When God Tests Us
Sermon
Walking With God
Cycle A First Lesson Sermons for Proper 23 through Thanksgiving
Object:
When we get nervous about the unknown, we can make mountains out of mole hills. But we aren't by ourselves. Loads of people down through history have made the same mistake.
Take the Israelites, for example. God had delivered them from Egyptian bondage through a series of mystifying miracles at the hand of Moses. Then Moses led them on a three-month journey to Mount Sinai. There God called Moses to the top of the mountain for a meeting with him. Soon Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. In due time, God called Moses back to the mountain, and there he remained for forty days and nights (Exodus 24:18).
Moses had become the central figure of stability for the Israelites. After all, he had been the leader of God's people even before they were set free from Egyptian bondage. They had grown to lean heavily on him. His presence among them became absolutely essential. As long as he was nearby, they felt safe. If they couldn't see him, especially for a long period of time, they apparently began to get nervous. That's when they started to jump to conclusions. Amountain soon formed from a mole hill.
According to Exodus, Moses left the people to go up the mountain for an extended meeting with God. He didn't come down from the mountain soon enough; so they started to wonder if he would return at all. They could see the fire on the mountain where he was meeting with God, but they couldn't see him. In fact, they hadn't seen him for several days. Jittery, they began to think that he wouldn't ever return to them. They may have convinced themselves that the fire had consumed him, leaving them all alone.
Like all of us, the Israelites craved a relationship with God. They showed their eagerness to devote themselves to God by signing on immediately to worship Him alone and to live according to his ways (Exodus 24:3). Once Moses presented the Ten Commandments to them, they immediately agreed to live by them. They seemed to be enthusiastic about following the one true God, their deliverer. Just as quickly, they appeared to be eager to ditch God once his messenger disappeared without a trace and to replace him with another deity.
And like all of us, the Israelites confused silence with absence. They hadn't heard from God or Moses, his messenger, in a while. Consequently, they figured that God must have left the mountain and Moses must have died there, leaving his people waiting anxiously in the middle of an unforgiving desert. In their anxiety, they wondered who would take them on from there.
How do you react when God seems to give you the silent treatment? Do you assume that he's absent? If so, what do you do about it?
Poor Aaron didn't help the tense situation very much, even though he tried. He gave his best effort to keeping the people focused on their commitment to God, but to no avail. Aaron had been with Moses from the start, and he himself had witnessed in Egypt and Sinai, and every place in between, the miracle-working power and the all-sufficient presence of God. He seemed to know that the silence on the mountain didn't mean God had made an exit. Apparently he couldn't convey that confidence to the people who had already jumped to the conclusion that Moses would never return to them.
At the same time, however, he knew the people whom God had delivered from Egypt. They had been raised in slavery. They had lost a part of themselves somewhere in the brutal treatment they had received at the hands of their oppressors. The Egyptians had conditioned them to be afraid. You could imagine that faith wouldn't come easily to them. Aaron knew that something had to be done to assuage their fear. If he didn't try something, they would jump ship on him just as quickly as they bailed out on the God who used him and Moses to get them this far on their journey to the promised land.
They wanted Aaron to help them get on with their lives so they could move forward from there. Taking that step meant crafting a deity that would give them a measure of comfort. They had grown accustomed to the Egyptian idols that they could see and touch. Aaron told them the cost for that kind of god would be high, but they didn't mind paying it. Desperate, they displayed nothing less than blind allegiance to the hope that Aaron could craft a god for them to worship. They ripped the gold jewelry from their bodies and their clothing so Aaron could boil it down into a deity. They decided that their healthy appetite for a relationship with God could be satisfied with the junk food of an idol. What they didn't know was that their devotion to their new deity would turn out to be the source of unimaginable pain for them.
So Aaron crafted a god for them, and they fell in love with it immediately. It probably looked like something they could relate to from their days in Egypt. The golden calf that Aaron crafted from their jewelry brought back memories of home, even if home had bad memories. It made them feel as if they had something worthwhile to which they could devote themselves. Gazing upon it, they didn't feel so alone in the desert.
