Good Intentions

GOOD INTENTIONS

Picture yourself as an actual survivor of 9/11. How would you feel about those events? Would you ever forget them? Would they fade in your memory over time?

Of course not! Those who lived through it will never forget those images and memories. Over two decades have passed but the wounds are still raw in our minds.

But for the sake of argument, how long would it take for you if you lived through it to forget the lessons learned. 30 years? 50 years? Never?

Now let’s go back 4,000 years to the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews. Picture the vision of a sea being held back and walking on dry ground. It is a scene that will never be repeated.

Now watch as the Egyptian army pursues you through the same open sea. You watch in awe as the sea sweeps back in and drowns the entire army. Bodies wash up on the shore but most of the army will never be seen again.

How long do you think it would take for those memories to fade? 50 years? A lifetime? A generation?

Today, I want us to see how quickly we can forget what God has done for us if we aren’t careful.

There are some things that we should never forget!

Invocation

Lord of Sinai, your presence shook the mountain and lightning filled the air. The people feared for the lives because You came near to them. Yet, in a town called Bethlehem you came to be among us and on a hill called Golgotha, you died to make us one with you. Help us, Lord, never to forget what you have done and what has been done for us in Jesus name. Amen.

Message:

A man thinks his wife is losing her hearing. A doctor suggests that he try a simple at-home test: Stand behind her, ask her a question from different distances, and see when she can hear it.

The man goes home, sees his wife in the kitchen facing the stove, and asks from the door, “What’s for dinner tonight?” No answer. Ten feet behind her, he repeats, “What’s for dinner tonight?” Still no answer. Finally, right behind her he says, “What’s for dinner tonight?” His wife turns around and says, “For the third time—chicken.”

Now we have to be careful when I tell you how long Israel remembered their Red Sea miracle. Like that husband, the answer may be speaking about us as well.

So how long did the Red Sea miracle last? The Word tells us how long it took for Israel to forget. Three days!

The miracle of the Egyptian defeat quickly disappeared when, three days into the desert, they were dying of thirst.

Granted, the people feared for their lives, but they had just witnessed the power of God. You and I wonder how they could even do such a thing.

Yet, Moses prayed to God, who showed him how to give them water.

What was established was a pattern that would be repeated all alone the journey to Sinai.

(1) Something causes dissatisfaction. (2) The people mutter against Moses and God. (3) God responds graciously and provides what the people need or want. (4) Rather than being thankful, the people become more dissatisfied and more rebellious (16:1–12; 17:1–7).

I remember years ago that “permissive” child-rearing was popular. The theory was, let the child do what they want, and their natural beauty will unfold like petals of a flower.

The only problem was that permissive child-rearing produced the selfish, unproductive, and dissatisfied adults we see so much today, just like the mercy that God displayed during the three-month journey to Sinai allowed the Israelites to become more dissatisfied and more rebellious.

God would eventually address that rebellion but there is a lesson to be learned. Grace without responsibility, like love without discipline, doesn’t promote healthy relationships with God or man.

Did you hear about the Texas teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his cowboy boots? He asked for help, and she could see why. Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn't want to go on.

By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, "Teacher, they're on the wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were.

It wasn't any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the right feet. He then announced, "These aren't my boots." She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn't you say so?"

Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet. She mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again. She made sure they were the right boots but it didn’t make it any easier.

Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your mittens?" He said, "I stuffed 'em in the toes of my boots."

The behavior of the Israelites on the journey to Sinai shows us that God had found the perfect time to introduce the Law. It was the Law that would make them a nation and not slaves.

The Law, with its clear standards, served to make the Israelites responsible for their actions, and provided God with a basis on which He could discipline when His people did wrong.

Slaves never ask why they suffer. Their just slaves. But a nation wants to know what is right and what is wrong.

Today God deals with us in grace. Still, He is too wise and too loving to give us everything we want or think we need.

God continues to discipline Christians, not to punish but to guide us. Hebrews 12:10 says He “disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness.” (That we may be different from this world)

God made some amazing promises to the Israelites during this period. One was that He would protect them from disease. Can you imagine? Never being sick.

Paul’s experience (2 Cor 12:1–10) shows us that Christians are not guaranteed healing but that God may actually use physical illness to accomplish spiritual purposes in our lives.

If nothing else, illness and disease will certainly get our attention.

But God wasn’t done with miracles. He begins to feed this nation with something called ‘manna’.

Now, some suggest that manna was really the excretion of a desert plant, the tamarisk tree, which drops to the ground and hardens into a sweet substance.

So how do we know that manna, whatever it was; was the product of a miracle.

Think of it this way. Enough manna was produced every day to feed millions; it was available everywhere the people went for some 40 years; it appeared only six days a week, never the seventh.

On the sixth day, the manna that had been collected bred worms when kept overnight, died, and could be made into cakes like bread.

How ironic that the bread of His Table we ate today was the result of His death, and it provides us spiritual food to keep our spirits alive.

In Scripture, manna always served as a symbol of God’s provision. That’s because the Lord knows our basic needs and He acts to meet them. Always!

Now here’s a special twist to this miracle. It is found in Exodus 16:18. “Each one gathered as much as he needed”

Note that manna did not appear in the pot, but on the ground, where people had to gather it. God provides, but He expects us to work for what we get.

I will always remember the illustration of the man sitting on his roof during a terrible flood.

A man came by in a boat and offered him a ride. He said, “No thank you, the Lord will take care of me.” Within the hour as the water rose, a helicopter appeared and offered to pick him up. He again said, “No thank you, the Lord will take care of me.”

By the next hour the flood swept over the house, carried the man away to his death. When the man appeared in heaven, he asked the Lord why He let him drown in the flood.

