#LENT2019 Day 12: Exodus 15
(For our lent devotional, we’ll be going through the book of Exodus with the rest of our church and be looking at the hand of God carrying the Israelites through their captivity and oppression as well as their sin and unbelief. Keep up with us as we look at how much God loves His people and never leaves us alone.)
First, read: Exodus 15 (focus on 22-27)
This chapter is a textbook example of the Israelites all over again: praise God for all He’s done until things go wrong.
For the first 21 verses of chapter 15, all you see are the people of Israel dancing and singing for the Lord. In verse 21, Miriam sings out,
“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”
It’s clearly a whole ordeal. The Israelites have seen so much of what God can do, and in His mighty hand of freedom and victory, they could not help but sing. But in literally the next verse, Israel hits a roadblock: they when three days in the wilderness without water. And when they came across a place with water called Marah, they couldn’t drink it because of our bitter it was, and grumbled against Moses.
After all that, ten plagues and one crazy walk through the Red Sea split on either side of them, they grumbled at God and at Moses because they didn’t have water. Oh, the irony.
Moses cries out to God, and God shows him a log to throw into the water. He does, and the water turns sweet for them to drink. It says at this point in Exodus that the Lord makes for the Israelites a “statue and a rule” to test them. He says this:
“IF you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”
And then God takes them to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there.
When Israel was worshipping God, they were pointing to the glory of God and giving him all the glory, honor, and praise. It’s an act that is sacred and completely necessary, but it’s also a natural response to the wonderful act of freedom and restoration that God has done in their lives.
But when things went awry for three days, they started to grumble. After all that they had seen, after 430 years of oppression that was lifted, it took the Israelites 3 days without water in the hot, sunny, dry wilderness to get distracted. Think about it: 3. Days. And when they grumble to Moses, Moses cries out to God and God listens to his cry. But when God listens to his cry wit a log of wood, we’re hit with how menial that sign of wonder is in comparison to all that had happened only two chapters prior. It was such a small thing for God, even within our limited understanding of what God can do. And yet after all they had seen and praised Him for, the Israelites couldn’t get over the bitter water in front of them and grew upset.
So God sets some ground rules for them. It says in scripture that he “tests” them in order to see their obedience to Him, and this language is crucial because it helps us understand that God had freed them from the idolatrous rule over them in Egypt so that they would be free to worship their true Lord and God. Now that they were free, it was a matter of obeying God, because that’s where their best interest is.
Then, the midst of His new ground rule with them, God reminds them of who He is: their healer. And afterwards, God brings them to a place with 12 springs for 12 tribes and 70 palm trees. The number seven, and any number with the number seven in it, often represents completion in the Bible. This is significant because God is not just talking about healer here in the context that we know this to be talking about. God here is talking about healer in the context of creation, and shows here that He is a Creator God that rules over all on Earth and restores it/brings it to completion. So while God sets the ground rules, He tells them in gracious, steadfast, kind love that He is their healer and restores their situation by not just giving them a better version of the bitter water but bringing them to a new place that completes their needs.
Sound familiar, huh?
How many times do we get caught up in the midst of our circumstances and forget God? How many times do we lose sight of what God has done for us, big or small, and get upset when He doesn’t immediately cover our needs in front of us?
I know I forget all the time. Even when i’m praying in my car after a long, fruitful day of preaching and teaching about the radical, transformative love of Jesus, it often just takes ten minutes of driving for my heart to start grumbling. Within a half hour of worship, I catch myself complaining about the driver in front of me or whining about my tiredness. And when I catch myself starting to get distracted, God reminds me to look at Him— but it’s not with his anger or punishment or “you get what you deserve” discipline that he reminds me. God’s discipline is not punitive— it’s instructional. God points me back to where I need to look with His kind, steadfast love.
In response to our short-lived, limited, selfish perspective, God doesn’t punish us. He practically tells us how to be obedient, reminds us of who He is in our lives, and leads us to green pastures to lie in safety.
All of this is not because we’re perfect, but because God is still God, even when we’re not our best.
This Monday, as we drag ourselves through the first half of the week, let’s remember God. We can be short-sighted, and our worship for God is short-lived. We can be distracted by the world around us, and it might only take seconds for our hearts to start grumbling. But God is with us. So let’s take our eyes off our situations. Let’s pause our annoyance at all we have to deal with and all we have to do. Let’s re-direct our eyes towards the cross and live out the life with God that we are free to live out today.
Happy #grindday Monday everybody.
Love,
janedo
