PSALM 82 - Crunching In The Garden Of Hubris

I said, "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince." Arise, O God, and judge the earth, for You shall inherit all the nations.  (Verses 6-8)

"Because your heart is proud and you have said, 'I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,' yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god -- you are indeed wiser than Daniel.  No secret is hidden from you.  By your wisdom and understanding you have made wealth for yourself, and have gathered gold and silver for your treasuries.  By your great wisdom in your trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth -- therefore, thus says the Lord God:  Because you make your heart like the heart of a god, I will bring foreigners upon you."  Ezekiel 28

Again with the heart.  We are little gods, given kingdoms in varying degrees of import.  Some rule vast empires, others rule only themselves.  Either realm can be corrupted with the pride of heart that deems us smarter than God Himself.  Since my realm is of the smaller ilk, I need to start with me.  Lord of my actions, ruler of my emotions, queen of my attitudes and princess of my perceptions.  My Father has indeed made me god of my life.  But I'm just a human.  My rulership is limited to my vision.  My small, simple world view.  Lest I think of myself as God...instead of a child of God.

The lush green of the garden and the morning song of the chirping birds made the early walk a joyful pleasure for the new man and woman created for fellowship with and the pleasure of the Father Who met them there.  Their Creator delighted in their formation, given minds like His and put into the lavish setting designed after a heavenly garden through which a mighty river flowed.   God talked with them.  Instructed them about how to live in the beauteous place.  The Creator told Adam, before He made the woman, everything was his to enjoy -- except one tree.  He couldn't eat its fruit or he would die.  It was sacred.  Death a concept not well formed in Adam's nascent mind.  Adam surely repeated the warning to his lovely bride, Eve.  All was theirs to enjoy.  All.  But the one thing.

A lovely creature, slippery skin flashing multi-colored in the glory of the sun, saw the naked couple as they wandered about the paradise, plucking blackberries and splashing in the Euphrates.  Their joy made it rankle, the serpent thrown to earth out of his rebellion toward his God.  He'd tried to be an equal in his grander estate.  Made himself a god and, indeed, gathered quite a following before the Almighty had enough and threw them all to earth.  Adam and Eve walked near the tree in the center of the garden. "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?"  (That is not what He said.) 

Eve corrects the serpent.  "We can eat from all but the one in the center.  We can't eat from it -- or even touch it!" (That is not what He said.)

"You won't surely die!  That's a lie!  What God knows is that if you eat of that tree you shall be godlike -- knowing good and evil."

Hmm.  God is a liar.  He isn't good.  His motives are cruel, selfish, capricious.  All about Him.  Eve.  Why is she the one the serpent picked to speak to?  Didn't the command come straight to Adam?  Isn't her relationship with the tree hearsay?  Something in her already upset about the idea that there is a tree she can't pick from.  And now she knows why.  God would keep her from the joy of knowledge.  Crunch. Crunch.

"Here, husband, this is the best fruit I've had since I came to the garden."  Crunch.  Crunch. 

And they were like gods.  Knew their nakedness.  Knew their sin.  Were destroyed by the pride that says, "I will be like God."  They paid dearly for their munching into hubris.  We all have.  Death wasn't in God's plan for man...His perfect will was for us to live eternally in a garden paradise with a mighty river running through it.  That is still His plan.  Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.  Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations.  (Revelation 22)   And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. (Revelation 21)

The same enemy still lies to us about God's intentions.  All those rules.  All that stuff the mean old God says we can't have...can't do.  Just taste and see.  You won't die.  You'll simply experience all the stuff He doesn't want you to know about.  Yeah.  Like shame, remorse, abandonment, loss, regret, heartbreak and lies.  That's what it means to be my own god.  Little 'g'.

I fear we aren't much smarter these days.  The enemy of our souls needs nothing more than he used in the garden in the beginning.  We want to live as gods without restrictions wielding the power of our own will to make ourselves rich, famous, powerful and beautiful.  We want to say we did it our way.  For those who have rejected God, refusing to understand how much higher He is than we, God just might let them make some headway in this world.  After all, we will serve somebody.  Like it or not.  We are not sovereign.  Satan can bless us just so far as he can lie to us about his Creator.  But the ruler of this world always...always...has one goal in mind.  Utter destruction.  Dressed in a lovely outfit, hissing beneath his undershirt.  Stroking our pride.  "You don't need God."

