A sermon preached by the Reverend
Scott D. Nowack on September 25, 2011
at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore,
Texas.
If You Love Me,
Then Prove It
Exodus 17:1-7
There was a game
we played in youth group called, “If you love me, won’t you please smile?” Everybody would grab a chair and sit in a
circle. One person was "it". They were in the middle without a chair. The person who was "It" had to ask someone
the big question, “If you love me, won’t you please smile?” If the targeted
person must say without laughing, "I love you, but I just can't
smile." If the targeted person laughs at any time, then that person is
"It". If the targeted person
does not laugh, then "it" must find another person to target. In order to get someone to smile, one
could resort to a limited but effective bag of tricks. You could make funny faces. You could speak in a weird, strange
voice. But you couldn’t touch or tickle
them. And some people where harder to
crack than others.
As
the Israelites move by stages through the wilderness, this is one of their
favorite games to play. First, it starts
by asking God, “If you love us, give us something to eat.” Now they’re making the same complaint, but
this time it is for water: “If you love us, give us water to drink.” The ultimate question they are asking is
found in verse 7, “Is the Lord among us or not?” In other words, “You say that you love us,
Yahweh. And if you really do, you’ll
give us what we want.”
Israel
is STILL not sure that God is faithful or reliable. God had promised to keep the people safe if
they listened to his voice and did what was right in his sight (15:26), but
they still complained and were impatient.
Israel appears to be testing God, to find out about God’s power and
might. They are looking for a way in
which God can be coerced to act or show himself to be faithful and
trustworthy.
These
are the same people who witnessed first-hand the power of God: the gifts of
quail in the evening and manna in the morning, the plagues unleashed in Egypt,
and the walls of water crashing down and destroying the Egyptian army after
crossing the Red Sea.
How
often do we put God in Christ Jesus to the test? How often do we pray, ‘Lord, if you do a, b,
and c, then I’ll do d, e, and f.’ How
often do we dictate the terms of our relationship with God? Have you ever said, “Oh God, if you help me
out of this situation, then I’ll go to church every Sunday no matter what.” Or “If you’re really here with me, then give
me a sign.”
Asking
these questions is to set God up, to try to force God’s hand in order to
determine concretely whether God is really present or not. Israel’s testing of God went like this: if we
are to believe that God is really present, then God must show us in a concrete
way by making water materialize. It is
to make one’s faith and belief in God contingent upon such a demonstration. In essence, it is an attempt to turn faith
into sight.
Do they not understand
that having saved and protected them thus far, God does not intend to let them
perish in the wilderness through dehydration?
God has invested a great deal of time and resources to bring the
Israelites out of slavery to get them to the Promised Land. In a place that is empty of resources for
life is filled with God’s resolve to preserve life. God is going to do whatever he has to do to
make this work. He does not have to
answer to a CEO or shareholders on what’s happening with this project. The water they receive from God through the
rock is pure, unconditional grace and mercy.
God is not going anywhere.
If you love me,
then prove it! The proof of God’s amazing
love for the Israelites is that he continues, time and time again, to meet
their needs and not their greeds. And
not only that, but he promises to sustain them in the days to come in a far
more significant manner than with simple food and drink, and that is with the
principles and ordinances by which they are to live: the law of God beginning
with the Ten Commandments.
It’s easy for us
today to read about the Israelites situation and point out their lack of faith
and not believing that the God who led them out of slavery to freedom to be
faithful or reliable or trustworthy.
Let’s be honest with ourselves and one another: we would much rather
turn our faith into sight, to turn what is unseen to what is seen. I want God at my disposal. I want him right where I can see him. I want the “God” app on my iPhone or for God
to be one of MY followers on my Twitter account. We place God in the role of the servant,
placing him at our beck and call whenever we need him.
Such an attitude
endangers our understanding of faith. It
leads to destructive attitudes such as: “God did not heal or protect you,
because you did not have enough faith.
If you had, God would have acted.”
This is to put God to the test, demonstrating an inappropriate belief
system that God is who he says he is and can do what he says he can do grants
our "wishes" and our earthly "desires".
When good things
are happening and life is going our way, we so readily give thanks to God for
blessing us with so much goodness. But
when the tables turn on us, and life is not going our way anymore, one of the
first questions we ask is, “God, where are you?
Why would you let this happen?
Are you among us or not?” Or even
worse, we forget about God altogether.
People today are
troubled by this same question, “Is the Lord among us or not?”. It lurks secretly behind a façade of piety and
proper practice as a member of a church.
The deepest thirst of people today is to get this question answered,
this issue resolved. Is the Lord among
us or not?
Here’s the awesome
and amazing truth: the answer is yes!
God is among the Israelites meeting their needs and not their
greeds. And God is among us today. The Bible says that the proof of God’s
amazing love and grace is this: while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ, the
son of God, died for our sins on our behalf.
We didn’t earn this. We don’t
deserve it. You and I do not have to
have our act together, we don’t have to wear the right clothes to church, we
don’t have to pretend we are perfect in order to fool everyone around us into
thinking we are something we are not.
Why? Because while you and I were
still imperfect, unfinished, unpolished diamonds in the rough, the God of all
creation, the God of the universe, the one who made the stars and gave the
earth it’s frame, said to each one of us, “I love you and I’ll always be here
with you, no matter what. I love you so
much that I want to be in a relationship with you and if that means that I must
sacrifice my only son, Jesus the Christ, to make it happen, then so be it! I'll do whatever it takes!
Through our
scripture reading today and throughout the Bible, God has shown us time and
time again that God is with us and will never leave us or forsake us. Each one of us is called by God to be a
disciple of Jesus Christ no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done or
left undone. We are precious children of
God.
Twentieth century
pastor and author Andrew Murray puts it this way: “God has no more precious
gift to a church or any time in history than a man or woman who lives as an
embodiment of his will, and inspires those around him or her with the faith of
what grace can do.”
We are called to
answer the question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” with how we live our lives
every day, showing those whom we encounter the amazing grace of God. This is where God wants us to serve, so we
can demonstrate what grace can do.
And as long as
the Lord of the universe is with us, then we are right where we are supposed to
be. Where else would you want to be?
This is the good
news of the Gospel. Amen.
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