It doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a nice guy, and it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a good guy – it means he was not acceptable to an absolutely Perfect and Holy God. Many people without a relationship with God do nice things. They give to the less fortunate. They recycle. But that isn’t enough. After the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden – the sinfulness of man excluded him from walking with God without a restored relationship. That is why the Bible says that “all are sinners” and “there is none righteous”. It doesn’t mean that “there is no one nice” and “no one pleasant”. The issue in those passages is our acceptability before a spotless and Holy God. That was provided for all of us by God at Jesus’ death on Calvary.

Now even though the sacrifice of the spotless Lamb of God made it possible for me to have a relationship with God – it still requires my deliberate acceptance of His gift. No one is saved without knowing it – they choose to surrender to Jesus and let Him pay their way to acceptance before God. No one gets a relationship with God without asking for it intentionally and believing in His conditions truly.

What about Jonah? Jonah didn’t get a relationship through Jesus – since he predated the Master. Yet still, salvation was always by God’s grace, accepted through faith. Jonah had to choose to know God. Jonah accepted that God looked past his sins when he offered a sacrifice on schedule. Jonah’s salvation didn’t come from the animal he killed – but from his acceptance in God’s Word that this act would satisfy God – because God’s Word declared it so. Salvation is about acceptance of God’s terms – and not about how good or worthy I am. It is about belief that what God said is true. That has never changed.”

Wouldn’t it be great if knowing God was the same as FOLLOWING God? Sure, but it isn’t. Jonah KNEW God, but Jonah wasn’t WALKING WITH GOD. Wait, does that mean he sinned too much to call on God? Not at all!

God is only a word away from one who will humble themselves – there are no wrong times to call on God!

It doesn’t matter where you are, you can turn back to God.

Jonah 2:1 “…from the stomach of the fish,”

There are probably no other testimonies in this room more unique when it comes to “weird places I have prayed” – but the stomach of the fish wasn’t too far from God for Him to hear the prayer. In fact, the fish was prepared by God as the personal repentance CHAPEL for Jonah’s restoration.

Let me ask you: “Do you need a personally prepared chapel to get back to your knees?”

What will God have to do to get you to really be ready to fall on your face before Him and recognize that following Him is the only way you will ever accomplish what you were meant to complete? You may not need much of a reminder, but I will offer this – God didn’t meet Jonah until he was at the bottom of the sea and in the middle of a fish. The place stunk. The place wasn’t pleasant. That is what running gets you – a fish motel. When your life stinks, and the view around you is half digested waste – remember this – God is waiting to hear from you.

One young man who sat where you sit right now didn’t want to follow God. He walked away from a God that saved him. He knows God, but he didn’t want to follow him. Now, from a jail cell, he wished that he would have listened. He thought he was untouchable, and now he has nothing but God. Another young woman I know grew up with a fine testimony. She got out in the world and went crazy for a time. Now, with three children from two different men, she is facing a terrible disease. Her life has been stripped away because of disobedience…

I am not trying to scare you. I wish I could – but sin is far too strong for my words to really be effective. What I am trying to do is caution you. Running is hazardous to your health. When you figure that out – no matter WHERE you are – drop to your knees and turn back to the God that made you.

It doesn’t matter how deep you are in it – He can hear you. There are no wrong places to call on God!

It doesn’t matter how you feel, you can turn back to God.

Jonah 2:2 “…and he said, “I called out of my distress to the LORD, and He answered me…”

Some people stress out early. We have to give some credit to Jonah for his high pain tolerance. Jonah got truly stressed only after the long “voyage to the bottom of the sea”. On the ship he was able to sleep. Now he was well rested and fully crushed. He was completely broken inside and his prospects for the future outside clearly looked like NOTHING AHEAD. It would have been easy to simply accept that there was nothing more to do than lie down and let the fish juices do their work. Can we call this DEPRESSED? Even without my clinical education – I don’t think it is too much a stretch. In the end, it didn’t matter how he felt – God was ready when HE was ready.

It doesn’t matter how LOW your heart has sunk – there are no feelings that can block God from hearing your heart beat.

It doesn’t matter how much time you think you have left, you can turn back to God.

Jonah 2:2b “…I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice.

The Hebrew word “Sheol” in this case is an idiom for the grave – as in “from death’s door”. Jonah didn’t believe that Nineveh was his future. Jonah didn’t believe he had a future in this life… I have thought of this passage when I sat at the bedside of dying friends. I remember a young man in Ft. Lauderdale who was watching AIDS take away what was left of his body. His lifestyle choices brought him low – right into Hospice care. At that time, I worked with patients that did not have a church or Pastor, but requested spiritual care. He was a neat guy, and life choices aside – I truly liked him. As we watched his weight descend steadily and his infections rage – I asked him repeatedly to turn to God. He kept saying: “It is too late, I am nearly dead.” Sadly, one day it was too late.

While you breathe and can respond to God – you still have hope.

It doesn’t matter how far from God you are, you can turn back to God.

Jonah 2:3 “For You had cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the current engulfed me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me.

You can feel like God took you to the woodshed. You can feel crushed and disciplined by God’s mighty hand. Even so – you can still turn to Him. He is not a man that harbors our wrongs when we have hurt him. Listen to what God said about Himself – this is His own Divine autobiography:

Exodus 34:4 “So he cut out two stone tablets like the former ones, and Moses rose up early in the morning and went up to Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and he took two stone tablets in his hand. 5 The LORD descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the LORD. 6 Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness and truth; 7 who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” 8 Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship.”

God said it clearly: “If you want restoration, I am ready. If you want to challenge Me, fight Me and try to get your own way – I am also ready. Remember, God isn’t too far away. The only wall keeping you from restoration to God is your own stubbornness!

When I face reality, I tear down the walls of deception, grasp the truth, and return:

I recognize it is God’s right to judge the violation of His Word and Person

Jonah 2:4 “So I said, ‘I have been expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.’

When you really come to God – standing before Him you will very quickly see that you are NOT GOOD. No one who truly worships leaves feeling big in themselves. At the foot of the cross there are no tall men and women. The presence of the Holy One makes all of us who are unholy bow down. We know why Isaiah said when he saw God: “Woe is me! I am a man undone!” Worship is, and was intended to be an act that pulls our selfishness out like stuffing from an old ripped teddy bear. We aren’t supposed to feel big in God’s presence – we are supposed to grow to stand BECAUSE of God’s presence.

He resists the arrogant, but takes the one who is aware of his own brokenness, and lifts his spirit with mighty and powerful grace. He has the right to judge me – and when He declares me righteous because of the payment of Jesus, my eyes well up with tears. I am not GOOD, but I am now FULLY ACCEPTED.

I recognize the reality of my utter helplessness apart from God – be humbled before God.

Jonah 2:5 “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. 6 “I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever…:

At the bottom of the sea and inside a fish is a wise time to conclude that you have no hope unless God shows up. It is a good time to review the choices that got you there. It is a good time to feel TRULY HELPLESS – because YOU ARE! Americans aren’t given to seeing the truth about our own condition. We prefer to live life with the image of wealth on borrowed money, and success based on a never ending series of overestimations we come to later call “bubbles”. Just remember this about bubbles – they burst leaving nothing because they are really much of anything even when we see them floating. They are an abstraction – and so is our view of ourselves a lot of the time.

Stop for a moment and really look at your life. I don’t care how much you have made, you are ONE ILLNESS from having a bill you cannot pay. It doesn’t matter how many friends you have, none of them can keep you from aging, getting sick, and eventually leaving this life. It doesn’t matter how many people know you – our current graduates cannot even name more than a few of the US Presidents of the past – so the likelihood that you will be remembered is pretty slim. We are one breath from helpless – and yet we live like we are kings and “strut our stuff” like the Mummers on Broad Street – feathers flying.

Remember this: If you think you are GOOD ENOUGH to deserve God’s help, you aren’t seeing the truth yet. If you can’t think of any reason why God would want to take your calls – He is waiting to hear from you!

I recognize God is being merciful in salvation – I am NOT deserving.

Jonah 2:6b “… But You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.

I am not truly ready to follow God with my whole heart as long as I believe I can manage and fix things apart from Him. If I believe I am clever enough to break into Heaven – I am deluded. MacGyver and duct tape won’t do for this episode – I am going to need Him. Chuck Norris can’t break the door down!

God has to open it… and He doesn’t budge for the self-satisfied.

I recognize the true source of the problem – forgetting God.

When I wake up from self-delusion, and the spiritual smelling salts of the Word do their work in me, I will see it clearly. I will recognize that I FORGOT GOD WAS GOD. It happened in daily choices that were so simple, I missed them:

First, I neglected prayer.

Jonah 2:7 “While I was fainting away, I remembered the LORD, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple.

As fish food Jonah was ready to pray. At the port, he was paying the fare with resources God enabled him to gain. Jonah didn’t NEED to pray when he didn’t WANT to hear the answer – and that is why he didn’t. Could that be the problem with prayer meetings now? Are we unconvinced that we need them, or could it be that we really don’t WANT God to deal with us in such a quiet and focused setting?

Second, I became as unreliable as one who doesn’t really believe.

Jonah 2:8 “Those who regard vain idols, Forsake their faithfulness,

Jonah makes the point that pagans aren’t reliable, because their gods aren’t real. Could that be the problem? Could it be that I really don’t believe what I say I do? Maybe simple doubts mixed with the powder of self will is the perfect recipe to keep me from truly following God!

Third, I became more selfish and unthankful.

Jonah 2:9 But I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving…

In the fish, Jonah says that he will return to obedience and return to thankfulness in the process. Could that be my problem? Am I unwilling to do what God has said, and frankly a bit ticked off that He won’t let it go?

Finally, I justified my actions as I cheated you out of what I promised you.

Jonah 2:9b “…That which I have vowed I will pay.

You can hear it in the tone of Jonah’s statement – he hasn’t been WILLING to give God what was HIS DUE. He didn’t want to surrender all of himself to God. He wanted to hold back a part of his life. Just a small part… like his future. Oh, yes, and his travel plans. Oh, and also his ministry – just that…not too much. Do you see how quickly we slip into justification and ROB GOD of His due?

I recognize the ONLY HOPE is in Him.

Jonah 2:9b “…Salvation is from the LORD.”

Finally, Jonah recites the truth! As long as I kept thinking I could fix things myself, I kept going DOWN, and away from the peace and strength found in following you.

My rescue depends to WHOM I am willing to reach! Jonah said it repeatedly…

• 2:1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God
• 2:2 I called out of my distress to the LORD
• 2:6b “… But You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God.
• 2:9 But I will sacrifice to You…Salvation is from the LORD.”

If you came to this lesson hoping that encouragement and blessing would mean that you would hear that you are self-sufficient and personally special – I am truly sorry. This hasn’t been your message. There are places you can go and be affirmed, but I am not sure that is what most of us need. Our salvation isn’t going to happen in our own hands. God WILL deal with us, but not if we think our hope is found in GOOD FEELING. He will not move in to build up those who are already too big for their spiritual britches.

• If I am depending on God for my walk – I am hungry to listen to His Word.
• If I am depending on God for my walk – I am not satisfied unless others are being blessed by my gifts and abilities.
• If I am depending on God for my walk – I am excited to seek Him for my future. I refuse to make up my mind and then tack His name on the process.

In my return, God restores my life and I surrender to His purposes.

Jonah 2:10 Then the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.

As Jonah finished his prayer of surrender, the fish got an upset stomach. The journey wasn’t wasted – God got him much closer to where he needed to be – both on land and in his heart.

Don’t miss an important part of the story though. He wasn’t deposited back on the land to run his own life as he chose. He was SAVED to SERVE. God delivers a man for the purpose of SERVING HIM in obedience. God did not send him back to ship he was running on, but onward to the place of his mission! I DON’T KNOW if he kept the seaweed headband. I don’t know if he walked into Nineveh with prune-like bumpy skin, and white from digesting juices. I don’t know how, if it is even possible, he got rid of that awful smell. What I do know is that fish cleared up his eyesight. Jonah could see clearer than he had in many days. Following God wasn’t complicated – it was just hard.

The way back to God is not a long one or complex one – but I must understand and respond as God requires.

Strength for the Journey: “A Season of Discontent” – Numbers 11 (Part One)

winter of discontentIn 1961, the year of my birth, John Steinbeck wrote his last novel, and borrowed the title from Shakespeare’s speech of Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun [or son] of York.” Steinbeck called his novel The Winter of Our Discontent. Though it is true that many Americans were deeply disappointed by the work, feeling it lacked the quality of “The Grapes of Wrath”, the Swedish Academy awarded Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. In letters to personal friends after its publication, Steinbeck claimed he wrote the novel to address the moral degeneration of American culture in the 1950s and 1960s. I could describe the story of Ethan Allen Hawley, and his struggle from innocence to moral decay – but those who are familiar with the times of the 1960’s don’t really need me to make an allegory about the decay – you remember it. We are still suffering from some of the rebellion of the era. It reshaped America.

