When Good News is Inexplicable
Commentary
I spent a couple of days recently in a hospital room with a two-year-old grandson. I watched as the medical people ran all sorts of tests and provided a variety of treatments. In every case, there was an accompanying explanation. “This test will help us to see what's going on inside his brain.” “This blood panel will help us to eliminate this or that possibility.” “This medicine is anti-inflammatory.” “This exercise will help him to regain strength and flexibility in this part of his body.” And so on.
Everything they did, you see, was an attempt to help him. And everything they did had a clear sense of cause and effect. That is to say, they were able to explain to us how this test or treatment or procedure or medicine would yield a certain kind of result.
Not so that day in the desert.
The children of Israel were on their journey from Egypt to the promised land, and they were feeling miserable within their circumstances. They complained, and divine chastening came in the form of poisonous serpents in their midst. As panic spread throughout the camp, Moses cried out to the Lord. And the Lord did, indeed, prescribe a cure for those who had been bitten. But we would be hard-pressed to explain the cause-and-effect relationship between the malady and the remedy.
A bronze serpent hung on a pole in the center of the camp. That was God’s solution to Israel’s problem. But what in the world does looking at such an object have to do with venom in my veins? Shouldn’t we be tying tourniquets, sucking, and spitting? How could that metal image possibly save a life?
The relationship between problem and solution was not obvious. I wonder, therefore, if not a few Israelites died even after the serpent was erected. I wonder if some refused to follow the prescription simply because it didn’t seem to make sense.
The strange story of the serpent on a pole is our Old Testament lection this week. And Jesus himself revisits that story in our Gospel lection. Meanwhile, we also read a part of what the apostle Paul has to say to the Ephesians about the salvation that is our in Christ. Our privilege, then, is to take those passages all together and proclaim to those who have been bitten the good news of the one who hung on a pole.
Numbers 21:4-9
The scene is the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land. The people of Israel had witnessed God’s miraculous deliverance from bondage, and they had been the daily beneficiaries of his supernatural leading and feeding. When they arrived at their destination, however, they balked. They doubted the Lord, and they panicked at the prospect of doing battle with the inhabitants of the land. Consequently, they were turned back into the wilderness. And, in a completely unnecessary tragedy, the generation of adults that had come out of Egypt were sentenced to wandering in the wilderness until that whole, faithless generation died off and their children had grown up. The episode that is our assigned Old Testament text comes from the midst of that wilderness wandering period.
The people, we read, became impatient with the journey and their experience of it. That, as is so often the case with impatience, led to complaining. Specifically, we discover that “they spoke against God and Moses,” which was not the way to go. And as a result, the Lord chastened the people with a plague of serpents in their camp.
Evidently the serpents were sufficiently poisonous that a great many people died. In their desperation, the people cried out to Moses, who interceded on their behalf. And in response, the Lord prescribed a most unusual cure.
At the Lord’s direction, Moses fashioned an image of a serpent out of bronze. Then it was hung up on a pole in the center of the camp, where it could be seen. And the invitation went out that anyone who had been bitten could look at the bronze serpent on a pole, and he would live.
The cure, while odd, worked. No explanation is given, and no specific details are offered about the people. Yet, knowing human nature as we do, we might reasonably wonder whether everyone who was bitten actually chose to look at the bronze serpent. After all, there was no reason — no human reason, that is — to believe that such a prescription would be effective. Can’t we imagine, therefore, some recalcitrant Israelite staying in his tent, refusing to look out? He grumbles to his family, “What good could it possibly do to look at a metal snake? This is silly. It makes no sense, and I won’t do it.”
How many people die in their sins even though salvation is available?
The episode is a brief and strange one. Yet, like the equally brief appearance by Melchizedek in the Book of Genesis, this little event is credited with tremendous importance when it is recalled with significance in the New Testament. And, in the case of the serpent on the pole, it is recalled by Jesus himself.
