Twice during Israel’s wilderness wanderings, God provided water from a rock. In both instances, God’s people were encamped in a waterless desert. The first time (Ex 17) was toward the beginning of the forty years of wandering. The second time (Num 20) was toward the end. In both cases, the people, thirsty and fearing death, grumbled against Moses. They questioned Moses’ (and by extension, God’s) motivation for bringing them out of Egypt.

“But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”” (Exodus 17:3, ESV)

“And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.”” (Numbers 20:5, ESV)

At Horeb (the first instance), Moses sought God for direction. God instructed Moses to take his staff and go before the people along with the elders of Israel. God promised to appear before Moses on the rock, where he was to strike the rock with his staff and God would produce water from the rock so the people could drink. Moses named the place Massah (testing) and Meribah (quarreling). The idea of quarreling implies a legal contention. The people came together to make a case against Moses. In verse 7 it says they “tested the LORD by saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?”

At Kadesh (the second instance), Moses again sought God for direction. He and Aaron went together to the tent of meeting and fell on their faces before God. The scripture says that God’s glory appeared to them and the LORD gave them very specific instructions. This time, instead of taking Moses’ rod, they were to take the staff that was “before the LORD.” This referred to Aaron’s staff, the one that had miraculously budded after Korah’s rebellion when God had vindicated Aaron as a priest. Moses was to take that staff to the rock, but this time, instead of striking the rock, God instructed Moses to speak to the rock and God would again provide water. God provided water as promised, even though Moses & Aaron didn’t obey God’s instruction completely, but they were not permitted to lead God’s people into the promised land as a result. The LORD characterized their disobedience as unbelief and a failure to uphold God as holy before the people.

As I reflect on these two very similar stories, the context surrounding them captures my attention.

The first instance immediately follows the crossing of the Red Sea and the provision of manna from heaven.

The second story immediately follows Korah’s rebellion, where the ground opened up and swallowed up Korah’s household and God’s fire consumed the 250 men offering incense. When the people were offended at God’s judgment, a plague broke out killing an additional 14,700 people before Aaron was able to intercede and stop the plague. This was followed by God’s vindication of Aaron’s leadership when his rod miraculously budded as a sign confirming God’s unique calling upon his life as a priest.

It boggles my mind how a people could witness both God’s miraculous deliverance and provision, or God’s mighty acts of judgment, and so quickly move again into a place of complaining, unbelief, and dishonor toward God. It’s a good thing we never struggle that way.

Our need for God’s provision is real. There are times where we need water and all we have is a rock in the desert. We serve a God who is well able to provide. Yet still we grumble. We complain. We question his motives or even his presence. How often, I wonder, in the midst of present lack, do we quickly lose sight of our past experience with God. He has delivered us before, but in the moment of present struggle we can easily forget. He has provided for us before, but in the moment that reality easily fades from our consciousness. We have grumbled and complained before and that hasn’t gone well for us either. Thank God that this side of the cross God’s justice and wrath have been fully satisfied in Christ.

Do we sometimes think that if God would just appear, then we would believe? If he would just give us some kind of sign, then our doubts would vanish? If we could just get breakthrough this once, then the next time we need it, surely we wouldn’t grumble and complain again. Or would we?

What if Massah (testing) and Meribah (quarreling) don’t arise from our circumstances at all? What if our circumstances simply expose what was in us all along?

The most amazing thing to me is that even in the midst of our grumbling, God still gives us water from the rock. He meets our needs.

__________

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http://alansmithonline.com/resources/store/

I’ve read this familiar verse all my life. Each time, I’ve understood the writer of Hebrews to be saying that faith is what pleases God. If I can’t please God without faith, then faith must be the thing that pleases Him. If I’m struggling with unbelief, He must not be pleased with me.

This week I saw this verse in a whole new light.

There are actually two parallel statements in this verse.

1. Without faith I can’t please God.
2. I will draw near to God if I believe He exists and that He is good.

These are both contingent statements, in that they both express an “if, then” reality. The first statement expresses this negatively: if not this, then not that. If I don’t have faith I can’t please God. The second statement is expressed positively, but the “then” is placed before the if. If we express both of the statements using the same form, positively with the “if” preceding the “then”, they look like this.

1. If I have faith, then I will please God.
2. If I believe God exists and is good, I will draw near to God.

Note that the “if” of both statements is essentially the same. Believing that God exists and that God is good is simply a more specific way to express the idea of faith. What is the result of this faith? What is the “then” that will follow once the conditional “if” is satisfied?”

