God ends grumbling.

 

And the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord! Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle?"

Numbers 20:3-4

Irrational complainers say really stupid things. Grumbling is usually dumb. For instance, in their complaining, the Israelites consider those who died in direct judgment by God as now better off than those alive in the wilderness. They are basically agreeing with past rebels and wishing they had joined them! They'd rather be dead sinners than live followers of the Lord in the desert of Sinai. This is a really moronic proposal to bring before God as they fought with Moses!

Their quarrel is with Moses as leader but really their rebellion is against God Who literally led them to Meribah with a pillar of cloud and fire. They don't like the prospective difficulties of living in the desert even though all the way up to this point God gave them manna and provided water and protection for their every need. When their current campsite has no easy water access, they immediately complain to Moses, even though God had led them to their current place in order to display His power.

There is no logic to complaining. The Isrealites just go on with their negativity and attack their leaders without thinking. They express two mutually exclusive complaints in their dangerous emotional grumbling: 1) Those who died already are better off even though they died in judgment on their sin. 2) "we are going to die now and we don't want to!" I'd have this incredulous reply to them: "So do you want to die or don't you, because you are saying both?!" It's hard to understand their complaints because the "insights" exclude each other! But really grumbling isn't logical. It's raw pain being expressed in complaint. 

Sadly though, this was the complaint that drew Moses into unbelief as well. He disobeyed God's command and struck the rock at Meribah rather than speak to it as God had commanded. That God gave any water at all is pure grace! Moses, by entering into the disobedient attitude of Israel was then denied the last victory of his leadership to bring the nation into the Promised Land. Complaining has serious repercussions. Divinely orchestrated circumstances arranged by an infinitely wise and holy God should not be lightly dismissed and disdained. God will end grumbling, sometimes punishing us even in His provision.

more kingdom reversal

 

The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Matthew 23:11-12

In the upside-down kingdom

of Christ our Lord

the world is re-ordered

by His holy Word

Children teach us faith

as we truly believe

servants are the leaders

giving to receive

Christ's kingdom reversal

reflects in all we do

abandoning our works

to get us through

God dies for us

so we can live forever

His life in us

as we win by surrender

Turning our thinking on its head

makes everything again right

and we yield -- don't resist

abandoning power by our might

exalted by slavery

empowered by trial and pain

we have joy in the Lord

and heaven to gain

rejoicing in suffering

 

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:2-5

The path from suffering to hope described in Romans Five has some unexpected surprises along the way. It begins by rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. And that is truly our main hope in this world. It is worshipful. It anticipates the time when we are forever with the Lord in constant rejoicing. Many of the great hymns and gospels songs of old celebrate this sense of eternal hope.

But then Paul moves us from rejoicing with God to rejoicing in suffering. And that seems so contrary to the first type of rejoicing. What does it mean to rejoice in suffering? Paul reminds us to remind ourselves that this outcome of painful suffering can be good. Suffering produces endurance in us. And that endurance can be used by a faithful, loving God to show us new levels of His grace and mercy that we might not have appreciated if we had not first suffered.

That endurance then produces character in us... ultimately the character of Christ Who suffered all things for us on the cross. We think about His sufferings and we learn to see the joy in our own difficulties as we get to be like our Master and show Him to others. And then our character lessons from enduring trials lead to future hope to be like Jesus.

That great hope in Jesus, with Jesus, to be like Jesus is not a source of shame, but is our comfort and our strength. It brings us into a fresh awareness of God's love as His Holy Spirit comforts and strengthens us. What began in worship of the Father, through enduring suffering eventually made us more like the Son, strengthening us in our hearts through the nearness and personal work of the Holy Spirit. And because God is known so intimately in this process, we can rejoice in suffering.

rebels in rubble

 

The righteous shall see and fear,

and shall laugh at him, saying,

“See the man who would not make

God his refuge,

but trusted in the abundance of his riches

and sought refuge in his own destruction!”

Psalm 52:6-7

All the ways that human souls seek solace and strength outside of God will come to ruin. This is because all our sinful efforts at doing good or caring for ourselves all fall short of the glory of a powerful, holy God. Those alternate means of self righteousness or attempts at self satisfying happiness seem to promise us much, but in the end they let us down. It's like trying to make a bomb shelter out of the ruins of a previous bombing. It can be attempted but it will not stand. You can't hide from destruction in the ruins of your previous devastation.

Those who trust God have three responses to this sad show of human endeavor that seeks to trust anything other than God. First we see it. And that is no casual observation. We see the difference. We know God and we know life without God and we thrive in seeking the Lord. We then easily discern the significance of the failure to seek Him. And so we are spiritually aware of what it means to seek refuge outside of God and it drives us to seek the Lord even more.

