One Stage After Another
Text: Exodus 17:1-7
Title: One Stage After Another
Thesis: People long to feel settled in. How can we help people feel that they belong?
Time: Lent, 3 Sun, A
It was an unprecedented thing, that a large city full of people would be forced to evacuate. I’m not sure if we have anything else to compare it to in our nation’s history –that that the people of New Orleans and others in smaller communities along the Gulf Coast would be forced to evacuate and at least temporarily find somewhere else to live. Some have given up hope of ever returning, taking up new jobs and homes elsewhere. Some still cling with assurance that soon they will return home. Many of their stories are sad. Two days ago I heard a news interview of a man who was in the convention center in New Orleans. Somehow he got separated from his wife and children. He doesn’t know where they went, still unable to find them. All this to say, “People like to be settled in. People like the security of a roof over their head, to have a place to call home. People like stability in knowing where their next meal will come from, and to have a steady job. Our nation is being challenged to provide for hundreds of thousands of people a temporary feeling of being settled in until they can return to their own homes. It’s an enormous challenge.
The Hebrew people became masters at living with a temporary feeling of being settled in. In the book of Exodus we read that they knew they weren’t in the Promised Land yet, that wouldn’t happen for another forty years. So they learned to adjust, to live with hope, to have faith, and all this allowed them to have that temporary feeling of being settled in, even in the worst of living conditions, a hot desert that offered little in the way of resources or comfort or security. The Hebrew people are an example for all those whose lives have been temporarily displaced from the recent two hurricanes –to live with hope and faith. But really, the Hebrew people are an example for all of us. In some way, each of us are not yet where we want to be. We might long to graduate from school and get settled down in a job. We might long to be more financially secure and less in debt. We might long to overcome a health problem. And for all of us there are lessons to be learned about hope and faith from the Hebrew people who crossed a hot desert with little else than God’s promise that some day they would reach the Promised Land. Let us take their example so that we too can live with hope, with joy and with happiness, even when we don’t exactly fell settled in.
I like in Exodus 17:1 the description that the whole people traveled in “stages.” As I explained in the children’s sermon, this is an idiom meaning “They were a people who pulled up their tent stakes.” They did not yet have a place where they could build permanent foundations. Rather, they were still on the move. They did not yet have what they needed to feel permanently settled in. And here in Exodus 17, they are lacking one of the most basic of resources, water.
What’s the immediate response when news breaks out in camp that there’s not enough water for everyone to drink? Exodus 17:2, “The people quarreled with Moses.” They turn to their leadership. Let’s blame Moses, he’s the one that led us out here in this hot desert it the first place. Sure, we were slaves in Egypt, but at least we had water. How easy it is for us to blame others when our sense of security and feeling settled in becomes threatened. It’s easy to blame our problems on other people. But the solution lies elsewhere. God will provide what we need. No matter how large the problem that robs us of being permanently settled in, the solution is to believe that God will provide what we need.
Here is what God does in Exodus 17. God instructs Moses to go ahead of the people, to be an example of someone living in faith. Moses doesn’t retreat. Moses steps out further into the desert. Moses has confidence that God will provide the water that the people need.
Do you know who the Hebrew people are really quarreling with in Exodus 17? With God. That’s why Moses says, “Why do you test the Lord.” Along the way to the Promised Land over and over, the Hebrew people have to be reassured that God will provide for them, just as God has been providing for them. It’s that same way for us. On occasion when I’m visiting with someone in the hospital or in some other situation where their sense of security is threatened they’ll ask in one way or the other, “Why did God allow this to happen to me. Why isn’t God taking care of me. Or, Will God be with me as I go through all of this. Usually, it doesn’t take long for the person to think of some way that God has taken care of them in the past, faithfully providing and being with them in some past trying time in their life. Had the Hebrews in Exodus 17 thought about it, they could have easily accounted dozens of ways that God has faithfully provided for them, even as they have just recently stepped out into the desert.
It’s interesting how many people find their sense of purpose whenever they are placed in less than ideal conditions. Moses learned he was a great leader, someone with great faith. And God takes what Moses has, to help others develop a sense of stability in the most trying of times. What is that in your hand?” and Moses had said, “It’s a rod.” “Cast it to the ground,” God said. When Moses did, it became a serpent from which Moses fled. But God commanded him to pick up the serpent, and when he did, it became a rod again. And God used that rod of Moses and then continued to use it throughout the wilderness wandering. It’s a powerful symbol. Every life has some capacity, and to all of us God is constantly saying, “What is that in your hand?” God takes for granted that each of us has something that is useful for Him and in ministry on His behalf. We’re all given gifts, according to the measure of the grace of God.
Perhaps today you have gone through a desert, a survivor some trying circumstance that called you to have great faith, and you are a survivor. You made it across. It might be that you can be a spokesperson, like Moses, stepping out in front, assuring others that yes, they, too can make it across.
Or today, you might be one of those looking for someone to lead you forward. Your faith is drained, you are unsure which way to go, you feel you are going the way alone. God’s promise is that you will not go alone. We are called to be together the church, traveling in stages together.
And for all of us, we are called to have faith, to live with the promise that God is with us. Jesus repeats several times one of the promises God makes to the Hebrews as they are crossing the desert, “I will dwell with you.” It’s another one of those Hebrew idioms. It could be translated like this, “I will pitch my tent next to yours.” Even when we are at a place in life where we would not want to put up a permanent foundation, even when we still have a ways to go, the promise of God is that he will be right there with us. God is with us wherever we are, and God will lead us forward.