COMPLAINING
III.
If complaining diverts God's will, if it is a sign of no faith, do we find ourselves wondering why there was so much complaining from "God's people" on the right wing over the last eight years? Because they weren't getting their way. Which, frankly, in many aspects, has little resemblance to God's Way.
Ex 15:1 Then Moses and the children of Israel made this song to the Lord, and said, I will make a song to the Lord, for he is lifted up in glory: the horse and the horseman he has sent down into the sea.
2 The Lord is my strength and my strong helper, he has become my salvation: he is my God and I will give him praise; my father's God and I will give him glory.
3 The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name.
4 Pharaoh's war-carriages and his army he has sent down into the sea: the best of his captains have gone down into the Red Sea.
5 They were covered by the deep waters: like a stone they went down under the waves.
6 Full of glory, O Lord, is the power of your right hand; by your right hand those who came against you are broken.
7 When you are lifted up in power, all those who come against you are crushed: when you send out your wrath, they are burned up like dry grass.
8 By your breath the waves were massed together, the flowing waters were lifted up like a pillar; the deep waters became solid in the heart of the sea.
9 Egypt said, I will go after them, I will overtake, I will make division of their goods: my desire will have its way with them; my sword will be uncovered, my hand will send destruction on them.
10 You sent your wind and the sea came over them: they went down like lead into the great waters.
11 Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? who is like you, in holy glory, to be praised with fear, doing wonders?
12 When your right hand was stretched out, the mouth of the earth was open for them.
13 In your mercy you went before the people whom you have made yours; guiding them in your strength to your holy place.
14 Hearing of you the peoples were shaking in fear: the people of Philistia were gripped with pain.
15 The chiefs of Edom were troubled in heart; the strong men of Moab were in the grip of fear: all the people of Canaan became like water.
16 Fear and grief came on them; by the strength of your arm they were turned to stone; till your people went over, O Lord, till the people went over whom you have made yours.
17 You will take them in, planting them in the mountain of your heritage, the place, O Lord, where you have made your house, the holy place, O Lord, the building of your hands.
18 The Lord is King for ever and ever.
19 For the horses of Pharaoh, with his war-carriages and his horsemen, went into the sea, and the Lord sent the waters of the sea back over them; but the children of Israel went through the sea on dry land.
20 And Miriam, the woman prophet, the sister of Aaron, took an instrument of music in her hand; and all the women went after her with music and dances.
21 And Miriam, answering, said, Make a song to the Lord, for he is lifted up in glory; the horse and the horseman he has sent into the sea.
(BBE)
They have been saved from the Red Sea. They're praising the Lord. Raised voices and raised hands and everything. Singing hymns of praise. God saved them from impossible odds. Emotions take over and the joy of the moment overcomes them. Surely they now understand He is in control of everything.
Yeah, right.
Ex 15:22 Then Moses took Israel forward from the Red Sea, and they went out into the waste land of Shur; and for three days they were in the waste land where there was no water.
23 And when they came to Marah, the water was no good for drinking, for the waters of Marah were bitter, which is why it was named Marah.
24 And the people, crying out against Moses, said, What are we to have for drink?
25 And in answer to his prayer, the Lord made him see a tree, and when he put it into the water, the water was made sweet. There he gave them a law and an order, testing them;
26 And he said, If with all your heart you will give attention to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his eyes, giving ear to his orders and keeping his laws, I will not put on you any of the diseases which I put on the Egyptians: for I am the Lord your life-giver.
27 And they came to Elim where there were twelve water-springs and seventy palm-trees: and they put up their tents there by the waters.
(BBE)
The People begin to complain when the first thing goes bad. God is teaching them to depend on Him and they are not getting it. I can identify. I've been in places where I had to just let go of my control, without a job with little prospects and the Bush administration having mismanaged the economy. The Lord watched over me, keeping me in my home and keeping me in an income from extended Unemployment Benefits and available monies. Until I got a job being retrained and then got a better job in the auto industry. I had nothing to do with that besides constantly looking for a job while I was laid off. The people in charge after the economic failure of flawed neo-con libertarianism did their best to make things work and succeeded as well as they could with the lack of resources left and the incredible debt burden of money borrowed from China to pay for wars in the Middle East. But U.S. citizens seem to have no sense of history. They are caught in the web of people doomed to repeat history they seem to have forgotten after only eight years. Though it seems ever moe likely god has allowed them this blindness. No complaint: observation. God's plan unfolds and all we can do is praise Him and sing our songs and let it unfold even as many of us knew it would from the time Israel became a nation again.
And remember the Israelis kept repeating their error of complaining. even after massive miracles.