The second response comes from the seriousness with which we seek God after we see this. We fear when we seen others insisting on sheltering in the rubble of sin's destruction. We fear for them. We fear for our own souls because we can easily revert to such fruitless spiritual failure. And in our fear, we reach out to the lost, begging them to cease their own efforts at refuge in ruin and to come to the Lord! It is the fear of the Lord that calls us to persuade others to come to the safety, salvation, and security of the love of God in Christ known only in the gospel.

The third response described here is laughter. When the wicked person persists in their attempt at evading destruction in the ruined rubble, it is our final response. This is not ridicule being talked about here. It is a recognition of irony. And when hard hearts will not repent, it is the response of the righteous to be like God Who sits in the heavens and laughs, having rebellious sinners in derision for their useless wanton rebellion (see Psalm 2 for how that looks).

ministry & mentoring

 

This applies to the Levites: from twenty-five years old and upward they shall come to do duty in the service of the tent of meeting. And from the age of fifty years they shall withdraw from the duty of the service and serve no more.

Numbers 8:24-25

This is God's retirement initiative for the Levites who served Israel and the Lord in the sacrificial system under the Law. They were to officially begin duties at the age of twenty-five and were to step down in mandatory retirement at the age of fifty after twenty-five years of service at the altar. Given ancient life expectancies being much shorter than today, this would constitute a full lifetime of service.

The work at the altar was hard. Slaughtering animals, cleaning that altar, offering sacrifices, keeping the grounds, all of these tasks wer demanding physical labor, and in the case of the priestly Levites, also spiritually demanding tasks. I'm sure for those who lived to see it, retirement was an anticipated relief. After all, the sacrifices for sin were a constant daily task under the Law and during the feasts and holy days the work increased exponentially. Their rest from ministry labor was well deserved.

One benefit from this requirement was that it kept the training for ministry among the Levites a high priority. It was structured. The service at the altar had a definite start of career and end of ministry. The older men would have been constantly mentoring the young Levites who would replace them upon retirement. This ministry mentoring would help ensure that the demands of the Law were kept a high priority among the priests and the Levites.

My main take away from this passage is to realize that investing in younger ministry training is important for me at this stage of my life. I don't face mandatory retirement (I can't really afford to anyway!), but I am approaching thirty years of professional ministry in 2018. That's a milestone not to take lightly. I'm approaching a finish line. It's time for me to make sure there are those to whom I can pass the torch, fan into flame God's gift in them, so that the gospel will burn bright in another generation of disciples around the globe.

no partiality

 

There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

Romans 2:9-11

God is not partial in justice or judgment. All sin must be judged. All sinners will be held accountable to Him for their sinfulness. And very quickly in the epistle to the Romans Paul makes an airtight argument for the universality of sin. No Jew can claim to be sinless on their own (chapter 2). No Gentile can make that claim either (chapter 3). Everybody sins and falls short of the standard of God's holiness and is therefore destined to receive judgment from God whose wrath against sin misses no sinner.

God is also not partial with His grace and forgiveness, choosing only to forgive just certain people. The requirement is repentance and faith and it is open for all people. He will forgive all who come genuinely to Him in repentance and faith. His grace is without any prejudice or partiality. His mercy is enormous and His grace is without distinction. All those who truly repent of sin and believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior are saved and will find the glory, honor, and peace promised here in this passage.

Lord,

I thank You for such great grace to sinners. You call us to repent and believe in Jesus. And those who come to You in genuine repentance, forsaking sin, and in faith, trusting Jesus alone and not their own works, are completely forgiven. You call us to take this gospel without partiality to every human being because You want to let this good news be known. May Your church be like You so that the world might know Your glory and gracious love, O God!

Amen

everything... and eternity

 

Truly no man can ransom another,

or give to God the price of his life,

for the ransom of their life is costly

and can never suffice,

that he should live on forever

and never see the pit.

Psalm 49:7-9

So... these disturbing words were in a worship song that Israel sang. Not the kind of stuff we put in song bridges these days to sing over and over raising our hands and closing our eyes. This is not a happy thought for mutual encouragement. It does not make for positive, encouraging, feel-good spirituality. But it is the truth. And sometimes the truth has painful, sharp edges that cut us with necessary surgery. After all, there is no good news for the gospel without first there being some bad news. And this is the really bad news: death awaits us all as the proper end to our sinful existence and we are completely powerless to stop that from happening.

Most of Psalm 49 is a morose meditation on this grim fact. It is an exposition on humanity's vain attempts at cheating death by wealth accumulation, seeking knowledge, or searching for human fame. All these fall desperately short of stopping the yawning grave from swallowing us all. But there is a vivid hope expressed for those who will trust God as their rescue.

The hope is expressed in verse 15: "But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me." And with that fact of faith firmly claimed, Psalm 49 ends with life affirming perspective. The righteous need not envy or fear the rich and powerful, for their end is death and all they gained comes to nothing. In the end they are like dead beasts. But not so the righteous. Those who know that God has ransomed them will be received into God's presence, losing nothing and gaining everything and eternity with the Lord. Amen!