Ephesians 2:1-10
Paul functions with a different definition of “alive” and “dead” than people typically do. Is this hyperbole for dramatic effect? Is it just metaphorical language? Or is he actually onto something?
Addressing the Christians in Ephesus, he tells them that they were dead. They were, but they are not any more. Now it’s a pretty small percentage of the world’s population to whom one could say, “You were dead, but now you’re not.” Yet Paul is saying it as though it is true of everyone in his audience there in the ancient city of Ephesus.
He tells them specifically that they were dead in their trespasses. But then, ironically, he discusses the ways that they used to live. Indeed, it is evidently the way that so many in the world around them still live. And so, again, we see that “alive” and “dead” have a different meaning for Paul.
One wonders if Paul is perhaps working with the same definition that the Lord had in mind when he warned Adam about eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You recall that the Lord said they would die if they ate from the tree, yet Adam and Eve lived for several hundred years after eating the forbidden fruit. So “die” might have meant something other in Eden than just the end of biological life.
So it was that the Ephesians were biologically alive, but spiritually dead — dead in their sins. The gospel truth that they have experienced, meanwhile, is that God has made them alive with Christ. Their biological condition is still the same, but their spiritual status has been completely changed.
In addition to the overarching theme of “alive” and “dead,” our epistle lection also prominently features a marvelous expression of the saving work of God through Christ. We observe that he is characterized by mercy, love, and kindness. He must be; otherwise, he would have left us in our former state rather than saving us from it. And not only saved us from that former state of debauched life and spiritual death, but elevated us to a glory that is completely out of step with anything we deserve or could presume to request.
We also discover at the conclusion of the passage that the Lord has a sovereign purpose in mind in saving us. We are his workmanship, and he has made us for good works. The principle is reminiscent of Jesus’ words in John 15 that the Father is glorified when we bear much fruit.
Finally, we could not do justice to this assigned text without making note of verses 8 and 9, which form such an extraordinary summary of the gospel message. Here, in so few words, the apostle manages to state precisely and succinctly the interplay of faith, grace, salvation, and works. Each of these words could merit a sermon of its own. While we may not have that luxury, we will find it profitable to bear those two verses in mind in light of the salvation story being told by Numbers and by John.
John 3:14-21
Our gospel lection is not long in terms of number of verses, but it is so dense with profound statements that one can hardly do justice to it all. At the heart of the passage is the verse which has rightly been nicknamed “the gospel in a nutshell,” John 3:16. An explication of that verse alone is worthy of a sermon all its own.
Yet that crucial verse is flanked by other profound verses, as well. The starting place is Jesus’ reference to the event from Numbers which is our assigned Old Testament passage. And following the familiar John 3:16, where we are told why God sent his son, we find an important elaboration on what was and what was not God’s purpose in sending Jesus.
Verse 17 tells us that God did not send his son to judge the world, yet verses 18 and 19 speak to the reality of judgment. The theme of judgment morphs into a theme of light and darkness. And that theme, in just a few verses, is given much depth and complexity before we reach the end of the passage.
When something seems to me to be too big to handle, my instinct is to break it down into smaller parts. And so, in the case of these meaning-filled verses from John 3, I would break the passage down into these three categories. First, what does God do? Second, why does God do it? And, third, what are the human responses?
In the first case, the answer is simple, familiar, yet mind-boggling. What God did was send his son. Untold volumes of sermons and songs have endeavored to give expression to the meaning and magnificence of this fundamental truth of our faith. To try to summarize the matter here in a sentence of two risks being trite. I am hopeful that as we treat God sending his son against the larger backdrop of the Old Testament passage, some of the profundity of what God did will come through.
The second issue to consider is why God did what he did. On this, we are given three answers. His motivation was love. His purpose was salvation. His desire was not judgment. Here is a glimpse, then, into the very heart of God, and we might trace these manifestations of his heart all through scripture (and all through our own lives, as well).
