When Gifts Become gods
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Title: When Gifts Become Gods.
Scripture: Numbers 11:33-34
While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague. Therefore the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had the craving.
Introduction:
Introduction:
Once upon a time, I was vegan. I know its hard to believe, but I was just trying to give my arteries a break, cause I love meat so much! I’m a carnivore! Now I love meat in general, but I really love buffalo chicken wings. I love any chicken wings, but particularly the spicy ones. I can eat a lot of them. Full disclosure is when I see people eat wings and they leave so much meat on them and move right on to the next one! Finish him! So I had to quit, cold turkey, no more meat. No more wings. But they called to me. Shaaaane. I’m here for you. I have what you need. Come to me. Come to B Dubbs, come to The Hangar! I made it a whole 5 months before I had had enough. For five months I made it without eating meat or dairy. I did cheat a little and had some cream in my coffee. But, I have to be careful, that my soul is not lifted up and demanding. Can I be content without it? If a shortage came, if my finances dwindled, would I be able to be content with what the Lord gives me? Or would I complain?
The children of Israel had been miraculously taken out of hard slavery in Egypt and through the Red Sea and into a season of testing. God miraculously delivered them and provided for them. When they got hungry and complained and grumbled against God and Moses, the Lord was gracious and fed them bread from heaven and quail too. But today we are going to look at how Israel grumbled and complained against God and Moses and it wasn’t just because they were starving. It was something gravely serious.
Let’s pray.
Setting the Stage
Setting the Stage
It is no sin to crave. It is no sin to want something. However, if our lack of that thing, our want of that desire, exceeds our reverence for God, our desire for God, our fear of the Lord, we are breaking the first commandment and we bring death to ourselves.
Indeed, all of the pleasures that the Lord has intended are good, but they are also easily worshipped. We derive pleasure from them. We don’t want that to stop and they can quickly become objects of worship. We love them, and if we don’t get them, we get cranky. We get angry. We get angry at God!
In Numbers chapter 11 we begin to see that. Here, the Israelites begin to grumble. I can hear the sound of that orc in the Lord of the Rings saying, “Yeah, why can’t we have some meats?”
The fountain of living waters:
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.
When we first come to God, we find Him to be so satisfying. We see Him as our source of life. Unfortunately, too many times, His blessings become idols that we look to as sources of life. We feel that we simply could not get along without them. When we do this, we are abandoning the fountain of living waters and looking to broken water containers that can’t even hold water.
Commentaries
Commentaries
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Chapter 11)
On a former occasion their murmurings for flesh were raised (Ex 16:1–8) because they were in want of food. Here they proceeded, not from necessity, but wanton, lustful desire; and their sin, in the righteous judgment of God, was made to carry its own punishment.-JFB
Faithlife Study Bible (Chapter 11)
11:20 Why did we ever leave Egypt? The anger Yahweh feels toward Israel is not because of their longing for meat, but because, in their craving, they long for Egypt and thus reject the goodness, provision, and power of Yahweh.-Faithlife Study Bible
A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Numbers (Exegetical and Critical)
Not only will the people not go forward, but they will return home to the flesh pots. The God-forgetting yearning after pleasure, after the fancied, idealized pleasure of the world, that has become a sympathetic power of seduction, has, by the spirit of faith, been justly taken as an allegorical type of all kindred outbreaks of base despondency in the church of God.-Lange’s Commentary
Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Numbers 11:31–35)
David longed for the water of the well of Bethlehem, but would not drink it when he had it, because it was obtained by venturing; much more reason these Israelites had to refuse this flesh, which was obtained by murmuring, and which, they might easily perceive, by what Moses said, was given them in anger; but those that are under the power of a carnal mind will have their lusts fulfilled, though it be to the certain damage and ruin of their precious souls.
Scripture References:
But they soon forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel. But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert; he gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them.
Ps 78:26-42 is full of imagery about the rebellion of Israel.
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind; he rained meat on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas; he let them fall in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings. And they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved. But before they had satisfied their craving, while the food was still in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest of them and laid low the young men of Israel. In spite of all this, they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe. So he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror. When he killed them, they sought him; they repented and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer. But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant. Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again. How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert! They tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember his power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe,
10 chapters later we see them complaining and rebelling against God and Moses and god brought snakes in that bit them and people were dying. They realize that they were sinning and rebelling and ask Moses to pray for them. Then God offers healing through looking at a bronze snake that Moses would hold up.