I mention Steinbeck’s story as a bridge back to a much older story of discontent. This one comes from the pages of the Bible, and is tucked into Numbers 11. The story of the readying of the people to go from the mountain of the Law into the wilderness wandering and eventually the Promised Land unfolds over ten chapters of the writing. We left off the story with the “Wagon’s Ho!” moment. In the intensity of the heat by day, the discomfort of constant camping at night, the people wore through every thread of the garment of civility in short order. No sooner were the people in the desert on the journey, and Moses recorded the “season of discontent” that settled on the traveling hoards of ex-slave Israelites. The text offers a window to watch the people in a variety complaining situations.

I am going to deliberately break the teaching of Numbers 11 into two lessons, because there are two distinct kinds of complaints in the passage – and they need to each be addressed separately. In this lesson, we want to highlight the complaints that come from a heart that doesn’t trust God – a believer that has failed to understand the goodness of God in their daily life. In the next, I want to highlight a believer that is beat down – overburdened and in need a time of “honest praise”. Honest praise is the ability to empty ourselves before God and let Him build up what has broken inside us. Here is the key…

Key Principle: Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get from Heaven.

Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

Today we are examining the complaints seeping from a COLD and UN-TRUSTING HEART.

The first mentioned complaints were about the discomfort of the journey get an answer from the heavens.

Numbers 11:1 Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the LORD; and when the LORD heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. 2 The people therefore cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the LORD and the fire died out. 3 So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the LORD burned among them.

Some people have been convinced that life on the journey to the Promised Land was designed to be easy – and they find out very quickly in their life that is not correct. God didn’t create an air conditioned envelope through the desert, nor did he make the ground soft under the sleeping areas under the tent. Physical ease isn’t supposed to be a guaranteed part of the package in your walk with God.

Three issues concerning the complaining:

First, the people became fixated on a constant spirit of complaint and became verbally unrelenting and thankless. It was one thing to have a momentary complaint, but quite another to become perpetually negative, discouraged, and mouthy. Note the phrase: “the people became like those who complain of adversity”. What a weird phrase! The Hebrew letter “kaph” placed before a word usually adds the quality of a simile – it is “like” something. Though that is usually the way to interpret it, it is not ALWAYS the way to interpret the additional letter. Here, the translators said they people became LIKE those, because they seem to have missed an idiom, or common expression. To make it clearer, let me mention another place where this idea occurs. In Hosea 5, the writer claims: “The princes of Judah have become like those who move a boundary; On them I will pour out My wrath like water.” This was a poetic way of saying they were crooks – taking lands not purchased by moving the fences. The expression “to become like” was a simple idiom that they were acting out as those who had perfected the task – and that is what it meant in Numbers 11. The people were acting out like one who was moaning on the stretcher after the war, awaiting death. They cried as one who faced their death with no hope of survival and no relenting of pain. The people saw the road ahead and evaluated the change of landscape as a death sentence. The believer cannot judge safety by appearances. God isn’t only with those whose lives are prosperous and convenient. Complaints come from a dissatisfaction with circumstances – and many of those circumstances come ultimately from God. A complaint about the conditions of the walk can be a veiled complaint about the goodness of God.

Do you truly believe that God has been good to you, and IS being good to you? It is no small question that can be glibly answered – it is a serious and piercing look into the center of our own hearts.

Second, the people seemed to express less trust in God’s presence than in their old systems of security. Let me explain. In the fourth century, the commentator St. Jerome offered the idea that they complained because of the length of the way ahead. Based on the note from Numbers 10:33, the Israelite camp had not progressed in the journey more than eight miles when this problem developed. It is highly unlikely they were weary from all the travels – they hadn’t gone that far! Far more likely was the sense that they were leaving the out lands of Egyptian camps and moving out from under the influence of Egypts travel routes – and that was scary. The issue appears to be SECURITY in the direction they were heading. The people angered the Lord because they saw Egypt as more secure than His presence. The believer is always safest following the Lord – that is the very essence of safety. Believers are not safe when removed from trouble – they are safe when moved close to their Lord in obedience.

Do you try to “read the tea leaves of circumstance” to judge what is right and secure? As the believer grows, his dependence on circumstance is lessened – because his dependence on God’s promises are greater.

Third, it isn’t clear that there wasn’t some specific occasion that brought it all about. In fact, that may have been the case. Custom of the time dictated that leaving the territory of a nation was cause to pause at the border and remember their gods and cultic practices. For that very reason Jeroboam set up calves at the extremities of the northern Kingdom when the northern confederation of tribes broke away from Judah. The Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar can be translated “Nebo, protect the standing stones on my border”. Remember, the people were leaving the edges of encampments and roadways that were used by Egypt in copper mining transports. This may have caused some to want to stop and observe the rituals and superstitions common to the time. Leaving without a sacrifice may have felt like some people react to walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror, or tripping over a black cat. God’s presence is REAL and superstition is NOT – so God doesn’t want to be compared to it. God’s one and only requirement of His people is to listen to His Word and take Him seriously. When we don’t, we show we aren’t interested in following Him beyond the immediate fix to whatever mess we have gotten ourselves into. Superstitions are expressions of trust in hocus pocus – not appropriate for the child of God. Pagan rituals aren’t supposed to be used to satisfy us – God’s presence and our tight grasp to His hand are to become our only security as we move out.

Have you learned to celebrate God’s rich love and unchanging goodness when circumstances seem to look bleak? When the doctor’s news in NOT good, or the economic forecast appears to be devastating – is God still trustworthy in your eyes? Mature believers leave the promises of Heaven for AFTER THIS LIFE and don’t expect them to be in this life NOW.

God’s response to the complaining:

There are those who read about the “Taberah lightning sound and light show” experience and see a tiny drop of malice or even cruelty in God’s eyes – and they are wrong. God wasn’t messing with the people by sending the lightning that started the fire on the edge of the camp. Troubles are often God’s warning signs that something isn’t right – and we need to back away from the edge of whatever we are engaging in. The hint of what God was doing may be found when the text says: “His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.”

Along with the Israelites, there were others that had been swallowed up by the enslavement of the Egyptians that also went with them. Though we cannot say definitively, it is highly likely they found their place on the edge of the camp – out where the lightning fall started the fire. Be careful how you read the text – it doesn’t say PEOPLE were harmed – only property. If it is true that some of the complaint was particularly related to ritual – the spurring to do it may have come from the “mixed multitude” that came along with Israel, mentioned in places like Exodus 12:38. That is why commentators like Jamieson note: “It is worthy of notice, however, that the discontent seems to have been confined to the extremities of the camp, where, in all likelihood, “the mixed multitude” [see on [71]Ex 12:38] had their station.”

If God wasn’t being cruel and shooting lightning bolts like stories of Zeus after a drinking party on Mt. Olympus, what was He doing? God was sending trouble as a WARNING to quell the call to be involved in cultic practices that would defile Israel. He was squashing the voices of those who would have quickly drowned out the voice of Moses as leader. God often does more dramatic displays when the work is NEW, because people need to be sufficiently warned. Do you recall the body bags that carried out Ananias and Sapphira from the meeting in Acts 5? God hasn’t dropped every liar in church since (thankfully!), but He did early on – to push out pretense in the fledgling movement. Often, people who don’t yet know God’s love, respond to His power. They learn His clout before they feel His caring. These people needed to know that the parting of the water wasn’t the only time God would drop onto the scene and make Himself known. The point is that God wasn’t being CRUEL, He was guarding the believers and showing the bulge in his jacket pocket – making sure those who doubted His ability saw the edges of the weaponry available to Him in short order.

Herein is the warning: Don’t mess with God. He isn’t desperate, a pining lover so lonely that He will sit and weep, waiting for your call. He is a powerful, majestic and whole God – Who has graciously invited you to be used of Him. Respond to His love and you will see His power as helpful, not threatening.

The second mentioned complaints that got Heaven’s response were about the menu.

There are four important observations we can readily make about the problem of the menu:

First, it appears to be again linked to those who joined Israel for the journey – a distinct group of those who were not believers that were quietly tucked into the group.

11:4 The rabble (hasaph-soof’) who were among them had greedy desires; and also the sons of Israel wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat?

Have you ever noticed how a wave of discontent falls when complainers are allowed to air their critique of a situation for very long? Complaining, like yawning, is contagious. We can’t help it. When all the problems are mentioned over and over, they seem to grow even bigger than they truly are. They overwhelm us. They victimize us. They can even distract us into inaction about our own lives and responsibilities. Isn’t it much easier to blame the President for my plight than my own laziness? Why not make it Congress’ fault that I didn’t keep the oil in my car changed, or consistently discipline my children? Information can help us, but over analysis and pounding away at problems I cannot solve tends to paralyze us to the inaction of a victim. Perhaps that is why the “24/7” news cycle has seemed, in my view, to raise the depression rate among the well informed.

Note their question: “WHO will give us something different?” It is like they were saying to Israel: “Your God seems to be a bland diet vegetarian. That’s great to, you know, stay alive and all…but it isn’t very tasty and it isn’t very meaty!” That is the heart of the world’s complaint – they want to be able to CHANGE GOD TO THEIR LIKING. They want a God who allows them to have whatever they want to have – but then fixes the problems that are caused by their own self-indulgence. This was NOT just an attack on the menu – it was an attack on the CHEF. God was in their cross hairs, and He knew it. The people were naively drawn into the complaints, without the maturity in their walk and faith to see what the puppet masters of complaint were really saying. They didn’t just want meat – they wanted the ability to CONTROL GOD. They went after the WHO in the statement – not simply the WHAT. I have watched many naïve believers join the ranks of an evil agenda because they could not see through the work of the enemy inside it. Today, large numbers of evangelicals are standing on the wrong side of moral issues out of a naivety that they are being played.

When I grew up in New Jersey, I remember the rise of casino gambling. I recall the commercials as nuns, priests, community leaders, and those who helped the poor were put on TV to convince us that Atlantic City would get much help for the poor if we would vote for casino gambling. It was the moral and responsible thing to do – to get money for our schools and our poor. Drive there today, and you will see MORE POOR, and many elderly that were dispossessed from their homes because of the rise in taxes based on property values that skyrocketed when the casinos began buying up property. Naïve people lost their wallets to slick marketers.

Do we really believe that a lottery is the way to fund education? Do Floridians have to LOSE so that others can be educated? Is that the legacy of my generation to the next? We are naïve when we let the world determine the course of morality without relying on the truth of God’s Word.

Let’s be clear: No one in the world is offended at a God that is there to prosper us, care for us, and let us do what we want. That is the American god – the one that lets us be materialistic without sacrificial giving, hedonistic without penalty, and narcissistic without consequence. The problem is – that isn’t the true God. We made Him up. We like Him. He is nice and leaves us alone with our porn industry while we appease Him with an occasional church visit. The world wants to make a new god to replace the real one, and believers need to consistently seek the real One to stop unwittingly getting sucked into following after the latest carved rendition of Baal.

Second, the rabble called the people to focus on the life they had in the world, not the call of God to be distinct and dwell in His provisions.

11:5 “We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, 6 but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna.” 7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. 8 The people would go about and gather it and grind it between two millstones or beat it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its taste was as the taste of cakes baked with oil. 9 When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.

Look at the recitation of old Egyptian menus: fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic… Yum!

Can’t you hear them?: “We will be serving today a lovely little appetizer salads of cucumbers, followed by a nicely prepared tilapia, garnished with shavings of garlic and onion. Our light afternoon menu will be topped off with delicious, sliced melon. What a perfect meal for the desert traveler in the know.”

That is the essence of the trick of distraction – keep the believers thinking about the GOOD PARTS of their former captivity in the world. Here is the part they DIDN’T mention… WE WERE SLAVES! We ate when we were TOLD we could. We worked dawn to dusk. Taskmasters beat us and could even kill us. They abused our women without penalty – and took from the fruit of our labors without deserving it. The world would have you believe that every teen is sleeping with their date, and the people who aren’t are really awkward and lonely. They would have you believe that those who have the most money are the happiest. They produce show after show that postulates that those who walk out the door when their marriage gets tough find true happiness in the e-Harmony page with the perfect someone they have been missing all the days they were married to the shrew they found early in life.

Now hear the truth. Venereal diseases are rampant and have destroyed intimacy in countless couples. Innocence has been trashed in many a child long before they should have known how to give away their most precious parts of the heart. The big lotto winner from a few months ago is now in the morgue as they test his body for what poison the family used to eliminate him – check the news. Broken marriages have left untold damage in the hearts of millions of America’s children. A February 2012 report cited: Past statistics have shown that in the U.S. 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second, and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. Second marriages are often more likely to end in divorce than first ones – we can’t seem to find our true love even when we spin the wheel more than once. How can I say this more clearly: Night time TV, Hollywood movies and even daytime TV are telling us LIES. Life in the world isn’t happy – it’s guilty, it’s broken, and it’s pointless. Believers that look back at their old life longingly are being suckered to re-join a losing team. A great many go on calling themselves “Christian”, but increasingly live like they used to live – and that isn’t a formula for success and victory in this life, nor hearing God’s compliment in the next one: “Well done!” Believe me, when you see Him – that will matter!

Third, the problem caught on among the Israelites. The unbelievers among them pulled them into complaining by raising discontent.

