Gooding, David: How God Deals With Rebels

Now for our morning meditation, as we prepare our hearts to draw near to God, let us read together in the book of Exodus and chapter seventeen. And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin by their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim. There was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people strove with Moses and said, give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, why strive you with me? Wherefore do you tempt the Lord? The people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured against Moses and said, Wherefore hast thou brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me. The Lord said unto Moses, Pass on before the people and take with thee of the elders of Israel, and thy rod wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Masar and Meribah, because of the striving of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, is the Lord among us or not? Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose out men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek. And Moses and Aaron and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed. And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon. And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side. And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomforted Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. The Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah-Nissi. And he said, The Lord has sworn, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. May God guide us in our meditations upon his holy word. The book of Exodus is an exceedingly ancient book. It was written, I suppose, over three thousand years ago. But for all that it is an exceedingly ancient book, it speaks still today directly to our hearts, and not least for this reason, because of its down to earth sheer realism. The situation it is describing as we break into its record at this juncture is that Israel had recently been delivered from their bondage and servility to the Pharaoh of Egypt, and they had left Egypt in high spirits and jubilant mood. Their minds were full of the promises of God that he had not only delivered them from bondage, he had for them an inheritance flowing with milk and honey there out in the distant blue somewhere, an inheritance they had never seen, but which God assured them was truly there. As they had come to the Red Sea, for a moment their courage had failed them, as they thought that the whole expedition would end in disaster. But when at last they saw the wonder of the miracle power of God and came through the Red Sea safe and stood upon its further banks, and when they looked back to see their once-time enemies dead in the waters of the Red Sea, then they became so excited and elated that they sang to the Lord, and Moses led their choirs, and Miriam responded, the Lord had triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider had he thrown into the sea. They felt that they were almost there to their inheritance, another inch or two, and their heads would poke into the substratum of heaven. They spoke freely in their song, not only that the Lord had brought them out, but they said, the Lord has brought us in. They felt as if they were almost there, and sang fit to break their very lungs. But a few months down the road, it was a very different picture. For it wasn't long before they made two shocking discoveries, and the discoveries filled their hearts with bitter disappointment. And the first discovery they made was this, that God wasn't what they thought he was. God was, in fact, very different from what they had imagined, and they became sorely and bitterly disappointed with God. You'll say, I don't know how it was, perhaps it was because of all that talk of the inheritance flowing with milk and honey, that they seem to have imagined that their brief journey across the wilderness would be a kind of a cook's tour conducted in air conditioned omnibuses. But it didn't turn out that way. They found the journey by which God took them to be a waste and a howling wilderness. And at first, their disappointment registered itself as they came to Moses standing on the banks of the Red Sea, as they saw the Egyptian chariots coming on behind them. And the thought of the taskmaster's whip and the recent feel of the lash upon their backs drove them in their misery to come to Moses and said, Moses, you fool Moses. We always told you it was a ridiculous scheme. It was never likely to succeed. It was a wild, wild escapade. Fancy ever thinking that God could bring us out of the grip of the tyrant of Egypt. Would God we died in Egypt where it was more comfortable than to be massacred here by your stupid unrealism in trying to break the power of Pharaoh. And God in his mercy told them to stand still while they should experience his magnificent power that should fight for them and deliver them from their enemies. But when they got over the Red Sea to the wilderness and began their journey in Annas, the lesson they had just learned became dim, because their food became very ordinary and samey and minimal. And they came to Moses and they said, sir, do you know we didn't sign up for this kind of thing? This is worse than what we had in Egypt. We remember the cucumbers and the onions and the garlic. I know we had to work rather hard, but you know, at the end of the day, what glorious meals we would tuck into, flavored and varied and luscious and toothsome. This is absurd, Moses, they said, this kind of prison convict fare that you serve us out with day by day. This isn't good enough, Moses. It's like a living death, starving our appetites like this. And Moses had a job to contain them. Then came the terrible climax. Well, they took their journey according to the commandment of the Lord, says Holy Writ. And as they attempted honestly to follow the guidance of the Lord in their journey, they came to a place where the water gave out completely. It