Notice the difference between Moses and the rest of the crew. They complain to Moses and try to guilt him into helping them. They turn to the man who talks to God for them. Later, at the mountain when God speaks, they will ask Moses to talk to God for them.
Ex 20:1 And God said all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house.
3 You are to have no other gods but me.
4 You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth:
5 You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters;
6 And I will have mercy through a thousand generations on those who have love for me and keep my laws.
7 You are not to make use of the name of the Lord your God for an evil purpose; whoever takes the Lord's name on his lips for an evil purpose will be judged a sinner by the Lord
8 Keep in memory the Sabbath and let it be a holy day.
9 On six days do all your work:
10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on that day you are to do no work, you or your son or your daughter, your man-servant or your woman-servant, your cattle or the man from a strange country who is living among you:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and everything in them, and he took his rest on the seventh day: for this reason the Lord has given his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy.
12 Give honour to your father and to your mother, so that your life may be long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
13 Do not put anyone to death without cause.
14 Do not be false to the married relation.
15 Do not take the property of another.
16 Do not give false witness against your neighbour.
17 Let not your desire be turned to your neighbour's house, or his wife or his man-servant or his woman-servant or his ox or his ass or anything which is his.
18 And all the people were watching the thunderings and the flames and the sound of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when they saw it, they kept far off, shaking with fear.
19 And they said to Moses, To your words we will give ear, but let not the voice of God come to our ears, for fear death may come on us.
20 And Moses said to the people, Have no fear: for God has come to put you to the test, so that fearing him you may be kept from sin.
21 And the people kept their places far off, but Moses went near to the dark cloud where God was.
(BBE)
Notice this is in the midst of God speaking the Law to them, the Big Ten. Telling them how to behave and what would be the way to worship him by action.
They don't want to hear God's voice. We see it in Exodus 15 long before it becomes stated in the context of 20.
The People DON'T PRAY. They whine and complain but to Moses now that he's here, God's man instead of to God Himself. This is a picture of Israel and the Jews. Seeing God from a Bette Midler distance. The prophets and judges and kings will come to them and THEY will know God and be His messengers and speak for Him.
There is a constant discussion of why the Holy Spirit seems to behave differently at different times in history. One that occurs to me is that sin mars humans so grievously that God would only select a few until Christ paid the sacrifice on the Cross. But then we see that God still speaks to sinners, Noah, Enoch, the Forefathers, Moses, even to the vast nation led from Egypt. But the majority of the sinful simply don't WANT to hear. So the Spirit moves them to hear, but the majority in this time frame, before the Earthly reality of God's Son sent, the eternal Moses if you will, the one Moses represents, before that event there was a universal assumption that the high priest was somehow closer to God, that Moses was closer, that Noah was closer, that Enoch was closer. Humanity walked in an illusion which we still see today. The Pope becomes God's rep, even if, as we see from history, one Pope has a different "truth" than another, one calls for Crusades and another defers judgement. Even in Protestant congregations you hear how Billy Graham is so close to God or Smith Wigglesworth or Billy Sunday or the person at your church's pulpit today. You hear an assumption that they are getting paid well to be your rep so they are supposed to be there for everyone in the congregation when trouble strikes and they are to be your voice.
This is the great delusion. Everyone has had their sins forgiven, even as far back as Adam, and they need to accept that forgiveness and enter into a personal relationship with God and find the mission He has for them and, (and this is my own problem so I know it well) then take the gifts given by the Spirit to use for God and USE THEM FOR GOD. But it is impossible if they think Moses is the man of God and supposed to do all that for them. If they want to sit on their Holy Assurance and get too comfortable letting the clergy do the work. (Thank you, Michael Youssef,) It speaks volumes that people step forward into leadership and act under that same delusion that THEY are closer to God and congregations should follow THEM. Not God, but them.
This delusion makes it seem every leader must be perfect. Nixon can't have Watergate, The Kennedy's can't have affairs. Carter can't have a funny time trying to swat a rabbit with an oar. Bush can't be misled so easily by special interests. Obama can't offer only a corroded version of universal health care. Every one of them did their best with the tools they were given and were offered as examples to learn from. Our failures are in not learning. If we don't, we end up like Hitler, forging into Russia in their dark winter and thinking we can outgun the people who know their land better than we do. And suffering ignominious defeat. Only ours is on a much smaller scale. We only ruin our own lives and maybe those of the ones we love.