11:18 “Say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the ears of the LORD, saying, “Oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt.” Therefore the LORD will give you meat and you shall eat. 19 ‘You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, 20 but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you; because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’”

Duped into forgetting the terrible bondage of a past life, even the Israelites were now mimicking the words of the complaining rabble. They were looking around and looking back – but they were looking in the wrong directions.

The believer won’t find comfort LOOKING AROUND. They will feel out of place, because they are to be growing in such a way that they learn slowly to displace the values of NOW for the standards of Heaven. Following the world’s values and living by their hungers is placing your life in the blind pilot’s hands. Seriously, if you were standing in line to get on a flight and the pilot came walking slowly up the ramp tapping his white cane and wearing dark glasses, would you get on the flight? The pit comes to both the blind leader and the blind one who holds his hand and follows him. When will we learn that only the person with the true map finds the treasure. Fakes are distractions that raise your hopes and suck away your energy.

The believer won’t find comfort in LOOKING BACK. The things of this earth are to dim more and more as he learns to look in the right directions – UP and FORWARD. The answers to a broken world lay in the coming Redeemer – and nowhere else. It doesn’t mean that I do not care for the planet – I was told to steward it. It means I don’t do it to fix the broken world – because I haven’t the power. He does, and He is coming soon!

One final observation, and look at the end of the story. God heard the revelry of gluttony and greed – and it made Him really sick.

Skip down to 11:32… The people spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. 33 While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague. 34 So the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had been greedy. 35 From Kibroth-hattaavah the people set out for Hazeroth, and they remained at Hazeroth.

Often the transliterated words in the text give a glimpse of the point of the story. In this case, “Kever” is the common term for a tomb or grave. “Kibbroth” is the plural form set in a name, with a descriptive name to follow – “hattah-av-aw”. The place became a marker and memory – mentioned five times in the Bible and always referring to this place alone. In Numbers 33 and Deuteronomy 9 God reminded them of the provocation of this event. In the end, they left there and journeyed to “Chatserot” – a word for settlements or villages. The people saw God take the lives of their greedy fellows, and many died. With the weeping and bitter memory of the grave place called “Hattah-avaw” still burning in their minds, they moved from loud complaining to walking quietly to the villages, or “Chatserot”.

I can’t say this strongly enough to any believer that is open to understanding: Living the world’s values, seeking desperately the world’s approval, pressing for the world’s hungers WILL KILL YOU!

Next time, I want to address a closer look at MOSES and the complaints from an over-stressed and BROKEN HEART.

By now, I think the point is clear – Not all complaints are the same. The heart they come from changes the response we get. Those out of a cold heart toward God, block God’s work in and through us because of our self-centered spirit. He withdraws His blessing and stops teaching us. Yet, when we crumble under the load of real ministry– it is a different story. God offers new resources and new instruction.

How could I leave this passage without the one song that was written in my lifetime that captured the heart of the complaining Israelite? Keith Green wrote it, and many of you will smile, because you know it:

So you wanna go back to Egypt, where it’s warm and secure. Are you sorry you bought the one way ticket when you thought you were sure? You wanted to live in the Land of Promise, but now it’s getting so hard. Are you sorry you’re out here in the desert, instead of your own backyard? Eating leeks and onions by the Nile. Ooh what breath, but dining out in style! Ooh, my life’s on the skids, give me the Pyramids! Well there’s nothing to do but travel, and we sure travel a lot. Cause it’s hard to keep your feet from moving when the sand gets so hot. And in the morning it’s manna hotcakes. We snack on manna all day. And they sure had a winner last night for dinner, Flaming manna soufflé. Well we once complained for something new to munch. The ground opened up and had some of us for lunch. Ooh, such fire and smoke. Can’t God even take a joke ­huh? (no!) So you wanna go back to Egypt, where old friends wait for you. You can throw a big party and tell the whole gang, That what they said was all true. And this Moses acts like a big-shot, who does he think he is. It’s true that God works lots of miracles, but Moses thinks they’re all his. Well I’m having so much trouble even now. Why’d he get so mad about that cow? (that golden cow). Moses sits rather idle, he just sits around. He just sits around and writes the Bible. Oh, Moses, put down your pen. What ­oh no, manna again? Oh, manna waffles­, manna burgers, manna bagels, fillet of manna, manna patties, manna – cotti??? How ’bout..­.ba -manna bread!”

Strength for the Journey: “Defensive Posture” – Numbers 10

CelloAs with most of you, I have come to deeply love music. I am moved, in particular, by the deep and rich sounds of the cello in the hands of a master. I love the intricate structure of Bach’s orchestral works, and especially the beauty and elegance of the resolutions in each piece. When I think of music, I think of the peaceful respite in my loft office, as an orchestra plays in the background to the sound of my typing. I spend many hours each week in my old well-worn chair, with the sounds of gentle classical artists without a word spoken or sung. The instruments are calming to me – and they help my attitude and demeanor as I write. The truth is, though, that not all musical instruments were made for sounds of pleasure. Some horns were deliberately created and shaped to make the signals of impending danger, directive attack, and even the deep sorrow over fallen warriors. Some bugles only play “taps”. We sometimes forget that music wasn’t only given to soothe – it is sometimes given to signal.

The same reality must be soberly applied to looking into the Bible’s pages. Talk about happy passages of Scripture, and you will draw a crowd.

Everyone wants to hear about peace, prosperity, Heaven, and hope. I know that I do! These are deep truths, and motivating realities of the Word. The problem is, they aren’t the whole picture. Along with the needed preaching of affirmation and encouragement – we need the bugle tones of caution. I am assured this is true – because the Word has major sections given to offering warning and preparatory counsel. There are significant glimpses in the Word that we are living in the time of a bitter conflict, fought in unseen places by ruthless foes. Ignoring that reality won’t help – and it will in fact place people in the middle of a “fire-fight” with little or no understanding concerning what they are facing.

Yes, because of the conditions of the spiritual war, we desperately need the whole counsel of God’s Word – with all its encouragement saddled beside the bugle bursts of warning. Why do I mention this? I am concerned as I watch and listen in our current day – because far too many followers of God are insufficiently dressed for battle, and inadequately prepared for the reality of the spiritual war zone. I am not qualified to know the complete sense of why this may be, but I truly believe at least some of the fault can be placed in pulpits, where we have not sufficiently reminded our people that we are in a time of elaborate and complex warfare. An over-simplified Bible and an ignorant Christian will do little to advance the Kingdom, and is more likely to be a casualty than a key asset in the day of battle. I say this with a heavy heart, beloved friend, for I know too many casualties.

Key Principle: God wants His followers to be diligent to watch for the enemy’s work, and to constantly acknowledge our need of His hand of protection – because we forget how much we NEED God.

Look back into the record of Numbers 10. Just as Moses and the people cleared the moorings of the various issues of direction, God addressed their specific need for preparation before movement – especially in the areas of communication and defense:

Though God is always with us, He has called upon believers to be diligent in setting up defense (10:1).

Numbers 10:1 The LORD spoke further to Moses, saying, 2 “Make yourself two trumpets of silver, of hammered work you shall make them; and you shall use them for summoning the congregation and for having the camps set out.

God understands perfectly what believers are up against, and called Moses to be prepared (10:1). Notice the passage opened with the now familiar “the Lord spoke further…” Don’t overlook that God specified the defense methods, plans and arms for the believer to be ready for attack – and they are all found in His Word. If you are young in your faith, it may do well to remind you that the opening chapters of the Bible (1-11) outline what some of my friends calls the “five major story lines of Scripture” (my thanks to James C. Martin; Doug Greenwold and Preserving Bible Times):

God: Who He is, What He cares about.
• Adversary: Who he is, how he works, what his agenda is.
• Mutiny: What broke in man and why.
• Human Condition: Why things are the way they are now.
• Rescue: How God is taking back what the enemy has stolen away in deception.

The Bible opens with these stories not to explain the science of Creation or the methodology of how God works – but to explain that we are born into a war. Anyone who wishes to follow God must recognize that our connection to Him was broken in the Garden, and it must be re-established. The sin of the Garden is the reason for the Cross at Calvary. The Bible teaches that Jesus did NOT primarily come to be an example of self-sacrifice, but to be the one and only Lamb of God that would satisfy the mutiny of man in God’s judicial system. Though a believer has trusted in Christ, the war is not over – he just switched sides. God then reveals tools and defenses He has provided for the believer – but they must be understood, appropriated, and worn consistently. This passage is about the call to physical defense, but the physical attack is a mere echo of the truth of spiritual warfare – a relentless battle between mutineers and the God that made them.

God recognized the need to be able to call the people together without stirring the people to panic (10:2). Wise Pastors are instructing believers about warfare in a time when they are not being slammed. The believer must be ever ready to face the world, fight,] and deny the flesh, and resist the Devil. The two trumpets were fashioned by God’s plan to distinguish between the sound of muster to fight and the sound of assemble for instructions and movement. When believers don’t know how to hear the trumpets, they don’t know what to do. Either they will panic each time, assuming battle is imminent, or they will gather to assemble and show up without their arms. In many cases, they will count on their neighbor and ask what the signal means – not accepting for themselves the proper responsibility for discernment. We have whole churches today that cannot distinguish what the Word says concerning the war – and they blame Satan for acts in which he was in no way involved. They confuse irresponsible behavior with Satanic attack, and cannot really discern one trumpet from the other. They are no danger to the enemy and little asset to the Kingdom, because they cause as much confusion as they offer assistance. They don’t use the Word and the Spirit to bring them along to maturity. They remind me of the story Zig Ziglar used to tell (from See You at the Top):

Oil was discovered on some Oklahoma property belonging to an elderly Indian. All his life he had been poverty stricken, just eking out a living. But the discovery of oil had suddenly made him a very wealthy man. The first thing he bought was a very big Cadillac. He wanted the longest car in the county, so he added four spare tires on the trunk. He would dress up in his new clothes and everyday he would take his Cadillac into the hot dusty little town nearby. He wanted to see everyone and he wanted everyone to see him. He was a friendly old soul. so when he was riding through town he would turn in all directions to wave at all the people as he rolled by. Interesting enough, he never ran into anybody nor into anything. The reason for this was that directly in front of that big beautiful auto was two horses harnessed to it and pulling it. There was nothing wrong with the car’s engine. It was because the old Indian had never learned to drive it. He had never learned how to insert the key into the ignition switch and turn it on. Under the hood was 100 plus horsepower ready and willing and raring to go, but the old Indian was content to use the two horsepower hooked to the front of the car…The devil gets really happy (or as happy as a devil can get) when he can keep the believer chugging along in their Christian life on a two horse power faith level. At that rate, the spiritual progress is slowed down to a crawl, and this is what the devil is after in his warfare with us.

God set up a clear system to assess the meaning of the Warning Signals (10:3-7)

Numbers 10:3 “When both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the doorway of the tent of meeting.

One essential signal was set to call believers together – because God’s intent was that they hear from Him as a group – not just individually (10:3). The design of God always included individual responsibility before Him – as in the deliberate obedience to His Word and seeking of Him in individual prayer. At the same time, there was the requirement of corporate responsibility among believers. We were never allowed – not in the old economy or in the present one – to simply follow God without attaching ourselves to others. Israel was to worship together, share in festival life together, and seek God’s blessing together as a nation. In that same way, God’s church was called to assemble, learn, serve, and grow together. Weak believers walk alone. The enemy knows how easily they can be knocked out of service. It is for no less than this reason that the early writer to the Messianic followers of the first century wrote in Hebrews:

Hebrews 10:19 Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 By a new and living way, which he has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; 21 And having an high priest over the house of God; 22 Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 24 And let us consider one another to provoke to love and to good works: 25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.

Did you see the progression of the thought?

We have new boldness because Jesus paid for our entrance to the Holy of Holies with His blood – and there is no fear of separation from God anymore (10:19-20). We have a High Priest that bids us blessing (10:21).

What should we do with this?
• We must draw near to God – walk in with hearts clean and hungry to be near Him (10:22).
• We must be bold about what God has done in us and for us (10:23).
• We must help EACH OTHER with prompting, encouragement and service (10:24).
• We must be diligent about assembling together – especially as the day of Jesus’ return gets close (10:25).

Our call is STILL to assemble together, and to learn, serve, encourage, and walk through life together. With the many churches available to us, in many cases what it has done is water down the ability of believers to hold each other accountable, and expect Christian behavior from one another. If people misbehave in one church, they simply go to another, with no desire to reconcile what they have done to the cause of Christ – and both churches are weakened – the one he left AND the one he brought himself into.

Sometimes God wanted just the leaders to get together to handle issues – so they had their own assembly signal.

Numbers 10:4 “Yet if only one is blown, then the leaders, the heads of the divisions of Israel, shall assemble before you.

From Genesis to Revelation, we have seen that God calls, raises, nurtures, and protects leaders. They have different responsibilities that the followers. They are charged with greater demands to be both right with God and an example to the flock. The warning of James rings in my ears in the old King James language I learned as a child…”Stop being so many teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation.” James argued the responsibility of Godliness is heavier on the teacher of God’s truths – and I have often thought about that. It haunts me. I sometimes want to drop the pretense of being any different and punch someone who makes me mad. That’s the truth! The problem is that my name is not my own. My name is tacked on to YOUR name at Grace, and onto Jesus’ name in Heaven. If I punch someone, you will pay some of the price, and that isn’t right. So, for the moment, I won’t punch you.

