Mercy
Notes
Transcript
God Deals With Impatience & Ingratitude
3.14.21 [Numbers 21:4-9] River of Life (4th Sunday in Lent)
We’ve all been there. Sitting in a car, looking out the window, as you begin to suspect your driver is lost. It’s not deja vu, you’ve just passed this intersection before. Maybe your driver knows they’re lost too. But more likely than not, they’re not going to admit it. Now depending on a few factors--your relationship with the driver, your immediate schedule, and your personality--you might just let it slide. You might be okay with the driver taking the scenic route.
Driving around and being lost can be frustrating and upsetting, because you know you’re wasting time and energy. But you’re driving. Or you’re along for the ride. It’s exponentially worse when you take a wrong turn on a hike and get lost. You may not be prepared to add miles or days to your trip. When you’re lost you accidentally could wander into a dangerous place. When you’re out in the elements, a wrong turn can be deadly.
Your mind and your mood change dramatically when you take a wrong turn. Keep that it mind as we observe the children of Israel.
This generation of the children of Israel had grown up wandering in the wilderness. They were used to it, to some degree, but that didn’t mean they enjoyed it. They were eager and excited to finally get to the Promised Land. But they had suffered some setbacks.
Just recently, Moses’ had buried his sister Miriam at Kadesh. Then water became hard to find and the people grumbled at Moses and Aaron. God told Moses and Aaron to speak to the rock and water would pour forth. But Moses and Aaron were angry and Moses took his staff and hit the rock twice. The water was miraculously provided, but God punished Moses and Aaron. Neither would enter the Promised Land.
Then, as Moses continued to lead the people into the Promised Land, the king of Edom pushed back. Despite Israel’s peaceful and polite request to pass through their land, Edom refused and sent soldiers to block the Israelites. So Moses told the people to turn around. A short time later, Aaron died, and Israel was attacked by Arad. They cried out to the Lord and he delivered them. Maybe it made Israel wonder. Why don’t we fight against Edom? Still Moses led them Num. 21:4 around Edom, but the people grew impatient on the way.
Any detour can make a group impatient. But there’s more here. People grow impatient when they think there are--or should be!—other, better options. You might grow impatient if the mail is late, or if your package doesn’t arrive according to its tracking data. But you don’t get impatient when the mail doesn’t come on a Sunday. You realized you made a mistake. You felt foolish & your impatience dissipated.
But that doesn’t happen to Israel, does it? Their impatient thoughts gave birth to destructive words. Num. 21:5 They spoke against God and against Moses. Whoa! That escalated quickly. But we ought to pause here a bit. This order isn’t necessarily chronological. More than likely it’s ranked by seriousness, the same way our court systems work. The most heinous crime is read first.
The people were unhappy about the detour, but they were also dissatisfied with Moses. Maybe they wondered if Moses was still the right leader for them? He was getting up there in years and he wasn’t allowed into the Promised Land. Maybe that’s why he was so content to go around Edom instead of fighting them?
It didn’t take much for suspicions about God’s spokesman to morph into questions about God’s power and his plan. If God could destroy Arad, why wouldn’t he do the same to Edom?
As they spoke against God and Moses, Israel starts adding up the grievances. Num. 21:5 Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And another thing: we detest this miserable food! Do you see the close connection between impatience and ingratitude? Spiritually speaking, it might be a chicken and the egg debate. But impatience and ingratitude lead people to make untrue claims.
It happens to us. Even though we are not wandering around in the wilderness we all struggle with the sin of impatience and ingratitude. Not just ‘not being patient or grateful enough‘ but ugly, abusive, faithless impatience and ingratitude.
Let me start with a simple, almost silly example. How many of you remember your families’ first color TV? How about the first TV you had that came with a remote? Look how far we’ve come! We went from over the air TV, to cable, to satellite, now streaming, and it’s so good you can even stream to things that aren’t TVs. But guess what? Our complaint hasn’t changed. There’s still nothing on TV!
Sometimes, we have the same attitude toward God. We want to be thrilled. Learn something new or thought-provoking. We want to have our spiritual taste buds dazzled, thrilled, and satisfied.
But don’t you see what has happened with TV? It’s not that there’s nothing on. There’s plenty on. Well I don’t like what’s on, you say. Sure. Most of it’s junk. But some of those shows, those movies, you’ve watched before and enjoyed. What happened? You’ve lost the taste for them. You’re no longer entertained by it. Is it really any surprise you’re no longer entertained by worship in God’s house or time in his Word, then? The stories haven’t changed. And you’re no longer dazzled or entertained because you never were supposed to be in the first place. The Word of God is not meant to entertain you, but to feed you a steady diet of what you need: Law & Gospel. And just like the children of Israel, you’ve grown disinterested in the same old, same old, even though this sustains your very life!
There are plenty of others ways we demonstrate our impatience and our ingratitude. Impatience is really about unmet expectations.