Answer: I will please God. I will draw near to God.

This verse doesn’t teach us that faith pleases God. It teaches us that what pleases God is when I draw near to Him. Faith is simply the necessary condition. If I don’t have faith, if I don’t believe that God is good and responsive, if I don’t believe that God is a rewarder of those who seek Him, then I won’t draw near. Me keeping my distance from God doesn’t please God. Drawing near to God is what pleases God.

Let’s draw near!

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By faith we understand.

The entire verse is a mind bender. But the first phrase packs enough stopping power to drop the bully of Western thinking to its metaphorical knees. In the West, faith and reason are kept in tidy, distinct categories. Reason is the way we understand. Faith is the way we cling to things that we either don’t understand or are in complete conflict with what we do understand. Faith is not the way we in the West understand. Faith is not the way we know things.

This is due to the way we understand faith. I hope you get the tension contained in this wording. Faith is not the way we understand understanding. But we think we understand faith. Makes me giggle a bit. Mostly, I think we understand faith to be a blind leap in the dark – a hopeful, if not presumptive grasping at that which is unreasonable. There’s just enough truth in this to be a trap. Faith is not arrived at through reason. This is true. My apologetic brain almost wishes reason was the path to faith. But just because reason is not the path to faith, it does not follow from this that faith is a blind leap in the dark. Dark is actually a nice metaphor for how we typically understand faith. We think of reason as light. The Enlightenment is, in a sense, thought of as the age of reason. The age prior to this is referred to as the Dark Ages. Reason is the way we see. From this view, faith is the way we hope against reason in the dark. But what if this is exactly the opposite of truth? What if faith is the way we see beyond reason in the light?

Faith does not operate in the dark. In fact, faith is itself a way of seeing, a way of knowing, a way of understanding. Faith is a way of seeing a kind of light that remains opaque to reason alone. Faith is not against reason, though reason can choose to oppose faith. Faith is a way of experiencing light that reason can only guess at. Faith grasps a light that leaves mere reason alone in a dark closet, closing in on itself, imploding, shriveling, eating away at that which can never truly satisfy.

The rest of this verse, having established faith as a means of knowing, of understanding, tells us what we grasp when we boldly stare into this bright light through eyes of faith. We understand that the universe is made of that which is unseen. We see the unseen underneath the seen, under-girding it, originating it, sustaining it, holding it together.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. ” (John 1:1–5, ESV)

Christianity is not a faith we reason into. We cannot reason our way to Christ. In fact, Jesus came to rescue from the blindness of merely seeing through the eyes of reason. The total depravity of man is not so much about our wickedness (though this alone is a serious enough issue). Our true depravity is  in our blindness. We are born dead and the path to life is only visible to men who are alive. So we are stuck. He must come to us. He must lead us out of the dark. The One who sees must speak to those in the dark and lead them from darkness into light.

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. ” (Romans 10:17, ESV)

“the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” ” (Matthew 4:16, ESV)

“One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ” (John 9:25b, ESV)

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. What follows inverses 2-13 is Jesus’ answer to that request. His response comes in four parts.

1. The Model Prayer (vs 2-4)
2. The Impudent Friend (vs 5-8)
3. Ask, Seek, Knock (vs 9-10)
4. The Goodness of the Father (vs 11-13)

While much could be said, and certainly has been said, about each of these sections, I want to focus upon a theme Jesus introduces in the hypothetical story about The Impudent Friend (vs 5-8) that carries over into the next section about asking, seeking, and knocking. Here is the story:

“And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. ” (Luke 11:5–8, ESV)

It is important that we keep the context in mind. Jesus is answering the disciples request that he teach them to pray. This story is a direct answer to that inquiry. Jesus is telling us, through this story, something extremely important about prayer.

I love the raw honesty portrayed in this tale. For, if we are truly honest, this story tells us exactly what the experience of prayer often feels like. When we first begin to pray, we sometimes experience what seems to be resistance. In the story, the neighbor tells us to go away. It’s late. His kids are asleep. He is busy and other things are more important than us. It is important to note that in this story, Jesus is not telling us what God is like. He is telling us what prayer is like. His point isn’t that God is too busy and can’t be bothered with our request. His point is that when we begin to pray, we feel like this is the case. This story first describes what we commonly experience when we pray. He then tell us that the key to effective prayer is to press through this initial feeling of resistance.