Here is my point: it isn’t wrong to hold leaders to a higher standard than we hold followers. God has made it clear in His Word that leaders must be circumspect, and can be disqualified. We should not be hungry to tear apart anyone, but we cannot gloss over leadership responsibilities to walk with special care. None of us are perfect – I assure you – but leaders are more culpable than followers.

Recently, a fellow minister was counseling someone and crossed an emotional line – and later a physical one – in the counseling relationship. Not only is the action wrong, but the crossed lines show a misunderstanding of the role of a true counselor. The flawed view of the ROLE is also part of the problem (in addition to other sin issues more familiar). Let me caution you: Don’t go to a counselor for emotional support – that is what we are to get from friends and family. Counselors – I know this may sound crazy – are where we go for COUNSEL. The client may not be clear on this, but the COUNSELOR must be clear on this. We aren’t emotional supports, our proper role is informational and reflective (helping the person see where they are and are not living in harmony with their accepted standards). When the counselor confuses the role, they endanger the effectiveness of the role, and confuse the person seeking help. Leaders must sharpen other leaders, and there are times the call to assemble is just for them.

Because the enemy wants to destroy, God established emergency signals that were also essential for God’s people.

Numbers 10:5 “But when you blow an alarm, the camps that are pitched on the east side shall set out. 6 “When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that are pitched on the south side shall set out; an alarm is to be blown for them to set out. 7 “When convening the assembly, however, you shall blow without sounding an alarm… 9 “When you go to war in your land against the adversary who attacks you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and be saved from your enemies.

God instructed believers how to face a crisis so that they would be prepared and not confused (10:5-6). He worked on such a detail level that He placed an ASSEMBLY ORDER into the text. If they didn’t follow the instructions, confusion and defeat would follow. God wasn’t just wasting His time blowing off steam – there is a point to every instruction. Why do I mention this? Because many believers and many churches – whole denominations and fellowships – seem to miss the detailed nature of the Almighty. When God said believers should only marry believers – He had a reason. When God said that marriage disputes should be healed by both parties kneeling before the Cross and making things right with God and each other – He wasn’t just suggesting things. When God said not to put people into responsible positions of ministry too quickly, He had something in mind. We live in the time of cutting corners… but God’s commandments cannot be discounted. They must be understood, and when the enemy tries to move in to the thinking of the church, he should be spotted and identified.

Pastor Wayne Field noted: “General Peter Cosgrove is the recently retired Chief of the Australian Defense Force. In his autobiography he tells about his first tour of duty as a young lieutenant in Vietnam. His first posting was at a base near the village of Dat Do. The purpose of the base was to house army engineers. These Aussie soldiers would use giant bulldozers with a huge chain dragged between them to rip down vegetation. The purpose of this was to deny the enemy any possibility of concealment in the jungle. Huge tracts of jungle were just ripped down and burnt – that way no one could hide (p71). The Aussies were removing any camouflage that might possibly be used for evil purposes. In dealing with our spiritual enemies we have to pull down and lay flat the jungle in order to identify them. Once they have been identified we can better deal with them.” (sermon central illustrations).

The church simply cannot truly be the church without opening the fields around, and putting out spotters that will call sin what it is. Enough toleration of all things evil in the name of love!

I don’t know why America’s pulpits are aflame against the vicious killing of our unborn. I don’t know why we don’t hear insistence in the face of routine divorce. I cannot fathom what we are waiting for, when our children are being indoctrinated by pagan thinkers to follow after anti-god and anti-truth thinking. I am not on the war path – but I have pledged to seek God, teach His Word, and stand against the enemy’s cruel attacks on God’s church. It comes with the job. Frankly, some need to surrender the holy calling and go into politics if what they want to do is keep everyone happy – since it is working so well for our current Congress.

I plead with you to hear me from the heart I intend this… If you ARE divorced, if you DID have an abortion, if you have really violated God’s Word in your life in ways that cannot be undone – I am not here to beat you down. I want you to leave with GOD, not GUILT. What I am addressing is the growing flagrant violation of God’s Holy Word IN HIS MODERN CHURCH that is being caused by MISFORMED TOLERANCE and rampant BIBLICAL IGNORANCE. If you have done these things, don’t be hurt by my words, fall into the powerful and gentle hands of a Loving God! He didn’t stop loving you when you took a life any more than He stopped loving Moses, King David, or Saul of Tarsus when THEY took the life of another. God used them for great things, and He can and will use your life as well – if you give it to Him.

My words are to those who HAVE NOT done these things, BE WARNED. God is not swept up in the desire to be popular, and He is not concerned if His “tweets are trending”. He tells the truth, and He knows the end from the beginning.

Did you notice why God said to the children of Israel to blow the trumpet when the attack comes? (10:9) The purpose of the trumpet wasn’t just for people to get busy, but for God to come to their defense. He knew exactly when to come – when they ASKED HIM. We often “have not because we ask not”. We simply think that because God “already knows”, we shouldn’t really worry about informing Him. The fact is, we don’t cry out to God with our needs because we are informing Him – but because by our obedience to remember to call Him we are INVITING Him to help.

Not everyone was qualified to determine the danger and blow the trumpet.

Go back for a moment to a verse we skipped in Number 10:8 “The priestly sons of Aaron, moreover, shall blow the trumpets; and this shall be for you a perpetual statute throughout your generations.

God selected specific people who were to learn when it was appropriate to blow the trumpet (10:8). This wasn’t everyone with a strong opinion and an hour’s study – it was done by qualified men who were selected by God. I have to admit that one of the richest blessings in my life is to be involved in some small way, in the training of those God has called to lead in the next generation. I cannot tell you how exciting it is to watch them, through struggle and celebration, come to conclusions about their future and God’s call. Just keep this in mind: In ministry – too quickly appointed means too easy defeated. God selected and men trained – then as now.

Don’t’ forget! Not all the blasts were BAD either! Some were to call people to a feast, and remember that the Lord is their God!

This has seemed like such a tough message, that I am happy to tell you that there are some wonderful reminders of happy things! God said:

Numbers 10:10 “Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feasts, and on the first days of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a reminder of you before your God. I am the LORD your God.”

The signals were not all heavy – sometimes they were blessings and promises that all the people could share! Some were for GLADNESS and feasting and SHELMIM offerings (called “peace”) – where you expressed incredible thankfulness for all that God had done! The trumpet was not just calling upon God to protect, but blessing God for provision! What a joyful blowing of the trumpet on a day like that!

Once the people were ready and defense was set, God called “Wagons Ho!” and off they went.

He moved them with the sign of His presence (10:11-13): 11 Now in the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth of the month, the cloud was lifted from over the tabernacle of the testimony; 12 and the sons of Israel set out on their journeys from the wilderness of Sinai. Then the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran. 13 So they moved out for the first time according to the commandment of the LORD through Moses.

They followed Him in strict order (10:14-28): 

• First out of the camp was Judah, then Isaachar, and then Zebulun (10:14-16).

• As the third tribe moved, the Tabernacle’s disassembly was completed – with Gershonites and Merarites carrying in order.

• Next came the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, and Gad (10:18-20)

• The Kohathites took the holy objects next, allowing the Gershonites and Merarites to set up the Tabernacle in the next place in advance of their arrival with the objects.

• On came Ephraim, Manasseh, Benjamin, and Dan (as rear guards), along with Asher and Nphtali (10:22-28).

Moses invited a good camping guide (Hobab, his brother in law the Midianite 10:29-32).

Every movement of the people had a second sound – beside the trumpet. Anyone standing near to Moses would hear him: 33 Thus they set out from the mount of the LORD three days’ journey, with the ark of the covenant of the LORD journeying in front of them for the three days, to seek out a resting place for them. 34 The cloud of the LORD was over them by day when they set out from the camp. 35 Then it came about when the ark set out that Moses said, “Rise up, O LORD! And let Your enemies be scattered, And let those who hate You flee before You.” 36 When it came to rest, he said, “Return, O LORD, To the myriad thousands of Israel.”

Moses knew that God wanted to move the people, and that God was committed to lead the people – but they needed to CONSTANTLY be called to remember they weren’t to CHOOSE THEIR OWN PATH. God would defend them, but they must FOLLOW Him.

God wants His followers to be diligent to watch for the enemy’s work, and to constantly acknowledge our need of His hand of protection – because we forget how much we NEED God.

Be careful, church. Be watchful. Be vigilant. “The attack [of Pearl Harbor] took place [December 7, 1941] on a sunny Sunday morning. A minimal contingent of soldiers was on duty at the time. Most offices on the base were closed and many servicemen were on leave for the weekend. New technology, including the new radar mounted on Opana Point, were in place, manned and functioning at the time of the attack. The incoming Japanese attack planes were detected by the radar and reported, but were mistaken for an incoming group of American planes due from the mainland that morning. While on practice maneuvers outside the harbor that morning, an American destroyer spotted a Japanese submarine attempting to sneak into the harbor. The submarine was fired upon, immediately reported — and ignored.” (www.U-S-history.com).

Breaking my Stubborn Resistance: “Smacked into Reality” – Jonah 1

night drivingIt has probably happened to you a number of times in the past. You were on a long drive in the car, and you were getting tired. The sun had long set, and the lights of the road were making your eyes weary. You weren’t really falling asleep, as much as you seemed “entranced” by the road ahead. The rhythm of the engine’s hum, along with the steady intervals of the reflectors on the road drew you into a stupor that settled in your mind as you saw the brief flash of one bright yellow lane marking line after another reflecting from your headlight. You had a good distance between you and that car in front of you, and you occasionally checked your mirrors to see the cars following you. The steady thump of the breaks in the road beneath you sounded like a drummer keeping time… thump, thump, thump. Just as you began to drift in your mind with the sound, there was a sudden change. The car in front of you suddenly applied its breaks. Like an electric shock that shot through your body, an adrenaline shock wave snapped you into reality, and your foot instantly moved from the accelerator to the break. For the next moment, the chemicals in your body brought a clarity that had not been there in hours. Even after the danger had been neutralized, you noticed your attention to detail on the road was significantly heightened. We may not like to admit how much of the time we are driving with much of our mind on something that has nothing to do with the road or the car. We float around the roadways, and often are fairly out of touch with the reality around us.

It isn’t only in driving that we lose track of the real and fall into a stupor, drifting along. Some of us have been doing it financially. We have been working and spending, working and spending… and suddenly some major appliance failed, and we got our neck snapped into the reality that we hadn’t been saving – and now the rains were falling on us. Maybe some of you can identify with the reality check you discovered when you pulled out a pair of jeans and realized that the only YOU that could wear them was twenty pounds ago! That brief encounter with the ghost of waistlines past brought a painful awareness to you – a change needs to come soon!

Our nation has rippled with a series of body blows that have left our markets shaken and our pockets emptier. The “tech bubble” was followed by the “housing bubble” and is now being followed up by the “government balloon”. While we continue to spend more than we make as a people, our country continues to take in more goods than it sends out each month, and our legislators slump into a stupor, watching the lights of the deficit numbers pile up without any sense that impending doom looms ahead. The same people that hunger for greater entitlements, grouse at lower paychecks, being somehow duped into believing that taxing a few thousand millionaires would pay all of our bills – and then the paychecks rolled out last week, and 77% of working Americans got a reality check. There aren’t enough dollars in rich hands to pay all the benefits to the rest of us. Reality is beginning to set in, but many are still watching the lights…

The problem with reality is that it is stubborn. No amount of emotional affirmation will change my waistline. The equation of truth is found in what I take in through food, and what I expend through physical exertion. The simplicity of the equation stubbornly insists that I take in less of what is adding to my girth and expend more energy in ways that will properly shape my body. Here is the truth: I don’t want to. I want dessert, and I don’t want to exercise. No matter what else I say – the issue comes down to the will. In our modern world, if you give a man something he wants to do, and he will find a way to do it; give a man something he hates to do, and he will work out a way to avoid it, make it sound tremendously complicated and somehow victimize himself in the process. He will claim metabolic rates as he scarfs down bacon burgers. He will do all he can to divorce his own chosen behavior from the outcome – making the problem intractable and out of his reach. Only when the red lights go on in his face, will the snap into reality surge through him.

Does the same problem of drifting from reality happen in our spiritual lives? Sure it does. Jonah the prophet from Gath Hepher in the Galilee, was a man who had drifted from spiritual reality. He was a follower of the God of Abraham. He knew God, and was known by his neighbors as a man that heard from God. He was not just an average believer; he was verbally called upon by God to accomplish a specific work. Yet, he was in desperate need of a smack into reality.

Key Principle: When I forget Who God really is, I live like He isn’t watching and doesn’t know what I am doing. Even as a believer, I lose track of reality and buy into the illusion that my life is my own.

The situation began with a believer who heard God’s Word clearly and understood how to complete the task.