Finally, there is the issue of human response. This has multiple expressions in our selected passage. The first and primary option is faith: “whoever believes,” you see. The centrality and necessity of belief is found in verses 15, 17, and 18. But then, in the concluding verses of the passage, the issue of human response is expressed in terms of loving or hating the light or the darkness.
In this matter of light and darkness, I am conscious of the human instinct to resist whatever is not our current context. When you put a small child to bed at night and you turn off the lights, the child is likely to feel and to express some anxiety. We do not like the darkness, for suddenly we can’t see anything. Ah, but fast forward a number of hours and go into that same bedroom to wake up the child, and now we encounter the opposite reaction. We turn on lights or pull open curtains, and the child’s eyes are tightly squinched. Perhaps he or she even puts hands or arms up to cover their eyes. Maybe they even pull the cover over their face. Once we have grown accustomed to darkness, you see, we hate the light.
This, then, would be my approach to preaching the gospel found in the gospel passage assigned to us this week. What does God do? Why does he do it? And how do we respond?
Application
The Apostle Paul freely admitted that the cross of Christ was an offense to the Jews and nonsense to the Greeks. Perhaps there were contemporaries of Moses who felt both of those things about the serpent on a pole. Inasmuch as the serpents were the dreaded scourge, to set a large one prominently before the people’s eyes may have been offensive to some. And, as we noted above, such a prescription must certainly have seemed like nonsense inasmuch as there was no discernible cause-and-effect relationship between looking at a metal serpent and being delivered from the venom of a real serpent.
Yet a cause-and-effect relationship is there, and it is precisely the same cause-and-effect relationship that is repeated all through scripture. It is the cause-and-effect of faith, you see. That was what God required of the people in order to be healed: they had to respond in faith to the cure that he had ordained.
The cause-and-effect of faith is what lies behind the silliness of an army marching around a walled city on seven consecutive days. It’s what sends a leper to bathe in the Jordan River. It’s what prompts a spent and weary woman to reach out to touch the hem of a garment. And, above all, it is the cause-and-effect of faith that saves lost souls through a man’s death on a cross.
The fact that Jesus identifies himself with that serpent on the pole invites some consideration. At a minimum, we recognize the parallel imagery of something being lifted up on a “pole.” We also recognize that, in both cases, it is God’s prescribed cure. And then there is the provocative detail that it was an image of the plague itself — i.e., a serpent — that was hung on the pole, which brings to mind Paul’s remarkable declaration that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV).
That is all grace, you see. For the one who had no sin to become sin on our behalf is inexpressibly gracious. And it is by looking to him that we are saved. We don’t suck and spit or do anything else to save ourselves; we simply trust the sacrifice of the one hung up on the “pole.” And thus we are saved by grace through faith; and it is God’s gift, not the result of our works. This is the good news for the sin-bitten people to whom we preach this Sunday!
Alternative Application(s)
Numbers 21:4-9 — “Life in the Backseat”
The centerpiece of our Old Testament lection is clearly the serpent on the pole, and we are dealing with that elsewhere. Within that same passage, however, I am fascinated by a narrative detail leading up to that centerpiece event. The biblical author tells us that “the people became impatient because of the journey,” and that is where all the trouble that follows begins.
I suppose I am so struck by that element in the story and because it sounds familiar to me. Traveling in the wilderness does not sound very familiar, of course. Neither does a plague of poisonous snakes. Nor does being healed simply by looking at some object. None of those prominent elements in the story are part of my own personal experience. Ah, but becoming impatient with the journey? Now that rings a bell!
We know all about this at a routine physical level, of course. We remember being children in the backseat, pestering our parents with questions like “How much longer?” and “Are we there yet?”. As adults, we may be just as impatient, but we are able to disguise it more easily because we don't have to ask anyone else those questions. We still want to know the answer, of course, and so we keep one eye on the GPS’s estimated time of arrival. And when traffic is slow, when construction or detours complicate the trip, when bad weather makes the driving more tense, then we too may become impatient with the journey.
