sermon – Page 8 – jeffersonvann

A PURE WALK

A PURE WALK

Numbers 5:1-4 NET

¹ Then the LORD spoke to Moses: ² “Command the Israelites to expel from the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and whoever becomes defiled by a corpse. ³ You must expel both men and women; you must put them outside the camp, so that they will not defile their camps, among which I live.” ⁴ So the Israelites did so, and expelled them outside the camp. As the LORD had spoken to Moses, so the Israelites did.

We are reading through the Bible sequentially, two chapters at a time. But our messages only touch on a portion of each Sunday’s text. That means that our preaching is like bunny hopping or taking the stairs two or three at a time. I need to set the stage for today’s message because anyone who has not been reading is liable to get lost.

We are now in the Book of Numbers. The children of Israel are at Sinai, getting ready for their long walk to the promised land. They have spent all of Leviticus in this exact spot. The people needed to prepare. They needed to get out of Egypt, but they also needed to get Egypt out of them.

The first part of Numbers is dedicated to the final preparations for the walk to destiny. That is why Numbers begins with a census and that is why it is called the Book of Numbers. But once they have established who is going to be taking the walk, the next thing to establish is what position the people are to be walking in. It helps to visualize what the march to Canaan was supposed to look like. At the center of the walk was the Tabernacle, carried by three clans of Levites who were specifically designated for the task. Surrounding them were the tribes of Israel, in groups, with a prominent tribe leading each group. At the front of the march would be the tribe of Judah, leading its group consisting of the tribes of Issachur and Zebulun. Then Reuben’s group which included the tribes of Gad and Simeon. Then the Tent of Meeting, surrounded by Priests and Levites. Behind them would be Ephraim’s group, including the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh. Finally, there would be Dan’s group, including the tribes of Asher and Naphtali.

All of these groups made up what was referred to as the camp as they traveled. When they were not marching, the groups would camp surrounding the tent of meeting. The tent of Meeting would be set up in the center, surrounded by groups of priests and Levites. The Judah group would surround them from the East, the Dan group from the North, the Ephraim group from the West, and the Reuben group from the South.

But these were not all the people who were traveling. These were just what was called the camp. Outside the camp, a large number of non-Israelites traveled with them. They had to obey the rules of the community, but they were not allowed to be part of the tribal encampment. They were allowed to come along, but they could not identify with the Jewish congregation.

Today’s text tells us that some of the Israelites were singled out and told that they were not allowed to join the tribal encampment. They would have to stay outside the camp. They were not being excommunicated—they were still Israelites—but they had to stay on the outer fringes of the camp along with the Gentile guests.

Why is that? Remember that the people of Israel had been slaves for 4 centuries. God had to communicate spiritual truths to them with simple concrete methods. The spiritual truth God wanted to teach was:

God wanted the Israelites to have a pure walk in his presence.

He told them that they must sanctify themselves and be holy because he is their God (Leviticus 20:7). He said that he had set them apart from other peoples to be his alone (Leviticus 20:26).

He did not tell them that they could wait until they got into the promised land and then live the set-apart life. No, they were to begin that set-apart life while on the way to Canaan. So, God uses a symbol that they are sure to understand. Some of their own friends and family members would be taken away from them. They would have to live outside the tribal encampments. Those in the camp would miss their friends. They would miss their brothers and sisters. But they would know that God wanted them to have a pure walk in his presence.

God commanded the expulsion of everything that defiles from the Israelite camp.

Three particular types of defilement are mentioned: disease, discharge, and death.

Many other things defiled people spiritually, but they were not mentioned in this particular command. These three are mentioned because they each involve obvious, visible defilement.

I must also point out that each of these expulsions could be temporary. There were Levitical rules concerning how long someone had to be segregated from the camp if a skin disease, a discharge of fluid, or a death in the family defiled them. If a person were restored to the camp, it would be a cause for celebration for that family and tribe. But it would also be another opportunity to drive home the principle that God’s people are to be a set-apart and holy people.

Jesus is the ultimate answer for everything that defiles.

It is no coincidence that during Jesus’ personal ministry, he encountered people with all these defilements. He did not shun them. He came to them. He touched them. He demonstrated God’s perfect will in regard to the things that defile because he cleansed the lepers, healed the woman with a discharge, and raised the dead.

The principle we learn from today’s passage is that God requires that his people demonstrate purity in their walk. We are not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with Good. We are to live holy and righteous lives as proof that we are following a holy and righteous Savior. If there is visible sin among us, we must separate ourselves from that sin and allow the Lord to bring that sinner to repentance and restoration. We must not allow visible sin in the encampment.

But the goal is always restoration. Our savior taught us never to give up on even the most sinful and the most visibly defiled. He ministered to those who were unclean and so should we.

God’s plan is to bring us back into his presence by removing the things that defile from us.

The ultimate lesson we learn from today’s passage is not that we should separate ourselves from others but that God wants us to come apart from everything sinful and be separate from what defiles. We are to walk a pure walk. But there is even more to the lesson. We must remember that God was leading his people to a destination. He is doing the same thing for us. Only, instead of a destination, we are on our way to a destiny.

Listen to these words from Revelation 21:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more. And I saw the holy city — the new Jerusalem — descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more — or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.” And the one seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new!” Then he said to me, “Write it down, because these words are reliable and true.” He also said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who is thirsty I will give water free of charge from the spring of the water of life. The one who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But to the cowards, unbelievers, detestable persons, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic spells, idol worshipers, and all those who lie, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That is the second death.”

There are two destinies, and both are permanent. Jesus is making all things new, but there are those who will not experience the new life he will give. They will experience permanent death instead. We must walk in purity today because only the pure will inherit the new universe. We must separate from everything that defiles us today because God, in his love, wants us to experience the joy of eternal life tomorrow.