In the story, the neighbor is our friend. But Jesus overtly makes the point that this friendship alone is insufficient for prayer to be successful. Jesus says that the friendship is not the basis for the answered request. According to Jesus, “impudence” is the reason the prayer is answered. What is impudence?

Webster defines “impudent” as “marked by contemptuous or cocky boldness or disregard of others, insolent.” The root meaning of the English word means “shameless”. Obviously, the New Testament wasn’t written in English. So let’s investigate to see if the Greek might give us additional insight. The following definition is from The Complete Word Study Dictionary, New Testament edited by Spiros Zodhiates, Th.D.

335. anaídeia; gen. anaideías, fem. noun from anaid?s (n.f.), impudent, which is from the priv. a (1), without, and aidos (127), shame. Recklessness, audacity, shamelessness, insolence. Recklessness or disregard of consideration by the one making the request.

As in the English and Latin, the Greek word used here also carries the literal meaning of “shameless”. Is it possible that Jesus is saying that the key to effective prayer is to pray with a contemptuous, cocky boldness, along with insolence, recklessness, shamelessness, and a complete disregard of consideration? Yes. That is precisely what the text of scripture says.

If this kind of praying is, according to Jesus, the key to answered prayer, is it possible that we lack answers to prayer simply because we refuse to pray in this manner?

Again, let me clarify. I do not believe Jesus is telling us what God is like. The point here isn’t that God is reluctant to respond to us. We are not being asked to wear God out through sheer annoyance until he finally gives in. The purpose of impudence in prayer is not to convince a reluctant God. Jesus isn’t describing what God is like. He is describing what prayer is like. When we pray, we initially experience resistance. It feels hard. God seems far away and reluctant sometimes (though he isn’t). Impudence is what is necessary to overcome this experience of resistance. Only with a bold, persistant disregard for this initial experience of resistance are we able to press beyond it.

In the following section Jesus talks about asking, seeking, and knocking, with the promise of receiving, finding, and opening as the guaranteed result. In this section I want to point out that the relevant verb tense in these verses implies continual action. We are to ask and keep on asking. How are we to ask? How are we to seek? How are we to knock? With boldness. Without shame. With persistence. With total disregard to any feeling of resistance, inappropriateness, or doubt.  With impudence!!!

If prayer often feels like an exercise in pushing through strong resistence, and if an attitude of impudence is what is required to push through this feeling of resistance and rebuff, then what is on the other side of our bold persistance that makes all this effort worthwhile? Jesus’ answer: a good Father.

“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” ” (Luke 11:11–13, ESV)

Do you want to experience your good heavenly Father who delights to give good gifts to his children? To get there you might have to press past the experiential difficulties that often accompany prayer. You will initially feel resisted. You will feel rebuffed. This is what prayer is like. But do not give up. Ask more, keep seeking, knock louder, not because God is reluctant, hiding, or deaf, but because you are so convinced that he is eager, present, and responsive that you won’t allow anything but your confidence in his goodness to deter you.

We’ve got a few posts (almost 30) so far and it’s been fun and interesting. Jace is very bright and very well read and very biased. I am at least equally biased. I would love for you to check it out. There are a few things it will help you to understand.

1) You won’t be able to publish comments on the blog. You don’t share the relational context Jace and I have developed for 27 years and frankly, your input wouldn’t be helpful. This conversation is safe between us because of the relational context. We are very commited to protecting that.

2) Jace is an amazing artist. He wrote the number one country hit “Your Man” recorded by Josh Turner. He wrote and performed the theme song for the HBO show True Blood. It’s called Bad Things. His newest recording “Red Revelations” is available on iTunes and I recommend it. It is not contemporary christian music. You have been warned. Search “Jace Everett” on iTunes and you will find it.

3) The nature of this conversation is actually a bit dangerous for me. I’m an outside of the box thinker at points and hold some opinions that will definitely offend some Christians. This is not my intent, but Jace’s questions require answers from me that will at times be critical of current expressions of Christianity. I’m probably wrong about all these. Having admitted that up front, please don’t argue with me. I will not argue back. That forum is about me arguing with Jace!

If you’re still interested, please visit us:

http://bellingthecat-jaceandalan.blogspot.com/

“God is in control. If you’re sick, he must have some purpose in it.”

“You know, he doesn’t heal everyone. You can’t really expect him to heal you.”

“You don’t really think you have enough faith to receive something like that from God do you?”