When Aaron saw that the people had glued themselves to the idol he constructed, he tried to direct their attention back to the living God who Moses was talking with upon the mountain. When he finished the golden calf, he built an altar for it, and he proclaimed the next day as a festival. But he decreed that the festival would be in honor to the living Lord (v. 5). Perhaps he thought that a festival to the living God would lure the people back to him, even though he would have to share the billing with the idol they really wanted to worship.
What Aaron tried to do has been given a name. Scholars call it syncretism. It's the effort made to blend different perspectives so everyone can work together to accomplish a common goal. Some theorists like to refer to it as fusion. It's like melting the wax on two candles, pouring the liquid into one mold that shapes it into something else. It's like taking various bits of gold jewelry, melting them, pouring the liquid gold into a new mold and letting it harden into a new form that everyone can appreciate. It's like taking a relationship with God and melting it with devotion to a cold, dead deity to form something that would be appealing to everyone.
For Aaron, the effort at syncretism didn't work. It rarely does for anyone else either. Jesus told us as much when he warned us not to put new wine into old wineskins. The new wine of a living relationship with Christ can't ever be contained in the old wineskin of dead religion for very long.
We tend to look at the Israelites in this episode of their journey with at least a hint of disgust. Such a perspective on their huge blunder would be easy to develop. We say they should have known better, and Aaron should have known better. Before we cast judgment on what he and the others did on that sad day, we do well to see that what happened to them can happen to God's people at any time in history.
Even now we may find ourselves so eager to see God at work that we take matters usually left to him into our own hands. Or, like Aaron, we try to harmonize the life we have with the Lord with the ways of a culture that eventually has us wandering farther and farther away from him.
That's what happened to the Israelites. They wandered far away from God. From the way they behaved, you wondered if they would ever return to him. Instead of worshiping the true and living God, they turned their attention to praying at the altar of the deity they had made for themselves. Strangely enough, their devotion to their idol led them down the path of self-indulgence after they affirmed that they would take the high road of walking with God in obedience and love.
Was the Lord surprised by what they had done? Not one bit. Disappointed? Yes, but not surprised. It's as if he left them alone so who they really were would rise to the surface. In the silence that accompanied Moses' departure to the mountaintop, his people got a chance to take the high road of commitment to him when he didn't seem to be around every day to remind them that he was watching them. You may even say that he set up the crisis to see how they would react. He wasn't surprised with their reaction to his silence. They took it to mean that he was absent and decided to take matters into their own hands.
It wasn't the first time God's people reacted that way, and it wouldn't be the last. Even today we find ourselves reacting like God's people then. If he doesn't show up every once in a while and remind us constantly of his presence among us, we get the impression that we can go our own way and that no one will care or even notice.
God's silence tests our mettle. When he doesn't seem to be giving attention to us, it presents for us a crisis, a crisis of faith. Will we move forward and trust him? Or will we decide that we would do just as well to take action on our own behalf?
Meanwhile, up on the mountain, God tested Moses too. He didn't test Moses like a research specialist would test a laboratory mouse in order to prove a scientific theory. No. God tested Moses like a dad tested his daughter by giving her the keys to his car. All finished with the driver's education classes and having passed the driver's test, she had a brand new license that was burning a hole in her purse. She was itching to get out on the open road by herself, so her dad let her take his car for a spin around the neighborhood. Before he put the keys in her hands, he said, "Sweetheart, don't go over the speed limit."
"I won't," she said with her eyes glued to the keys in his hand.
"And don't let anyone ride in the car with you."
"All right, Dad."
"And be back home in one hour."
"I will." Then she grabbed the keys from him, kissed him on his cheek, and out the door she went with the parting words, "I love you, dad!" resonating through the house as she made her way through the front door.
Her dad tested her that day. After he provided the necessary training and gave her sufficient instruction, he let her go on her own to see how she would react. He didn't test her because he wanted to conduct research on teenagers behind the wheel. He tested her because he loved her and wanted her to enjoy the liberty that driving would give her and to take seriously the responsibility associated with the freedom he had given her. Because he had reared her, he knew how she would handle the test he had placed before her. But nothing made his heart swell with pride like the front door swinging open 45 minutes later and his daughter bounding into the house, hugging him again, and thanking him for letting her drive his car. Her trip through the neighborhood had gone extremely well she said with a smile on her face. Her dad smiled, too, because she had passed the test.
