Lent: God on Trial | Student Pastor: Sam Rapp

Well, good morning again.

Uh my name is Sam Rapp.

I serve here as a student pastor.

And this is turning into kind of like Redeemer Students Sunday.

I don't know how that happened, but uh student pastor and the Redeemer Students announcement.

So that's just what we're doing here today.

But I'm honored to be with you.

A couple years ago, uh my wife Grace and I we took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina for a few days.

It was our first like real trip after a honeymoon.

Here's a picture of us on that trip.

Uh I look really similar, I know.

I haven't aged very much.

Uh and I felt like a real adult booking this trip.

Booked the Airbnb, driving to a new city with my wife, not my fiance anymore.

I had to learn to say that word.

Uh we were so excited for this trip.

And I am about as type A as they come, and so I thought through everything.

I was like, I'm gonna book the Airbnb right in the middle of the town so we can walk everywhere.

I'm gonna get all the logistics planned out.

I'm gonna book a tour of the built more.

It's gonna be a perfect trip.

And as a type A as I am, as I've learned from a lot of time on the counseling chair, uh a lot of my type A-ness is a defense mechanism of me trying to avoid pain in life.

So that's something I'm learning, but that's a conversation for another day.

Uh any other type A's in the room?

Any type A's?

Uh type beers, I'm so sorry that we're the way we are.

We can't help it.

Uh it's the way that we it's the way that we were born.

Uh but thank you for helping us have fun.

Uh type beers, I appreciate it.

Um so the trip was perfectly planned out.

Nothing could go wrong, right?

So we get to the Airbnb.

It's in a great spot, it's beautiful.

It's on the second floor of this kind of shopping strip.

It would be like having a uh Airbnb kind of on the Merrida Square over some of the shops there.

So uh we walked down the stairs and we were like right on the main strip, and so we kind of check out, we see a couple shops, and uh this one store looked really cute on the outside, and so we decided to go in.

Uh and at first it felt like a classic kind of cute white girl store, you know, it had like the cute little decorative rocks and the little paintings and you know, little books and all the good stuff.

Uh and then you know the feeling of you thought it was one thing, and then it becomes something else, and you're like, I'm not where I thought I was.

Um so I come across this beautiful hardcover book sitting proudly on a table, perched up right next to the store, and this is what the cover says.

Uh, which by the way, updated and revised made me nervous.

I don't know why.

Um, but uh apparently this is a very popular book in the world of witchcraft because Oberon Zell, nicknamed Oz, aka the Wizard of Oz, on the top of the book, says the most comprehensive compilation I've ever seen on all aspects of the craft, uppercase craft that made me nervous.

You know the moment in the office when uh Michael is dating Pam's mom and Jim is begging Michael not to tell her, and then Michael calls Pam into the office to talk about it.

Uh there's a quick, quick video here from that scene.

She is the mother of a close friend of mine.

Oh.

More than a friend.

A co-worker.

Oh, gossip.

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it, Michael?

It's okay.

No, no, no, no, no.

No.

Oh my god! Oh my god! So that was a little bit what I felt like in this witchcraft store.

Um I saw the book, and then the feeling began to sink in.

Like, I'm in a witchcraft store.

Um and I look around and I begin to see it, I see pentagrams everywhere, which is a strikingly nervous sight.

Uh and then I looked at the back of the store and there's like four or five little booths in the back, much like therapy rooms, but they weren't doing therapy there.

I think they were doing witchcraft.

Uh, I don't know exactly what that looks like, and but you're probably thinking, Sam, like it's just a store, dude.

Like, you're good.

It's it's just a store.

But I want to remind you, do you remember where my Airbnb was?

Right up the stairs.

The floor of our Airbnb shared the ceiling of the Airbnb of the uh witchcraft store where I'm sleeping.

Uh and so I grew up in a Presbyterian church.

I went to a Southern Baptist church in college.

So, pre-seminary 23-year-old Sam did not know what to do with this information theologically.

I was like, does witchcraft float upwards like incense to heaven?

I didn't know how it worked.

I was like, is it gonna seep through the floor?

Do I need to go buy some olive oil and you know wipe it on the floor and anoint the room?

I did not know what to do with the information because these people are practicing witchcraft about 15 feet from where my bed is, and so I was very nervous.

Uh and so not only did I freak out and panic, but I also got really mad at myself because I'm a type A guy.

I I know the logistics.

And I was like, Sam, you dummy.

You're gonna bring your wife here to kill her in Asheville?

Now, of course, we survived.