Sometimes, other people reveal our selfish impatience. That’s why we’re impatient with our friends and family, co-workers & neighbors. We expect them to behave in a certain way. We expect them to be respectful & honest, thoughtful & pleasant. When they don’t deliver on our timeline or up to our expectations we become upset or frustrated. We make assumptions about their disinterest or their self-discipline. Impatience makes us unforgiving.
Other times, like for the children of Israel, situations expose it. Maybe you’re more impatient--more abrasive and critical--when you have to sit and wait for something. Maybe you grow impatient when you aren’t in control. Perhaps your inner impatience flaw is laid bare when you are suffering physically, mentally, or financially. Impatience makes us ungrateful. If nothing else, the past year has exposed our collective struggle with impatience and ingratitude. We live in the day and age most prepared to sit and work at home. We can get so much brought right to us, but all the modern conveniences in the world cannot rid us of ingratitude & impatience.
Impatience is defiance. Ingratitude is rebelliousness. It is bold disobedience against God’s power and will and authority. God is in charge of everything and if you don’t like it, you don’t like God. Like being lost, we don’t realize we’re impatient or ungrateful until we’re shown. That’s why Numbers tells us when the Israelites complained they were speaking against God.
So Num. 21:6 the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. Seems harsh, right?
But God knows us well. He knows that we cannot be told we are being rebellious by being impatient or ungrateful, we have to be shown. If we are just told, we will blame the people and the situations around us. In his Law, God shows us that impatience and ingratitude is despising God’s will & Word.
But the Lord is patient. He did not strike the people dead. He takes no pleasure in that. He sent venomous snakes to serve as symptoms. And the people got it. When God showed them their sin, they Num. 21:7 came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray for us.
We sinned. Pray for us. No excuses. No lame attempts to sidestep culpability. No half-hearted apologies that shift the blame to others. We sinned. Pray that God takes it away. Moses did. He prayed for the people and the Lord listened to their humble pleas and gave Moses some interesting instructions. Num. 21:8 Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.
God’s plan must have baffled the people but it was intentional. Isn’t another snake the last thing Israel needed? But the one who’s wise and discerning knows Hos. 14:9 that the ways of the Lord are right.
As strange as it sounds, this is wise and right. When you’re bit by a snake, what do you need ASAP? Anti-venom. Where do you get anti-venom from? A snake. And for some bites, the anti-venom is species specific. Scientifically speaking, you need a snake for someone who has been harmed by a snake.
But there is a greater, deeper spiritual reason for this symbol. These venomous snakes were a frightening symptom of a deeper problem. The Lord sent snakes because the people had sinned against him. They had earned this. In the same way we’ve all earned a frightening symptom for our sins. Rom. 6:23 The wages of sin is death. During the season of Lent, we must recognize our mortality.
Death humbles us all. Our own mortality drives us to our knees in prayer to our God for salvation. He listens and loves. He cares. He responds. Not by pointing you to a bronze snake, but to the snake crushing Christ. What happened here in Numbers 21 was anticipating a greater lifting-up--one Jesus explains to Nicodemus Jn 3:14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.
In the person and work of Jesus, God lifted up sin and death. Not to celebrate it, but to defeat them and set us free. Jn 3:16 God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. On the cross, God took sin and death and put it up on display, so that anyone who has been damaged by sin’s venom could look to the death Jesus died and live eternally. 2 Cor. 5:21 He who had no sin, was made sin for us, so that we might become, by grace through faith the righteousness of God. Jesus suffered for our impatience and defiance. He died for all our sins. He took our shame and guilt upon himself and removed it forever. He told us & he showed us on the cross.
As we look upon the suffering of our Savior this Lenten season, let us not be baffled. This isn’t strange--this is salvation. His suffering is real and painful, but it is for us. There is no other way. As we watch him die, let us not mourn like those who have no hope. His death is necessary. Planned. Prophesied. His death is our death. Only because he is wounded can we be healed.
Let us marvel at God’s patience. Rom. 3:25 God presented this Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine patience, he did not send fiery serpents to strike every impatient, ungrateful sinner. 2 Pt. 3:15 God’s patience means our salvation because when the set time had fully come, God gave us the greatest blessing of all. His son. Born of a woman, familiar with the struggles of mankind. Born under law, sympathetic to the challenge of being patient and thankful in a world where things are not the way they should be. We say that the reason we struggle to be patient, is because life in this world doesn’t meet our expectations. But Jesus made the world perfectly. Nothing here meets his expectations. Nothing on earth can hold a candle to the glories of heaven. But he was patient—even when people were impossibly difficult. He was grateful—even when life wasn’t all that great. He came to redeem us who could not bear the weight of the law. So that we might receive an inheritance that outshines anything we could every imagine. Heaven. The ultimate Promised Land.
Because he died, we no longer fear death. Because he died, we look forward to life in place he promises--heaven. Jn 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him, looks to him in faith, is not condemned. Amen.
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