Jonah 1:1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”

The issue wasn’t that God hadn’t spoken (1:1). This is why it is so utterly important for the world to try to carpet bomb the Bible with suspicion and attack. If God has spoken, then I am no longer a victim – I must choose to set aside my rebellious “do it my way” nature and follow Him – or face the consequences. Man would rather be a victim than have to stand before a clear choice of following God. He would rather say “truth is complicated” and “truth cannot be surely known”. He would rather philosophize and theorize than open his heart to the simple truth – the Creator has told us how we got here, why things are the way they are, and what He will do in us if we open ourselves to Him. Our response is our responsibility.

The issue wasn’t ignorance of God’s specific will and direction (1:2). God told him exactly where to go and what to do with his life. In point of fact, God’s Word is a blessing to the obedient, and an indictment to the rebellious. What has that to do with us? Consider this: God has made clear both the message of salvation for lost man, and the clear missive for those who desire to follow Him in a believer’s walk. His path is not so unclear. He may not have said “Go to Nineveh”, but is that the problem, really? Has he been unclear about your sensual desires? Has He made His commands unclear about honesty and integrity, so that you are unsure if lying or cheating is correct? I believe if you look with honesty at your life, you will find that God has been clear about the issues that are causing many, if not all, of the stir in your life.

  • God’s will, clearly stated, is that we abandon all religious hope, and cling to the Cross for salvation alone. If you are trusting in anything else – a Sunday School pin of attendance, a past aisle walk of commitment to Jesus, a holy momma growing up – but you haven’t begun and followed a true, surrendered heart relationship with Jesus, you are kicking against God’s clearly stated intent.
  • God’s will, clearly stated, is that we walk as believers in purity. If you are sneaking open a website to feed your sensuality, trying to find ways to cover your tracks so that you will not be embarrassed and caught – you are kicking against God’s clearly stated intent.
  • God’s will, clearly stated, is that as an obedient and maturing believer, you deliberately identify your spiritual gifts, and faithfully be at work using them to their fullness for God’s work in this community. He hasn’t been unclear about that. Yet, many believers will file in and out of churches today, and think that because they punched the card for a hour, and because they gave a dollar – God is satisfied.

What I am saying is that we are kidding ourselves if we think that God has not been clear about most things we encounter. The principles of God’s Word, properly applied by an open heart that has been filled with God’s Spirit through trusting in Jesus Christ as Master and Savior confound walking in constant confusion. Confused believers are usually in one of three conditions:

Rebellion: They are acting like they don’t know what God wants, but they aren’t truly open to His nudging, because they don’t like the implications of His commands.
Ignorance: They are unsure of the content of the Word, and aren’t getting the principles that apply to their situation. They need prayer, study, and patience.
Pain: They have been attacked by the enemy – some in an enduring memory of the past, and some in a powerful attack in the present. The confusion of war has fogged their view of truth. They need assistance, healing, and love.

The issue was the will to do what God said (1:2). The implications would have meant incredible sacrifice, offensive distinctiveness, and lead to less comfort and immediate satisfaction. Knowing what God said is helpful – surrendering to DO what God said is right. Far too many believers KNOW more than they are willing to DO.

The believer that didn’t truly recognize Who God is thinks an alternative strategy will work in life.

Jonah 1:3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

The verse revealed four critical errors in Jonah’s thinking in this verse (1:3):

First, there was IGNORANCE of God’s character and nature: Jonah didn’t take into account that you CANNOT flee God’s watchful eye.

Second, there was OBSTINANCE in Jonah’s heart: Jonah headed in the exact opposite direction of the stated calling of God – west instead of east.

Third, there was OBLIVIOUSNESS to his increased troubles: Jonah didn’t sense the catabasis of his life… “going down, going down, going down.” Jonah was slowly being digested by sin long before he was being slowly digested by a fish – he just didn’t see it.

Fourth, there was WITLESSNESS about his wallet: Jonah thought he could afford to “pay the fare” – but it was much more than he could ever afford! He thought a few pieces of silver were all the world would cost him. Mutiny from God costs everything. It will cost you an open relationship with God and replace it with guilt. It will rob your planned future by God, and replace it with a patched life of guilt at best or a broken life with a seared conscience at worst. It will cost your reputation as a faithful follower of God, and leave you stranded between hypocrisy and suspicion by those around you. It will imperil your very life – and it will give you satisfaction only for a short time.

The perilous troubles were God’s way of pointing the believer back home to Him – but a rebel is often too consumed with his own desires to notice.

Jonah 1:4 The LORD hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. 5 Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep. 6 So the captain approached him and said, “How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.”

God isn’t willing to let people walk away easily (1:4). It is HARD to kick against God. People do it inside LONG before they do it on the outside –so we don’t always see how long it has really been going on. No man suddenly becomes base. No marriage suddenly falls apart. No one suddenly decides to lie, steal, or murder – these are but a symptom of an ongoing rebellious process already deeply rooted in the heart. The Bible is replete with examples that God brings troubles and personal afflictions to pull rebels back. For Jonah, the “great wind” was God’s doing. Enough of the pansy God that is the happy genie in the bottle preached across America today. If you are sick and you are running from God, I would like you to be open to the idea that sickness may be FROM GOD. If you are working harder and harder and falling more and more behind – I’d like you to consider that God may be trying to get your attention deep inside. Your wife or husband may not know the issue – but YOU do. God isn’t going to let you talk the talk and inside rebel – without fighting back FOR you, by positioning things AGAINST YOU.

My rebellion brings peril to those around me (1:5). John Donne was right: “No man is an island”. We live with the whirlwind effect of the rebellion of those about us – and they live in the effect of our rebellion. Our lives are intertwined. When a Sunday School teacher allows lust to develop in his heart, an adulterous or fornicating affair with another member is the fruit – but that is just one fruit. The broken hearts of the other students – something that may take years to unfold – are more fruits of the same tree. One of those very students may grow up to be a rock star that pulls the hearts of a generation from God’s Word in defiant rebellion – or maybe a President or Congressman that does the same. The mistrust that develops in the hearts of others in the scene will plague them and keep them from growing in Bible studies for years to come. Jonah’s fellow travelers were imperiled by his rebellion and his presence. Think about this: a rebellious believer in the presence of the world makes the situation WORSE than if they people never knew a follower of God. It is often much more difficult to reach people in a post-Christian west than in the still untouched pagan jungle. The rebellion and misdeeds of believers has doused the flames of the Gospel and cooled our ability to reach others at home. This is why the enemy spends more time tempting, teasing, and attacking the believer, rather than simply steering the course of the unbeliever. One affects the destiny of the other.

Rebellion from God is both exhausting and numbing (1:5b). In the confluence of our own desire to shut off sensitivity to God and things spiritual (read: truth) along with the aiding process of the enemy’s attack to keep pushing us in our rebellion – we lose our sensitivity to dangerous behaviors. We lose our sensitivity to the effects of our actions. We sleep while others panic about us. The stupor of the long drive overtakes our once sharp reflexes. Make no mistake about it, when we are walking in rebellion, our self-sensitivity increases and our care for others decreases. Our taste for self-indulgence overtakes our longing to help and assist others around us. Sin envelopes the heart and we become more and more selfish – often numb to the real affect our rebellion is having on our deportment and character.

What becomes obvious to others still strangely feels manageably hidden by us.

Jonah 1:7 Each man said to his mate, “Come, let us cast lots so we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.” So they cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 Then they said to him, “Tell us, now! On whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?” 9 He said to them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the LORD God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men became extremely frightened and they said to him, “How could you do this?” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.

Men have no real device to discern the origin and purpose of troubles –so they will stab in the dark when troubles come (1:7-8). What if we dug into a school shooting and saw a generation ago a father that was caught up in pornography? What if he raised a son that had a hardened and inappropriate view of women that played out on his wife? What if she, a victim of abuse, raised a son that was ravaged by mental illness – and she did so both alone after a cheap divorce? What if the pain she suffered caused her to hunger for weapons in the closet? What if those weapons were used to kill twenty-six people in a school? The bullet-ridden bodies of those sweet children would be directly connected back to a man, forty years ago, buying a Playboy magazine. No one would be able to see that – they would only sit and wonder how such troubled youths develop. They will blame the mechanism of the gun, because they won’t stop the pornography and they want cheap and easy no-fault divorces. They will be wholly unable to connect the dots between one generation and another. Lost men, even expert lost men, have no real ability to recognize root causes – because addressing them would strip us of some of our deepest held sinful practices. Taking the guns will do much less than putting a stop to easy divorces a generation from now – but they can’t see that –they WON’T see that.

Others often see and feel the results of our sin long before we recognize what we have done (1:9-10). Isn’t it funny how the men around Jonah connected the dots between his rebellion and their peril much more quickly than did the dulled Jonah? That is the effect of sinful rebellion – it dulls our perception. The more we do it, the duller we get. We can be rocking in the midst of a storm and make little or no connection between our run from God’s Word and our current jeopardy. Here is a secret: Others see it. They may not tell you, but they sense something is very wrong long before you tell them.

• Did you notice the fact that Jonah was verbally prepared to recite that God was Lord over Heaven, sea, and dry land? If he truly understood the implications of that, to where did he think he would run? Knowing the Bible isn’t following the Bible. Knowing theology isn’t living the truth. A man or woman of God must hear this warning: If you think your knowledge of God substitutes for your obedience TO God – you are woefully mistaken. If you think WORK for God will substitute for a WALK with God – you are a sad believer… and your substitution may have convinced you, but God is not tricked, and those close to you know something is very wrong.

• As the boat was tossed, did you also notice how intolerant people around Jonah became with his hypocrisy? They were incensed because he was fleeing from his own God (1:10). The world forgives lascivious behavior faster than hypocrisy. They would rather you claim no belief that proclaim the truth of a God you do not serve. Remember that! Better to say nothing about your witness for God’s salvation and His Word than preach Christ and live self. Of course, the real design is to live and proclaim His mastery over the universe AND your choices – but that should give us pause. The disobedient believer is often used by the enemy unawares to block seekers from the truth – because men instinctively abhor hypocrisy.

Reality smacks us when we realize that our secret is now obviously exposed – and there is no sense trying to hide our wretched state.

Jonah 1:11 So they said to him, “What should we do to you that the sea may become calm for us?”—for the sea was becoming increasingly stormy. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you.” 13 However, the men rowed desperately to return to land but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them. 14 Then they called on the LORD and said, “We earnestly pray, O LORD, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us; for You, O LORD, have done as You have pleased.” 15 So they picked up Jonah, threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging.

At the moment the sin is exposed, the obedient believer should know what he or she should do (1:11-12a). Jonah said, “Put some distance between us.” How much simpler to say, “Turn the ship around and I will ask forgiveness for running!” Nope. Get AWAY from me. Jonah sees his guilt, admits it openly, but fails to see the POINT of the trouble. The ship could go back, and the men could be saved as he turned to obey. Stubbornly, he went down into the sea, letting the cold water rush around his still disobedient and resistant soul. The passage is clear that the MEN sought God, not Jonah. He was fixed on HIS SIN and HIS PUNISHMENT – but not on the open hand of forgiveness.

In rebellion, we re-create God as a harsh caricature of Himself (1:12b). Just as Jonah told the men to throw him overboard, he should have seen how dumb an idea that was. Believers that know God is not happy with them can change that in a true act of surrender. They cannot control the seas, but a good start would be to pray. Did Jonah pray? No, he simply told them to toss him into the deep blue sea – because he wasn’t ready to drop to his knees alongside them. Instead, he was convinced that God wouldn’t forgive HIS sin. His was too big, too obvious, too dark.

• Do not buy into the lie that you cannot be forgiven. God is ready to accept the broken pieces of your life if they are submitted by one who is truly broken and ready to be healed by God.
• Do not delay in dropping to your knees amid the crashing sea of problems in your life. The waves aren’t there because God hates you, or is mad at you.

“The waves are crashing into your life to get you to turn the ship around and drop to your knees. Stop running!”

God can use even the defeated believer to show His power and care.

Jonah 1:16 Then the men feared the LORD greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows. 17 And the LORD appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.

Only God could take a rebel and make them an effective object lesson for Him (1:16). God alone can feature a failure as His prized witness! The Bible is full of men who had all the qualifying marks of failure:

• Consider Abraham – that lied about his wife and out of fear nearly let another sleep with her before God sent a sickness to stop that from happening.
• Consider Jacob – whose lies and schemes, together with his mom, are infamous to Bible students.
• Consider Moses – ex-con murderer and runaway spoiled prince – made into the leader of God’s people.
• Consider Gideon – great leader of armies called by God while fearfully hiding in a hole.
• Consider David – schemer, killer, adulterer, politician – and featured song-writer of Scripture.

The list goes on and on… Don’t even get me started on the disciples, Paul or Timothy. Can we not see it? God specializes in taking broken lives and making them examples of His grace, His love, and His forgiveness – and He will do it with you – if you let Him!

Even though the believer defied Him, God had the fish prepared (1:17). It wasn’t a comfortable experience, nor was it a desired one – but it was a life-saving planned experience. It offered Jonah a second chance that he wasn’t even seeking yet. He needed marinating with chewed fish before he would come to his senses. In all honesty, what he needed is what we all need – a show of force by God on our behalf. When the believer is running, he has come to believe that God is AGAINST HIM. It isn’t true, but it IS often his perspective. By God showing up powerfully, that believer is smacked into the reality… God DOES LOVE ME. He DOES still want me enlisted to do His will. I am NOT DONE.