God looked him in the eye and said, “I sent you a boat and helicopter. What were you waiting for?”

Sometimes we wonder where God is and do not realize He is providing for us every day.

It’s significant that manna appeared daily. Jesus taught His disciples to petition God for their “daily” bread. God meets our needs day by day, so that we will remember He is the source of life.

Jesus would later speak to His disciples that they should recognize their absolute dependence on God, so that they would seek Him daily and so build a relationship with Him.

Days pass and troubles come and go but each time we walk with the Lord through them our relationship with Him grows ever stronger. We should feel His presence in our lives.

God’s presence was visible to Israel in the cloudy-fiery pillar that led them, and in the manna that appeared daily. Yet when the people camped where there was no water, they accused Moses of trying to kill them and were “almost ready to stone” him.

When troubles come, it’s natural to wonder where God is. But we must guard against unbelief like that displayed by Israel. It is an insult to His grace and an invitation to His judgement.

So how do we do that? How do we guard against insulting His grace or worse, feeling His judgment.

We begin by making it a habit to rehearse all the good things God has done and is doing for us. Something as simple as counting your blessings can change your heart.

While on a short-term mission’s trip, Pastor Jack Hinton was leading worship at a leper colony on the island of Tobago. He was taking favorite hymns when a hand went up from the back. He asked her to stand up so he could hear her. It was then that he really saw her.

"It was the most hideous face I had ever seen," Hinton said. "The woman's nose and ears were entirely gone. She had lifted a fingerless hand in the air and asked, 'Can we sing Count Your Many Blessings?' "

Overcome with emotion, Hinton left the service. He was followed by a team member who said, "I guess you'll never be able to sing that song again."

"Yes, I will," he replied, "but I'll never sing it the same way."

It’s all too easy in reading these chapters to focus on the obvious flaws in Israel’s character. The people were ungrateful. They were rebellious. They were mean-spirited and hostile. They were selfish and petty.

Perhaps a good way to sum it up is that they were the kind of folks who, if you had them as neighbors, would make you want to put your house up for sale. Yesterday.

Yet God delivered this people from Egypt and said I have “brought you to Myself” (v. 4). God even says that He chose this people, “out of all nations,” to be His treasured possession.

I know, you have to wonder what God was thinking but I thought the same thing when He called me to ministry.

The Hebrew word here is significant. Segullah means “valued property,” “personal possession,” or “private treasure.”

God looked over the whole earth, and selected Israel to “be for Him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (v. 6).

It’s hard for you and me to have this delight in these unlovely people. We tend to see only the rough spots, the dull and lifeless form. Sometimes we are tempted to feel so about much of the current generation.

What we need to do is ask God to share His perspective with us and He does.

The image of maturity that God used was that of the eagle, bearing its young on its wings and teaching them the glorious freedom of flight.

At a certain stage in the development of their young, the parent eagles break up the comfortable nest and force the eaglets to fly.

The young birds may not be anxious to leave the security of the nest, but they must learn to fly if they’re going to live.

The adult birds stay near the fledglings and, if they fall, carry them on their strong wings until the young birds learn how to use their wings, ride the air currents, and enjoy the abilities God gave them.

This image paints a picture for us of the freedom God wanted for Israel and He wants for us.

freedom from that which enslaves them (petty sins, resentments and the hatred around us);

freedom in the place God has put them (accepting where God has placed them and serving Him from there), and

freedom to become what God meant them to be (knowing that God had a plan all along).

True freedom means more than that we’re delivered from doing the bad, it means we’re able to do the good, and we’re accomplishing God’s will on the earth.

From God’s point of view, Egypt was a furnace of affliction for Israel (Deut. 4:20; 1 Kings 8:51; Jer. 11:4), but the Jews often saw Egypt as a “nest” where they at least had food, shelter, and security (Ex. 16:1–3; Num. 11:1–9).

God delivered them from Egypt because He had something better for them to enjoy and to do, but this meant that they had to “try their wings” and experience growing pains as they moved toward maturity.

When we’re maturing in the Lord, life becomes a series of open doors that lead to more and more opportunities for our freedom.

But if we refuse to let God mature us, life becomes a series of confining iron bars that limit us.

A baby is safe and comfortable in the mother’s womb, but at some point, the baby must be born and enter a new and demanding world of growth and maturity.

From birth to death, there are “turning points” of life which usher in new freedoms that bring with them new privileges and new responsibilities: walking, instead of being carried; riding a bicycle and then driving a car; working at a job and earning money; learning to use that money wisely; making friends; getting married; raising children; retiring.

At each “turning point,” we lose something as we gain something; and this is the way the maturing process works.

Whenever the Jews complained about God’s dealings with them and yearned to go back to Egypt, they were acting like little children, so God had to discipline them.

George Morrison needs to be quoted: “It took one night to take Israel out of Egypt, but forty years to take Egypt out of Israel.”

How long is it taking the Lord to get us to fly, or are we nestlings who don’t want to be disturbed? Let’s remember how far we have come.

Exodus 19: 1-6

IN THE third month after the Israelites left the land of Egypt, the same day, they came into the Wilderness of Sinai.

2 When they had departed from Rephidim and had come to the Wilderness of Sinai, they encamped there before the mountain.

3 And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him out of the mountain, ‘Say this to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites’:

4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.

5 Now therefore, if you will obey My voice in truth and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own peculiar possession and treasure from among andabove all peoples; for all the earth is Mine.

6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation [consecrated, set apart to the worship of God]. These are the words you shall speak to the Israelites.

7 So Moses called for the elders of the people and told them all these words which the Lord commanded him.