I’ve been reading about one of the greatest heroes in the Bible this past month—Moses. In the Bible Paul wrote 32,000 words….Jeremiah 35,000….Luke almost 40,000….Ezra over 43,000….but Moses put down over 125,000 and was constantly referred to by the apostles and Jesus. His stature cannot be over-stated in Bible. He was with Jesus at the transfiguration! Obviously, he’s one of God’s special ones—elected by God—he’s in heaven right now and is a giant in the Jewish and Christian celebrations.
But as good and as honored as he was, he was not perfect. He was afraid of the angry mobs, messed up on occasions, and more than once God got angry with him. It made me wonder—does God ever get angry with me—or you? If He does, it’s because of one thing: Disobedience.
“And the LORD said to Moses, “Take the rod, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water; so you shall bring water out of the rock for them; so you shall give drink to the congregation and their cattle.” And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock with his rod twice; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their cattle. And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” (Numbers 20:7-12, NIV). Friends, God spanks!
So what went wrong here? Moses hits the rock and water comes out—all is well. Right? No—not at all. Moses did not do what God said—Moses and Aaron went about it their own way. When it comes to God’s work, the ends do not justify the means. In fact, it could be argued that how you do the tasks God’s gives you is the most important thing! God became angry with Moses because Moses didn’t follow His instructions precisely, and because Moses gave himself the glory rather than giving it to God.
Moses was instructed to “tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water”. He said nothing about striking the rock. That was drama that got Aaron and Moses attention. Secondly, and worse, he gave himself the glory rather than giving it to God. He bragged: “Shall we bring forth water for you?”. They were God’s servants—nothing more!
When I preach or offer a devotion or a homily, who is getting the glory? It had better be God. The next man to fill this pulpit should have the same fervor and fear. Beware of Christian speakers and writers that are always the heroes of their own stories. God alone must be the hero and the one that gets the credit.
When I first built a home, the one that burned down eight years ago, I had a friend, Sarah Collins, to help me find water for the well. She brought up a forked branch from a tree, walked around and I watched the limb, time and time again, turn to the ground where she claimed there was water. We found the place to put in a well. I watched as she also found water lines at the camp with her “Diving Rod”. I’ve seen it, and I’m a believer. Some people, but not all, have that gift—the ability to find veins of water with a limb from a small tree.
Well, that’s sort of what Moses and Aaron were pretending to be. They acted like they knew just the right way to hit a rock and how to find the right formation of rocks to bring out water. But, if they had obeyed God by speaking to the rock, there would be no confusion about the One that brought about water. Only God can speak to a rock and bring out water. When Aaron and Moses instead decided to hit the rock, it could have been interpreted as some special ability that Aaron and Moses had—kind of like a diving rod.
And when Moses hit that rock two times, he was not showing faith, but a lack of it. God could have made the water gush forth when Moses simply spoke to the rock. God bought water out of that rock—not Moses. God saves you and me—-not a preacher or evangelist….and we cannot save ourselves. There are some things in life that we can accomplish, through focus and hard work—and we should! But human efforts will never lead a non-believer to God. What causes the lost to take pause and consider being a believer is when the Holy Spirit moves….when the impossible takes place in our lives and we give Him the proper glory and credit. And so, you see, we need calamities, financial disasters, broken hearts and hopeless situations! Why? So that God might just waste suffering upon us? NEVER. But rather that His Hand, mightily…obviously….inexplicably…. might not only cause our faith to soar—-but so that others might witness what a Mighty God we serve…..and might be saved from eternal darkness and death. Have your way in our lives Lord so that others might see what YOU have done to bring about the impossible!!!!
But for God to use us, as a church or privately, we must be obedient to Him, and oftentimes have no clue as to what He is doing what He is doing. Friends, we don’t have to know or understand—it’s not required. We clearly told to simply obey.
Prior to this event in the Moses’ life, he was confronted by fellow Hebrews that watched a man deliberately disobey God. Now in the Old Testament, unintentional sins, mistakes, could be atoned for, by making an offering and the shedding of blood. But deliberate, intentional sins could not—there was no sacrifice for that—-and Moses knew it. So right after Moses warns the people about deliberate, intentional sins, a man was caught breaking God’s Law by working, collecting firewood, on the Sabbath day. I think that perhaps Moses, Aaron, and the Israelites were not immediately sure what to do—they hesitated to put him to death.
So they showed what had happened to God and waited for His decision on what should be done to lawbreaker. And since the man had committed this sin immediately after God had just warned his people about the consequences of sinning intentionally, God judged that the man should be executed by stoning. The man’s arrogance to God’s law is evidenced by the fact that he never even offered to make a sacrifice to atone for his mistake. By the time he realized that he was going to fall into the hands of an angry God, it was too late. God’s judgement here served as a warning to all the people so that they would not show contempt to his commandments.
God repeatedly stated the importance of upholding the Sabbath to his people, as well as the punishment for doing any work on it. Friends, the Sabbath law was the first law passed in the history of mankind—-not just the Hebrews. It was a requirement He placed upon mankind before Adam sinned, before the flood, before the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt. Do you honor the Sabbath? Do you keep it holy?