was the last straw, and it broke the proverbial camel's back. They came to Moses in a very ugly mood. This isn't good enough, Moses, sir, they said. We've had enough. You made us such glowing promises when we started, but this is absurd. You'll see it wouldn't have been so bad, would it, if they had journeyed according to their own ideas and schemes and had neglected the leading of the Lord. But to follow the leading of the Lord and find that the Lord's own very leading led them into this dire straits where the water was given out completely. Brought them almost to despair. And they were in ugly mood when they came to Moses. And they strove with Moses and were almost ready to, uh, stone him. As they said, give us water, or else we pack the whole thing in. And then they made another discovery. That they, who had so recently sung the praise of God on the banks of the Red Sea, still had within their hearts an incurable rebel against God. Look here, they said to Moses, you'll give us water, or we shall ditch the whole idea of God. What we want, Moses, is solid evidence that God is among us. For to tell you the truth, Moses, we've come nearly to the p- the opinion that all your talk of God, all your talk of God leading us, of God being with us, is so much hot air. Is the Lord among us? Show us, Moses, give us evidence. Is the Lord among us or not? We tell you what, Moses, you'll provide water as we give up on the idea of God completely. They discovered that second big discovery, that they weren't the holy, worshiping, songful people that they thought they were. In their hearts there nestled rebellion against the living Lord. Why did God do it? It seems to me, as we read these ancient records, we too could find an answering cord in our hearts. There was a hymn that we used to sing lustily in my youth, and it ran like this: He is not a disappointment. Jesus is far more to me than in all my glowing daydreams I had fancied he could be. Happy the child of God who has always been able to sing that in one hundred percent volume, sincerely. But I'm telling you now that there are many believers in life who have not found it so. There have come patches in their lives when they have found God and his blessed Son grievously disappointing. They thought the road to heaven was going to be full of glory and adventure, only to find that as they honestly followed the Lord's leading, it led them into distress and thirst and hunger and disappointment and heartbreak. Why did God do it? Subsequently, he told them when they neared the promised land, he told them through Moses, I led you in the wilderness, and I caused you to hunger, and I humbled you, that I might know what was in your heart. We'll see, God is out to make his people holy, is he not? And there is only one way of making them or us holy. That is if, as it is fitting and circumstances allow, God shall bring us to make the great discovery of what we are really like in the depths of our hearts. We shall not wake up one of these mornings and say to ourselves, I feel different somehow this morning. I wonder what's happened to me. Oh, I think I know what it is. I've become holy overnight. We don't become holy overnight. We don't suddenly get a surge of curious feeling, and lo and behold, we have come holy. We become holy by that difficult, uh, tiresome, painful process of from time to time being made to face ourselves, to face our sin, to face our basic rebellion, and facing it to learn what an ugly thing it is, and learning that to repent of our sin and to repent of our rebellion and seek the gracious help of the Lord to be delivered from the foe that lurks within our hearts. It is the only way known to God to make us holy. And seeing we need to be holy by the time we arrive at our great inheritance in glory, it is absolutely inevitable and utterly necess- ne- necessary that as we journey through life's circumstances, we too, from time to time, shall be allowed to hunger and to thirst and to suffer distress. We too shall allow, be allowed to discover what is within our hearts and taste the bitterness of discovering we are not the nice people we thought we were. We are not the devoted believers that we imagined ourselves to be. At our hearts still, there lurks an old rebel. The painful lesson that in me, that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good thing. And as with individuals, so with churches, said Paul to the Corinthians in their day of misery, there must be divisions among you, mustn't there? There must be heresies. Why so? That they which are approved may be made manifest, and that which is not of God may be removed. To that end, God is tough. We rightly praise him because God is love, and God is never anything else or less than love. But sheer realism, watching the lives of God's people, would show us this, that God is tough. His love is not of the meringue variety, all sweetness and brittle. God is tough. For God has great and immense purposes of glory for us, not only to deliver us from our slavery to sin, but eventually to conform us to the image of his glorious son. We are to be sons and daughters of the Most High God, elevated in glory to stations above angels, and to sit with Christ upon his imperial throne, he the firstborn among us, the many brethren. And God is determined to have it so. And God will not stop at anything short of sin itself. To form in the hearts of his people the likeness to his son. Hence the trial and the difficulty and the pain and the disappointment. But as the record goes on, it tells us another wonderful thing. It tells us how God met the rebellion in his people that erupted on that occasion. And here is the story. Said God to Moses, Moses, I shall come down and I shall stand upon the rock, Moses, in the presence of the people. And I want you to collect the people and to collect the elders of Israel, and bring with you the rod with which you smoked the waters in Egypt and turned them into blood. And Moses did so. He collected the people, and God