Thoughts like this have a certain odor to them, and a definite weight. They push down upon your sense of strength and can make it so hard to breathe in and out through the normal rhythms of simple asking and receiving.

Matthew 8:2-3
2 And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” 3 Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.(NKJV)

We seldom doubt that God “can” heal us. We, like the leper, simply struggle with whether he “will” heal us. In this same situation, though willing to embrace the leper’s question, I wonder if we’re also willing to hear Jesus’ response? There are three primary reasons we might find it difficult to really hear Jesus say “I am willing.” To each, the proper response is repentance.

First, there’s the issue of theological bias. Entire segments of the Body of Christ have taught for years that “Jesus used to be willing but he’s not anymore.” This obstacle is easy to overcome with a quick glance at scripture and some basic repentance. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:8, ESV)

Second, there’s the barrier of past disappointment. When you’ve prayed and not experienced God’s healing power, painful disappointment can reinforce the idea that maybe Jesus just isn’t really in the healing business anymore. But does what we haven’t experienced have the authority to set the standard for what we believe is true about God’s character? If we find that our experience has been given this kind of inordinate authority, the proper response is repentance.

Third, there’s the obstacle of inaccurate valuation of both self and the cross. Some find it easy to believe Jesus is willing to heal others but they’re unable to personally align with that truth simply because they don’t believe they’re worthy of that kind of love. This is merely an argument with God.  He has deemed you worthy of great sacrifice. Motivated by his valuation of your worth, he has given himself to make you worthy, and in his sacrifice has provided not only for your cleansing, but for your freedom from every grief and sickness. This obstacle masquerades as humility but in reality it is a direct attack on the sufficiency of Jesus’ death on the cross.

Again, the proper response in the face of this challenge is repentance. At times we find that our heart cries out with the leper “If you’re willing…Jesus’ response to the leper is still his response to us today. “I am willing.” Are you willing to hear it? If you’ve identified something that’s in the way of hearing Jesus say this to you, are you willing to surrender to God in the process of repentance?

Dear XXXXXXX, Your confusion is very understandable. I”m not entirely certain that an explanation has the power to resolve this kind of question, though I will make a brief attempt.

First, God has many attributes. He is good. He is just. He is righteous. He is Jealous. He is wrath. He is sovereign…The list could go on and on. We make a mistake when we choose to focus on one of these in a way that doesn’t allow him to fully be the others.

Second, there are things about God in scripture that I don’t understand with clarity. There are other things that seem very clear. It is not wise to hold those things I do clearly understand hostage with those things I don’t. A God that neatly fits between my ears is not likely to be worthy of my worship. Figuring him out is not the path to worship. Surrender is.

Third, one of the things that scripture is very clear about is that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God. God becoming flesh gives us the very clearest possible revelation of who God is and what he is like. Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s nature. Colossians 1 tells us that Jesus is the image of the unseen God. John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word that was with God and was God and became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus himself said to Philip “If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.” If you really want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. That’s the bottom line. If reading the Old Testament diminishes the revelation of God in Christ then you are probably reading it through the wrong set of lenses, because it’s whole point was to point you to Christ. If Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, then the revelation we had leading up to Jesus must have somehow been less than ultimate. This doesn’t mean that Old Testament revelation is inaccurate at all. It simply means that we must interpret the lesser by the greater, not the other way around.

If you’re struggling with this issue, I would encourage you to take a season and just read the gospels. Really get to know what God is like through Jesus. After that, I recommend you read Philip Yancey’s book The Bible Jesus Read. It’s a great survey of the Old Testament and it will help you begin to read the Old Testament in some new, fresh, and helpful ways. Hope that helps! Again, your struggle is very understandable. I’ve struggled through it already. It’s worth the effort so don’t quit.

Blessings,

Alan

AlanSmith_Sermon_WhatsInMyAccount

This is the message I gave last weekend at Crossroads Church in Decatur, TX.

Why was I afraid? What was the cure? Interestingly enough, correct information did nothing to help me overcome my fear. I understood enough about physics to know it was perfectly safe to ride the Shockwave. In a science classroom, if asked to explain this, I could have said some very reasonable things about centrifugal force that would have adequately explained why there was no reason to fear. And the thing is, I really sincerely affirmed this to be fact. I was nevertheless still afraid.

There is a distinction between affirming right data and belief. Belief is much more than intellectual agreement. Belief embraces more than information. It is possible to sincerely affirm correct information and yet actually believe something completely incongruent with that data.