Communion meditation:

“For the bodies of those animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore, to sanctify the people by his own blood, Jesus also suffered outside the camp. We must go out to him, then, outside the camp, bearing the abuse he experienced. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:11-14).

What did the author of Hebrews mean when he said that Jesus suffered outside the camp? Those who were expelled from the camp were considered impure and defiled. Jesus was treated the same way when they crucified him. Paul said, “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” We were all outsiders, and Jesus was the only insider. So he went outside to bring us back. By his death on the cross, he made it possible for all of us outsiders to come back inside. We celebrate that victory as we remember what he did for us on the cross.

“Devotions from Numbers” is 236 pages long and was released on November 1, 2024.

FAILURE OFFERING

Leviticus 4:1-2, 35.

¹ Then the LORD spoke to Moses: ² “Tell the Israelites, ‘When a person sins by straying unintentionally from any of the Lord’s commandments which must not be violated, and violates any one of them — ³⁵ Then the one who brought the offering must remove all its fat (just as the fat of the sheep is removed from the peace offering sacrifice) and the priest must offer them up in smoke on the altar on top of the other gifts of the LORD. So the priest will make atonement on his behalf for his sin which he has committed and he will be forgiven.

As Christians, we believe that God inspired the Bible, and it is therefore worthwhile to read, learn, teach, preach, and know. Our congregation is in the middle of an experiment to test that belief. We have decided to eat the whole elephant – one bite at a time. We determined to read the whole Bible over eighteen months. Some of the passages will be pretty easy to read. The stories of the history of God’s dealings with his people – the biblical narratives – are easier to read. A reader can imagine being in the story and experiencing the event. Doctrinal texts are easy, too, because we all have questions about what God wants us to believe and how we should act. Wisdom literature is practical because we all want to make the right choices – to please God and live his way.

But we have come to a section of Scripture that most people find more challenging to read, and some find it hopeless to understand. If you started our little experiment on January 1, you probably felt this way about midway through Exodus. Now that you are in Leviticus, you might find your daily reading a bit of a challenge. Every day, you encounter a fresh set of rules and regulations about the Tabernacle – which you have never seen, and sacrifices that you will have never participated in – and will never join in. You are going to be tempted to skip over the “irrelevant parts.” As much as you might want to believe that the whole Bible is God’s word, you might be tempted to consider these difficult parts as beyond your ability to comprehend. You are not alone.

What we are experiencing is all too common for any generation. We are in the middle of a section of Scripture that most people skip reading. It is a section with the most pages stuck together because it is so infrequently visited. It isn’t that we think this section does not belong to God’s word. It is mostly because we have no clue as to why it is in God’s word.

What we need is to crack the code. Some documents are impossible to understand until you find the code that they are written in – the knowledge that helps us to make sense of what otherwise would remain a hopeless jumble of words and phrases. When we were reading the narratives of Genesis and the first part of Exodus, we found the code to help us decipher that text in the historical background. When we were studying the commands of Christ in the Gospels, we found the code in the personal application of those commands to our everyday lives. But what is the code that can help us read and understand the regulations of the Old Testament sacrificial system?

I believe there is a code. What’s more – I want to assure you that you will not have to go back to college and learn a lot of new things in order to understand it. You already know the code that will help you master the reading and comprehension of Leviticus. Once you apply the code to what you read on these pages, you will see that every rule is relevant to you personally, every statute and ordinance and judgment and regulation.

What is this code? It is theology. The trick to understanding all these complex passages of Scripture is what the rest of Scripture teaches about God, Jesus Christ, sin, and salvation. Unless we see the truths about God from Scripture in these obscure texts, we will always get hopelessly stuck in these pages. But once we start seeing the code at work, we will find that we have a new Bible in our hands.

So, today, I want to crack the code of Leviticus 4, which is all about the sin offerings. You will notice from the title of this morning’s sermon that I call them failure offerings. In my translation of the Bible, I use the word “failure” to translate the Hebrew and Greek words that are usually translated as “sin.” My reason for doing this is that sin is one of those words that we have assigned a religious meaning and that religious meaning can keep us from understanding the word’s biblical meaning. There are lots of words like this in the Bible. In my translation, I try to use other words for these religious-sounding words that everybody seems to understand but nobody can explain. The word I use for the concept of sin is failure. Sin is missing the mark. It is trying to do the right thing but ending up doing the wrong thing. When we use the word sin, we usually think of intentional transgression – rebellion against God’s commands. But every one of the regulations in Leviticus 4 have to do with unintentional sins.

We are used to thinking of unintentional failures as mistakes. We don’t hold people accountable for their mistakes. We might give someone an “F” on the test that they failed, but we don’t punish them for failing. We don’t consider it a personal affront to us if someone makes a mistake. But the sin offerings of Leviticus 4 are all about getting forgiveness for things done wrong that were inadvertant – unintentional. We cannot crack the code of Leviticus 4 until we answer the question of why God requires atonement for unintentional failures.

Our failures offend God’s holiness.

Look at verses 16-17. They say, “Then the high priest must bring some of the blood of the bull to the Meeting Tent, and that priest must dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before the LORD toward the front of the veil-canopy.” We are familiar with this part of the Tabernacle. It is a curtain that separates the holy places where God resides from the mundane places where just anybody can go. We know that when Jesus was crucified, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, signifying access to the Father. This veil represented the holiness of God contrasted with the corruption and sinfulness of all humanity.

The blood of the failure offering was to be sprinkled on the veil. On one side of the veil were defilement, depravity, and sin. On the other side were holiness, purity, and sinlessness. On one side of the veil were mortal and temporary beings. On the other side was the immortal and infinite God. In between, the blood was sprinkled. The blood of the sacrificial animal symbolized the atonement.