Though it really applies after the vomit experience of Jonah 2:1, think about one more truth before we go: The look and smell of the “second chance believer” is distinct – they are weak in self and strong in understanding of God’s nature and power. When you meet them, you will know them by their scars, their serious understanding of God’s work…these are people that know WHO God is, WHERE God is, and HOW God loves and forgives. They may not be obvious in stature, but they will be in tone – if you listen to them. Remember..

When I forget Who God really is, I live like He isn’t watching and doesn’t know what I am doing. Even as a believer, I lose track of reality and buy into the illusion that my life is my own.

The School of Joy: “The Resistance Movement” – Philippians 4:1-9

out sick 1This week it happened again. I was working with great fervor, but not being a careful enough steward of my body, and my resistance to the cold and flu broke down. I hate getting sick. I don’t mind the physical symptoms as much as I hate to waste time lying around accomplishing nothing and watching the work back up. The breakdown of my resistance was the invitation for sickness to overtake me – just like it is in you. We cannot always avoid being around sick people – but we can compromise our system and rob our body’s ability to fight off invading infection by our own decisions. How? One way to do that is eat badly. (All holiday eaters say “check”.) Another way to do that is get too little sleep. (All holiday party goers say “check”). Another way to do it is live with additional stress. (All holiday shoppers say “check”). Isn’t it a wonder we don’t all just die between Christmas and the New Year celebration?

Resistance is a concept well known in modern life.

• In electricity, it is defined as “a measure of the degree to which an object opposes an electric current through it”.

• In physics, it explains “drag” on our aircraft or boat with “fluid or gas forces opposing motion and flow”.

• In medicine, the term is used to describe: ”the protective assistance gained through taking a specific medicine or following a specific regimen of treatment”.

In short, resistance is about forging the ability to stand firm in the face of pressure.

Why are we talking about it? Because God’s Word addressed a problem long ago that we are observing again in our day. Anyone paying close attention is really beginning to notice that in the world of the twenty-first century Western church – resistance is quickly evaporating.

There are increasing numbers of people who claim to follow Christ with few distinguishing marks that separate them from the culture around them.

Believers appear to be less able to stand firm in the face of the deluge of immoral thinking and outlandish behavior of our day. A wise old Pastor wrote: “If the church is to be the church, it must resist the track of the world. It must guide the world in God’s intended path, and challenge the immoral lifestyle and unconscionable cruelty of sinful expression in society.” Dear ones, God has called on His people to stand firmly on a wall of truth and resist a tsunami of lies…It is our privilege, and it can be done with great security and intense JOY – but we must be instructed on how to do it.

Look back with me into the letter of Paul to Philippi that was later divided into four chapters. Identify the call in the opening of the final chapter in Philippians 4:1 “Therefore, my beloved brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.” Can you see the call? Paul had one thing he was driving home to the congregation – STOP BACKING UP. Stand on the ground God put under your feet. Resist.

Key Principle: Believers can effectively resist the moral slide of our nation when we follow the pattern God gave to us.

Before we dive too deeply into the verses of chapter four, let me ask you something. Did you notice how Paul positioned what he was about to say? The chapter opened with a “THEREFORE” – as Paul beckoned us backward in the letter, urging us to look at the setting carefully for his point. His ending instructions were rooted in the previous points he raised. When we last looked at this letter, we tried to grasp the Spirit’s call to JOY in the face of trouble as it was expressed in what is now called the third chapter of Paul’s writing to Philippi. Since it has been some time, let’s recall the three steps we observed to move from panic to peace in the face of trouble.

The first step was to DEAL WITH OUR OWN HEARTS before anything else. A man with limburger cheese stuck to his lip thinks the whole world stinks – when the problem is that all his sense of smell is dominated by a close odor. His senses are fouled but it seems like the world is. Paul said in Philippians 3:1 to rejoice, and that he didn’t mind repeating that call at all. We have to face the fact that we cannot see all that God is doing, and we aren’t qualified to judge the day from where we sit. What we can do, and what we MUST do, is look inside and place our hearts under the light of the Master’s scrutiny. Is my attitude one of trust or of insecurity?

The next step we observed in the letter in 3:2-11 was the call to KEEP OUR EYES AND EARS OPEN. Looking within can make one be blind without. Troubles were plaguing the early church, just as troubles plague the work today. Some problems came from the intentionally planted “dogs” (3:2) that were moving about in the churches and couldn’t be pinned down. They had great criticism for churches and believers, but offered no regular help and commitment. They FED – but they didn’t provide anything but an occasional critique. Some were plants of the enemy to disrupt, but some were simply immature believers that had not been challenged and held accountable to learn and live God’s Word. They drifted about, feeding on whatever was currently fashionable and convenient. They didn’t build anything; they just used what others were building. A third group was found in those who got terribly impressed with physical accomplishments – those who thought spiritual assessment could be accurately made in this world. In each case – dogs, drifters and deed measurers – God warned that distraction would come if His people didn’t recognize what was happening – keeping eyes and ears open.

The third step we mentioned was found in the end of chapter three – we must KEEP PUSHING RELENTLESSLY TOWARD THE PRIZE. Paul leaned into the future – pressing to grow to be what God truly desired of him. He didn’t pull back to a monastery – but anticipated what was coming. The temptation to GIVE UP is very real, but needs to be checked. Paul didn’t say that his future goal was about ACCOMPLISHMENT IN THIS LIFE – but rather about his honest and full surrender to Jesus Christ REGARDLESS of where that would lead him. He wasn’t saying he was going to DO great things for God that other men could see – but that he would reach out to the hand of Jesus in Heaven and grab it more deliberately, more strongly. That is something you CAN do, and that is something you MUST do.

As chapter four opened, Paul had expressed that if a believer dealt with his heart before God, looked with understanding and care at the situation of the local church body, and kept his eyes focused well beyond the constraints of the physical world – they would be ready to face the challenges of troubling circumstances with assurance and stability. That would certainly set them on the right path toward offering stiff resistance to the world’s onslaught of their Biblical values. At the same time, Paul wasn’t done. He now offered six actions that construct a wall of resistance. He argued that resistance was essential to keeping the Gospel open to future generations. The wall needed to be constructed, and the Spirit used his quill to tell believers how to accomplish this vital task.

Six Ways to Build a Wall of Resistance

We can panic and run into monasticism, or we can acquiesce and accept moral ambiguity – but both would be disobedient to God. We are to stand firm in the faith. We are to live in a way that contrasts with the world. We are called to build a wall. How do we accomplish this? Here are six ways to complete the task:

First, to build resistance we must face interpersonal tension – we may struggle to harmonize.

When believers fail to get along, and become settled with the idea that division is acceptable – they say much about what they believe concerning God’s call and power. Paul told two co-workers in the Philippian church to get together.

Philippians 4:2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord.

The terms “auto phronein” literally translate to “be of the same mind” or literally the same “midriff or diaphragm; the parts around the heart.” The idea was to “properly, regulate (moderate) from within, as inner-perspective (insight) shows itself in corresponding, outward behavior.” Essentially, Paul is calling for discipline of inner feelings that show in harmonized outer behavior. The task comes down to one thing alone: inner discipline. We cannot expect to get along if we feel we have the right to verbalize every emotional outburst and “let it all hang out”. We MUST learn to deal with our heart within, and curb our mouth without.

Admittedly, we know little of WHO these two ladies were, or what their true role was. We DO know they fell out with one another—fueling a disagreement between them. Perhaps it began as a small slight, but it eventually mushroomed into a rift that began to hurt the entire congregation, and was reported to Paul in Rome. The women may have held responsible positions in their municipality. As a Roman colony, Philippi gave a level of independence to women that was not common in most Greek cities of the Roman period; this may account for the prominence of the women and their disagreement.

James reminds that troubles come between us because of troubles within us. James 4:1-4 offers these words: “1 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Before you overreact to the hyperbole in James’ words, listen to the symptoms of a building conflict between believers:

• First, James said we start into quarrels and conflicts because we get hurt by the war within to have what we want, the way we want it, when we want it. We are focused on selfish pleasure so very easily, and when we are bit deeply, and our veins flow with the venom of self – it shows in our stubborn behavior toward one another.

• Second, James argued that when we are fixated with lust, and hunger for something dominates our thinking – we are more concerned about what we want then any care for the another person. We can “kill” them in our minds – their needs don’t count. We quarrel because our desire is our only passion.

• Third, James admits that we stay in a state of distance from God – either not asking Him to meet our inner needs because we know them to be debased, or allowing our hurt to even warp our view of God’s goodness.

• Finally, James ended the few verses with the recognition that we are all too friendly with the world, and that bond pulls our hearts from following God’s priorities. We don’t WANT what God desires; we want what the world offers. That poison can be seen in our comfort with an immoral world, and our bickering with the family of God.

Paul recognized what all of us in church leadership recognize: the greatest single hindrance to the spread of the Gospel is the behavior of God’s people – especially in relation to one another.

Churches can tear down in one business meeting what took generations to build in reputation in their community. Two arguing believers can reduce the great Sequoia of witness to a pile of ashes faster than felling and burning the actual great tree. The failure between us to get along is responsible for countless losses of testimony and embittering of lost men and women. Some of the people who are most avid haters of Jesus grew up in churches and saw our mistreatment of one another. We must face the fact that harmony is hard – but working for it builds the wall of resistance in a community searching for truth.

Second, to build resistance we must create systems to deal with the growing struggle, and recognize committed workers.

Philippians 4:3 Indeed, true companion, I ask you also to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel, together with Clement also and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

With the issue between Euodia and Syntyche still in mind, Paul enlisted an unnamed individual to intervene directly and assist in ending the quarrel between Euodia and Syntyche. It isn’t as easy to see in English, but in Greek both of the people in verse 2 were female. In verse three, Paul changed to masculine form and called on his “companion” to step in and help the women settle their dispute. One commentator, (Peter Toon) wrote in his commentary: “His identity is not known, but he was probably a respected and influential member of the church whose word would be heeded”. Much earlier, William Barclay, wrote: “Maybe the best suggestion is that the reference is to Epaphroditus, the bearer of the letter.” That sounds very plausible.

Regardless of WHO God used – the fact remains that the struggle needed to be solved and to do so would require intervention of someone. Paul made sure that person understood his RESPECT for both of the women and their help in times past. He made clear that they were believers, anticipating eternal life. He shared the problem out of a heavy heart, not a flippant spirit of gossip. Paul set up the necessary system to bring resolution. In fact, we possess indirect historical evidence that, perhaps, the women did reconcile and peace was restored. Tucked in the archives of the Apostolic Father, we have a letter from Polycarp of Smyrna. Early in the second century, the church in Philippi wrote to Polycarp to inquire about the fate of another minister who had been arrested and taken to Rome. Their letter appears lost in history, but Polycarp’s reply was preserved. In it, he commended the congregation saying: “have followed the example of true love and have helped on their way, as opportunity offered, those who were bound in chains.” He added: “I rejoice also that your firmly rooted faith, renowned since early days, endures to the present and produces fruit for our Lord Jesus Christ.” Scant evidence, I know… but we may be able to conclude that our dear servant ladies resolved divisions and tensions.

Beloved, we must grow up! We cannot allow divisions to foster and disgust to build. We need ways to resolve problems and we need to be insistent in doing so – so that our wall of resistance to the world’s moral deluge is buttressed. The church cannot preach unity and reconciliation with God while fighting behind the scenes amongst ourselves. I have enjoyed many years of Pastoral peace because some around me have insisted on confronting problems and resolving conflicts. It has made serving Jesus where I am much more joyful and secure.

Third, to build resistance we must recognize that the world will watch our demeanor as closely as they listen to our message.

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

Don’t be deceived! The world isn’t listening to our doctrinal disputes as much as it is watching our expressions and listening to our tone. Look at the three truths Paul pressed in two short verses:

• He repeated the need for believers to be steady about rejoicing, not grousing. Beloved, some meetings of senior believers don’t sound encouraging or encouraged. We all recognize that things aren’t going well on the moral landscape, there is little encouragement on the governmental scene, and the financial prospects don’t appear to be improving. If we ever forget, there are news outlets on 24/7 dedicated to depression and the fostering of blame. Believers must be diligent to ward off the complaining spirit that is gripping the nation. We are to sound like the buzzing of those rejoicing. God is still on the throne. He hasn’t finished telling His story, and we want to thank Him for His endless goodness today! Drop the attitude. Shake off the negativity. Look up! God is still smiling, in spite of earth’s groans. He is readying the Bride for the soon coming wedding dance.

• Paul placed a goal before believers that they would build the reputation of gentle reasonableness. The term for “reasonable” or “gentle” in the text is well chosen. The word “epieikḗs” is a compound adjective, derived from epí, “on or fitting” and eikos, “equitable, fair”. It simply means “equitable”; and is “gentle” in the sense of truly fair- seeking to keep the “spirit of the law.” Believers must be known as people of principle, but not rigid and unbending in the complexity of life. We cannot toss aside truth, but we don’t wield it like an offensive sword. We have to try to be FAIR with people, and CARING toward them. It isn’t enough to be right, we need to be of a loving nature. Paul’s call was always to speak the truth in love. People don’t care what you know until they know that you truly care about THEM. They don’t want to be a project, or the object of your evangelism – they want to be loved and genuinely cared about. We must see people as God’s great gift, and try to HELP them see God. Pharisees hinder and hold out – followers of Jesus invite in and love. There are times we cannot, but they must be the extreme.