As the little god of my own life, I have a choice.  Just like the first two people God allowed to walk in His presence.  I can rule it my way.  Tried that.  And you?  Yeah, I know.  You get to do whatever you bloody well want.  No strings.  It might be working better for some than it did for me.  So, I choose door number two.  Putting Another on the throne.  A benevolent King Who rules everything, knows everything, and is everywhere.  I relinquish being a god in order to be God's.
 

PSALM 82 - The God of Politics

They have neither knowledge nor understanding.  They walk about in darkness.  All the foundations of the earth are shaken.   (Verses 5)

"For My people are foolish.  They know Me not.  They are stupid children.  They have no understanding.  They are 'wise' -- in doing evil!  But how to do good, they know not!" God, Jeremiah 4:22

Looks like God involves Himself in politics!  And we thought He didn't care.  This psalm is directed toward the rulers of the nations.  Those gods with little 'g's' that rule our everyday lives.  The Lord has a standard by which they must rule.  Why?  Because God created them, that's why.  And He has an ultimate plan that involves real people on a new real earth.  How our rulers lead on this old earth can make God Himself mad enough to shake the very foundations of this planet.  That should give us pause.

So what is it that God expects from rulers?  That they listen to Him.  Just watched the newest episode of The Bible on television last night.  It told the story of King Zedekiah, appointed by the king of Babylon to rule Judah.  But Zedekiah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so much so the Bible says that "it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that God cast them out of His presence." 2 Kings.  The prophet Jeremiah cried out to Judah and Jerusalem on God's behalf in Jeremiah 4.  The verses preceding verse 22 above are:  My anguish!  My anguish!  I writhe in pain!  My heart is beating wildly.  I cannot keep silent, for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.  Crash follows hard on crash.  The whole land is laid waste.  Suddenly my tents are laid waste, my curtains in a moment.  How long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?  But Zedekiah and his cabinet dismissed the anguished warnings of the prophet of God.  A mistake that cost him his throne, Jerusalem and Judah, his children and his eyes.  Zedekiah was literally blind, then.  Walking in the darkness of his own choices.  Because he disregarded the wisdom and prescience of God.

Is there a ruler walking about this planet today who listens to God?  I don't know.  What we see is chaos around us.  The world falling apart economically, ecologically, spiritually and morally.  Making wrong, right.  Refusing the wisdom of God.  Rejecting His very Son and Likeness.  The Light of the World.  No wonder we fumble about so.  God said of Jesus in Isaiah 49:  I will make You as a light for the nations, that My salvation may reach the ends of the earth.  The way out of darkness.  Jesus.  Not just for individuals, but for nations!

I can't do much about others.  I'm not called to judge in the final analysis.  I am called to walk in the light as He is in the light.  I've done my share of stumbling around in darkness, fumbling to get my own way.  It's surprising where you wind up when feel around for the path.  Most of the time, it isn't pretty.  There is a way that seems right to us.  But God knows the end of it.  How silly for me or the head of a nation to just wing it without knowing what God wants.  He is God!  For goodness sake!  History for Him is done.  The Alpha and the Omega.  The Beginning and the End.  Our God is seeing it all at once.  And we think we have our own lives figured out just fine. 

As Christians, it would behoove us to look more closely at the warnings from the mouth of Jesus about our present times in the revelation of John, the beloved.  "He who has ears to hear, let him listen!" Jesus gave the admonition as God gave the admonition to the kings of Judah and Jerusalem through Jeremiah.  There is a way God wants us to function today.  Right now.  And if we don't walk in the light of His Spirit, know His word, and love Him more than our own lives, we won't have what it takes to live in a world where the rulers rule in darkness.  Jesus is The Way, The Truth, The Life.  Apart from Him there is no way.  There is no other god.  No greater wisdom.

