Sermon manuscript:
There are a couple places in the Bible where there is so
much you can learn that they almost seem inexhaustible. One of those places is
the Garden of Eden with the fall into sin and the promise. You know how I bring
that up all the time in my preaching and teaching. The other place is what we’ll
look at especially today—the example of the Israelites when they leave Egypt
and are in wilderness with Moses.
The main thing going on with the Israelites is that God is
at work with them. Everything that happened was God’s idea. Sometimes we might
think that the stuff that happened was Moses’s ideas, but that is very much not
the case. From the beginning at the burning bush to the end at Mt. Nebo God was
making the plans and doing the actions. God did the plagues. God manifested
himself as a sign to be followed with the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of
fire by night. God opened up the Red Sea and dried it out so that the people
could walk through it as on dry ground. God brought the manna at dawn and the
quail at evening. God made the water flow from the rock. God did it all.
But, as you know, the Israelites had a very hard time with everything
God did. They didn’t enjoy how God was doing things. God wasn’t doing things
the way that they would have done things.
So, for example, they didn’t like it when Pharaoh got mad at
Moses and punished the Israelites by making their work harder. They didn’t like
being led helplessly to the shores of the Red Sea, looking like they were going
to be slaughtered by the Egyptian army. They didn’t like running out of the
food and water that they had brought with them from Egypt, and then looking
around and seeing nothing but a barren desert. If it were up to them, they would
have done all these things very differently than the way God did things.
If it were up to them, they probably would have liked it
best if they would have been the masters and the Egyptians were their slaves. They would have liked
riding across the desert in air-conditioned limousines. They would have liked
to have enough provisions in their convoy to last forever and a day. They would
have liked all the circumstances and conditions to be pointing to their awesomeness
and successfulness so that they would always be soothed and never ever have a negative
thought.
What I’ve said might sound silly, a little over the top, but
we can be serious about what the Israelites were thinking and wishing. If there
were a physicist at the shores of the Red Sea that physicist would be very serious
about his objections to what was about to take place. If there were an
economist in the wilderness, that economist would be very worried about limited
resources and how they could ever be properly allocated among so many people.
One of the rules for properly engaging in economics is that
God is not going to intervene. How could an economist properly predict the
price of bread if bread just shows up out of nowhere with the dew? There’s no
way for a physicist to describe the physical characteristics of water if all of
a sudden it stands up in a heap and removes itself from the mucky sea floor.
That’s not how things normally work.
We all understand how things normally work. We all
understand how we normally get bread. We all understand how water normally
acts. Moses, the writer of Exodus, would have us believe that a bread-like
substance came to them every morning. The water of the Red Sea didn’t act like water
normally acts. The reason why these things acted the way they did is because
God made it so. Either God made it so or Moses is lying about what he saw and
experienced.
What happened with Moses, however, is not something that is
applicable only to him. Jesus, our teacher, says similar things to us. For
example, Jesus tells us not to worry about our life, what we will eat, what we
will drink, or what we will put on. Why? Because your heavenly Father knows
that you need them. Jesus does not tell us that we should not worry only if we
have tons and tons of provisions. He evidently means that we will be fine no
matter what the economist might say.
Or, for example, Jesus says that he is the resurrection and
the life. Even if we should die, yet shall we live. Whoever lives and believes
in him will never die. Here we have a problem for the physicist or the medical
doctor. From dust we are and to dust we shall return. How can these bones live?
They shall live by the life-giving sacrifice of the Son of God, no matter what
the physicist might say.
So when we think of the Israelites and Moses we should
understand that we have the same struggles of faith as they had. We are cut
from the same cloth. We know how things normally work. God has promised them
and us that we will be blessed. But then how things normally work comes along
and it doesn’t look at all like we will be blessed. Then they figured that
there’s no way that they could be blessed because that’s not how things
normally work. God’s promises were thrown out the window because how could God’s
promises come true when that’s not how things normally work?
So we need encouragement to believe. It can be hard to be at
peace and thankful if our net worth is decreasing rather than increasing. It
can be hard to be at peace and thankful when death draws near. What about when
our sins be like scarlet? It can be hard to believe that God will make them
white as snow. But such are the promises of God.
We can’t know exactly how God will be faithful to his
promises to the very last detail. There’s no way that the Israelites could have
known that they would be walking on a dried out seabed or have water sweetened
by a chunk of wood. But regardless of not being able to see how everything was
going to work, God was faithful to his promise of being their God and they
being his people, even when they were not faithful to him. The people’s
faithfulness was quite awful actually.