• He reminded them that the Master was close to them, watching and listening. We aren’t motivated simply by the eyes of the crowd. We serve One – and He is nearby. He cares what we are doing and HOW we are doing it.

If we would simply remember that our walk talks, and our talk walks but our walk talks louder than our talk walks – we would do well.

Fourth, to build resistance we must remember that the Lord only removes the stress we deliberately place in His hands.

Every time we address the subject of prayer in any text, I get concerned. It has been my experience that the subject of prayer brings much GUILT into the room, every time it is mentioned. Most believers I know well are very unsatisfied with their prayer life. I am not saying they are dissatisfied with God’s answers – quite the contrary. They are dissatisfied with the time they spend in prayer, and the very mention of it makes them feel dirty and inadequate. Stop. Listen for a minute to what the text says…

Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Can any among us truly say they have mastered worry and now stand before God without anxiousness about ANYTHING in their lives? I doubt it. If you are engaged in the battle, your mind is filled with concerns (that is the acceptable Christian word for WORRY!). Paul didn’t say what he said because he wanted believers to read it with dread for generations. He used the word DIVIDED- the term that is now translated “anxious”. Worry divides you energy and cuts your effectiveness. It keeps you awake when you should be asleep and recharging. It distracts when you should be focused. Look at the words closely.

Stop worrying. Give the cares to God. Ask for what you need. Pour out your heart. Share while you thankfully recall all that God has given you. Leave HIM with the problems, and take home the PEACE.

God’s interest in your prayer life is not self-serving. He isn’t lonely. He isn’t denying you the opportunity to do it on your own because you might have too much fun. Facing anxiety is like moving your couch. It is TOO BIG for you to move alone. You can nudge it, but you can’t get it out the door without another pair of hands. That is what God offers. If you want to clear out the clutter and get back to peace – you will need His strong hands to help. He’ll take your trouble and leave you the peace you long for – but only if you let Him.

Fifth, to build resistance we must fight the battle for the mind and learn to think properly.

The battleground in the believer is in the mind. The enemy has lost your soul, and now he seeks to mute your voice and curb your influence. The fastest way to sideline a powerful force for God is confuse the thinking within. Get them caught up chasing the wrong ideas, and thinking about the wrong things. Paul said it this way:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Paul opened with thinking about things that are TRUE. The word “alēthḗs” is a negative – the “a” means “not” and “lanthánō” means “unnoticed, concealed. The term is “true” in terms of it being a fact or reality that is tested and cannot be hidden. The idea is that it has been tested and is truly authentic.

Paul moved to the HONORABLE. The term semnós comes from the word sébomai, “to revere, be in awe”. It refers to what is “august, dignified, weighty, deeply respected, majestic, of grave importance”.

He urged onward to what is RIGHT. The term díkaios is an adjective derived from dikē, “right, judicial approval” and literally means things “approved by God” or things “upright.”

He pushed them to think of things PURE. The term hagnós is an adjective meaning “chaste, un-adultered both inside and out; uncontaminated and undefiled from sin; not mixed with guilt or anything condemnable”.

He directed them to think on things LOVELY. The term prosphilḗs is a compound adjective, from prós, “extending toward” and philéō, meaning “worthy of personal affection” or “dearly prized”.

He called them to think on things OF GOOD REPUTE. The term “euphémos” meant “well reported of, spoken in a kindly spirit”, laudable, and reputable.

He marked out things that are EXCELLENT. This is the word arétē – the term for “moral excellence” which enriches life.

He called them to think of the PRAISEWORTHY. This is the term “épainos” from epí, “on, fitting,” and aínos, “praise”) – meaning apt praise, or accurate acknowledgment.

Let me ask you something… How should my desire to change my thinking change my actions?

• If I am to think of things that are TRUE what does that mean for the movies I watch, the books I read, and the games I play? Is fantasy that takes more of my day than reality a good thing?

• If I think of things HONORABLE, How much comedy should I build my life around? Should everything be a joke with me? Do I also feed on some ideas of substance? What have I read or watched that really took my breath away recently?

• If I think on things that are RIGHT – how much time should I spend in entertainments that encourage me to laugh at ungodly words or behaviors?

• If I think on things PURE, how many extra-marital affairs can I watch in the movie theatre before I am in disobedience?

• If I think of things LOVELY, how much gratuitous violence should be in my video gaming?

• If I think on things of GOOD REPUTE how much arguing, bashing, and shouting should I listen to on talk radio?

• If I thing of things that are MORALLY EXCELLENT, how many stations should never get turned on my TV?

Paul ended with: “These things consider”…logízomai is the word at the root of the English terms “logic, logical”. The idea is to “take into account”or “reckon” based on this thinking

Sixth, to build resistance we must stress the need for the team to be mentored and instructed to follow the recognized pattern.

Christianity is more caught then taught – but then, so is paganism. What should that mean about when and where we invest our time?

Philippians 4:9 The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Paul called on believers to learn, receive and practice truth together. It would bring peace to the body, and progress to the Gospel. People can’t simply get the lessons they need from a message or Sunday School class – they need PATTERNS as much as LESSONS. Consider this testimony:

Howard Hendricks tells of a mentor who changed his life in his book Iron Sharpens Iron. Howard was from a broken family, and said, “I could have lived, died, and gone to hell without anyone bothering to care.” However, a man named Walt from a tiny church in his neighborhood cared about reaching nine and ten year old boys for Jesus. One Saturday while he was playing marbles on the sidewalks of Philadelphia Walt came by and asked him if he wanted to go to Sunday School. The very thought of school made him decline, but Walt then asked if he would like to play marbles. Howard was the best marble player on his block, and was sure he could beat Walt easy. Walt won every single game, and after that Howard wanted to follow him everywhere. Over the next several years Walt would take the boys hiking, even though he had a bad heart. His teaching and love for thirteen boys, nine of whom came from broken homes, made a difference in their lives. Eleven of those boys went on to pursue careers as vocational Christian workers, even though Walt had only gone through the sixth grade.” (Sermon central illustrations).

This is the pattern: Learn to get along. Build systems that keep us together. Watch how we act before the world. Learn to surrender worry in prayer. Think rightly. Shape through mentoring.

Believers can effectively resist when we follow the pattern God gave to us.

Strength for the Journey: “Discerning God’s Direction” – Numbers 9

God’s ddirection1irection sometimes seems confusing, doesn’t it? You may have noticed that the Bible is not a small book, and it is not lacking in detail. God had much to say, and keeping all of it straight in our mind is essential, but it takes work. We need to really be intentional about learning and applying the Word, but sometimes it is confusing to us. Maybe a good way to introduce the problem is by using a humorous little story that makes the point…

Years ago, a small church suspected a candidate, despite his supposed seminary training, was not ready to be ordained to Gospel ministry. A committee of knowledgeable Christian men convened to question the candidate carefully on his knowledge of the Holy Scripture. The candidate offered some curious answers to theological questions. As a result, the committee decided the best thing to do was quiz his recall of the Scriptures. The candidate “… was asked, “What part of the Bible do you like best?” He said: “I like the New Testament best.” Then he was asked, “What Book in the New Testament is your favorite?” He answered, “I like the Book of the Parables, Sir.” [Puzzled by the response…] They asked him to relate one of the parables to the committee. And a bit uncertain, he began… “Once upon a time a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves; and the thorns grew up and choked the man. And he went on and met the Queen of Sheba, and she gave that man, yes sir, a thousand talents of silver, and a hundred changes of raiment. “And he got in his chariot and drove furiously and, as he was driving along under a big tree, his hair got caught in a limb and left him hanging there! And he hung there many days and many nights. The ravens brought him food to eat and water to drink. And one night while he was hanging there asleep, his wife Delilah came along and cut off his hair, and he fell on stony ground. And it began to rain, and rained forty days and forty nights. And he hid himself in a cave. Later he went on and met a man who said, ‘Come in and take supper with me.’ But he said, ‘I can’t come in, for I have married a wife.’ And the man went out into the highways and hedges and compelled him to come in! He then came to Jerusalem, and saw Queen Jezebel sitting high and lifted up in a window of the wall. When she saw him she laughed, and he said, ‘Throw her down out of there,’ and they threw her down. And he said ‘Throw her down again,’ and they threw her down seventy-times-seven. And the fragments which they picked up filled twelve baskets full! NOW, whose wife will she be in the day of the Judgment?” The story didn’t say what the committee decided, [but I have hope that he will not be your next Pastor]. (Adapted from a sermon by Bobby Scobey, If the Church Became Unchristian # 4 – Behavior More Important than Belief, 6/22/2010).

The passage we are looking at today will help us straighten out some problems in following God’s direction, while giving us confidence in God’s comforting presence. God IS with us. God’s will CAN be understood. His direction CAN be followed – but it will take work to discern the path. Look at the example in Numbers chapter nine.

Key Principle: God’s continual presence in our life is an empowering prize and a securing peace. When we don’t see it, we have strayed, and must choose to return.

Just as with us, so God dwelt with His people in the desert of Sinai, as they made their journey to the Promised Land God showed up before the people of Israel to keep the people moving ahead and confident about their direction. In the passage for our lesson today, He showed up in two important ways: 1) in response to uncertain application to the Word – when two instructions of God seemed to conflict God made His direction clear; 2) in direction and obvious manifestation of His power and presence when God wanted the people to move, He obviously LED them. The passage provided a record that there are two clear ways to follow God’s direction when His followers are uncertain:

• Seek Him when His Word offers what appears to be conflicting direction.
• Watch for His manifest presence and empowering in our lives.

God isn’t playing “cat and mouse games” with believers. He WANTS us to know His direction. He isn’t looking to be cryptic, causing us to search dark caves for ancient inscriptions. He has delivered His Word through the perils of history and the scrutiny of arrogant men. He has guided us by the hand with His enduring and patient hand. Yet, following the One we cannot see with our physical eye, while we are so transfixed in the material world can be difficult. God provided the content of His Word and the tug of His hand – yet there are still problems discerning His direction. God wants us to WORK at discerning His direction, and following His manifest presence. If we cut the chapter in two parts, we see answers to two distinct problems…

Two Problems following God’s direction:

Problem One: The complex nature of God’s Word in a sin-ridden society.

Life is often more complicated than a simple “right” and “wrong” in many areas of modern choice. I am not implying that God is uncertain about His desired design, but rather that the fruits of generations of sinners have made life more complicated than simply looking at a verse and deciding what is a correct practice. The further from God one has walked, the more complex it becomes to recognize the combinations of principles from God’s Word to solve problems. Facing the complexity of the modern family alone is a study in threading the needle of truth. Add to that the breadth of the principles of God’s Word, and we find ourselves having to search carefully for answers.

When we were raising children in schools that began with prayer, and taught respect to authority, and when we had the support of a community that operated in principles much closer to Biblical truth – the culture helped us raise our children to fear God and walk much closer to a Biblical form of morality. Whether we engaged the moral lesson that “Timmy and Lassie” taught us, or soaked in a primer in honesty we got from watching “Opie” get caught in a lie in Mayberry, the culture didn’t seem to try to pull the Bible away from daily life at every turn. We live now in different times. ABC Family line up on Tuesday night is now “Pretty Little Liars” followed by “The Lying Game”…and that is the FAMILY CHANNEL. The previews alone should scare a follower of God about what passes as moral in common culture.

As sin multiplies and wrong is redefined as right in this “progressive” culture, the application of God’s Word requires greater energy and more careful search with a consistent approach to Scripture. This is not a time for laziness in our study. We dare not “dumb down” our knowledge of the Word inside the church as the world numbs itself from God’s truth on the outside. That combination will leave young believers helpless in the confusion over God’s direction. It is time to do a more careful work in the Word, and to examine our lives carefully for conformity to God’s standard, while seeking to walk with intensity and consistency in God’s path of direction.

Now here is my question: What do you do when you have an important choice to make, and more than one principle of God’s Word applies, but doesn’t seamlessly fit together?

That was the problem in Numbers 9:1-14. God had already said ALL ISRAEL was to participate without exception in the Passover feast (cp. Ex. 12), but God subsequently instructed separation from sacrifices and cultic observances in Israel by those defiled by burial of their dead (Numbers 5:2), restricting them from participation in OTHER SACRIFICES and worship for a time. The specific question was this: “Which principle of God’s spoken Word applies in THIS SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCE?”

The Situation was set amid listening to the Lord:

God instructed the timing of the Passover feast. He wanted things done exactly, and according to all that He had said. Numbers 9:1 Thus the LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, 2 “Now, let the sons of Israel observe the Passover at its appointed time. 3 “On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall observe it at its appointed time; you shall observe it according to all its statutes and according to all its ordinances.” God spoke clearly, and Moses knew exactly what God’s intent was concerning the observance. They were given in statutes (a word for “engravings” or eternal and unchanging truths).