When our leaders are like unruly children, foolhardy and capricious, we are literally on shaky ground.  God will not stand for it forever.  This earth will go up in smoke, replaced by a new one.  God has warned us.  We must listen.  Those of us with ears to hear.  Lest we castigate the Lord of heaven, saying how mean spirited He is and malevolent for blowing the whole thing up, look at what He promises for those within earshot of His warning.  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband...and He Who was seated on the throne said,  "Behold, I am making all things new." Also He said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." ...And I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light..by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it...and there will be no night there.  Revelation 21

If these words are trustworthy and true, we would be the most foolish of children to miss out on the glory and joy set before us.  May the nations bow now before they no longer have a choice.  May we be salt and light to a world that ever increasingly walks in the nightmare of darkness.



 

PSALM 82 - Hey, Neighbor!

God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods He holds judgment:  "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?  Give justice to the weak and fatherless.  Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.  Rescue the weak and needy.  Deliver them from the hand of the wicked."  (Verses 1-4)

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.  For is a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, "You sit here in a good place,"while you say to the poor man, "You stand over there,"or, "Sit down at my feet,"have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?....If you really fulfil the royal law according to Scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing well.  James 2

There you have it.  The heart of God. 

I will call him Adam.  He was newly homeless when he came to sit in our little downtown church here at the beach.  In his late thirties and suffering from some phobia seemingly untreated by medications he either refused to take or couldn't afford.  He rode a bicycle he'd refurbished as best he could.  Our church has donuts and coffee after the services and I think he came for that at first. 

Every Tuesday night for several years now, the men's Bible study has been at the Farish house.  As with the other men, Adam was invited to attend.  Our son, a police officer, was horrified when we told him we'd invited Adam over early so he could eat with us before the study.  So, Will came, too.  Just to make sure we were safe.  Our homeless friend was hungry.  As a cook, it was gratifying to see him eat so much.  Adam clearly enjoyed being with a family, talking with Will and sharing about himself.  That is, of course, where things broke down a bit.  He could communicate with us in a straight line for just so long, then he was somewhere in another orbit. 

It became a habit for Adam to eat with us before study.  Even showered a time or two.  Sometimes he'd ride up with another friend who was hungry.  Most of the time they'd stay for the study which would then take left and right turns into some territory the men would get lost trying to navigate with Adam.  We gave him a leather coat Bill didn't wear.  I read his poetry.  We loved him for his quirkiness.  Then he was gone.  In more ways than one.  As the weeks on the streets prolonged, Adam seemed farther away.  Less in touch with himself and others.  Hair and beard grown long and scruffy.  I haven't seen him for months.

Becoming a Christian is supposed to mean developing a heart like God's.  Caring about what He cares about because He's our Father and He's raised us well.  I understand with Will that it's dangerous to let just anyone into our homes these days.  The times were dangerous when Jesus told the story of the Samaritan who stopped to help the wounded man on the road to Jericho, too.  The question Jesus was answering, "Who is my neighbor?" Apparently, the person who needs our mercy.  Not just the people who live next door and come over for barbeque on occasion.

The lawyer wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus asked him what the Law said.  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."  That's when the "Who is my neighbor?" came up.  In other words, "Who is it right for me to exclude?"  "What's the bare minimum for me to care about others and still get into heaven?" Really? 

Jesus wanted to know which of the people who saw the man, the victim of a bloody robbery, fulfilled the definition of neighbor?  The priest and the Levite who walked by on the other side?  Or the Samaritan who bound his wounds and placed him on his own donkey, took him to an inn to be cared for and paid for the man's stay?  The Samaritan, not even a godly Jew (or a church-going Christian, perhaps), went way out of his way to help someone he didn't know.  While the godly people, the ones you'd expect to help a person in need, understood the danger, perhaps, but also the work it would be to help this miserable person out.  No time.  Too busy.  Got lots of God's work to do today without this.

The lawyer's answer might as well have been rhetorical by the time Jesus finished the story.  "Who's the friend?"  The one who showed mercy.  The one whose own life wasn't so important he couldn't stop what he was doing and help a brother out...or a total stranger.  I'm sure God is still honored when we do good to our neighbor with a heart that resists it even so.  If the Levite had stopped, looked around to make sure the whole world saw he was caring for the wretch there bleeding in the street, would that be the same?  The man would've been taken care of just the same.  But it's mercy God is looking for.  Again with the heart.  The injured man can either be a good work or a neighbor.  To the world, it looks the same.  Maybe not to our Father.