This can be a dangerous trap for Christians. Failing to understand the distinction between what they intellectually affirm and that which they actually believe, many mistake doctrine for belief. It is possible to sincerely embrace right doctrine and have little to no faith in operation. The doctrine of Justification by Faith can be learned, rehearsed, and vigorously defended from scripture by someone who has never heard the Judge of all Creation declare them innocent of all charges. The God who is fully present in every place can always seem distant and removed from someone who fully embraces the doctrine of God’s omnipresence and has verses from Psalm 139 ready to back it up.

What do you believe about God? I’m not asking about your doctrine or your theology. What do you really believe? Is he good? Is he near? Is he powerful? Beliefs are shaped by experience not Sunday School. The lenses through which we see reality are shaped by what we encounter. Have your experiences taught you to believe that God is good? Near? Powerful? Or do you just have right doctrine.

If you discover an incongruence between the good doctrine you’ve learned in church and from the Bible and the actual assumptions your heart makes about God based on your life experiences, then what you need is a new experience. You need to encounter God, hear his voice, experience his presence. Only this kind of revelation will produce lasting growth and change. Only this kind of experience will result in faith. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word (spoken word) of Christ (Rom 10:17).

Am I minimizing the importance of sound doctrine? No! Bad doctrine is of no benefit whatsoever. The point is that right doctrine is simply an accurate description of reality. It explains something real. In itself doctrine is insufficient for it is simply the explanation of a thing, not the thing itself. To the degree that right doctrine leads you to pursue the reality it points to, it is helpful. But to the degree right doctrine simply becomes a collection of correct information, it is simply the Knowledge of Good, which really isn’t any better than the Knowledge of Evil. Eating fruit from either branch of that tree will kill you!

Roller coasters were not made to be studied. Get in, buckle up, and ride.

2 Corinthians 5:14-15

Paul here declares that he is being controlled. But what might this mean? The Greek word tranlated “controls” means to “hold together”. In Luke 8:45 Jesus is “surrounded” by a crowd, pressing in on every side. In Luke 19:43 enemies “hem” you in on every side. In Luke 22:63 soldiers are “holding” Jesus in custody. Men “covered” their ears in Acts 7:57 as they rushed to stone Stephen. Christ’s love “controls” us in 2 Cor 5:14. The basic idea seems to be surrounded and thereby limited. Paul is saying that he is surrounded by and limited by the unconditional love of Christ.

This isn’t the kind of control that removes Paul’s volition. Paul isn’t claiming to be robotic and mechanical in his response to God. He is not claiming that his capacity to choose has been removed. Rather, the options available to him have been reduced because every direction he turns he runs smack into God’s unconditional love. Why is Paul surrounded by and limited by the love of Christ? The next statements make this clear by beginning with “because.” He is surrounded and limited by Christ’s love “because” of what follows.

1. Because we have concluded. Paul has made an internal judgment between alternatives. He has concluded something. This verb indicates that there was a moment in the past when he actively made a determination that resulted in his experience of being surrounded and limited by God’s unconditional love.

2. Because we have concluded that one died for all. The first thing Paul concluded was that Jesus death was substitutionary. Jesus died in our place, as our substitute. We will never be surrounded by and limited by Christ’s unconditional love until we actively conclude that Jesus died for us.

3. Because we have concluded that one died for all, therefore all  have died. Not only has Jesus died for us; we have died in him. When He died, we died in Him. Not only did Jesus die in our place, Jesus’ death is the place where we died. We will never be surrounded by and limited by Christ’s unconditional love until we conclude that we ourselves are dead because Christ has died.

4. Because we have concluded that he died…that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Because Jesus died for me and because when Jesus died I died too, I no longer live for self. For my “self” to die in Christ is to no longer be ruled by what I think, feel and want. It is to no longer live for self.

So there are two ways to live. On the one hand I can live for self, pursuing what I think, feel, and want. On the other hand, what I think, feel, and want can be hemmed in, surrounded, held captive – controlled. But this control is not a control by rules or law. It is not a control from obligation or fear. It is a control flowing from Christ’s unconditional love. The clear conclusion is that if I am living for self, unconstrained, uncontrolled, it is because I do not clearly see Jesus’ death on the cross and my place in relation to His death. On the other hand, if I rightly view the cross and my relationship to the cross, I will discover that I am surrounded by an unconditional love that, though limiting me from being governed by what I think, what I feel, and what I want, is the only way to truly live.