Why does human failure need to be atoned for? Why do our unintentional sins need forgiveness? Why can’t God say, “They’re just human after all? They are going to make mistakes. They’re not perfect like I am.”

We say those kinds of things all the time. We make a mistake, and we don’t run to the altar and throw ourselves on it. We say, “Nobody’s perfect.” We say, “I’m only human,” and go on with our lives. It was a mistake! We don’t make a federal case out of it. We shrug it off. At most, we say, “I’ll try to do better next time.

But failures under the Mosaic covenant cost the life of a precious animal. They could not be overlooked. From the priests to the leaders to the commoner, everyone had to seek forgiveness for sins—all sins, not just intentional transgressions. Why? Because we serve a holy God, and he does not compromise his holiness. He is different from us. Every time we fail to measure up to his perfection, we incur guilt, and that guilt must be atoned for.

Every sin. Every day – that is why the blood must be sprinkled seven times. We can’t say, “I went to church on Sunday, so I’m good for another week. We can’t say, “I went to church last Christmas, so I’m good. We need God’s forgiveness for every sin, every day, every hour. We are sinful creatures. We are constantly in need of God’s forgiveness. The sin offering was a way of seeking that forgiveness. It was a way to reconcile with God in spite of our constantly failing him.

Our failures affect our prayer lives.

The first part of verse 7 says, “The priest must put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense that is before the LORD in the Meeting Tent.” Incense in the Bible is frequently used to accompany prayer. Some of the blood of the sacrifice of the sin offering was put on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense to symbolize the fact that when we fail God, we sever the connection between ourselves and our creator. The lines of communication are broken. Everyone who has ever tried to pray with a guilty conscience knows about this fact. We can’t seem to reach God because there is a barrier to our prayers.

But the regulation for the sin offering shows us that it is not just our intentional rebellion that does this. Even the mistakes we make can sever the chord and disrupt the signal to heaven – and from heaven. The phone lines are down. The telegraph wire is cut. The wifi signal is lost. We cannot even ask for forgiveness because it seems like there is no way to reach God. But the good news of the sin offering is that the blood can make a difference. The life’s blood of the innocent sacrifice can atone for the sin and reestablish the connection.

Our failures hinder our influence.

There is not just one rule for the sin offering. There is a set of requirements for the priest, starting in verse 3. There is another list of requirements for when the whole congregation fails, starting in verse 13. When a leader fails, the requirements are outlined starting in verse 22. When a common person fails, the regulations start in verse 27. Every person can fail, and every person needs to make atonement for that failure. However, there are different requirements depending on the sphere of influence that the sinner has. We hold our leaders to a higher standard than we do ordinary citizens. The reason is that our leaders are more likely to cause others to fail by their example.

When a leader fails, they need atonement for their sins. They also need to show that they confess their sins and seek forgiveness visually. There will be no cover-ups. There are to be no special circumstances where people look away and refuse to acknowledge the sins of the priest or the elder because of their status. If atonement is not accomplished, the sins will trickle down to the whole congregation.

Our failures affect our worship.

The final part of verse 7 reads, “and all the rest of the bull’s blood he must pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering that is at the entrance of the Meeting Tent.” The altar of burnt offering was where sacrifices were made that were consumed by fire so that the entire sacrifice would ascend into the sky to be enjoyed by God himself. They were a symbol of reconciliation with God. They were a means of worship.

The reason that sin offerings involved this altar is that sin servers the connection between God and man. We saw that this breech in communication affects our prayer life with the mention of the fragrant incense altar. The same is true with the altar of burnt offering. Not only does sin disrupt our prayers to God, but it also disrupts our worship of God. This is wrong because God created us to show our appreciation for him. Some people deserve praise because of the good things they do. God deserves worship because of who he is.

The thing that is most wrong with the world today is not climate change, the immigration crisis, drug abuse, or gender dysphoria. The thing that is most wrong in the world today is that God is not worshiped as he deserves to be worshiped. Sin has separated us from our heavenly Father.

The sin offering gave the believers in God an opportunity to confess their failures before God. It offered them a means of consenting to God’s plan to provide a substitute to pay for those sins by a blood sacrifice. The sinners were told to place their hands on the head of the sacrificial animal. We see this repeated throughout the chapter (verses 4, 15, 24, 29 and 33). Placing their hand on the head was a way of identifying with the victim and letting the victim take the punishment of death in their place. By putting their hands on the victim, they transferred their sin to the sin offering. In fact, the language suggested that each person would lean on the victim, symbolizing the fact that they were depending on the victim to atone for their sins, failures, and inadequacies.

Now, here is the theology that cracks the code of Leviticus 4. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul writes, “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” Jesus Christ is the sin offering. He is God’s ultimate and eternal solution to the problem of human failure. He fulfills every aspect of the Levitical regulations concerning the failure offering.

I should say … every aspect but one. There is one aspect of the regulations that Jesus does not fulfill by his sacrificial death on the cross. That is the fact that the failure offering was voluntary. Once discovering his sin, the sinner had to come to the Tabernacle and confess his sin by means of the sin-offering ritual. God did not perform this sacrifice for the sinner. For the same reason, our instructions in the New Testament are as follows:

“If we say we do not bear the guilt of sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

The one thing Jesus did not do for you on the cross was confess your sins. He cannot do that for you. If you go your whole life, never acknowledging your failures before God, he is obligated to make you pay for those sins. All of your sins can keep you from eternal life—even the ones you don’t recognize as sins, even the ones you don’t know you are committing.

The more we know about what God wants of us, the more we realize that we need his forgiveness constantly, consistently, and perpetually. But the blood of Christ already shed on Calvary’s cross is the one sin offering for all people and all time.