Why else would the two religious people not stop?  I think, judgment.  The guy shouldn't have been out here at night alone.  Serves him right.  Wonder if he was selling drugs.  Probably homeless, anyway.  I'd be unclean if I touched him.  Several ritual cleansings I don't have time for when he probably brought this on himself.  I hope this isn't sounding too familiar.  I know I've been guilty of judging when I should've been helping.  Mercy costs us something.  Real mercy is why I do what I do.  I have choices.  Don't help.  The man isn't my neighbor, so why?  I can help because I have to.  The man still gets what he needs, I just don't really care.  I can stand over the poor victim and berate his stupidity for getting himself in this mess in the first place.  Or, I can help to bind his wounds because I understand the mercy which bound my own.  If I remember how Jesus found me, loved me and cleaned me up, my only recourse is mercy toward another who is destitute and incapable of helping herself.

When God holds court, He wants to know what I've done for those He cares about.  He watches to see if I'll dirty my hands as He dirtied His.  In ever increasing heaps of grace, my Father loves me through my ups and downs.  Teaching me what mercy actually looks like.  Creating a well of reserve in me to heap upon a world judged guilty, for sure, just like me.  Ah, but, "mercy triumphs over judgement (James)!"  Because we all know what we deserve!  And mercy is the opposite.  A surprise.  We await the guillotine and receive a reprieve.  Therein lies the triumph...therein is the love.

 

PSALM 81- Don't Play In The Street

"I would soon subdue their enemies and turn My hand against their foes.  Those Who hate the Lord would cringe toward Him, and their fate would last forever.  But He would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you." God  (Verses 14-16)

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  James 4

The little girl down the street lived with her grandmother.  Don't remember why her parents weren't around.  The child was tiny and her teeth, at four years old, were rotting in her mouth.  Unrestrained, Taffy roamed the neighborhood at will, often crossing our rather busy street without looking for cars.  Vanessa, our middle child, loved playing with Taffy.  Of course, the lack of restrictions on her made the neighbor kid look a lot more inviting.  However, I would only let them play at our house where I could watch them.  Vanessa knew never to cross that street.  Ever!  That made the street more inviting to her.  A born boundary tester, life on the wild side (the other side of the Rhea Road in this case) just kept drawing her in.  As you can guess, I looked up one morning to see the front door thrown open as the two made a quick escape to the unfenced wild outdoors of the front yard and beyond to the middle of Rhea Road.  I chased after the blond flopping pigtails of my daughter in hot pursuit.  "Vanessa, you come back here right now!"

"Come and get me!" was her hollered reply as she careened out of control both physically and orally.  Ew, boy!  Doing what she was told she couldn't do trumped the punishment she surely got.  For, yes, I did go and get her!

I went and scooped her mutinous body into my arms, told Taffy to go home and took Vanessa inside where...well, you know.  Why would I do that?  Keep her from her fun?  What kind of mother would put such unfair restrictions on her kid?  One who loves her child, of course.  This mother knew the dangers of the street and the perils of following one who seemed free as a bird off the proverbial cliff.  I knew what Vanessa couldn't know.  She had to trust that I knew best.  On that day and on many to follow.  And she couldn't play with Taffy anymore.  Though I hurt for the abandoned neighbor child, her grandmother refused to rein her in. 

Moses came down from the mountain with ten things the people had to do.  Ten things!  Too hard.  In fact, the ten things people can't do sometimes make them more determined to somehow do them.  We don't always need the devil to make us go across the street, so to speak.  All we need is for someone to tell us we can't.  What does God do with a heart like that?  I'm afraid He lets us go.  Helps us find out what happens when we simply won't listen to Him.  We are free to follow our own counsel after so many rescues and warnings.  Getting our own way is often worse than being punished.  It serves us right.