The context was strict obedience to the revealed desire of God:

Numbers 9:4 So Moses told the sons of Israel to observe the Passover. 5 They observed the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the LORD had commanded Moses, so the sons of Israel did. This should remind us of an important truth: God is not haphazard in His prescriptions. He is not sloppy in His standards – and His followers must not be as well. When God calls on His people to act, He does so with very specific principles and standards in mind. When Paul wrote to first century Corinthian believers not to “yoke together with unbelievers” – he certainly excluded cross participation between the pagan temple and the local church. The values, world view, and allegiances were different – because their God was different. As God spoke through Paul’s words, God marked out the family of believers as distinct in their community. Would not marrying a person who does not see life as an opportunity to serve our Master betray this idea? Believers need to be careful to recall that God is specific because God knows what He wants. For Israel, He expressed that He wanted full participation in the festival as previously instructed… and that set up the problem.

The Problem was there was no previous precedent for a specific case of conflicting Scripture:

Outside the camp were some who were defiled because of a recent burial. They were now faced with a dilemma – two things God said seemed to conflict. Numbers 9:6 But there were some men who were unclean because of the dead person, so that they could not observe Passover on that day; so they came before Moses and Aaron on that day. Don’t quickly dismiss that Moses and Aaron received the men. The men CAME IN to the camp to meet with Moses, though they were defiled. Remember, defilement didn’t mean SINFUL, it meant INELLIGIBLE for a specified time because of a condition that was NOT specifically sinful. Not all defilement is from direct sin – though sin defiles. Sin causes death in a general way, and the handling of the dead defiles one and sets them out of participation for a time.

Moses was willing to meet them, because it wasn’t clear what they should do. Was defilement suspended by God at Passover? How could God both REQUIRE them to do something and RESTRICT them at the same time? They assumed they WERE ELIGIBLE and returned to the camp – a logical but erroneous conclusion.

The Question was WHY they could not observe (they were still part of Israel!):

Standing in front of Moses and Aaron, the men confronted the problem: Numbers 9:7 Those men said to him, “Though we are unclean because of the dead person, why are we restrained from presenting the offering of the LORD at its appointed time among the sons of Israel?” 8 Moses therefore said to them, “Wait, and I will listen to what the LORD will command concerning you.” Look at what Moses did with the problem! When he didn’t know God’s direction, he dropped to his knees and sought God.

Don’t misunderstand or misread what happened. There were TWO THINGS Moses did:

1) He confronted each of the commands and knew them thoroughly BEFORE he came before God. What it meant to OBSERVE the feast was not at all unclear. The three leading points: eating the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, leaving nothing till the next day, and not breaking a bone (Exodus 12:8, Exodus 12:10, Exodus 12:46) are repeated in this passage.

Let me say it carefully, in hopes that the lesson will not be obscured: We don’t have to prayerfully ask God for answers to questions He has already made clear in His Word. Don’t drop to your knees and ask if you should have a sexual encounter outside of a marriage vow. Don’t seek God’s face, asking whether you should steal money from another’s dresser drawer. Don’t fall in desperation before Jesus asking Him to change His standards on pornography. Don’t beg God to give you millions without work in the next lottery. Respect for God means searching His Word before we ask Him to answer us contrary to His stated principles and His clean character. This is why it is important for a believer to KNOW the Word so that they can follow God’s direction. There aren’t as many difficult directions as we may think. Direction is always a mystery to one who has not read the map already.

2) He sought God when the two commands could not be reconciled. When two passages seemed to lead in two directions – he was without an answer. Moses THEN went to God with the problem.

Rahab faced this issue when the spies came to her. Should she tell the king the men were hidden under the flax on the roof, and came from the northeast? Should she hide the men sent from God to her, at the expense of telling the truth?

Daniel faced this problem when the king made a decree to cease all prayer to anyone but to his throne, and God had already communicated with Daniel about his consistent prayer life.

Peter and John faced this when they were told by Jerusalem temple officials to cease preaching about Jesus.

Every believer who has ever had to carefully search the Scriptures for issues of civil disobedience has faced the problem. God calls believers to respect the government, but God placed the limit of that obedience inside the specific boundaries of His Word. The Apostles said: “We must obey God rather than men” because they understood the boundary of the two principles in collision.

Mishandling the Bible can have severe consequences. When Federal troops occupied Cheraw, South Carolina, the Confederates left so much gun powder behind that the Union troops decided to dump most of it in a little creek. Some bored soldiers were looking for some entertainment so they scooped up handfuls of the powder and carried it to their cooking fires a few hundred yards away, where they exploded it amid much shouting and laughter. With each handful they grew more careless, and left numerous crisscrossing trails of powder running back to the ravine. Sergeant Theodore Upson of the 100th Indiana had just started his coffee boiling when he saw “a little flash of powder running along the ground.” A moment later he noticed that the powder flashes had multiplied and were running in all directions. Someone yelled, “Look out for the magazine!” Upson and his comrades “made some pretty quick moves” in putting as much space between themselves and the creek bed as the burning powder trails would allow. “Then there was a tremendous explosion,” Upson recorded. “The dirt and stones flew in every direction.” The ground shook for miles. The force of the blast destroyed several houses and shattered nearly every window in town. A storm of shell and shrapnel rained down for a half-mile in every direction. One officer and three enlisted men were killed as a result of the blast, and more than a dozen were wounded. Rumor had it that Sherman at first believed the explosion was an act of sabotage, and was on the verge of issuing orders to burn the rest of the town and execute the mayor in retaliation. He relented, however, when he learned that it was the carelessness of his own men that had caused the devastation. (adapted from Mark L. Bradley,The Battle of Bentonville: Last Stand in the Carolinas, pg. 67-69).

When the Bible is poorly handled, people use its pages to justify enslavement of men of color. Social justice proponents use it to justify endless handouts without regard to any personal responsibility. The “love of God” gets misconstrued to tolerate whatever sinful practice has recently sparkled in the eye of the lost world. The Word explodes on people who use it as a popular quote book, or a rationalization source for sinful display. In the end, it is misquoted to justify wickedness and its context is perverted to appease religious sensibility, but it leads men away from God!

God replied with three standards:

God has a plan and He is not afraid to answer questions about it. Moses came with a legitimate issue, and God answered it. God offered three important statements:

First, He instructed them to observe a month later, but to observe exactly as the others did. Numbers 9:9 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If any one of you or of your generations becomes unclean because of a dead person, or is on a distant journey, he may, however, observe the Passover to the LORD. 11 ‘In the second month on the fourteenth day at twilight, they shall observe it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 12 ‘They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute of the Passover they shall observe it.

God didn’t force people in the midst of severe pain and loss to festivity and observance; He allowed them to choose to be a part of this a month later. At the same time, the METHODS used were not open to individual interpretation. “Do it or don’t”, the Lord said, “but if you do, it can be practiced only according to the statutes.” The normal restriction from offering did not apply if they felt they wanted to participate.

Second, He restricted any delay by others: Numbers 9:13 ‘But the man who is clean and is not on a journey, and yet neglects to observe the Passover, that person shall then be cut off from his people, for he did not present the offering of the LORD at its appointed time. That man will bear his sin.

Third, He pressed the point that there was one standard, even among strangers in their midst: Number 9:14 ‘If an alien sojourns among you and observes the Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its ordinance, so he shall do; you shall have one statute, both for the alien and for the native of the land.’”

Step back from the detail of the passage and look at what God made clear here. The keys to following God in the complexity of His Word are two: knowing the Word well enough to understand the issue, and then seeking God for His specific intention in prayer.

I don’t want to beat the point, but I want it to be very clear. The Bible contains many principles that may appear to conflict in complex life situations. It is the work of the local church to help you to build a consistent study pattern in God’s Word, so that you will have a grasp of how to apply to principles of Scripture to the complex issues we face in modern life. If you are regularly a part of a church where that is not being accomplished, I apologize for my colleagues and their misuse of sacred responsibility.

We can have fun together, but we are not a social club. We may enjoy experiences as we tie our lives together, but the primary focus of the local church is to train you to understand the Biblical world view and live it out in daily life. This includes relationships, so the body works together. This is not a counseling center, but the Bible offers the best counsel to be found on the planet. This is not a philanthropy organization, but Spirit-filled believers are generous people, and love to give toward the meeting of needs. This is not a social club, but God’s people function as a body and need to laugh together on their way to being a useful tool in God’s hand.

Let me ask you to consider something: Purpose to dig into God’s Word this year. Be a part of learning it, studying it, and applying it to life. Learn where problems are answered inside its pages. Be a part of a church that is heavily invested in the work of systematic and careful study of its contents. The world outside doesn’t know it, but it desperately needs well informed Christians who can discuss the principles of the Bible with confidence and clarity. When tragedy strikes, the airwaves fill with pundits that have no real ability to explain evil, let alone restore confidence and hope. The hope is found in the truth. The truth is found in the Word of God.

Problem Two: The need to discern God’s manifest presence

I think every believer wants more than a book to follow. We don’t fall in love with the Word as an end in itself. We fall in love with what God said, because we are learning to fall in love with HIM! We want to experience His love and presence in daily life. Let me say it plainly: God directs believers in more than just principles – He does it in very specific manifestations of presence. If you are walking with God, you KNOW His touch. You experience His presence. I am not getting spooky, but I loathe the hesitancy we have for really admitting that we long to have Him hold tightly onto our hand and guide us. I want that – I admit it. I want more than principles and theory – I want to KNOW HIM, walk with Him, follow Him. The good news is that He desires the same thing. Look at the second part of Numbers 9, this time in the verse from 15 to 23…

The sign of His manifest presence came from the time of clear obedience:

Don’t overlook that God’s manifest presence – the times when He nudges you, speaks into your life through the voice of others, shouts through something you read or hear, or even inserts His direction into your mind as you walk through the day – are all predicated in the Word on obedience to His Word. Numbers 9:15 Now on the day that the tabernacle was erected the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and in the evening it was like the appearance of fire over the tabernacle, until morning. 16 So it was continuously; the cloud would cover it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.

The people DID what God said, and God showed up when the map ran out for them. They knew His general direction, and they were experiencing His character. Moses was getting and giving His Word. Yet, they needed more. They needed to know where to go next…and God didn’t let them down. His obvious presence followed their submission – and it still does.

The marker of the presence moved to get the people re-directed:

Numbers 9:17 Whenever the cloud was lifted from over the tent, afterward the sons of Israel would then set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the sons of Israel would camp. 18 At the command of the LORD the sons of Israel would set out, and at the command of the LORD they would camp; as long as the cloud settled over the tabernacle, they remained camped. 19 Even when the cloud lingered over the tabernacle for many days, the sons of Israel would keep the LORD’S charge and not set out.

Notice that verse 18 clues us in to the reality that the people understood God’s movement as His command. When God stopped, they knew He wanted them to stop. When God went on, they saw it as His direction.

The key to following God’s direction was watching out for His manifest presence:

Numbers 9:20 If sometimes the cloud remained a few days over the tabernacle, according to the command of the LORD they remained camped. Then according to the command of the LORD they set out. 21 If sometimes the cloud remained from evening until morning, when the cloud was lifted in the morning, they would move out; or if it remained in the daytime and at night, whenever the cloud was lifted, they would set out. 22 Whether it was two days or a month or a year that the cloud lingered over the tabernacle, staying above it, the sons of Israel remained camped and did not set out; but when it was lifted, they did set out. 23 At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out; they kept the LORD’S charge, according to the command of the LORD through Moses.

The keys to following God’s manifest presence are two: desire to follow Him and keep careful watch for Him. The people moved as they saw God move. They kept their eyes fixed on Him. They wanted to be in His presence and follow Him as He moved. They didn’t move and then ask the cloud to follow them – they watched the cloud and moved according to His Divine call.

Let me ask some penetrating questions: Are you experiencing God’s daily presence in your walk through life? Is He directing your paths – and you KNOW it? Are you in a position of obedience and confidence, such that God can easily step in and give direction to you?

I must finish our time in Numbers 9, but I cannot leave without exploring my heart concerning God’s direction. I need to assess my commitment to the Word, and my hunger to grow in it this year, as the Lord allows. If I don’t WANT to know what God has said, then I have already stopped listening to His directions. There is no point to His speaking into my life – I am not listening. I show in my obstinacy the rejection of God’s control, and forfeit God’s direction. If that is true, we must all remember this: You cannot get where you want to go on the wrong road. The right path to fulfillment and stability is the one I walk holding the Master’s hand.

Do you know why believers struggle to follow God together? It is as simple as the lesson of the sunflower. The tall and slender flower seems to recognize its absolute need of the sun – so the head literally follows the sun’s movements across the sky. Have you ever stood and watched a full field of sunflowers? Watching one sunflower follow the sun can be interesting, but watching hundreds of tall, yellow flowers bending in unison to follow the sun is nothing short of incredible. When you watch them, you notice they all seem harmonious and synchronized. If you look closely, watch for this one truth: their unity appears totally dependent on one thing…their relationship to the sun. So does ours. Believers that follow the Son do it in harmony with one another, and confidence that they are positioned where God intended them to be.

God’s continual presence in our life is an empowering prize and a securing peace. When we don’t see it, we have strayed, and must choose to return.