I got over my panic.

We didn't pray, though, in Jesus' name, to cast out any demons that were gonna come into that room, but we did also do some research in our Bibles.

Uh, but the trip turned out a little different than we expected.

And every time we walked down those stairs onto the strip, we looked, we saw that store and we did a little roundabout, you know, to scoot around it.

But this morning, uh, we're continuing in the season of Lent, which covers the 40 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.

And the question I want to ask for us today is when life goes to unexpected hard places, where is God?

That's the question.

When life goes to unexpected hard places, where is God?

When the job is lost, when a family member or friend dies?

When another negative pregnancy test shows up, when the diagnosis hits, when a pastor or leader has a moral failing.

Where is God?

In Exodus 17, our text this morning, we're gonna see a bit of a legal drama played out like a three-act play, a bit like a few good men.

Act one, the problem, act two, the accusation, and act three, the trial.

Pastor Tim Keller, uh, he used to say that when we read the book of Exodus, it's as if we're walking into a museum and we see this beautiful room, and then there's a painting on one of the sides of the room, and we notice that the painting's really ugly.

So we get up, we get a closer look, and then we realize that the painting is a mirror, and that's what the book of Exodus is supposed to be like for us.

So, let's look in the mirror, Act 1.

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of sin by stages according to the commandment of the Lord, encamped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

So this the great tension and problem of this text is something that we all experience: suffering, trials, hardship, evil in the world, we experience little things like the daily frustrations of life, conflicts, emotions.

We came in this morning, perhaps, after a lot of frustrations, conflicts, and emotions.

And if you're a parent with young children, you might want to shout amen to that.

And we experience the big things like death, cancer, suffering, big life-altering things.

We don't have to look very far to see that the world aches.

So the people of God show up.

It's a place called Rephidim, which is no accident.

It's a name that literally means resting place.

So they show up to the place of rest only to find that they don't have water to drink.

And water turns out to be a pretty big theme in the book of Exodus.

A couple chapters before this, they showed up to another place, and the water was bitter, and God made it sweet.

The chapter right before this, they had the manna from heaven, the sweet bread that God provides, and yet they continue to grumble.

And we, too, are quick to grumble when things go wrong, right?

And also we're pretty slow to praise when things go right sometimes.

And the people here are in real danger.

You die of dehydration much faster than starvation.

So the stakes are real.

But the story of Exodus in the 16 preceding chapters is real complaint over a real issue, and God showing up and providing exactly what they needed.

It was just three chapters before this, where God told Moses to take the staff, put it in the Red Sea, only for them to part and walk through to freedom.

But in this story in Exodus 17, we see a shift.

Because in the chapters before this, it was the people grumbled, they grumbled, they complained, they grumbled, but here we see a sharp turn.

So this is Act 2, the accusation.

Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink.

And Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?

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?

So Moses cried to the Lord, What shall I do with this people?

They're almost ready to stone me.

So you notice the difference.

The people certainly quarreled there in verse or grumbled in verse 3, but the word used in verse 2 is quarrel, and there's something so much deeper going on than just anger.

The word for quarrel is a legal term.

It's a courtroom term.

So it's as if they're bringing a legal charge against Moses here.

They want him to go step into the stand.

And their accusation of Moses is that of a capital crime, that he led them into the wilderness to die.

He's just trying to lead faithfully as God had instructed him.

And yet, here he is, potentially being condemned for a capital crime, which in this day would have meant he would be stoned to death.

The people of Israel had grown to a huge number at this point.

Some people say a couple hundred thousand, some people say up to about two million people.

It's a huge group.

And they're accusing this one man of a capital crime.

And the people seem to be overreacting, at least at first read, right?

I guess unless we have the courage to hold up the mirror a little bit.

Because are we not too professional grumblers?

Are we not also professional gossipers who love to destroy people in our minds?

The Marietta bubble we live in is wonderful in many ways, but it can quickly become an echo chamber of gossip and complaining.

And beloved, we are quick, like the Israelites, to grumble and complain against our leaders and pastors too, aren't we?

We're quick to find fault in those the Lord has placed in positions of leadership and authority.

We ought to be quicker to pray for our pastors than criticize them.

And now there is space for accountability.

And in our day of skepticism of leaders, that makes sense.

But when the issue is that of preference and not theology, we ought to be slow to critique and quick to pray.

The writer of Hebrews on this writes, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.

Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

And you notice here, the opposite of this verse is what's going on in Exodus 17, right?

People have run out of patience on Moses, and Moses has run out of patience on the people.