"Oh, that my people would listen" is God's heart, however.  Because, though He allows us our own path into destruction, God stands ready to rescue us from what He must watch us doing.  Satan's will for us is to completely destroy us.  To take us to the middle of the street and leave us there as prey for every passing danger.  By then, we have defied every restraint that in His love He's called us to obey.  Abandoned now at the apex of our futility, horrified to see the oncoming traffic that will be our death, we have a choice.  Still.  Our God waits upon our hardened heart to mellow in the moment.  "Jesus, help me!"

"Finally," breathes our God, then scoops us up in His great mercy.  Consequences might still apply.  We have, no doubt, been severely wounded in the roadway to hell.  But we are alive enough to be a prize to Abba.  Because all along what He's wanted to do is give us the very best wheat.  Cover us in honey from the Rock.  Cradle us in protection under the safety of His wings.  But we must listen to God.  He's way smarter than we are.  His rules aren't arbitrary hindrances to our happiness but the way there.

 

PSALM 81 - Unrequited Love: Missing The Whole Point

But my people did not listen to My voice.  Israel would not submit to Me.  So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels.  Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways.  (Verses 11-13)

But this command I gave them:  "Obey My voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people.  And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you."  But they did not obey or incline their ear but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their own hearts, and went backward and not forward.    Jeremiah 7

Unrequited love.  If we haven't experienced it personally, we have read a book or watched a movie in which one person loves more than another.  We always hurt for the one whose devotion is rebuffed or never even noticed by the one she adores from afar.  I believe it was God's unrequited love for us that brought Him out of heaven down to earth.  Hear the longing in His heart as He says, "Oh, that my people would listen to Me."  Understand the disappointment when He knows the good He has for them but they choose to walk backward instead of forward.  It is necessary that I stoop down to earth to show them what it looks like to be loved by Me.

The woman was coarse, hardened by the experiences of her life.  Pariah to the better women in the village.  Drawing water at midday to avoid befouling their purity with her presence.  Jesus met her there and loved her.  Chose her to be the first person to whom He claimed to be Messiah.  Once a year the waters of the pool were said to swirl with healing power.  The lame and blind gathered there hoping to be the one whose toe first touched the miraculous churning.  This man's infirmity kept him from plunging to his healing, though his hopeful heart kept him day by day on the edge of the pool.  "Do you want to be healed?" Jesus asked the man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.  "I can't get into the waters fast enough before someone else does," was the man's reply.  Not exactly the answer to the question posed by Jesus.  No matter.  "Take up your bed and walk."  Do what I say and see what happens.  The man got up and walked.

On a grassy knoll five thousand people were without food because they'd come to hear about the kingdom of heaven.  With five little loaves and two fish, Jesus fed them all.  And had leftovers.  The fish and bread did what He said.  As did the waves later in that day when the disciples were upset with Jesus for sleeping while they were about to drown.  "Do not fear!" to the disciples.  "Be calm!" to the waves. 

In Bethany there was a family Jesus loved.  A man, Lazarus, and his sisters, Mary and Martha.  He stayed with them, ate with them and enjoyed long conversations about the kingdom of God as they sat in the living room after dinner.  But when Lazarus fell ill, Jesus didn't come.  Four days in his grave, Lazarus smelled rank.  Really, truly, officially, irretrievably dead.  That's when Jesus showed up.  When it was all over.  But even death does what He says." "Lazarus, come forth!" 

A fig tree doesn't give the Master breakfast.  "Dry up," He tells it.  "You won't bear fruit again." A picture of what happens when we don't obey.  Yet when a funeral bier comes his way, the mother of her young son mourning and wailing with the grief of her loss, Jesus gives the boy back his life.  The centurion's child is dying in another city.  "Just speak the word and my child will live."  "I've not seen this kind of faith in my own people, Israel," Jesus responds.  "She lives.  Her fever is gone."  The centurion took His word for it.  Good thing.

The demons made him a raving lunatic.  Tied him to trees to keep him from rampaging the countryside.  Jesus found him there in his misery.  "Come out of him at once!"  The demons shuddered and ran into a herd of pigs that rushed, in their new madness, over a cliff to their deaths.  Even demons did what He said.