God gave Moses the keys to the Israelite nation and said, "It's yours to drive. Ditch it if you want. Trade it in if you want. Let me know what you decide." All the while God knew how Moses would react, so he wasn't surprised when Moses pleaded with him to give the people he had delivered from bondage another chance. Neither was he surprised when Moses said that saving them would speak well of him in the land. And after all, his reputation among his people mattered more than anything else. God must have smiled when Moses passed the critical test of leadership. He loved God's people just as God himself loved them. Like his Lord, he didn't want to give up on them. Too much was at stake.
You may be thinking that God testing Moses was cruel. You may insist that he could find a better way to guide his people along toward the promised land. Or you may be taking the whole testing issue one step farther by insisting that you shouldn't be tested. The notion of God testing you insults you; your intelligence, your devotion, and your sincerity.
Tests aren't meant to be mean-spirited attempts to make our lives miserable. Tests are necessary. Without tests, how would we know that we have made progress? Suppose we decided that tests shouldn't be given to students. How would we know if third-graders have made progress with their math skills? How would we be able to evaluate the extent to which a high-school senior could read or write well enough to function productively in society? How would a soldier in boot camp know if he or she has mastered the skills necessary to move forward in the field of battle? In Christian living, how will we know that we have matured enough to take on the challenges that await us as we make our own journey to the promised land of a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord?
And what about our obligation to other believers? My journey with Christ isn't just about me, and your journey with him isn't just about you. It's about them too. It's about the others who join us, who don't know the way as well as we. It's about leading them to stay strong in the days when God is silent. It's about holding on to the promise that just because he's silent, we can't conclude that he's absent. It's about helping them to see that they're asking for trouble when they think about bailing out on God in favor of another way that seems to make sense at the moment.
So welcome the tests that God brings our way. He's not trying to hurt us. He's trying to help us so we will be fit for the journey called living. Through Jesus Christ, we have been given eternal life. When God tests us along the way, it's to help us stay on track so we can experience his fulfillment in our relationship with him. Amen.
Take the Israelites, for example. God had delivered them from Egyptian bondage through a series of mystifying miracles at the hand of Moses. Then Moses led them on a three-month journey to Mount Sinai. There God called Moses to the top of the mountain for a meeting with him. Soon Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. In due time, God called Moses back to the mountain, and there he remained for forty days and nights (Exodus 24:18).
Moses had become the central figure of stability for the Israelites. After all, he had been the leader of God's people even before they were set free from Egyptian bondage. They had grown to lean heavily on him. His presence among them became absolutely essential. As long as he was nearby, they felt safe. If they couldn't see him, especially for a long period of time, they apparently began to get nervous. That's when they started to jump to conclusions. Amountain soon formed from a mole hill.
According to Exodus, Moses left the people to go up the mountain for an extended meeting with God. He didn't come down from the mountain soon enough; so they started to wonder if he would return at all. They could see the fire on the mountain where he was meeting with God, but they couldn't see him. In fact, they hadn't seen him for several days. Jittery, they began to think that he wouldn't ever return to them. They may have convinced themselves that the fire had consumed him, leaving them all alone.
Like all of us, the Israelites craved a relationship with God. They showed their eagerness to devote themselves to God by signing on immediately to worship Him alone and to live according to his ways (Exodus 24:3). Once Moses presented the Ten Commandments to them, they immediately agreed to live by them. They seemed to be enthusiastic about following the one true God, their deliverer. Just as quickly, they appeared to be eager to ditch God once his messenger disappeared without a trace and to replace him with another deity.
And like all of us, the Israelites confused silence with absence. They hadn't heard from God or Moses, his messenger, in a while. Consequently, they figured that God must have left the mountain and Moses must have died there, leaving his people waiting anxiously in the middle of an unforgiving desert. In their anxiety, they wondered who would take them on from there.
How do you react when God seems to give you the silent treatment? Do you assume that he's absent? If so, what do you do about it?