We should be sympathetic to the Israelites of Numbers 21. It's easy for us to be condescending toward biblical characters who fall short. But let me walk a mile in their sandals — let alone several hundred miles! — and see if my attitude and demeanor fare any better. Only if I am continuously faithful, cheerful, and grateful all along my journey am I in a position to pass judgment on them.
But then, of course, there is yet another layer involved. For the real issue, it seems to me, is not a literal journey but a figurative one. We know, after all, that most of those Israelites ended up spending their whole lives on that trip from Egypt to the promised land. The best comparison for our purposes, therefore, is not just some ten or twelve or twenty hour drive that we have had to make along the way; the best comparison is to our lifelong, day-in-and-day-out journey of the Christian life.
How often do we become impatient on that journey? We grow weary of battles that we have had to fight day after day for years. We are discouraged by prayers that seem to go unanswered. We tire of the things that we regard as joyless. And, perhaps worst of all, we don’t know “how much longer.”
Most of us would say that we could endure almost anything — we could put up with it, we could persevere, we could keep at it — if we just knew when “it” would be over. We’ll make it through most any tunnel if we can see a light at the end of it. But that’s not always the case, is it?
So let us return to the circumstances of the Israelites in our story — the ones we may judge too harshly and too quickly. The children of Israel had a destination, but, so far as we can tell, they were never given an ETA. And so they were in the position of simply having to trust God. He knew the destination and he knew the way. He was the one setting the itinerary. He was the one arranging for all provisions. The Israelites were simply riding in the backseat and having to trust and obey,
Personally, I have fond memories of family trips when I was a boy. But they were pleasant only insofar as I relaxed, trusted my folks, and enjoyed the journey. When I grew antsy and impatient, then the journey became long and tedious.
And so it comes back to us and our lifelong Christian journey. Do we grow impatient on the journey? If so, we know from Numbers that our ancestors in the faith felt the same way. And we know from Numbers, too, that they would have fared better on their journey if they had simply relaxed and trusted the Lord. Just like us.
Everything they did, you see, was an attempt to help him. And everything they did had a clear sense of cause and effect. That is to say, they were able to explain to us how this test or treatment or procedure or medicine would yield a certain kind of result.
Not so that day in the desert.
The children of Israel were on their journey from Egypt to the promised land, and they were feeling miserable within their circumstances. They complained, and divine chastening came in the form of poisonous serpents in their midst. As panic spread throughout the camp, Moses cried out to the Lord. And the Lord did, indeed, prescribe a cure for those who had been bitten. But we would be hard-pressed to explain the cause-and-effect relationship between the malady and the remedy.
A bronze serpent hung on a pole in the center of the camp. That was God’s solution to Israel’s problem. But what in the world does looking at such an object have to do with venom in my veins? Shouldn’t we be tying tourniquets, sucking, and spitting? How could that metal image possibly save a life?
The relationship between problem and solution was not obvious. I wonder, therefore, if not a few Israelites died even after the serpent was erected. I wonder if some refused to follow the prescription simply because it didn’t seem to make sense.
The strange story of the serpent on a pole is our Old Testament lection this week. And Jesus himself revisits that story in our Gospel lection. Meanwhile, we also read a part of what the apostle Paul has to say to the Ephesians about the salvation that is our in Christ. Our privilege, then, is to take those passages all together and proclaim to those who have been bitten the good news of the one who hung on a pole.
Numbers 21:4-9
The scene is the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land. The people of Israel had witnessed God’s miraculous deliverance from bondage, and they had been the daily beneficiaries of his supernatural leading and feeding. When they arrived at their destination, however, they balked. They doubted the Lord, and they panicked at the prospect of doing battle with the inhabitants of the land. Consequently, they were turned back into the wilderness. And, in a completely unnecessary tragedy, the generation of adults that had come out of Egypt were sentenced to wandering in the wilderness until that whole, faithless generation died off and their children had grown up. The episode that is our assigned Old Testament text comes from the midst of that wilderness wandering period.