The “Devotions from Leviticus” book is 204 pages long and was released on September 15, 2024.

TWO LAMBS

TWO LAMBS

Exodus 29:38-46 NET.

³⁸ “Now this is what you are to prepare on the altar every day continually: two lambs a year old. ³⁹ The first lamb you are to prepare in the morning, and the second lamb you are to prepare around sundown. ⁴⁰ With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with a fourth of a hin of oil from pressed olives, and a fourth of a hin of wine as a drink offering. ⁴¹ The second lamb you are to offer around sundown; you are to prepare for it the same meal offering as for the morning and the same drink offering, for a soothing aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD. ⁴² “This will be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the LORD, where I will meet with you to speak to you there. ⁴³ There I will meet with the Israelites, and it will be set apart as holy by my glory. ⁴⁴ “So I will set apart as holy the tent of meeting and the altar, and I will set apart as holy Aaron and his sons, that they may minister as priests to me. ⁴⁵ I will reside among the Israelites, and I will be their God, ⁴⁶ and they will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt, so that I may reside among them. I am the LORD their God.

We need to do some things regularly.

The Lord instructs the children of Israel here that when they set up the Tabernacle they are to prepare a particular offering to him every day, continually. Every morning they were to sacrifice a lamb and every evening another lamb. Most of us are creatures of habit. We have things that we do every day. Nobody has to check up on us and make sure we are doing those things. We get into the habit of doing those things perpetually so that they are instinctual.

For me, Bible study is like that. For years now, I have followed a regular ritual that begins with translating a biblical text each day, followed by a devotional from that text. I have gone through the Bible several times that way. People wonder how I can publish so many books every year, and that habit is the reason. Because I have studied and written so many articles, devotionals, and theological posts, it is relatively easy to put them together in book form.

I’m also methodical about the medicines I take. I know which meds to take in the morning and which to take in the evening. I take them first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I label my medicine bottles with a big “M” for my morning meds and a big “E” for my evening meds.

My sermon preparation follows a pattern as well. I usually do my research for the next week’s message on Monday, write the sermon presentation, and record the video on Tuesday. That leaves Wednesday for visitation, Thursday for Food Bank, and Friday and Saturday for my weekends. It’s all habitual. It’s how I function. The pattern helps me get everything accomplished that is important to me.

I’m not one of these “last minute” people. If I came to a Saturday night and had done no preparation for my sermon, I would be a basket case. In fact, if I had to wait until Wednesday to write my sermon, I would be nervous and anxious. I don’t mind deadlines, but I feel better if I can finish a project a month before the deadline.

Now, I am saying all this to clue you in on how I do things. But it seems to me from today’s text that God wanted to establish some habits for the children of Israel, too. He wanted them to get used to doing certain things at certain times every day, to doing the things that really matter on a regular schedule.

We need to worship God regularly.

According to today’s passage, the most important thing on God’s list for his people to do regularly was worship him. The offerings that he prescribed for them were the way they would show their appreciation for God, and he told them to sacrifice those offerings every morning and every evening at sundown. That is why he told them to offer two lambs every day. These were not family offerings. These were not for individuals. They were national offerings. The priests would offer them for the whole nation.

But notice the nature of these morning and evening sacrifices. They consisted of the meat of a lamb, oil, flour, wine… everything that would be part of a fine meal. Why did God want them to prepare a meal for him twice a day? He did not need to consume any food. That is not it. But in every tent, every family would prepare a meal for themselves every day. They did this to sustain themselves, but it was also a way of coming together and enjoying each other’s company. It was a time of fellowship for each family.

The sacrifices that God prescribed for his people were to take place at a place called the tent of meeting. They symbolized God’s desire to get together with his people regularly, consistently, and habitually. From the standpoint of what God wanted, he was prescribing a unique form of worship: a symbolic meal shared with the Almighty twice a day.

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus tells the church in Laodicea, “Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me” (3:20). That is what God wants of his people. He wants them to worship him by showing their appreciation for him the same way they would do for a family member.

It makes sense if you remember that these are all former slaves. They were not used to being able to show their appreciation for anyone. The only way they knew how to commune with anyone was over a nice meal. That was the height of their gift-giving. Now, they have been rescued from Egypt, but they have not been automatically transformed culturally. They still have minimal experience with divine worship. But they do know how to show their appreciation by sharing a meal. That is what God asks of them.

He gave them their freedom. He could have asked for much more, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay close to them. When he smelled the aroma of those meals cooking, it was soothing for him. He could overlook many offenses as long as his people wanted to please him. Just two meals a day was all it took for that.

God will meet with us regularly.

Today’s passage also tells us about the other side of the bargain. It outlines what the Israelites are going to get for regularly communing with the LORD. He promises to meet with the people and speak with them at the entrance to the tent of the meeting. The pagans all around them had their rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices that they used to manipulate their gods. But the worship of the Israelites was not to be like that. They were not trying to appease an angry God. They were trying to stay close to a compassionate God. He was not just going to be there for the meal. He was going to be there for the people themselves. He was going to speak to them there.

He was also going to share himself. He would pass on his holiness to the place, to the priests, and to the people. They would become different people because God himself would transfer his holiness to them. He would be their God, and they would be his people. Ten chapters earlier, he told them that they were to him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (19:6).

That is what New Testament Christianity is supposed to be as well. Peter tells believers, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). Just as the Israelites were called out of slavery into holiness, so we—the church—are called out of the darkness of sin into the marvelous light of God’s holiness.