came down and stood upon the rock. And Moses solemnly took the rod of God in his hand, with which he had smitten Egypt under the terrible judgments of God. And instinctively, we think we see what is going to happen, don't we? God has had enough of the rebels. God has had enough of their mouths, of their tongues, of their rebellious hearts. God has commanded Moses to take his rod, and you can see what's going to happen, can't you? That rod is going to come down as God has had enough of it. But presently, things don't work out like that. Take your rod, says God, the rod of judgment, and come near to the rock on which I stand, Moses, and take your rod and smite the very rock on which I stand. What was God saying? You know, if it ever came to pass that Her Great Majesty Queen Elizabeth II came to some celebration in one of London parks, and they built for her a temporary platform, and she was pleased to come and stand on it in view of the assembled masses. If in that moment some man came out of the crowd and, evading the police cordon, came with a heavy rod in his hand and began to belabor the platform on which Her Gracious Majesty stood. What did you think it was? The police would have no difficulty in understanding the thing, would they? For if the man was sane and in his right mind, this would be treasonable rebellion against Her Majesty. Take your rod, the rod of my judgment, says God, and smite the rock on which I stand. Smite it in the sight of all the people. And you might as well. For isn't that what the people have been doing with their tongues anyway? And in our thoughts this morning, we shall presently come not to that rock, but to another hill. When God came down to deal with the rebel human heart, we come to Calvary. And all tell me what was happening at Calvary. It was, so to speak, the cone of a volcano, wasn't it? In which that disobedience and rebellion to God that has smoldered in the heart of every human being all down the centuries suddenly found its vent, and the great volcano of human rebellion spurted out its fires against God's incarnate. This morning, as we consider Calvary and what was happening, it will not be to blame other people for their rebellion, will it? But to see with graphic hindsight what we there did to God in Cana. Take your rod, the rod of God, with which you smote Egypt and smite the rock on which I stand, said God. To our amazement, the rod of his judgment falls not on the people, but on the rock on which God stood. And as presently we draw near to Calvary, we see two things, do we not? What our rebel sin did to God's incarnate Son. And in that moment, we see Jehovah himself. Jehovah lifted up his rod. O Christ, it fell on thee. Thou wast sore smitten of thy God. There's not one stroke for me. Who shall tell us vividly enough that marvelous mystery, God's way with rebels. When our rebellion was at its peak, then, so it is written, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. How can you fight a God like that? And we sing with the poet, well might the sun in darkness hide and shut its glories in when God, the incarnate maker, died for man, his creatures, sin. I do not know how many years you have been on the Christian pathway. You will certainly have had some concept of sin when first you came as a sinner to the Lord Jesus and learned to value the Lord as the one who died for your sin that you might be forgiven. It is with a deeper note of worship in our hearts, is it not, that we come this morning with the hindsight, perhaps, of many years of Christian experience, years full of God's goodness, years full of spiritual progress, but perhaps this morning the things that dwell in the forefront of our mind are those sorrowful occasions when even as believers, and to our disappointment and to our sorrow, we have found the rebel still lurking in our hearts. And we turn to the emblems, and we remember Calvary, and we say to ourselves, did he know it? Did he know it when I first came to him? Did he know it when I first promised him my allegiance? That in the course of life, I would go astray and disobey and rebel and prove selfish and self-willed. Did he know it all? And the answer is he saw it all in advance. And did he, knowing it, give himself for me? And so it is. Oh, for that love, wonderful, inexpressible love of God. And as we remember him this morning, we cry shame on our rebel hearts and find ourselves overwhelmed by the love of God, who loved us while we were yet sinners. God's way with rebels. But then there is a second part to the story. For if Israel, on this occasion, discovering the depths of their own hearts, named the place Massar and Meribah to record this ugly fact that they had rebelled against the Lord, they swiftly had another experience in which they proved that in spite of their rebellion, God was for them. For, says the historian tersely, the first instant- incident was no sooner over, then there came Amalek and fought with Israel. And that isn't to be wondered at, is it? For Amalek was the inveterate enemy against God. Amalek, the tribe that would not hesitate to try and overthrow the very throne of God himself. Then came Amalek. He came at an opportune time, didn't he? For while Israel were trustfully obedient to the Lord, Amalek kept his distance. But when Israel started to give ground to the enemy and themselves turned to rebel against the Lord, then Amalek was there to help them, of course. Then came Amalek, and Israel now had to decide what they would do. Would they continue with their rebellion and defection against the Lord and join with Amalek? Or would they take their courage in both hands and stand against Amalek and fight the battles of the Lord? Rise up, says Moses to Joshua. You must get the people to fight. And fight they did. And that was a new turn in their history, wasn't it? When they came out of Egypt first, and they saw the Egyptian chariots coming up behind them, they cried out in sheer terror, thinking that they were about to be taken back to