So what of his people?  What of us?  How much more could the Father show His love for us?  More than giving His only begotten Son that all the world through Him might be saved?  How is it that everything but man does what He says?  Recognizes the power of His words?  Of course, God, like us, wants to be loved because we choose to love Him.  He doesn't want me browbeaten into submission.  I am to understand my response to the love of Jesus.  I love Him because He first loved me and gave Himself a ransom for my life.  I can't imagine how Jesus feels when we reject that kind of giving and go our own way down the highway of hubris to our own foolish conclusion.  It's got to hurt!

The crowds waved palm branches and cried "Hosanna!" as Jesus rode in on a donkey.  They loved Him that day for what they thought He was about to do, not for Who He is.  By the same time the next day He would be hanging on a cross, killed by His own people for precisely the things He came to redeem them from.  How did they miss what Jesus was doing those three years?  Blessing, healing, feeding, forgiving and, yes, raising the very dead.  This One Who loved us first, loved us best, and we spit on Him, cursed Him and finally killed Him.  This is what we do with the love of God?  When our response should be abject humility, unadulterated adoration and unquestioned obedience to One Who would only ask of us what He was willing to give:  Everything.

"O, Jerusalem!  Jerusalem!  The city that kills the  prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood, under her wings, and you would not!"  The lament of Jesus over His people.  The cry of His heart.  And in the giving over of them to their stubborn hearts, they murdered their only hope of real, lasting love. 

Too many years of doing my own thing.  Tired of going backward.  It's made my ear inclined to listen and heart ready to love this Jesus of mine Who has wooed me with His great compassion.  Who has poured agape out on me in measures deeply undeserved.  It's made me throw my arms up and sing with all my heart an imperfect love song to my God.  Would that I could erase the pain my Lord has felt over all the rejections and ridicule to which He's been subjected!  Would that I could love my God with an adoration so great He feels reciprocated for the love long unrequited.

PSALM 81 - Still In The Desert?

In distress you called and I delivered you.  I answered you in the secret place of thunder.  I tested you at the waters of Meribah.  Hear, O My people, while I admonish you!  O, Israel, if you would only listen to Me!  There shall be no strange god among you.  You shall not bow down to a foreign god.  I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.  Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.    (Verses 7-10)

Rephidim had no water to drink.  The place was dry as a bone.  It was up to Moses to get these people, the children of Israel, some water, by golly!  After all, it was he who organized a mass exodus of probably a million people out of Egypt.  And what for?  To die of thirst in the desert?  Their shoes were still fresh and they still had manna stuck in their teeth when the Jews came at Moses with stones because they were thirsty. 

"What shall I do with this people ready to stone me?"  A good question.

"Walk on ahead of the throng," God said.  "Take some of the elders and the staff with which you struck the Nile when it turned to blood.  I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb.  You shall strike the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink."

Enough water for a million people flowed out of a rock in the desert because God said so.  The place was named Massah (testing) and Meribah (quarreling), though.  Because they tested God by saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?"  Ouch.

Are you a little thirsty?  Wondering where your water is today?  You've arrived at a very dry spot in your walk through the desert and you don't know where God is?  If we are honest with ourselves, we don't go through a day that we don't have something we need to trust a god for.  Distress is part of the stress of this life, so get used to it.  What our God wants is for us to call out to Him alone for the resources we need.  Why?  Because He delights in providing for us.  From a rock.  From a fish's mouth.  From heaven itself.  And at the last minute.  Right when we need it and usually, in my experience, not a minute too early.  But with flare.  An unexpected source.  An unusual way.  So there's no doubt your God is the God.  Not little "g."  And if we get thirsty enough, we'll cry out.

Standing on the rock at Horeb was God Himself.  Moses had to have understood that in striking it he would also be striking the Lord, Who wanted no mistaking of the fact that He was the provision.   The life-giving water flowed from the Rock.  But first it was hit, wounded, broken in two.  To provide for people who doubted the very God allowing it.  Sound familiar?