Now, the point is not that we have to be holy in order to experience God’s presence. It is the other way around. We become holy as we experience God’s presence in our lives through regular, consistent, perpetual worship. We don’t change for him. We change by staying close to him. Once we are saved by grace through the shed blood of Christ, we can come into the presence of God and commune with him regularly. Nothing we can do for him comes close to what his regular presence can do for us.

Devotions from Exodus:

The book is 296 pages long and was released on May 17, 2024.

MARAH

MARAH

Exodus 15:22-27 NET.

²² Then Moses led Israel to journey away from the Red Sea. They went out to the Desert of Shur, walked for three days into the desert, and found no water. ²³ Then they came to Marah, but they were not able to drink the waters of Marah, because they were bitter. (That is why its name was Marah.) ²⁴ So the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What can we drink?” ²⁵ He cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree. When Moses threw it into the water, the water became safe to drink. There the Lord made for them a binding ordinance, and there he tested them. ²⁶ He said, “If you will diligently obey the LORD your God, and do what is right in his sight, and pay attention to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, then all the diseases that I brought on the Egyptians I will not bring on you, for I, the LORD, am your healer.” ²⁷ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water.

We have been reading about the miraculous way God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, removing all obstacles to their freedom and defeating their enemies by drowning them in the Red Sea. The first thing the children of Israel did was worship – joining Moses in a song of triumph and praise. All the women joined in the worship with hand drums and dances. Miriam sang in response to them “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea.”

After this tremendous offering of praise and worship, the Israelites set out for the open country – what today’s text calls the Desert of Shur. There, the LORD tested them with the bitter water of Marah. We will examine this passage closely this morning because it reveals several key principles that can help us all as we live our lives. In order to give some structure to today’s message, I will ask and answer three questions. First, why did the Israelites go to Marah? Second, what did they learn there? Third, what happened afterward?

Why did the Israelites go to Marah? (22-25).

You might recall from your reading that when Moses first confronted Pharaoh, he did not immediately demand that all the slaves be set free so they could go to the promised land. No, his first request was that his people be allowed merely to go out into the wilderness three days’ journey so that they could worship the LORD with their sacrifices and offerings. Pharaoh did not want to allow them to leave. After all, they were his slaves, and they should stay with him to serve him. At first, he offered another option. He said that the Hebrews could perform their sacrifices to Yahveh in Egypt instead of traveling three days into the wilderness. But Moses rejected that offer. “Moses said, “That would not be the right thing to do, for the sacrifices we make to the LORD our God would be an abomination to the Egyptians. If we make sacrifices that are an abomination to the Egyptians right before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go on a three-day journey into the desert and sacrifice to the LORD our God, just as he is telling us.” (8:26-27).

Moses indicates something here that not everyone notices. The Hebrews couldn’t worship God the way he wanted them to. Even the sacrifices that the Hebrews made to God were repulsive to the Egyptians. That is what the word abomination means. For over 400 years, the Israelites were limited in what they could do to worship the LORD. Their loyalty to Pharaoh had checked their devotion to God. But God was setting them free. That freedom was not so that they could do whatever they wanted to do. That freedom was so that they could now do what God wanted them to do.

I am not suggesting that all the Israelites knew this. In fact, today’s text indicates that the main body of the Hebrews would be constantly in need of correction in this regard. They probably thought that now they were free from Pharaoh and the threat of his armies, they could do whatever they wanted.

Our text says that Moses led Israel from the Red Sea into the Desert of Shur. But the word for “led” is not the usual one for leading. The verb נָסַע means to pull something up—like to uproot a plant. The people wanted to stay by the Red Sea and keep celebrating their victory, but Moses had to force them to pull up and set out into the unknown. Moses had a mission, and most of the people he led had no idea what that mission was. In fact, even Moses did not clearly understand the reasons he was leading his people into the wilderness.

We can imagine the reason partly if we take a good look at what the Hebrews were doing at the beach of the Red Sea. They were celebrating their deliverance from a great enemy, rejoicing at what God had done for them. For some people, that is all that worship entails. But worship only begins there. True worship moves from celebration of what God has done to adoration of who God is.

Why is this so? Well, imagine it snowed again, and you were out in your car when a massive snowstorm hit. It forced you to stop, and before long, your vehicle was trapped in ice. What if some people come along and rescue you from that? You would be grateful. You would tell everyone about your rescue from the danger. But when they asked you about your rescuer, what could you say? You might not even know their names, much less anything substantial about them.

The wilderness journey of the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan was their chance to get to know the God who rescued them. It was their opportunity to learn about and identify with the God of their ancestors. Marah would be the first lesson for them.

When I was in college, I took many classes in biblical languages. My professor always began each class with a vocabulary test. That is what God is doing for the Hebrews. Every lesson starts with a test. The three-day journey into the Desert of Shur was not a mistake. God was intentionally bringing his people into a desperate situation. “Then they came to Marah, but they were not able to drink the waters of Marah, because they were bitter. (That is why its name was Marah.)” Why did Moses deliberately put them in such a situation? Why head to Marah first? Marah means bitter. Miriam’s name comes from the same word. She was born in bitter captivity. The bitter herbs the Hebrews ate during Passover were a reminder of that time of bitterness. Most of the Israelites were scratching their heads when they arrived in Marah. Some might have wondered why they left Egypt if they were going to encounter bitterness and hardship here.

The “people murmured against Moses, saying, “What can we drink?” After three days of travel, whatever water they had brought with them was exhausted. Their canteens were empty. So, they come to a place with water, but it seems a cruel joke. The water is undrinkable.