This is what God told the Hebrews in the desert: “You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. For six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.” (Exodus 31:14–15)
But here’s the good news today! You and I deserve death—-DEATH—not only for only breaking the sabbath but probably most of the other COMMANDMENTS as well! But Jesus Christ took all the sins of the world upon himself and died in our place on the cross, so that everyone who believes in him as their only Savior who rose again from the dead on the third day receives the forgiveness of sins and eternal life with him. That’s what preachers are supposed to be sharing and reminding us of every Sunday! Not how to get rich or avoid pain and struggles!
We don’t come here to be blessed——although you will be blessed if your heart is here to rejoice in your salvation from God’s wrath…. and you are open to receiving truth! But we come here because we are already blessed—ABUNDANTLY—and our presence here is a testimony of how He has blessed us and saved our souls from eternal darkness.
In light of that, what are we thinking when we break God’s laws???!!!! I had a friend in the car with me recently and she looked at one of my sons who was staring out the window, and she asked him, “What are you thinking?” And he said, “Nothing”. And he was telling the truth. Women: sometimes we men and boys, when we are quiet are thinking about nothing. Sometimes when we do dumb, senseless things and we are asked, “why did you do that?”, we’re telling the truth when we say, “We don’t know!”
That’s a major part of the mystery of our sinful self! We do the most witless things and don’t know why!!! Right before He died what did Jesus say about His tormenters and taunters? "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34, NIV). The Holy Spirit, God’s gift us, helps to remove the cobwebs and cloudiness in our heads!
Obeying means that I admit I don’t know it all! I am yielding to an authority or power over me. It might not mean that I admire or agree, but rather that I have been taught to yield to authority, or I am afraid of the consequences. Later, in life and in relationships, we often find ourselves obeying for a more noble reason——we trust the one we are obeying. Fishermen in a boat heard Jesus tell them to cast their nets on the other side, they trusted that He knew what He was talking about, and they did—-and they were astounded at their catch.
Satan never tempts us to obey—he always tempts us to disobey—or worse, to play the mind game of wondering if God really said what He said, or if He really meant the rule to apply to me! That’s the way he tempted Eve with the forbidden fruit. He never tempts us to believe—-but to doubt. You’ll never hear the devil lecture you about trusting him or anyone else—but rather to trust no one and nothing. It turns you into a very miserable creature—just like the devil himself. Creatures in hell are fallen beings that have no confidence in any other soul. Some people, walking around you and me, are living in hell right now—they trust no one and yield to no authority.
But the good news…the “gospel”….the reason we are here today is this: Jesus took the place for our disobedience—-and the disobedience and arrogance of Moses, David, Peter and all the others saints of old…praise God that He did.
But what about those, like the Sabbath breaker in the book of Numbers? What about the Christian that has confessed his/hers sins and claim to know Jesus, but continues to deliberately sin? I wonder why we Protestants are so quick to talk about Romans 10:9-10, but so slow to quote Hebrews 10:26. Romans tells us: “ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” That makes us feel good and lets us sleep well at night! But in Hebrews, another inspired book of the Bible we are told: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left….” (Hebrews 10:26, NIV). Now, you don’t like that verse do you? But in the community of those that profess to have been “born again” there pervades a pharisaical arrogance, at times, that my actions and attitudes are none of your business and I have nothing to worry about. So we Baptists tend to go to great lengths to talk about the sins of consuming alcohol, or gambling, or smoking pot—things we don’t do, but which the Bible never explicitly condemns or addresses—and yet we never talk about the sins of gluttony, gossip, pride, and plain meanness—which is so common among the common church-goer and repeatedly called “sin” in the Bible.
In my three years of visiting here and preaching here, I am have seen the sins the Bible condemns, clearly on display, in this church and others in our community. Where is our shame?So before I leave, and after I say this it might represent a curtain call for my time in the pulpit, let me state, clearly, before you and the Christ that saved us all, the purpose of this pulpit is that men, women, boys and girls might see Jesus. The person who preaches here, behind this lectern, should be forgotten and Christ should be manifested in the words spoken in this holy gathering.
More than once people have used the pulpit as a form of social media or to merely talk about themselves, their pet peeves, or as a platform to talk about whatever it is that entered into their minds that week. May God forbid that from happening. Preachers of the gospel are not here to entertain, but talk about Jesus. Paul said this, about preaching: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” I Corinthians 2:2, NIV. Is this what you want in the man behind the pulpit? Because this is what is needed—not a social director for a community club or somebody to make jokes or make you feel good.
People that only talk of themselves or things that irritate them do not belong behind this pulpit. This a sacred platform, or should be, where Jesus Christ is celebrated, our heavenly Father is adored, and the Holy Spirit is revealed. This podium should be sacred and holy, and the one standing behind here should speak as a mouth piece for God—not a place blathering about those things that are not holy and essentially about Jesus Christ.
So let me leave you with four questions:
a. Does God ever get angry with you? Ask Him yourself and then listen.
b. Pastors have been called to minister as God’s servants—nothing more! Beware of self promoters.
c. Are you struggling or suffering? Pray simply this:”Have your way in my life Lord so that others might see what YOU are about to do to bring about the impossible!!!!”
d. By the time the Sabbath breaker realized that he was going to fall into the hands of an angry God, it was too late. Don’t make that mistake! If you are living in sin—get out of it and seek to be re-born with a new mind and new inclinations to please Him.
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