Here's what's interesting to me.  The Hebrew children had to come back around to Meribah and Massah a second time.  You know they just walked around in circles in the desert for forty years until the complainers and grumblers died off, right?  Sure enough, second time around, the story is much the same.  Moses and Aaron are still putting up with the same old stuff.  Listening to the crowd.  "Hey, weren't we here not long ago?  This place has no water!  Some land flowing with milk and honey!  We can't even plant a fig in this dirt!"  And so on and so on, blah, blah, blah.  Moses sick to death of it.  He went, at his wit's end, to the entrance of the tent of meeting where God spoke to him as friend to friend, and fell on his face.  God said:  "Take the staff, assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.  So shall it come out of the rock."

Ew, boy.  Moses really made a mess of it this time.  "Listen you rebels!  Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?"  And Moses lifted the staff and struck the rock twice.  The miracle is that God brought the water abundantly forth from the rock anyway.  But He was so angry with Moses that He didn't allow Moses to go into the promised land, either.  Why?  Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it.  God thought that made Him look foolish because Moses did what he wanted to not what he was told to do.  "We" didn't bring water from anything.  God did.  But in His great grace, despite Moses's hubris, they opened their mouths wide and He filled them.  His standard for obedience for Moses was much higher than for those wandering after him.  They were following Moses following God.  And it looks like Moses had simply had enough.  So much so that he failed to listen to his Friend.

And that is God's admonition to us.  Oh, people, if you would only listen to Me.  He is the Rock.  Our provision in the desert as well at the oasis.  Why didn't the people remember the rock from the first trip to Rephidim?  How come they didn't say, "Wow, this is where all that water came out of Mt. Horeb!"  Bad memories?  Why would God do again what He did before?  Thirst too great?  Still not the promised land.  That's what I think.  Because I know us.  God gave us water, sure, but we're still not where we want to be.  We still can't settle down with the cows and the fam, put up the picket fence and know we've arrived.  Still walking the dirt of the desert waiting for a promise that's a long time coming.  So what's a little water.  How about God peeling us a grape from Jericho?

That is also why they didn't get to the Promised Land.  Not that group.  God provided what they needed, but He couldn't give them all He wanted to.  Because they still didn't know Him.  Every time it got rough, they forgot all He'd done in the past.  Abundance awaited them and they could've gotten there in a few short weeks had they spent the time given over to accusing God praising Him instead.

It makes sense to me as I look back on them that I should listen to the One who can bring something from nothing.  A cracked Rock providing thousands and thousands of gallons of water.  But if I think I deserve the water.  God owes it to me to get me where I want to go.  Where indeed He promised to take me.  And don't stop to wonder at the process.  To be grateful for all I see Him doing in the desert to get me where He wants me to go.  Well, what will I do when I don't need Him so much?  When my memory fails me so badly in the good land I don't take Him there with me?  Find other gods.  Because I dídn't allow myself to be glued to His side in the desert.  To marvel at God's power and open my mouth wide for living water purchased because He was struck.  Took for granted that my needs were met because my wants were still ahead of me.  I might just miss the promised land that way.  God tested them at the waters of "quarreling."  Arguing with Him about His plans.  And the Rock was there all along as the Hebrews ate heavenly food and miraculous water and only wanted more.

For I want you to know that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.  For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.  I Corinthians 10

"I am the first and the last. Besides me there is no god.  Who is like Me?  Let him proclaim it...  Let him declare what is to come, and what will happen.  Fear not, nor be afraid.  Have I not told you from old and declared it?  And you are My witnesses!  Is there a God besides Me?  There is no Rock.  I know not any."    God.   Isaiah 44



 

PSALM 81 - No More Basket Weaving For The Enemy!

Sing aloud to God, our strength!  Shout for joy to the God of Jacob!  Raise a song; sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day.  For it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob.  He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over the land of Egypt.  I hear a language I had not known:  "I relieved your shoulder of the burden.  Your hands were freed from the basket."  (Verses 1-6)

It had gotten so bad in Egypt that Pharaoh killed Jewish babies to keep them from multiplying so quickly.  Moses was spared, nursed by his own mother, raised by Pharaoh's daughter and self-exiled after he killed an Egyptian in a quarrel.  Forty years later Moses returned as God's man for the job of freeing the Jews from their virtual slavery.  The Jews were originally in Egypt because that is where Joseph ended up after he was sold by his brothers.  Ultimately Joseph, the Pharaoh's right hand man in Egypt, gave sanctuary to his own family during famine in their own land.  When the death angel, the final plague that forced the Pharaoh to release the Jews, moved over the land of their captivity, Joseph's people were finally let out of bondage in Egypt. 

