1. I begin this morning by challenging you with your knowledge of TV commercials and I begin with this one: Wider Is Better!
2. What’s the product? Pontiac automobiles. What’s the point of the commercial? A wider stance means a safer car.
3. Now, speaking of wider is better I want to have you help me determine which is more stable, ready?
4. Unicycle or bicycle? Bicycle or motorcycle? Motorcycle or car? Car or pickup truck? Pickup truck or Hummer? Hummer or tank as in the M-1 Abrams kind of tank?
5. I will readily confess that I am not an engineer. But, I will venture a guess as to what makes one vehicle more stable than another one. The width of the vehicle and where it’s center of gravity is located. The lower the center of gravity the more stable a vehicle is, correct?
6. There is an important spiritual application in this illustration that is rooted in this question: Where is your spiritual center of gravity located?
7. An important part of a well-lived Christian faith is stability. Now stability is defined as being firmly established, durable, constant, and steady.
8. Now stability can be a liability. We can get bogged down or side-tracked on an issue or decision or goal or belief and all of the sudden we have the feelings of frustration, disbelief, disappointment, or conflict that come with being bogged down. So the challenge is to have stability and progress balancing one another as we walk with God because being mature in the faith requires stability and progress.
9. Now what is our source of stability as we live out the Christian faith? It’s God. Now not only is it God, but it is a very, very important part of God – it is the ways of God.
10. One mode of transportation that I did not mention earlier in my quiz is a train. Now train cars are large. Locomotives are big. But, they have a higher center of gravity and, as we were reminded of in Spring 2001, they tip over easily when something goes wrong.
11. But, the track which the train runs on provides us with a visual illustration of what I am saying this morning as I have us consider the stability which comes from both the acts of God and the ways of God. (Overhead 1)
12. Our text for today is Psalm 103:7. In the translation read today we heard ways and deeds. In the version that I commonly preach from we read this verse as follows: He revealed His character to Moses and His deeds to the people of Israel.
13. This verse of scripture provides us with a window into a story we need to review this morning because it illustrates the need to have both an experience of his ways (character) and his deeds as a part of our Christian faith commitment.
14. In their devotional guide, Experiencing God Day-By-Day, Henry and Richard Blackaby ask the question, “Are you satisfied with merely knowing the acts of God or do you also want to know His ways? This is a question that requires an answer and the answer that we give determines the depth and stability of our relationship with God.
15. The Blackabys make this statement about the Israelites, “The Israelites witnessed the miracles God performed; they walked across the dry Red Sea just as Moses did. They ate the manna and quail from heaven just as Moses did. They were content to receive God’s provision without ever knowing God himself.” Is this true? Does this accurately describe the Israelites? Let’s look at a few examples:
16. In Exodus 14:10-16 we read: As Pharaoh and his army approached, the people of Israel could see them in the distance, marching toward them. The people began to panic, and they cried out to the LORD for help. Then they turned against Moses and complained, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? Why did you make us leave? 12Didn’t we tell you to leave us alone while we were still in Egypt? Our Egyptian slavery was far better than dying out here in the wilderness! ”But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand where you are and watch the LORD rescue you. The Egyptians that you see today will never be seen again. 14The LORD himself will fight for you. You won’t have to lift a finger in your defense!”15 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving! 16 Use your shepherd’s staff—hold it out over the water, and a path will open up before you through the sea. Then all the people of Israel will walk through on dry ground. And they did!
17. Then three days later God miraculously provides drinking water at a place called Marah, which means, bitter, because the water was bitter. This sustains them until they get to Elim where they gather strength and then move further into the desert. But at Marah, Moses says this to the Israelites in Exodus 15:25 and 26, “It was there at Marah that the LORD laid before them the following conditions to test their faithfulness to him: 26 “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and laws, then I will not make you suffer the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the LORD who heals you.”
18. Well, as we read in the opening verses of chapter 16 the Israelites get to the desert of Sin and starting complaining about Moses and Aaron again. This time it is about food. And so God tells the Moses, I will rain down food from heaven. They will have enough for each day. “I will test them in this to see whether they will follow my instructions.”
19. What is God trying to do here? Get the Israelites to follow Him! To have a relationship with Him! They experienced the miracle of a dry seabed crossing in the face of certain death, they obtained drinkable water at place not known for drinkable water, and then they got food from the sky in the middle of the desert! Wouldn’t such actions make you ask, “Just who is doing this?”