The notes to the NET text say, “The verb וַיִּלֹנוּ (vayyillonu) from לוּן (lun) is a much stronger word than “to grumble” or “to complain.” It is used almost exclusively in the wilderness wandering stories to describe the Israelites’ rebellion against God …. They were not merely complaining—they were questioning God’s abilities and motives. The action is something like a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

The Psalms are filled with great poets like David and Asaph pouring out their hearts to God. God encourages us to do that. It might seem like complaining, but it is anything but that. It is crying out to the only one who sees the problem and has the power to intervene. Instead of that, the people focused their complaints on God himself and the leader he had appointed. Instead of paying attention when God was testing them, they chose to test him and try his patience, even though they had seen his work (See Psalm 95:8-9; Hebrews 3:8-9).

So, in three days, the Hebrews went from celebrating God’s salvation to rebelling against him. All it took was one incident where it seemed that their needs were not being met, and they turned against God, their Savior. This event revealed a profound immaturity and lack of trust in the Hebrew people. If they had been thinking with maturity, they would have remembered the number of times in Egypt when they discovered they were not able, and then God showed that he was able. The people could have responded in faith to this crisis. They could have come to Moses and said, “We cannot drink the water, but we trust God for a solution to this problem.”

They did not do that. Instead, they rebelled against God and criticized Moses. At the first sign of difficulty, they attacked the leader that they had chosen to follow. It seems ridiculous, but it is actually human nature. The flesh always causes us to turn against our leaders rather than turn toward God.

But Moses did not follow their example. He chose to cry out to God. A prayer is always a better alternative to a critical word or complaint. As soon as Moses prayed, God showed him the solution. He had not only brought them to the place of testing but also given them the answer to the test. Some teachers make their questions so hard that students are unable to find the answer. God is not like that. If we have a need, he has an answer – already on his tongue.

The “LORD showed him a tree. When Moses threw it into the water, the water became safe to drink.” The bitter water became sweet. It had been unsafe to drink at first. That is a real problem if you are walking a long distance. I remember when Penny and I were on our thru-hike. There was one night we were camping out on the trail and needed water badly. I could not find a spring or stream. I found some deer and followed them to a puddle, so I filled up our water bottles from the puddle. But the water was yellow, and as badly as I wanted a drink, I could not bring myself to drink it. We finally decided to pour our deer urine and hope to find a better water source the next day. Obviously, we did.

For the Hebrews, the answer was a tree. God had already caused a particular tree to grow in that place. We don’t know whether the water changed because of the tree or just because Moses was obedient and used the tree. The point was that God already had a solution to the crisis, and he was waiting for his people to ask.

There, God tested them. He wanted them to come to a problem that they could not solve. The text says that there, the LORD “made for them a binding ordinance.” The binding ordinance is actually two words in Hebrew: the word for prescription and the word for judgment. God was prescribing for them the correct action to take when being tested. He was offering his judgment in place of their own. In fact, the word “showed” in verse 25 is the verbal root of the noun תּוֹרָה. This incident is the beginning of the Law of God for the people of God.

God focused on the law in the books of Exodus to Deuteronomy because the Law served as the link between the salvation God brought and the people he wanted to testify to that salvation to the next generation. Walking according to God’s Law would be their way of testifying that God had saved them. In later generations, people exchanged the Law for salvation itself. They thought obeying the Law was their means of saving themselves. That is never the case. The Law is God’s way of walking. The deliverance always comes from him.

What did the Israelites learn at Marah? (26).

The big lesson of Marah is not to “stop complaining, or God is going to get mad at you.” Moses lays out the lesson plan in verse 26. He said: “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.”

Moses describes a standard “IF-THEN” relationship: God is the teacher, and the Israelites are his learners. As learners, they are responsible for diligently listening to his voice and not for following their instincts. God is their teacher, so he promises to reveal to them specific commandments and statutes to help them walk appropriately. It is no surprise that the main action in the last four books of Moses is walking. While walking to Canaan, they were learning how to walk. To the extent that they learned the lessons and walked appropriately, God guaranteed that he would prove to be more than a teacher. He would also be their healer, preventing all judgment diseases that he had put on the Egyptians.

To summarize the principle: WALK GOD’S WALK, AND HE WILL BE OUR TEACHER AND HEALER.

What happened to the Israelites afterward? (27).

“Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water.” When they arrived at the next oasis, they found that it did not need to be cleaned. The water was already pure. God was showing them that every day would not be a test. But they should be prepared to seek his instruction when the times of testing come. Likewise, you and I will not be undergoing constant trials. But we should count it all joy when the times of testing do come. They are not proof that God has abandoned us. They are chances for us to grow and opportunities for us to display our confidence in God our Savior.

Holy Communion

“You cannot serve God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing?” (Matthew 6:24-25).

The Hebrews had been rescued from slavery in Egypt and escorted out of that place of oppression. They were on their way to the Promised Land—a land flowing with milk and honey. But before they got there, they had to learn a few lessons about how to walk God’s way. Some of the very first lessons dealt with worrying about what they would eat and drink.

Today, as we remember what our Lord did for us on Calvary’s cross, he invites us to re-examine our life’s priorities. He has promised to be our teacher and healer. But there is something that might prevent that. We can let worry steal our relationship with Christ. He surrendered himself for us. We can show our faith in him by releasing our hold on our self-preservation. He wants to be our master. We cannot have two.

LORD, we celebrate what you did for us for our deliverance and promise to walk your walk and let you be our Teacher and Healer.

Here is a quote from Devotions from Exodus:

“Nuisance

The frog was also a deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Heqet was a goddess who represented fertility. To have the territory overrun by these creatures was more than an annoyance. It was another reminder to Pharaoh that his worldview was erroneous. It was an embarrassment. And even though his magicians were able to duplicate the same thing on a smaller scale (because they were illusionists) he was perturbed, so he appealed to Moses to have Yahveh stop the plague. He was starting to take Yahveh seriously. Moses even gives Pharaoh the honor of choosing the day for the pestilence to stop. But when the break came, Pharaoh still stubbornly refused to comply with Yahveh’s demand.