This crying to Moses is the root of that moment the Israelis have when the scouts come back from the Holy Land and say there are giants and the People can't beat them. So God casts them into a nomadic life where the old ones who disbelieved and thought they could do nothing and God would just open every door though He doesn't personally know them are replaced by attrition with the likes of Joshua who will say he and his house will serve the Lord, will have a personal relationship of prayer and who will pray to God and have Him stop the rotation of the Earth so daylight continues long enough to hunt down God's enemies, the genetically poisoned. We must know God and His mission for us before we ask for His blessing and seek to accept every blessing as for our use for Him.
So note the pattern as we read and ask if there are traces in your own life. There are times I wish I never began this study because it keeps telling me my own weaknesses and how I need to change. THAT is really annoying.
Go to the last lines of 15:
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown:
25. the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet--Some travellers have pronounced this to be the Elvah of the Arabs--a shrub in form and flower resembling our hawthorn; others, the berries of the Ghurkhud--a bush found growing around all brackish fountains. But neither of these shrubs are known by the natives to possess such natural virtues. It is far more likely that God miraculously endowed some tree with the property of purifying the bitter water--a tree employed as the medium, but the sweetening was not dependent upon the nature or quality of the tree, but the power of God (compare Joh 9:6). And hence the "statute and ordinance" that followed, which would have been singularly inopportune if no miracle had been wrought.
and there he proved them--God now brought the Israelites into circumstances which would put their faith and obedience to the test (compare Ge 22:1).
Back shuffle, think of the Red Sea again. God parts it for them to escape but he also closes it over the Egyptians and in doing so closes the way back. He saved them, but he also separated them from the "world" in egypt. Yes, they are a nation wandering in the wilderness but they wander with God. He will give them their lessons and give them written instructions and guide them by day and night and STILL they will fail the test on entering the promised land.
They are delivered and God will offer miracle after miracle, but...but...They have to take up the tree and put it in the water. Moses will take the tree and place it in the water because he walks with God. The others don't grab a tree of their own because they see God over there, over there somewhere. Something like the Bette Midler song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN4AcFzxtdE&list=RDlN4AcFzxtdE#t=0
This is manure, of course, but a lovely thought. As i mentioned above, it fails the truth that God wants to be with us and us with Him. the entire effort is more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI0cgUKMqRs
But the purpose of this meeting of the minds and souls is preparation for eternity with God and for that preparation, God has separated them for one thing, our next subject: Holiness.
III.
If complaining diverts God's will, if it is a sign of no faith, do we find ourselves wondering why there was so much complaining from "God's people" on the right wing over the last eight years? Because they weren't getting their way. Which, frankly, in many aspects, has little resemblance to God's Way.
#3 – The people complained about the bitter water – Exodus 15:22 This is when you are faced with the bitterness of changing your diet from the things of the world to the things of God. Like asking a child to go from sugary foods to eating their vegetables, it never happens without a protest.
Read the verses before this complaint.
2 The Lord is my strength and my strong helper, he has become my salvation: he is my God and I will give him praise; my father's God and I will give him glory.
3 The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name.
4 Pharaoh's war-carriages and his army he has sent down into the sea: the best of his captains have gone down into the Red Sea.
5 They were covered by the deep waters: like a stone they went down under the waves.
6 Full of glory, O Lord, is the power of your right hand; by your right hand those who came against you are broken.
7 When you are lifted up in power, all those who come against you are crushed: when you send out your wrath, they are burned up like dry grass.
8 By your breath the waves were massed together, the flowing waters were lifted up like a pillar; the deep waters became solid in the heart of the sea.
9 Egypt said, I will go after them, I will overtake, I will make division of their goods: my desire will have its way with them; my sword will be uncovered, my hand will send destruction on them.
10 You sent your wind and the sea came over them: they went down like lead into the great waters.
11 Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? who is like you, in holy glory, to be praised with fear, doing wonders?
12 When your right hand was stretched out, the mouth of the earth was open for them.
13 In your mercy you went before the people whom you have made yours; guiding them in your strength to your holy place.
14 Hearing of you the peoples were shaking in fear: the people of Philistia were gripped with pain.
15 The chiefs of Edom were troubled in heart; the strong men of Moab were in the grip of fear: all the people of Canaan became like water.
16 Fear and grief came on them; by the strength of your arm they were turned to stone; till your people went over, O Lord, till the people went over whom you have made yours.
17 You will take them in, planting them in the mountain of your heritage, the place, O Lord, where you have made your house, the holy place, O Lord, the building of your hands.
18 The Lord is King for ever and ever.
19 For the horses of Pharaoh, with his war-carriages and his horsemen, went into the sea, and the Lord sent the waters of the sea back over them; but the children of Israel went through the sea on dry land.
20 And Miriam, the woman prophet, the sister of Aaron, took an instrument of music in her hand; and all the women went after her with music and dances.