The people, we read, became impatient with the journey and their experience of it. That, as is so often the case with impatience, led to complaining. Specifically, we discover that “they spoke against God and Moses,” which was not the way to go. And as a result, the Lord chastened the people with a plague of serpents in their camp.
Evidently the serpents were sufficiently poisonous that a great many people died. In their desperation, the people cried out to Moses, who interceded on their behalf. And in response, the Lord prescribed a most unusual cure.
At the Lord’s direction, Moses fashioned an image of a serpent out of bronze. Then it was hung up on a pole in the center of the camp, where it could be seen. And the invitation went out that anyone who had been bitten could look at the bronze serpent on a pole, and he would live.
The cure, while odd, worked. No explanation is given, and no specific details are offered about the people. Yet, knowing human nature as we do, we might reasonably wonder whether everyone who was bitten actually chose to look at the bronze serpent. After all, there was no reason — no human reason, that is — to believe that such a prescription would be effective. Can’t we imagine, therefore, some recalcitrant Israelite staying in his tent, refusing to look out? He grumbles to his family, “What good could it possibly do to look at a metal snake? This is silly. It makes no sense, and I won’t do it.”
How many people die in their sins even though salvation is available?
The episode is a brief and strange one. Yet, like the equally brief appearance by Melchizedek in the Book of Genesis, this little event is credited with tremendous importance when it is recalled with significance in the New Testament. And, in the case of the serpent on the pole, it is recalled by Jesus himself.
Ephesians 2:1-10
Paul functions with a different definition of “alive” and “dead” than people typically do. Is this hyperbole for dramatic effect? Is it just metaphorical language? Or is he actually onto something?
Addressing the Christians in Ephesus, he tells them that they were dead. They were, but they are not any more. Now it’s a pretty small percentage of the world’s population to whom one could say, “You were dead, but now you’re not.” Yet Paul is saying it as though it is true of everyone in his audience there in the ancient city of Ephesus.
He tells them specifically that they were dead in their trespasses. But then, ironically, he discusses the ways that they used to live. Indeed, it is evidently the way that so many in the world around them still live. And so, again, we see that “alive” and “dead” have a different meaning for Paul.
One wonders if Paul is perhaps working with the same definition that the Lord had in mind when he warned Adam about eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You recall that the Lord said they would die if they ate from the tree, yet Adam and Eve lived for several hundred years after eating the forbidden fruit. So “die” might have meant something other in Eden than just the end of biological life.
So it was that the Ephesians were biologically alive, but spiritually dead — dead in their sins. The gospel truth that they have experienced, meanwhile, is that God has made them alive with Christ. Their biological condition is still the same, but their spiritual status has been completely changed.
In addition to the overarching theme of “alive” and “dead,” our epistle lection also prominently features a marvelous expression of the saving work of God through Christ. We observe that he is characterized by mercy, love, and kindness. He must be; otherwise, he would have left us in our former state rather than saving us from it. And not only saved us from that former state of debauched life and spiritual death, but elevated us to a glory that is completely out of step with anything we deserve or could presume to request.
We also discover at the conclusion of the passage that the Lord has a sovereign purpose in mind in saving us. We are his workmanship, and he has made us for good works. The principle is reminiscent of Jesus’ words in John 15 that the Father is glorified when we bear much fruit.
Finally, we could not do justice to this assigned text without making note of verses 8 and 9, which form such an extraordinary summary of the gospel message. Here, in so few words, the apostle manages to state precisely and succinctly the interplay of faith, grace, salvation, and works. Each of these words could merit a sermon of its own. While we may not have that luxury, we will find it profitable to bear those two verses in mind in light of the salvation story being told by Numbers and by John.