In honor of this exodus from their captivity, the Jews were to celebrate solemn feasts in the seventh month of the year.  The first day, the new moon, was the feast of trumpets.  Originally these trumpets were made of hammered silver and they were blown at the entrance to the meeting tent where the Ark of the Covenant and God's presence dwelt.  The reminder? "I am the Lord your God." (Numbers 10)  The second feast in the seventh month was the Day of Atonement on which they are to pray, fast and abstain from work in humble acknowledgement of their sins.  On the fifteenth day of the month began seven days of feasting and rejoicing.  The people would live in tents (booths) during those days to remind them of their ancestors who were led out of bondage by the Lord.  It was also a time of thanksgiving for the produce of the land which was gathered in.  God told them to bring the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palms and leafy tress and willows of the brook and wave them in rejoicing before the Lord their God.  The reason for the Feast of Booths?  That your generations may know:  I am the Lord your God.

God wanted them to remember that it was He Who relieved their shoulders of the burden and freed their hands from the baskets.  No more slavery.  No more foreign idols.  God Himself led His people out.  What a cause for celebration!  God, their God, moved heaven and earth to extricate them from their captors.  Miracles still so awesome we make movies to portray them provided their escape. Afterward, God showed up day and night, by cloud and fire, to make sure they finally arrived in Israel.  A lot worse for the wear, though, because it was easier to get them out of Egypt than it was to get Egypt out of them.  When things got hard, they whined like babies, grumbled against Moses and God, even creating a golden cow to worship because being in relationship with the Almighty was harder than pretending an object could save them.  Or drugs.  Or alcohol.  Or sex.  Or power.  Or money.  Doesn't have to be a cow, you know. 

Palm branches waved in the air on the day of the Passover Feast as Jesus moved through the adoring crowds on the back of a donkey's colt.  The synagogue goers knew then.  This worker of miracles, forgiver of sins, healer of the blind and raiser of the dead was Messiah.  Behold, your King is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.  Zechariah 9  It was the Romans this time.  Jesus would deliver them, as King, from the Romans.  They didn't understand that His kingdom wasn't of this world.  That He is King over everything, not just the Jews.  That the Lord their God didn't come this time in cloud and fire, but in flesh.  To look them in the eye and see into their souls.  Hosanna!   Blow the trumpet!  Bang the tambourine!  Our God will save us!

But the burdens we have are not basket weaving or making mud bricks for a physical enemy.  Our captor is much less obvious, therefore more sinister.  Heavy is the burden of idolatry.  Cumbersome is it to carry our own shame.  Slogging through life heaving an agenda too great for us to bear because the enemy of our souls would destroy us if he could.  This King, King of all Kings, showed up on His planet once again to free us.  Not through the Red Sea, but through His very own blood.  To the other side.  The promised land.  That where He is we may be also.  Passover lambs don't usually rise from their altars.  Ours not only rose, but He took us with Him.  Triumphant over the last enemy, death.  Hosanna!

 The strange language of the enemy doesn't have to be our language any more!  We speak the Word over his lies and agreements.  The burden of our own sins no longer have to weigh us down.  Our King, the reason for our new moons and feasts, is also our atoning Lamb.  Once again the Lord our God does, Himself, take us out of slavery.  We don't need to work through it by ourselves.  That's religion.  And it's just another burden.  No, Jesus is our Savior every moment of every day.  When He ascended into heaven, Jesus didn't forget about us.  Instead, He came to live in us.  I can't even fathom the depths of that miracle.  I'm waving a palm branch in my little heart right now.  Hosanna!  With every breath I take, my God lives in me so that I am never alone, never without Him.  I don't go through grief, abandonment, betrayal or loneliness by myself.  Ever!  Wherever I go, He goes.  Good or bad.  Our God decided before He made us that He would never, ever abandon His children.  That is why Jesus said:  "Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Jesus  Matthew 11

Hosanna!