I wonder if we are any better than Pharaoh was. We regularly experience nuisances in our lives, and they sometimes are so bad that we appeal to Yahveh to rescue us. But do we ever stop to ask if Yahveh wants to change us? Maybe an annoying event might be his way of getting our attention. Perhaps we should not be so quick to return to business as usual when the nuisance is over.

LORD, forgive us for ignoring you when you remind us of our need to change. Help us to see the possible significance of the annoying interruptions in our lives. Keep us sensitive to your guidance” (p. 40);

The book is 296 pages long and was released on May 17, 2024.

WAITING

WAITING

Exodus 2:23-25 NET.

²³ During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning, God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, ²⁵God saw the Israelites, and God understood … .

Last week, we left the Patriarch Jacob staring at a bloody tunic, confident that he would die of grief because of the loss of his son, Joseph. He was wrong on both counts. He did not die of grief, and his son had not died in Gothan. Instead, Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he lived a tough life, ending up in prison. But God gave Joseph a special gift – the ability to interpret dreams. That gift eventually led to Joseph being released from prison and appointed second-in-command over all of Egypt. Joseph saved Egypt from a terrible famine, and his family joined him to live outr their lives in prosperity in that land.

The Book of Genesis ends with the death of Jacob and Joseph – both old and prosperous. Exodus begins with the good news that the Israelites “were fruitful, increased greatly, multiplied, and became extremely strong, so that the land was filled with them” (1:7). Then the other shoe dropped. The next verse says, “Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power over Egypt.” The new Pharaoh – and his nation with him – began to view the Israelites not as a blessing but as a threat. Likewise, the Israelites in that generation saw Egypt not as a blessing from God for their survival but as a curse to oppress and destroy them. The union of nations that had been their salvation had now become division and polarization.

while we wait, the world changes around us.

It did not happen overnight. It was not a drastic cataclysmic event that caused the two nations to turn against one another. While the people were living their lives and doing what they thought they should do, the world changed around them. There was no doubt a long period of prosperity for the Israelites in Egypt that led to their fulfilling the mandates of the Adamic and Noaic covenants – being fruitful and multiplying in the land of Egypt. However, it was this prosperity and multiplication that was seen as a threat to the new regime in Egypt. Thus, he ordered their oppression and hard labor and eventually demanded that they kill all their newborn males.

Chapter two tells of Moses’ birth, his rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, and his being reared as a prince in Egypt. It also records his taking vengeance on a brutal guard and killing him. This led to Moses having to flee Egypt and settle down in Midian as a shepherd. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel waits for its deliverance. That “long period” continues when it seems like nothing is happening.

When a cataclysmic event happens, we sometimes refer to it as an act of God. We think that God did it, or at least allowed it, to get our attention. But the Bible teaches that it is not just the times of upheaval and disaster in which God is active. He is just as real and just as active in the long periods of waiting. We can learn from these chapters in Exodus what we should be doing during our long times of waiting.

while we wait, we can cry out to God.

“During that long period of time, the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.” Before they began experiencing oppression and slavery, the Israelites were not known for their relationship with God. They were just another nation living in a land of many such groups brought together by Pharaoh’s mighty empire. But the tide turned, and the Egyptian culture turned against them and isolated them as a nation of slaves that must be controlled. Suddenly, the Israelites started praying. Their prayers were not ritual prayers that parents teach their kids to pray at mealtime or bedtime. Their prayers were the groans and cries of a people being mistreated and oppressed.

It is a fact that hard times tend to cause people to reach out, try to find answers and seek change. For many, that desire for change leads to a more intense religious life. It is an attempt to take hold of a power higher than the power that is causing the trouble that they are facing.

Our Lord asked a question after he taught the parable of the persistent widow. He asked, “Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long to help them? (Luke 18:7). In the parable, the widow was being treated unfairly, and she had no recourse but to cry out for help. She was commended for her persistence in doing just that. The Israelites in Egypt were in the same position. They were being mistreated. They were branded as enemies because the people in power feared them. They were made second-class citizens because of other people’s prejudice and ignorance.

The history of our world records many times when this has happened. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust is still fresh in our minds as a clear example of this phenomenon. But let’s open our eyes a little further. We might notice some similar situations closer to home: our own nation’s shameful treatment of Native Americans or Africans that we enslaved and deprived of their God-given rights.

Anything that we can do to make up for such shameful behavior is warranted. But what I am getting at is that such suffering can have a positive outcome. It is wrong, and it should never happen. Nobody is right to do it. But it can produce in the human heart a desire to be set free and a resulting cry to God for that deliverance. This is what was happening in the lives of those children of Jacob in Egypt. Their time of suffering was producing in them a connection with God that they had not felt during the time of prosperity and freedom.

All the elements of their oppression were already there among them before they started experiencing the oppression. They were living in a foreign land. They were under the control of a foreign king. That foreign king dictated their role in their society. But they were “getting along Ok” for a very long time until the oppression started. They should have been praying to their God during this time. They should have been seeking God and establishing a strong religious culture during this time. But it did not happen until the difficulties began.

while we wait, God is there.

Notice what today’s text says God was doing while his children were crying out to him. Verses 24-25 use four different verbs to describe what God was doing during this time. The temptation during long periods of waiting is to accuse God of doing nothing. We pray and pray and seek his face, but it seems like God is passive. Moses wants us to know that when the Israelites were crying out to God, he was anything but passive.

God heard their groaning. Moses used the Hebrew verb שָׁמַע. He used this word to describe how Adam and Eve heard God moving around in the Garden of Eden. It was the root of the name Ishmael, who was to be so named because God had heard Hagar’s painful groans. Moses used it to describe the way Joseph’s brothers felt when they remembered Joseph’s cries for mercy while he was down in the pit, but they refused to listen to him. Even if they ignored his cries, they most certainly heard them.