John 3:14-21
Our gospel lection is not long in terms of number of verses, but it is so dense with profound statements that one can hardly do justice to it all. At the heart of the passage is the verse which has rightly been nicknamed “the gospel in a nutshell,” John 3:16. An explication of that verse alone is worthy of a sermon all its own.
Yet that crucial verse is flanked by other profound verses, as well. The starting place is Jesus’ reference to the event from Numbers which is our assigned Old Testament passage. And following the familiar John 3:16, where we are told why God sent his son, we find an important elaboration on what was and what was not God’s purpose in sending Jesus.
Verse 17 tells us that God did not send his son to judge the world, yet verses 18 and 19 speak to the reality of judgment. The theme of judgment morphs into a theme of light and darkness. And that theme, in just a few verses, is given much depth and complexity before we reach the end of the passage.
When something seems to me to be too big to handle, my instinct is to break it down into smaller parts. And so, in the case of these meaning-filled verses from John 3, I would break the passage down into these three categories. First, what does God do? Second, why does God do it? And, third, what are the human responses?
In the first case, the answer is simple, familiar, yet mind-boggling. What God did was send his son. Untold volumes of sermons and songs have endeavored to give expression to the meaning and magnificence of this fundamental truth of our faith. To try to summarize the matter here in a sentence of two risks being trite. I am hopeful that as we treat God sending his son against the larger backdrop of the Old Testament passage, some of the profundity of what God did will come through.
The second issue to consider is why God did what he did. On this, we are given three answers. His motivation was love. His purpose was salvation. His desire was not judgment. Here is a glimpse, then, into the very heart of God, and we might trace these manifestations of his heart all through scripture (and all through our own lives, as well).
Finally, there is the issue of human response. This has multiple expressions in our selected passage. The first and primary option is faith: “whoever believes,” you see. The centrality and necessity of belief is found in verses 15, 17, and 18. But then, in the concluding verses of the passage, the issue of human response is expressed in terms of loving or hating the light or the darkness.
In this matter of light and darkness, I am conscious of the human instinct to resist whatever is not our current context. When you put a small child to bed at night and you turn off the lights, the child is likely to feel and to express some anxiety. We do not like the darkness, for suddenly we can’t see anything. Ah, but fast forward a number of hours and go into that same bedroom to wake up the child, and now we encounter the opposite reaction. We turn on lights or pull open curtains, and the child’s eyes are tightly squinched. Perhaps he or she even puts hands or arms up to cover their eyes. Maybe they even pull the cover over their face. Once we have grown accustomed to darkness, you see, we hate the light.
This, then, would be my approach to preaching the gospel found in the gospel passage assigned to us this week. What does God do? Why does he do it? And how do we respond?
Application
The Apostle Paul freely admitted that the cross of Christ was an offense to the Jews and nonsense to the Greeks. Perhaps there were contemporaries of Moses who felt both of those things about the serpent on a pole. Inasmuch as the serpents were the dreaded scourge, to set a large one prominently before the people’s eyes may have been offensive to some. And, as we noted above, such a prescription must certainly have seemed like nonsense inasmuch as there was no discernible cause-and-effect relationship between looking at a metal serpent and being delivered from the venom of a real serpent.
Yet a cause-and-effect relationship is there, and it is precisely the same cause-and-effect relationship that is repeated all through scripture. It is the cause-and-effect of faith, you see. That was what God required of the people in order to be healed: they had to respond in faith to the cure that he had ordained.
The cause-and-effect of faith is what lies behind the silliness of an army marching around a walled city on seven consecutive days. It’s what sends a leper to bathe in the Jordan River. It’s what prompts a spent and weary woman to reach out to touch the hem of a garment. And, above all, it is the cause-and-effect of faith that saves lost souls through a man’s death on a cross.