And we need to talk about that. As Psalm 95 says, and as our
reading from Hebrews says, the Israelites hardened their hearts. Their
unfaithfulness was made permanent. It is not as though God can be tested and
tested and tested and that’s okay. God eventually slammed the door on these
people, and once it was closed, no one could open it. No amount of crying or
gnashing of teeth made God relent once God hardened their hearts. They could
not believe, even if they had wanted to.
There is nothing worse than God hardening hearts. Other
curses and calamities have to do with the body and the mind. The hardening of
heart is God’s punishment of finality upon the soul. The way that it happens is
as it was with Pharaoh and the Israelites. Moses tells us how Pharaoh hardened
his own heart. He heard God’s Word, knew that it was God Word, but he didn’t
want to do it. He hardened his own heart. Eventually Moses tells us that not
only did Pharaoh harden his own heart, but God hardened it.
So it was also with the Israelites. They revolted over and
over and over again. They rejected God. They rejected Moses who spoke God’s
Word. It is amazing how long-suffering God is with them. But eventually enough
was enough. They no longer could be anything but unbelieving, which is what
they and we naturally are in the first place. God gave them what they wanted;
he withdrew his Holy Spirit from them.
When this happens, it happens quietly. The hardening of hearts
goes unnoticed. The Israelites carry on. There is no scene in the books of
Moses after their hearts are hardened where they tear their clothes and say,
“My God! What have I done!” Such a reaction is impossible with a hardened
heart. Their hardened heart is what kept them plodding alone, still going to
church, assuming that they were fine when they were not fine.
This, also, just like everything else we can learn from the
Israelites, is very instructive for us. Where are the torn clothes, the “My
God! What have we done?” among us? Instead we plod along. The younger
generations just don’t care it seems for God’s Word, and we shrug our
shoulders. I guess we’re just old fashioned. These whipper-snappers just don’t
do things the way we do. Oh well, times change I guess. We can’t be bothered to
care or to change or to act. We’ll just keep plodding along.
How did this happen? We have been hypocrites. We, like
Pharaoh, have known God’s Word, but not wanted to do it. We, like the
Israelites, have had God’s promises, but have not been thankful or believing. Instead
we’ve been just like the rest of the unbelieving world. We know how to get
ahead. We know how to have a good time. Screw whatever God has to say. We’ve
done what we wanted to do and not let
God’s will have his way with us.
If God rejected these Israelites, why can’t he also reject
us? That is the bracing thought that the writer of the Hebrews puts before us
today. It says in our reading: “Watch out, brothers, so that there is not an
evil, unbelieving heart in any of you that turns away from the living God. But
encourage one another each and every day, as long as it is called “today,” so
that none of you are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
Note how it says that an evil, unbelieving heart can come
upon any one of us. None of us is immune. I am not immune. How does this
happen? It’s by being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceitful.
It deceives. It tricks. It lures. It rewards. It hardens.
How can we be helped? First, we must not be deceived. Sin
always wants to masquerade as the thing that is “normal.” It’s what everybody
else is doing. It’s what is inevitable anyway. So we might as well just embrace
it and act accordingly. We must not allow such deceitful thinking to go
unchallenged.
But that’s only the beginning. The main thing, and really
the only way that we can be helped, is the only way that the Israelites could
have been helped. We must take in hand firmly and ever more firmly and always
and forever the promises of God. The strength of the Israelites was always and
only in their God who promised and acted. They were strong when they believed
that God was for them despite what they saw, despite what the worldly-wise
might tell them. Economists and physicists still think that it’s nuts to
believe that such things could ever happen.
Our reading says: “Encourage one another each and every
day, as long as it is called “today,” … Encourage with what? This: “For
we have become people who share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original
confidence firmly until the end. As Psalm 95 says: Today, if you hear his
voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
We are to encourage one another each and every day. What is
to be our encouragement? It is that we are people who share in Christ. The
Israelites were baptized in the Red Sea. You’ve been baptized into Christ’s
death. The Israelites inherited the Promised Land. Your inheritance is eternal
in the heavens. Don’t be deceived by the passing pleasures of sin. The
deceitfulness of sin says that you need your pleasure now. You can’t wait for
heaven. You can’t wait for God to feed you what you need. You need to take it
in hand and take it for yourself now.
Against this deceit we must fight with faith and
thankfulness. Christ’s promises will come true, no matter how you feel, how
sinful you are, or how things look. Thus you can be thankful. That’s your
strength. God is for you, come what may.
And in the meantime he gives you wonderful and beautiful
things if you will only just open your eyes to see them. Don’t be deceived by longing
for God to do things the way you want him to do things—air-conditioned limousines
and such. Embrace what God has given—even if that doesn’t look very impressive
to others.
God’s voice, against which you should not harden yourself,
is his promises to you. Therefore, if you hear his voice today, harden not your
heart. Believe his promises and it will be so.
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