21 And Miriam, answering, said, Make a song to the Lord, for he is lifted up in glory; the horse and the horseman he has sent into the sea.
(BBE)
They have been saved from the Red Sea. They're praising the Lord. Raised voices and raised hands and everything. Singing hymns of praise. God saved them from impossible odds. Emotions take over and the joy of the moment overcomes them. Surely they now understand He is in control of everything.
Yeah, right.
Ex 15:22 Then Moses took Israel forward from the Red Sea, and they went out into the waste land of Shur; and for three days they were in the waste land where there was no water.
23 And when they came to Marah, the water was no good for drinking, for the waters of Marah were bitter, which is why it was named Marah.
24 And the people, crying out against Moses, said, What are we to have for drink?
25 And in answer to his prayer, the Lord made him see a tree, and when he put it into the water, the water was made sweet. There he gave them a law and an order, testing them;
26 And he said, If with all your heart you will give attention to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his eyes, giving ear to his orders and keeping his laws, I will not put on you any of the diseases which I put on the Egyptians: for I am the Lord your life-giver.
27 And they came to Elim where there were twelve water-springs and seventy palm-trees: and they put up their tents there by the waters.
(BBE)
The People begin to complain when the first thing goes bad. God is teaching them to depend on Him and they are not getting it. I can identify. I've been in places where I had to just let go of my control, without a job with little prospects and the Bush administration having mismanaged the economy. The Lord watched over me, keeping me in my home and keeping me in an income from extended Unemployment Benefits and available monies. Until I got a job being retrained and then got a better job in the auto industry. I had nothing to do with that besides constantly looking for a job while I was laid off. The people in charge after the economic failure of flawed neo-con libertarianism did their best to make things work and succeeded as well as they could with the lack of resources left and the incredible debt burden of money borrowed from China to pay for wars in the Middle East. But U.S. citizens seem to have no sense of history. They are caught in the web of people doomed to repeat history they seem to have forgotten after only eight years. Though it seems ever moe likely god has allowed them this blindness. No complaint: observation. God's plan unfolds and all we can do is praise Him and sing our songs and let it unfold even as many of us knew it would from the time Israel became a nation again.
And remember the Israelis kept repeating their error of complaining. even after massive miracles.
Notice the difference between Moses and the rest of the crew. They complain to Moses and try to guilt him into helping them. They turn to the man who talks to God for them. Later, at the mountain when God speaks, they will ask Moses to talk to God for them.
Ex 20:1 And God said all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house.
3 You are to have no other gods but me.
4 You are not to make an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth:
5 You may not go down on your faces before them or give them worship: for I, the Lord your God, am a God who will not give his honour to another; and I will send punishment on the children for the wrongdoing of their fathers, to the third and fourth generation of my haters;
6 And I will have mercy through a thousand generations on those who have love for me and keep my laws.
7 You are not to make use of the name of the Lord your God for an evil purpose; whoever takes the Lord's name on his lips for an evil purpose will be judged a sinner by the Lord
8 Keep in memory the Sabbath and let it be a holy day.
9 On six days do all your work:
10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on that day you are to do no work, you or your son or your daughter, your man-servant or your woman-servant, your cattle or the man from a strange country who is living among you:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and everything in them, and he took his rest on the seventh day: for this reason the Lord has given his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy.
12 Give honour to your father and to your mother, so that your life may be long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
13 Do not put anyone to death without cause.
14 Do not be false to the married relation.
15 Do not take the property of another.
16 Do not give false witness against your neighbour.
17 Let not your desire be turned to your neighbour's house, or his wife or his man-servant or his woman-servant or his ox or his ass or anything which is his.
18 And all the people were watching the thunderings and the flames and the sound of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when they saw it, they kept far off, shaking with fear.
19 And they said to Moses, To your words we will give ear, but let not the voice of God come to our ears, for fear death may come on us.
20 And Moses said to the people, Have no fear: for God has come to put you to the test, so that fearing him you may be kept from sin.
21 And the people kept their places far off, but Moses went near to the dark cloud where God was.
(BBE)
Notice this is in the midst of God speaking the Law to them, the Big Ten. Telling them how to behave and what would be the way to worship him by action.
They don't want to hear God's voice. We see it in Exodus 15 long before it becomes stated in the context of 20.
The People DON'T PRAY. They whine and complain but to Moses now that he's here, God's man instead of to God Himself. This is a picture of Israel and the Jews. Seeing God from a Bette Midler distance. The prophets and judges and kings will come to them and THEY will know God and be His messengers and speak for Him.