As we pray, we often wonder if anybody is listening. But the Bible tells us that God always hears. Even if the time may not be right for him to act, he still listens to our prayers. He can’t not hear them.

God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. This is the Hebrew verb זָכַר. The names Zachariah and Zechariah are based on that root. They mean Yahveh has remembered. This verb shows that God not only hears our prayers, but they actively remind him of his promises to us. God had made promises to Abraham and to each of the successive patriarchs who took up the mantle as representatives of his covenant. When the children of Israel cried out to God, he heard the voices of Abraham and the other Patriarchs.

As we age, our memory becomes… what was I saying? But our God is not like that. He remembers everything. Our prayers are important because they are linked to his promises. When we pray to God, everything he has promised us comes back to him. When the Israelites were praying because of their slavery and oppression, chances are they only prayed for immediate relief from that slavery. But God had promised so much more. The prayers of the Israelites set the stage for both the exodus and the conquest of Canaan. They prayed for some things, but God gave them more than what they asked for. The reason is that the prayers reminded God of all his promises.

Often, when we pray as believers today, we limit what we ask for to only the immediate emergencies that we are presently facing. When we do that, we are short-changing ourselves. We have a God who is capable of giving us so much more than we can ask for or even imagine having. That reminds me of the old story of the couple who booked passage on a luxury liner. They saw such glorious and delicious-looking food on the ship, but they hid away in their cabin and ate a few meager snacks that they had brought with them. They were not aware that the price they paid for their passage included all the fancy feasts on the ship. We often pray like that. We are so hesitant to ask God for anything.

However, Jesus tells us to ask, and it will be given to us. Seek, and we will find; knock, and the door will be opened to us. Why did he give us such an open-ended promise? Because our heavenly Father loves us and has an unlimited supply of resources to meet our needs. He wants to display his elaborate love to his children.

We often fail to ask for anything because we think we are unworthy. We are right. But the basis for prayer is not our worth but God’s grace. He blessed us with salvation when we came to him in repentance and admitted that we did not deserve it. He still responds to those who come to him with their need and trust in his love to meet those needs.

Verse 25 says that God saw the Israelites. This is the Hebrew word רָאָה, which we recently discussed in reference to the miracle at Moriah. The word means to see something, but it can also mean to see to something—to provide for what is needed. God not only saw the plight of the children of Israel, but he already had a solution for their problem. He had another land for them to live in. He had a way for them to be released from their slavery in Egypt. He had a way to provide for their needs as they traveled through the wilderness to Canaan. He had a way to defeat all the adversaries they would face on the way to Canaan.

I am reminded of a story about a computer company that had a problem. They had not been able to locate the source of the problem, much less devise a solution. So, they called in an expert. The expert examined the machine – pulled out a piece of chalk, and marked an X on the spot where the problem was. The company’s accountants were thrilled to have a solution to their problem, but they were pretty surprised when the expert sent them a bill for $50,000. They wrote the expert demanding that he present them with an itemized bill. Later, he wrote them back with a bill consisting of two entries:

One chalk mark: $1.
Knowing where to put the X: $49,999.

When the Bible says that God sees us, it means more than just that he recognizes our problems. It also means that he already knows the best solution for those problems. He not only sees us, but he can also provide us with what we need.

God saw their need and all the obstacles they would face in leaving Egypt and entering Canaan. I can imagine one of his angels standing and holding a clipboard. It had a long list of those obstacles. There was a box by each obstacle. The angel read through it:

□ Destroying angel

□ Red Sea

□ Need for water

□ Need for food

□ Rebellion

□ Enemy kings

□ Wall of Jericho

But the angel knows that for each need that arises, God has a solution. He sees it all ahead of time, and he can deal with every incident and fix any problem.

He knows where to put the X. The final verb in verse 25 is “God understood.” That’s the Hebrew verb יָדַע, to know. Praying gives us access to the expert who has figured us out and knows what we need.

While we wait, we get stronger.

The power that the Israelites would experience in Egypt was not brought about simply because they prayed. They were able to overcome all the obstacles they would face because they first waited on the Lord to deliver them. Isaiah 40:31 says, “But those who wait for the LORD’s help find renewed strength; they rise up as if they had eagles’ wings, they run without growing weary, they walk without getting tired.”

The secret to Israel’s success in praying for deliverance is that they prayed to God and then waited for God to deliver them. They did not pray a short prayer to God and then go to the next provider on the list when nothing seemed to be happening. They waited a long time.

God did not need a long time to answer their prayers. He could have delivered them from Pharaoh’s grasp in a single day. But there is strength that comes from waiting on the Lord. God knows what we will face tomorrow, and he knows how much strength we will need to face it. So, when we encounter a need and pray for God to meet that need, every day we wait is an opportunity to display our faith in a God who answers prayers. As we patiently wait for his solutions to our problems, we glorify him and declare our loyalty to him.

Every problem we face is actually several problems. First, there is the problem itself. Then, there is our reluctance to seek God’s face to solve the problem immediately. Then, there is our lack of trusting God to take care of the problem once we have prayed to him about it. Then, there is our anxiety over the problem when we feel we have no one to turn to. The story of the exodus should be a reminder for us that we serve a problem-solving God. Each generation of us is given an opportunity to put our faith in him and to display our trust in him.

Oh, Lord, may those of us in this generation prove faithful to you by entrusting our problems to you and waiting on you for their solutions.

Here is a quote from Devotions from Exodus:

“Nuisance

The book is 296 pages long and was released on May 17, 2024.