He said to God, What shall I do with this people?

Parents with young children, you know what it's like when you've been parenting all day and your kids are being maybe especially frustrating, and then your spouse, who has been magically not there the whole time, shows back up and you look at them and you say, Tag, that's a bit what's happening here.

Moses is fed up, he's done, he's on the stand, he looks at God and says, Tag, you're it.

What are you gonna do about this, God?

And that brings us to Act 3, the trial.

Verse 5.

And the Lord said to Moses, Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.

And behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.

And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel, and he called the name of the place Masa and Mariba, because of the quarrelling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Again, the Lord is so patient.

Again and again and again, the people blame Moses and grumble against him, and the people grumble against God and complain against God.

And the Lord's response here is stunning.

Did you see it?

People have put Moses on trial, but even deeper than that, they're putting God on trial.

So God says to Moses, pass on before the people and bring some of the elders.

So in this trial, the elders would stand as witnesses.

So it's as if God is saying, Hey, Moses, go walk on in front of that giant group of people and bring your jury along with you.

And did you see what did God tell Moses to carry?

The staff with which you struck the Nile.

So this has two meanings for the story.

Number one, a staff was a symbol of judicial authority.

So, in a sense, the staff that Moses is holding is like that of a judge walking along with his gavel, ready to slam justice down.

And so here we see Moses acting as the judge.

And yet the judge is the one being put on trial.

Number two, the staff was the memorial of the Red Sea crossing.

The Lord didn't tell Moses to just bring any random staff.

No, this was the one that he put into the Red Sea to be parted.

The salvation story of the Israelites.

So when the people saw this staff, they thought, oh no, this staff is different.

This staff is the one that the Lord of hosts brought us to salvation.

So the scene is being set here like that of a courtroom drama, right?

Except it's not Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, it's Israel, Moses, and God.

And yes, the people are quarreling against Moses, but again, they are really after their Maker.

And that's relatable.

When things go wrong in our lives, horribly wrong.

When we see the suffering of the world we live in, it is an understandable thing to look at God and ask him the same question as the Israelites.

Are you among us or not?

And here at the height of the drama of this story in Exodus 17 stands someone being tried for a capital crime.

And we ask, is it Moses?

Is it the people?

Is it you and me?

Is it the elders?

But God says, Moses, take the staff and strike the rock, and then God says, Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock.

So what God is saying here is that God is going to stand in the place of the guilty being tried.

Moses is being told by God here to take the gavel, take your staff and strike the rock, and God says, I'm gonna be right there, ready to receive the blow.

The world we're living in wants justice to be met.

The tension you feel within yourself at your own pain, at the injustice and evil in the world, the tension you feel in yourself makes sense as an image bearer of God.

You're meant in this world to long for justice, but the question, the ultimate question is where can justice ultimately be met?

Where can the justice of the universe be met?

When God was grumbled against here, when he was quarreled against here, did he bring down the gavel upon his people?

No.

He took the gavel upon himself.

Now, beloved, what other religion tells us that?

What other worldview is so upside down as that of the judge standing in the place of the guilty?

We see this no more clearly than in the person and work of Jesus.

God himself, the second person of the Trinity, who came down, who became a man, who lived in the wilderness, who experienced all the pain, the suffering, the hardships, the temptations that we do, and then being accused in a legal trial.

Being put on trial, being quarreled against, them finding no fault in him, and still condemning him to the cross.

And then ultimately, like the Lord in Exodus 17, having the divine gavel of judgment upon himself.

Remember the moment on the cross where Jesus cries out, I thirst?

God provided the water for the people in the wilderness.

He did not satisfy Jesus' thirst there, because Jesus was drinking something that we never could.

Apostle Paul explains clearly what happened in Exodus 17 here in 1 Corinthians 10.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.

God has thrown himself under the rod of judgment, so that you might be liberated.

And this is not only a story pointing to our sins being thrown upon Christ.

It is also a story about the spiritual blessings we receive in our union with the rock.

The Israelites drank deeply from the rock because God took their place.

And God is such a master storyteller here for two primary reasons.

First, is there anywhere more unexpected for water to be than at the top of a high rock?

In the desert, that would be the last place you look.

That's where the sun shines the brightest.

There'd be no water there.

And that is exactly where God shows up for them.

In the most unexpected place.

So I would invite you over this season of Lent, this is part of what Lent is for, is to look for grace in the unexpected places.

And now, second, physical thirst is such a great parallel to spiritual thirst, isn't it?