And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
The crazy thing is that years later, they worshipped it!
In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.
Nehustan, the snake that Moses lifted in the desert, became an idol. This is another picture of worshipping something that the Lord created for good.
Signs that you’ve got an idolatry problem
Signs that you’ve got an idolatry problem
Some of the signs that we have made something a god, an idol in our life is found in
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.
In this passage, we see idolatry leads to the inability to speak.
They have mouths, but cannot speak. Do you have little to say to others because all you can talk about is your idol. Do you find yourself talking only about one thing?
They have eyes, but they don’t see. Is your idol all that you can see? Have been unable to see God in your life? Do you seem to see no evidence of His workings in your life? It may be because a gift has become a terrible god.
They have hands, but do not feel. Have you lost your ability to feel compassion? To feel empathy? To feel love? To feel God? Maybe a gift has become a god in your life.
They have hands, but do not walk. Does your gift from God or your idol keep you from going anywhere? Is it holding you captive?
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Jesus says in John 3:14-15
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
To worship Jesus is not the same as worshipping that snake. Jesus is God. The apostle John has already explained that in great detail in the first chapter of this Gospel. He states that Jesus is the creator of all things. Later, Jesus says that we must honor and worship Him as we do the Father.
If we want eternal life. If we want to walk in the newness of life, that abundant life, life to the full that Jesus talks about in John 10, we must look up. We must look to Him, not to the gifts we have been given, not to our ambition, our productivity, the honor we receive from others, the rising up the corporate ladder, not the relationships that we have, not the food we eat, clothes we wear, or cars we drive. We are to look up.... to Him!
We think that we know what we want. In the case of Amnon and Tamar. He “loved” her sooooo much, until he got her. Then he hated her more than he “loved” her after he lay with her.
No gift, no person, no anything makes a good god. They are poor substitutes.
Spiritual Theology
The Lord rained down quail, but figuratively, He rained down Jesus to us. He comes to us as the brooding hen longing to gather us as chicks. He will one day come as the vulture who can see a carcass 4 miles away and smell carrion from a mile away.
Jesus, when offered food by the disciples, says that he has food that they don’t know about.
A Song of Ascents. Of David. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.
The antidote to making gifts into gods is gratitude. It is contentment.
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Know and Why?
Know and Why?
God‘s gifts make terrible gods. When worshipped or seen as entitlements, they hold us captive and make us bitter and unhappy, because when we get them, we were only getting what we deserved. we don’t see them as gifts.
Do and Why?
Do and Why?
Learn contentment through gratitude and spiritual disciplines. See everything as a gift and not an entitlement. This comes only from through practicing gratitude and spending time with Him. It is aided by fastings of various kinds and other spiritual disciplines. If we are owed nothing from God, we can see everything as a gift. I am not entitled to dessert every day, every week, or even at all. I am not entitled to shelter. I am not entitled to a life free of pain. I am not entitled to having the friends I want or having my gifts used and showcased in the church. But if it happens, I will be grateful and that will put a smile on my face that the devil cannot wipe off.
Prayer:
Oh Lord, let me never wander away from you into the graves of craving. Death calls to me from not only the obvious evil of the world, but a subtle and growing addiction to those good and wonderful gifts that come from the Father of Lights (James 1).
When this happens, my image of you is distorted and tarnished. My hearing and view is filtered through the narrow lens of that distorted gift. Salvation is being brought into a wide-open space. Sin has a way of hemming us in and bringing us slowly into bondage. Deliver me from my small deluded sight and bring me into the wider place of seeing you as my good provider. You withhold no good thing from me. You are good.
Altar
Are there things in your life that you have turned into idols? Have you taken the blessings of God and begun to turn to them as escapes? Has food become your idol? Do you turn to it for comfort? We have that saying, “comfort foods.”
Has a distortion of something good taken over?
You may be in a grave of craving right now, but Jesus is calling you to come out of that grave, like Lazarus who had been dead for four days. And just as he told the people around him, “Loose him and let him go,“ he is calling to you to be set free from your addictions and idols.
I want to challenge to meditate on this story. And, perhaps, meditate on Psalms 131. It has been the theme of my year.