the concentration camps. For in all those long years of misery in the camps, they had given up all thought of fighting. They tell us, don't they, that one of the ill effects of the concentration camps of the last war was to demonstrate this, that when people get into such camps, they're not thinking first of liberty, they are thinking of surviving. If you have a taskmaster with a lash who could be offended by the very way you look, then you'll try to disguise even your feelings. You'll aim to please him. You will become a veritable slave simply to survive. And so it was with Israel. When they saw the Egyptians coming, they could almost feel the lash again upon their back. You fool, Moses, they said, you've brought us here to kill us. Unpleasant as Egypt was, we could at least have survived in the concentration camps. God, in his mercy at that stage, didn't ask them to fight. He said, look, you stand still. I shall fight for you. And that is blessedly true, isn't it? I think as I stand here of a man I knew years and years ago in the grip of alcoholism, I think of another who was in the grip of drugs. And the good girl who had been delivered from drugs by the power of the Lord, yet, uh, knew the strength of the temptation. And of a Saturday night, when the temptation would grow strong, some of us would go and sit with her and conduct little Bible studies with her to help her over the crest of the temptation that still gnawed at her heart. God, of course, has a salvation. He it is that has overwhelmed the power of Satan and delivered us from the power of darkness. It is not our strength that has delivered us, it is the strength of God. It is a genuine salvation. While is that, that is the truth on the one side, there remains the other. When God got Israel out into the wilderness and the time came, then he had to teach them to fight. We can't go to heaven as spineless beings. God has to build into our hearts the willingness and the courage and the ability to stand and face the enemies of God and learn to fight. So it was here. Up, says God. And if the people have learned their lesson, let them take sides, and let them take sides with me against their former rebellion and against the rebels, against the Lord Amalek and all his crew. Israel were told to fight. Yet mark, if you will, the lovely provision that God made for them, as now they must learn to begin to fight the enemy. First of all, there was Moses, and he went up the hill and sat upon the hill with the rod of God in his hand. Same old Moses, same rod of judgment, but now Israel perceived that Moses and his rod were not against them, they were for them. And as Moses sat on the hill and lifted up his hands and his rod in his hands, old Amalek quavered in his shoes and began to retire. Good old Moses. I thank God for Moses still. I know not about you. I need Moses every day of my life, I do, as I go out to face the battle of life and learn the old traitor in my own heart and see the forces of the rebels against the Lord in the world outside. I need Moses. Moses with his rod and his law saying, thou shalt not, my boy, and you won't do that, and you will do this, and you won't take, uh, you won't compromise with sin. Oh, I need good old Moses, do you see, up on the mountain to, uh, fight for me. I could never be saved by keeping his law, could I? But I do need his law. And the holy commandments of God, thou shalt not do this, and the holy command of God, you will do that. These are my friends, aren't they now? He's fighting for me against the rebellion of sin. Good old Moses. And then down on the plain, God gave them Joshua to be the captain of their salvation. You'll see God explained to Moses. It's not your war, really, it's my war. The Lord will have war against Amalek until he has utterly ble- uh, blotted Amalek out from under heaven. It's the Lord's war. My brethren, my sisters, we have the privilege this morning of joining a war that is cosmic in its proportion. It is no news to any of us that there has taken place a revolt at the highest level in the heavens itself, and mighty and majestic principalities and powers have been turned to rebel against the Almighty, and their rebellion has infected our very planet here. And the Lord has determined to have war with them, and the Lord has determined to blot out from the very heavens and from the earth all memory of such rebellion. And God himself has raised his military standard to lead his army, and he invites us once more today again to come and join up under his colors and fight the battle of the Lord. I'm glad it's his war, not mine, because God never did undertake a war yet, but what he won, and he's going to win this war too. He's going to subdue the rebel, and all praise. He has taken us in hand and will not finish with us either, until he has subdued utterly and eventually cast out the rebel that lurks within our breasts. And until he does, we have our Joshua too, don't we? Joshua, captain of the host of the Lord, to lead us in the battles of the Lord. He who learned what it cost to obey, but what he suffered. He has been appointed captain of our salvation to become the author of eternal salvation to those who in turn obey him. So they called the altar Jehovah Nissi, the Lord my military banner, and two names were written indelibly on the pages of Israel's history. Two names are likewise written indelibly and shall be forever on the page of our human history too, as we look back on its days and journeys, and the one is Massar and Meribah, and we remember that we once were rebels against the king, that we often have rebelled against him even though we were believers, and we record the fact in us dwells no good thing. Ah, but we have the other name, and it says Jehovah Nissi, and knowing all about us, he loved us just the same, and God is for us. And because he fights for us, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. The Lord use his word to stir our hearts and evoke our deepening worship and allegiance to him.