20. But the Israelites did not ask this did they? They just kept complaining and expecting something bad to happen. God wanted them to come to Him and trust Him and follow Him. But, they weren’t doing that.
21. The Israelites illustrate what I call “the dangers of a one rail faith.” In other words, their relationship was based all on the “left” rail – the “acts” of God. But, God, in His statements to Moses let us know that He was “testing” them to see if they would be faithful to Him. So far, they were flunking the test!
22. Now, let’s look at Moses for a moment and his relationship with God. First, there was the burning bush as we read in Exodus 3:1 – 10 One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he went deep into the wilderness near Sinai, the mountain of God. Suddenly, the angel of the LORD appeared to him as a blazing fire in a bush. Moses was amazed because the bush was engulfed in flames, but it didn’t burn up. “Amazing!” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go over to see this.” When the LORD saw that he had caught Moses’ attention, God called to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied. “Do not come any closer,” God told him. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God. Then the LORD told him, “You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
23. Moses had a personal experience with God that day which profoundly changed his life and the lives of the Israelites. He saw God at a much closer range than the Israelites did. To them God was a god of ancestors long dead. To Moses in these moments out in the middle of nowhere this same God because personal to Moses. That did not change as we walk through Exodus.
24. A consistent truth throughout this book is that God and Moses were close. Yes, Moses failed, but he was able to get closer to God than anybody else was able to and we see it places such as chapter 24 where Moses, and only Moses, was allowed to go higher up the mountain to meet with God for 40 days and 40 nights. The time ended abruptly when the people decided to do things their way and began worshipping the gold calf. Moses intervened, as we read in chapter 32, on behalf of the people and God did not destroy the Israelites.
25. But, we also see this closeness in chapters 33 and 34. In 33 we see it when Moses went to the Tent of Meeting, “Whenever Moses went out to the Tent of Meeting, all the people would get up and stand in their tent entrances. They would all watch Moses until he disappeared inside. As he went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and hover at the entrance while the LORD spoke with Moses. Then all the people would stand and bow low at their tent entrances. Inside the Tent of Meeting, the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” Then, in chapter 34 when he returned to Mt Sinai a second time to get a new copy of the covenant, we read in verses 29 through 35, “When Moses came down the mountain carrying the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, he wasn’t aware that his face glowed because he had spoken to the LORD face to face. And when Aaron and the people of Israel saw the radiance of Moses’ face, they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them and asked Aaron and the community leaders to come over and talk with him. Then all the people came, and Moses gave them the instructions the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with the LORD, he removed the veil until he came out again. Then he would give the people whatever instructions the LORD had given him, and the people would see his face aglow. Afterward he would put the veil on again until he returned to speak with the LORD.”
26. What’s the difference in these two different relationships with God? Why did the Israelites struggle with intimacy with God and Moses did not? Moses, as the Blackaby’s write, “wanted to experience more. He wanted to experience God Himself, not just God’s activity.”
27. Moses’ had a “two rail faith.” He experienced God’s acts and God’s ways as both God revealed His character to Moses and Moses approached God. As He did so, Moses was able to both lead the people and follow the Lord because his spiritual center of gravity was equally distributed between the provision of God and the person of God.
28. Now one could argue that’s way that it had to be at that point. There needed to be a leader to whom God could go and that was Moses. But, we have the hindsight of Biblical history at this point. And there are two things that need to be pointed out.
29. First, only Moses and then only the High Priest could enter the most holiest areas of the Tent, then the Tabernacle, and finally the Temple, on behalf of the people. There was a veil that separated this area from everything else.
30. But second, something happened to that veil during the death of Christ. In Matthew 27:50 and 51 we read, “Then Jesus shouted out again, and he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” That rending of the veil cleared a direct path to God. There was no more need for someone to go to God on our behalf. We can directly go to God for our own salvation and experience.
31. But, the point to what I am saying this morning is this: Are you trying to live for God on only one rail? Are you interested only in His provision; His acts? What are you experiencing as a result – frustration, defeat, disappointment?
32. What God had with Moses he also desired for the entire nation of Israel! The same holds true for us!
CONCLUSION:
For you and me, for us to live the life that God has for us; for you and me, for us to experience the power and presence of God in our lives that He has always purposed – we need to seek more than God’s provision. We need to seek God Himself!
My prayer for all of us here this morning is that we will be content only with the acts of God when we become passionate for and experience the ways, the character, and the person of God. Failure to do so will derail us and that is not God’s will, is it? Amen.