Poor Aaron didn't help the tense situation very much, even though he tried. He gave his best effort to keeping the people focused on their commitment to God, but to no avail. Aaron had been with Moses from the start, and he himself had witnessed in Egypt and Sinai, and every place in between, the miracle-working power and the all-sufficient presence of God. He seemed to know that the silence on the mountain didn't mean God had made an exit. Apparently he couldn't convey that confidence to the people who had already jumped to the conclusion that Moses would never return to them.
At the same time, however, he knew the people whom God had delivered from Egypt. They had been raised in slavery. They had lost a part of themselves somewhere in the brutal treatment they had received at the hands of their oppressors. The Egyptians had conditioned them to be afraid. You could imagine that faith wouldn't come easily to them. Aaron knew that something had to be done to assuage their fear. If he didn't try something, they would jump ship on him just as quickly as they bailed out on the God who used him and Moses to get them this far on their journey to the promised land.
They wanted Aaron to help them get on with their lives so they could move forward from there. Taking that step meant crafting a deity that would give them a measure of comfort. They had grown accustomed to the Egyptian idols that they could see and touch. Aaron told them the cost for that kind of god would be high, but they didn't mind paying it. Desperate, they displayed nothing less than blind allegiance to the hope that Aaron could craft a god for them to worship. They ripped the gold jewelry from their bodies and their clothing so Aaron could boil it down into a deity. They decided that their healthy appetite for a relationship with God could be satisfied with the junk food of an idol. What they didn't know was that their devotion to their new deity would turn out to be the source of unimaginable pain for them.
So Aaron crafted a god for them, and they fell in love with it immediately. It probably looked like something they could relate to from their days in Egypt. The golden calf that Aaron crafted from their jewelry brought back memories of home, even if home had bad memories. It made them feel as if they had something worthwhile to which they could devote themselves. Gazing upon it, they didn't feel so alone in the desert.
When Aaron saw that the people had glued themselves to the idol he constructed, he tried to direct their attention back to the living God who Moses was talking with upon the mountain. When he finished the golden calf, he built an altar for it, and he proclaimed the next day as a festival. But he decreed that the festival would be in honor to the living Lord (v. 5). Perhaps he thought that a festival to the living God would lure the people back to him, even though he would have to share the billing with the idol they really wanted to worship.
What Aaron tried to do has been given a name. Scholars call it syncretism. It's the effort made to blend different perspectives so everyone can work together to accomplish a common goal. Some theorists like to refer to it as fusion. It's like melting the wax on two candles, pouring the liquid into one mold that shapes it into something else. It's like taking various bits of gold jewelry, melting them, pouring the liquid gold into a new mold and letting it harden into a new form that everyone can appreciate. It's like taking a relationship with God and melting it with devotion to a cold, dead deity to form something that would be appealing to everyone.
For Aaron, the effort at syncretism didn't work. It rarely does for anyone else either. Jesus told us as much when he warned us not to put new wine into old wineskins. The new wine of a living relationship with Christ can't ever be contained in the old wineskin of dead religion for very long.
We tend to look at the Israelites in this episode of their journey with at least a hint of disgust. Such a perspective on their huge blunder would be easy to develop. We say they should have known better, and Aaron should have known better. Before we cast judgment on what he and the others did on that sad day, we do well to see that what happened to them can happen to God's people at any time in history.
Even now we may find ourselves so eager to see God at work that we take matters usually left to him into our own hands. Or, like Aaron, we try to harmonize the life we have with the Lord with the ways of a culture that eventually has us wandering farther and farther away from him.
That's what happened to the Israelites. They wandered far away from God. From the way they behaved, you wondered if they would ever return to him. Instead of worshiping the true and living God, they turned their attention to praying at the altar of the deity they had made for themselves. Strangely enough, their devotion to their idol led them down the path of self-indulgence after they affirmed that they would take the high road of walking with God in obedience and love.
Was the Lord surprised by what they had done? Not one bit. Disappointed? Yes, but not surprised. It's as if he left them alone so who they really were would rise to the surface. In the silence that accompanied Moses' departure to the mountaintop, his people got a chance to take the high road of commitment to him when he didn't seem to be around every day to remind them that he was watching them. You may even say that he set up the crisis to see how they would react. He wasn't surprised with their reaction to his silence. They took it to mean that he was absent and decided to take matters into their own hands.