There is a constant discussion of why the Holy Spirit seems to behave differently at different times in history. One that occurs to me is that sin mars humans so grievously that God would only select a few until Christ paid the sacrifice on the Cross. But then we see that God still speaks to sinners, Noah, Enoch, the Forefathers, Moses, even to the vast nation led from Egypt. But the majority of the sinful simply don't WANT to hear. So the Spirit moves them to hear, but the majority in this time frame, before the Earthly reality of God's Son sent, the eternal Moses if you will, the one Moses represents, before that event there was a universal assumption that the high priest was somehow closer to God, that Moses was closer, that Noah was closer, that Enoch was closer. Humanity walked in an illusion which we still see today. The Pope becomes God's rep, even if, as we see from history, one Pope has a different "truth" than another, one calls for Crusades and another defers judgement. Even in Protestant congregations you hear how Billy Graham is so close to God or Smith Wigglesworth or Billy Sunday or the person at your church's pulpit today. You hear an assumption that they are getting paid well to be your rep so they are supposed to be there for everyone in the congregation when trouble strikes and they are to be your voice.
This is the great delusion. Everyone has had their sins forgiven, even as far back as Adam, and they need to accept that forgiveness and enter into a personal relationship with God and find the mission He has for them and, (and this is my own problem so I know it well) then take the gifts given by the Spirit to use for God and USE THEM FOR GOD. But it is impossible if they think Moses is the man of God and supposed to do all that for them. If they want to sit on their Holy Assurance and get too comfortable letting the clergy do the work. (Thank you, Michael Youssef,) It speaks volumes that people step forward into leadership and act under that same delusion that THEY are closer to God and congregations should follow THEM. Not God, but them.
This delusion makes it seem every leader must be perfect. Nixon can't have Watergate, The Kennedy's can't have affairs. Carter can't have a funny time trying to swat a rabbit with an oar. Bush can't be misled so easily by special interests. Obama can't offer only a corroded version of universal health care. Every one of them did their best with the tools they were given and were offered as examples to learn from. Our failures are in not learning. If we don't, we end up like Hitler, forging into Russia in their dark winter and thinking we can outgun the people who know their land better than we do. And suffering ignominious defeat. Only ours is on a much smaller scale. We only ruin our own lives and maybe those of the ones we love.
This crying to Moses is the root of that moment the Israelis have when the scouts come back from the Holy Land and say there are giants and the People can't beat them. So God casts them into a nomadic life where the old ones who disbelieved and thought they could do nothing and God would just open every door though He doesn't personally know them are replaced by attrition with the likes of Joshua who will say he and his house will serve the Lord, will have a personal relationship of prayer and who will pray to God and have Him stop the rotation of the Earth so daylight continues long enough to hunt down God's enemies, the genetically poisoned. We must know God and His mission for us before we ask for His blessing and seek to accept every blessing as for our use for Him.
So note the pattern as we read and ask if there are traces in your own life. There are times I wish I never began this study because it keeps telling me my own weaknesses and how I need to change. THAT is really annoying.
Go to the last lines of 15:
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown:
25. the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet--Some travellers have pronounced this to be the Elvah of the Arabs--a shrub in form and flower resembling our hawthorn; others, the berries of the Ghurkhud--a bush found growing around all brackish fountains. But neither of these shrubs are known by the natives to possess such natural virtues. It is far more likely that God miraculously endowed some tree with the property of purifying the bitter water--a tree employed as the medium, but the sweetening was not dependent upon the nature or quality of the tree, but the power of God (compare Joh 9:6). And hence the "statute and ordinance" that followed, which would have been singularly inopportune if no miracle had been wrought.
and there he proved them--God now brought the Israelites into circumstances which would put their faith and obedience to the test (compare Ge 22:1).
Back shuffle, think of the Red Sea again. God parts it for them to escape but he also closes it over the Egyptians and in doing so closes the way back. He saved them, but he also separated them from the "world" in egypt. Yes, they are a nation wandering in the wilderness but they wander with God. He will give them their lessons and give them written instructions and guide them by day and night and STILL they will fail the test on entering the promised land.
They are delivered and God will offer miracle after miracle, but...but...They have to take up the tree and put it in the water. Moses will take the tree and place it in the water because he walks with God. The others don't grab a tree of their own because they see God over there, over there somewhere. Something like the Bette Midler song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN4AcFzxtdE&list=RDlN4AcFzxtdE#t=0
This is manure, of course, but a lovely thought. As i mentioned above, it fails the truth that God wants to be with us and us with Him. the entire effort is more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI0cgUKMqRs
But the purpose of this meeting of the minds and souls is preparation for eternity with God and for that preparation, God has separated them for one thing, our next subject: Holiness.
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