The fact that Jesus identifies himself with that serpent on the pole invites some consideration. At a minimum, we recognize the parallel imagery of something being lifted up on a “pole.” We also recognize that, in both cases, it is God’s prescribed cure. And then there is the provocative detail that it was an image of the plague itself — i.e., a serpent — that was hung on the pole, which brings to mind Paul’s remarkable declaration that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV).
That is all grace, you see. For the one who had no sin to become sin on our behalf is inexpressibly gracious. And it is by looking to him that we are saved. We don’t suck and spit or do anything else to save ourselves; we simply trust the sacrifice of the one hung up on the “pole.” And thus we are saved by grace through faith; and it is God’s gift, not the result of our works. This is the good news for the sin-bitten people to whom we preach this Sunday!
Alternative Application(s)
Numbers 21:4-9 — “Life in the Backseat”
The centerpiece of our Old Testament lection is clearly the serpent on the pole, and we are dealing with that elsewhere. Within that same passage, however, I am fascinated by a narrative detail leading up to that centerpiece event. The biblical author tells us that “the people became impatient because of the journey,” and that is where all the trouble that follows begins.
I suppose I am so struck by that element in the story and because it sounds familiar to me. Traveling in the wilderness does not sound very familiar, of course. Neither does a plague of poisonous snakes. Nor does being healed simply by looking at some object. None of those prominent elements in the story are part of my own personal experience. Ah, but becoming impatient with the journey? Now that rings a bell!
We know all about this at a routine physical level, of course. We remember being children in the backseat, pestering our parents with questions like “How much longer?” and “Are we there yet?”. As adults, we may be just as impatient, but we are able to disguise it more easily because we don't have to ask anyone else those questions. We still want to know the answer, of course, and so we keep one eye on the GPS’s estimated time of arrival. And when traffic is slow, when construction or detours complicate the trip, when bad weather makes the driving more tense, then we too may become impatient with the journey.
We should be sympathetic to the Israelites of Numbers 21. It's easy for us to be condescending toward biblical characters who fall short. But let me walk a mile in their sandals — let alone several hundred miles! — and see if my attitude and demeanor fare any better. Only if I am continuously faithful, cheerful, and grateful all along my journey am I in a position to pass judgment on them.
But then, of course, there is yet another layer involved. For the real issue, it seems to me, is not a literal journey but a figurative one. We know, after all, that most of those Israelites ended up spending their whole lives on that trip from Egypt to the promised land. The best comparison for our purposes, therefore, is not just some ten or twelve or twenty hour drive that we have had to make along the way; the best comparison is to our lifelong, day-in-and-day-out journey of the Christian life.
How often do we become impatient on that journey? We grow weary of battles that we have had to fight day after day for years. We are discouraged by prayers that seem to go unanswered. We tire of the things that we regard as joyless. And, perhaps worst of all, we don’t know “how much longer.”
Most of us would say that we could endure almost anything — we could put up with it, we could persevere, we could keep at it — if we just knew when “it” would be over. We’ll make it through most any tunnel if we can see a light at the end of it. But that’s not always the case, is it?
So let us return to the circumstances of the Israelites in our story — the ones we may judge too harshly and too quickly. The children of Israel had a destination, but, so far as we can tell, they were never given an ETA. And so they were in the position of simply having to trust God. He knew the destination and he knew the way. He was the one setting the itinerary. He was the one arranging for all provisions. The Israelites were simply riding in the backseat and having to trust and obey,
Personally, I have fond memories of family trips when I was a boy. But they were pleasant only insofar as I relaxed, trusted my folks, and enjoyed the journey. When I grew antsy and impatient, then the journey became long and tedious.
And so it comes back to us and our lifelong Christian journey. Do we grow impatient on the journey? If so, we know from Numbers that our ancestors in the faith felt the same way. And we know from Numbers, too, that they would have fared better on their journey if they had simply relaxed and trusted the Lord. Just like us.
