Tag: Trusting in God

Morning Musing: Exodus 17:8-11

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“At Rephidim, Amalek came and fought against Israel. Moses said to Joshua, ‘Select some men for us and go fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the hilltop with God’s staff in my hand.’ Joshua did as Moses had told him, and fought against Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. While Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, but whenever he put his hand down, Amalek prevailed.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How does God’s power work? If you are someone who believes His power exists and can accomplish things in our lives, that would seem to be a pretty important question to answer. Sometimes God answers big questions like this at unexpected times. As we take the next step forward in our journey with Israel in this new year, we find ourselves faced with an opportunity to reflect on this very question. Let’s take it and see what we can learn.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 16:21-23

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“They gathered it every morning. Each gathered as much as he needed to eat, but when the sun grew hot, it melted. On the sixth day they gathered twice as much food, four quarts apiece, and all the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He told them, ‘This is what the Lord has said: “Tomorrow is a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you want to bake, and boil what you want to boil, and set aside everything left over to be kept until morning.”‘” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are some traditions and phrases whose origin nobody knows anymore. One is the existence of “Blue Laws.” We know what these are, of course. They are laws designed to restrict the things people can do on Sundays. Why exactly they are called “Blue Laws,” though, nobody seems to know. We have some guesses, but none of them are very confident. The reason they exist, though, is because followers of Jesus from our nation’s colonial past wanted to encourage (that is, force) people to honor the Sabbath as they understood it should be honored. Speaking of the Sabbath, while we know where that came from, there is lots of debate about what exactly it is and what we should do about it today. We’ll be spending a lot more time talking about it in the weeks ahead of us, but let’s get started on that conversation today.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 16:17-20

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“So the Israelites did this. Some gathered a lot, some a little. When they measured it by quarts, the person who gathered a lot had no surplus, and the person who gathered a little had no shortage. Each gathered as much as he needed to eat. Moses said to them, ‘No one is to let any of it remain until morning.’ But they didn’t listen to Moses; some people left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank. Therefore Moses was angry with them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever proven yourself to someone only to have them doubt you anyway? That’s an enormously frustrating situation. One of the major themes of the Exodus journey is Israel’s persistent lack of faith in God. This story fits squarely within this theme. Let’s talk about how God provides, why Israel didn’t trust, and what all of this might mean for us.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 16:4, 12

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“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. . . .I have heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them: At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will eat bread until you are full. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Maybe it’s because I grew up in Missouri, the “Show Me State,” but I remember growing up that it was not at all uncommon when someone in a group of friends made a claim that seemed particularly outlandish, the rest of the group responded with two words: prove it. When Israel complained that Moses had dragged them out into the desert to starve them to death, while food was the direct object of their whining, it wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was that they were essentially telling God to prove (yet again) that He really was God. So he did, and in a way that has shaped the cultural memory of the entire world ever since. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

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Why Do We Suffer?

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This week we are in the third part of our teaching series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. This will be the most emotionally challenging stop on our journey. This week we are going to tackle the question of why there is suffering in the world created by a supposedly good God. This is a deeply emotional question with intensely personal elements to it. You have perhaps asked this question yourself. You certainly know people who have even if you didn’t know that about them. The answers to this question won’t be easy, but they are good. Let’s dive in together to see what the Scriptures have to say about it.

Why Do We Suffer?

There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding right now in Gaza. There’s an ongoing one in Ukraine. China is still keeping millions of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps in the Xinjiang Province even though that has dropped out of the news. That is in addition to that nation’s ongoing and vigorous persecution of Christians…who make up a larger percentage of the population than Chinese Communist Party members. Azerbaijan has launched a genocidal effort to exterminate or otherwise forcibly relocate all of the Armenian Christians in a disputed border region between the nations, leading to massive suffering on the part of tens of thousands. Muslims in Pakistan are becoming more and more aggressive in their persecution of Christians in the nation. So are Hindus in India. The two nations don’t like each other, but they both agree that they hate Christians more. A category five Hurricane hit the Pacific coast of Mexico last week from which the recovery efforts have only just begun. A shooter in Maine just last week murdered 18 and injured another 13, some critically. Several people in our own community have had their lives disrupted just recently by unexpected, unwelcome, and scary news that bodes for a very difficult road stretching out in their near future. 

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