Tim Keller on this, he says, In the desert, you find the water of God.

Until you get to a hard place, you're drawing water from all sorts of streams apart from God.

These sources are su are shallow and will eventually run out.

It is one thing to intellectually believe in God as our source of life.

It is a completely different thing to functionally live with God as our source of life.

Now, many of you in this room have walked through a lot of deep suffering.

I've sat in many hotel or many hospital rooms with many of you, and it's been heavy.

And the world is going to tell you to put God on trial for those things.

That you should be mad at him, you should be mad at other people.

This is why suffering can cause us to grow cold and cynical over time, right?

But in the Christian worldview, if our sufferings lead us to the river of living water, as we see God dead on a cross and risen from the grave, we can actually live with hope and suffering.

We can let our trials and our sufferings form us into the people God is growing us to be.

It's in our sufferings in the wilderness that God, in his patience, and his providence, and his grace to you and me, is reforming our spiritual taste buds for that of rivers.

Jesus in John 7 says this very thing.

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

And Jesus uses the word if there, and it's almost a rhetorical device.

He says, If anyone thirsts, because of course we thirst.

It's a matter of what we are thirsting for.

So just a question for us to reflect on is what streams are we settling for when rivers are available to us?

Is it our bank account?

Our performance?

Our success?

Our kids' performance or success?

Is it numbing out with alcohol?

Is it porn?

Is it work?

Is it acceptance from a certain group?

What is the stream when the river is there?

Now there is a real warning that this passage gives us.

And the warning is what we will naturally do through suffering if we're not careful, which is letting our hearts grow cold and hard.

And we know this because of how later writers of the Bible apply the story of Exodus 17.

Psalm 95 says this: Oh, come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of His hand.

Listen to this.

Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Mereba, as on the day at Massa in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.

What's crazy is then the writer of Hebrews, hundreds of years later, he quotes that exact same psalm, and then he says this Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

For we we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

That's a real warning.

A hardened heart, leading us to fall away, the writer says.

And yet the writer gives us a really good pastoral application.

He says, encourage one another every day.

Encourage one another every day.

That's the solution to the hardened heart.

To be encouraged in Christ.

And is that not what we all really need?

One of my favorite hymns ever, we just sang it, is Come Thou Fount.

And the writer of that hymn, Robert Robinson, great name.

Sounds like a pitcher.

He's so brutally honest about how easy it is to grow cynical and fall away, right?

He says, Let that grace now like a fetter, which is like a prison chain, bind my wandering heart to thee.

He confesses, prone to wander, Lord.

I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love.

So here's my heart.

Take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

And I've that song stings to me because I find it so relatable.

I am so prone to wander.

I'm so prone to look for streams that I can never satisfy.

Prone to grumbling and gossip.

Prone to letting my heart grow cold and cynical.

So what's the solution?

Well Robinson tells us in the stanza before this here I raise my Ebenezer, which means rock of help.

When you're suffering, when you're lonely, when you stumbled in that sin, you promised God you would never stumble, and again, your solution is to raise your rock of help.

Exodus leads us to the reality that we are banking everything on our Ebenezer.

Christ, the one who took our sin and guilt upon himself, the one who had the cosmic rod of judgment slammed upon him, the one through whom we receive rivers of living water.

Christ is everything.

So a few questions to reflect on and consider this week.

Number one, where am I looking for satisfaction and belonging apart from God?

What are the streams, right?

Number two, how has my suffering led me to doubt, cynicism, and unbelief?

Number three, where is God inviting me to drink more deeply of his love and grace?

And then finally, who is someone I can specifically encourage and pray for?

Now, if you have any questions about the sermon, about the text, about Christ, or need prayer, I'll be down front after the service.

I'd love to talk and pray with you.

Let's pray.

Our Father, we have set before us a passage of scripture that leads us ridiculously clearly to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Lord, every other world religion, every other worldview is telling us to ascend the mountain, to be right, to be whole, to be at peace, to prove to God that we're enough.

And yet, Lord, what we see in this text is that you are a God who descended the mountain.

You are a God who came down, who stood in our place, who took our penalty upon yourself, and then gave us rivers of living water to drink from.

So, Lord, I pray this morning that in all of our unbelief, all of our doubt, all of our cynicism, we would meet you, our great rock.

And we would have a new, fresh taste of the rivers of living water.

Father, thank you for showing us Jesus in this text.

And thank you that unlike Moses, Jesus, our mediator, never grows tired of us.

Help us believe this all the more deeply.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.