It wasn't the first time God's people reacted that way, and it wouldn't be the last. Even today we find ourselves reacting like God's people then. If he doesn't show up every once in a while and remind us constantly of his presence among us, we get the impression that we can go our own way and that no one will care or even notice.
God's silence tests our mettle. When he doesn't seem to be giving attention to us, it presents for us a crisis, a crisis of faith. Will we move forward and trust him? Or will we decide that we would do just as well to take action on our own behalf?
Meanwhile, up on the mountain, God tested Moses too. He didn't test Moses like a research specialist would test a laboratory mouse in order to prove a scientific theory. No. God tested Moses like a dad tested his daughter by giving her the keys to his car. All finished with the driver's education classes and having passed the driver's test, she had a brand new license that was burning a hole in her purse. She was itching to get out on the open road by herself, so her dad let her take his car for a spin around the neighborhood. Before he put the keys in her hands, he said, "Sweetheart, don't go over the speed limit."
"I won't," she said with her eyes glued to the keys in his hand.
"And don't let anyone ride in the car with you."
"All right, Dad."
"And be back home in one hour."
"I will." Then she grabbed the keys from him, kissed him on his cheek, and out the door she went with the parting words, "I love you, dad!" resonating through the house as she made her way through the front door.
Her dad tested her that day. After he provided the necessary training and gave her sufficient instruction, he let her go on her own to see how she would react. He didn't test her because he wanted to conduct research on teenagers behind the wheel. He tested her because he loved her and wanted her to enjoy the liberty that driving would give her and to take seriously the responsibility associated with the freedom he had given her. Because he had reared her, he knew how she would handle the test he had placed before her. But nothing made his heart swell with pride like the front door swinging open 45 minutes later and his daughter bounding into the house, hugging him again, and thanking him for letting her drive his car. Her trip through the neighborhood had gone extremely well she said with a smile on her face. Her dad smiled, too, because she had passed the test.
God gave Moses the keys to the Israelite nation and said, "It's yours to drive. Ditch it if you want. Trade it in if you want. Let me know what you decide." All the while God knew how Moses would react, so he wasn't surprised when Moses pleaded with him to give the people he had delivered from bondage another chance. Neither was he surprised when Moses said that saving them would speak well of him in the land. And after all, his reputation among his people mattered more than anything else. God must have smiled when Moses passed the critical test of leadership. He loved God's people just as God himself loved them. Like his Lord, he didn't want to give up on them. Too much was at stake.
You may be thinking that God testing Moses was cruel. You may insist that he could find a better way to guide his people along toward the promised land. Or you may be taking the whole testing issue one step farther by insisting that you shouldn't be tested. The notion of God testing you insults you; your intelligence, your devotion, and your sincerity.
Tests aren't meant to be mean-spirited attempts to make our lives miserable. Tests are necessary. Without tests, how would we know that we have made progress? Suppose we decided that tests shouldn't be given to students. How would we know if third-graders have made progress with their math skills? How would we be able to evaluate the extent to which a high-school senior could read or write well enough to function productively in society? How would a soldier in boot camp know if he or she has mastered the skills necessary to move forward in the field of battle? In Christian living, how will we know that we have matured enough to take on the challenges that await us as we make our own journey to the promised land of a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord?
And what about our obligation to other believers? My journey with Christ isn't just about me, and your journey with him isn't just about you. It's about them too. It's about the others who join us, who don't know the way as well as we. It's about leading them to stay strong in the days when God is silent. It's about holding on to the promise that just because he's silent, we can't conclude that he's absent. It's about helping them to see that they're asking for trouble when they think about bailing out on God in favor of another way that seems to make sense at the moment.
So welcome the tests that God brings our way. He's not trying to hurt us. He's trying to help us so we will be fit for the journey called living. Through Jesus Christ, we have been given eternal life. When God tests us along the way, it's to help us stay on track so we can experience his fulfillment in our relationship with him. Amen.
