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Hello my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
This week we’re beginning an important journey together. . . seeking to ‘walk with Jesus’ in moving beyond the horrific chaos of the past several months and into a new and RESTORED future. This is very important, for there will be other times in all our lives, when we will face great storms, and there will always be many voices offering paths out of the storm… but we need to discern God’s path.
REMEMBER is an extremely important first step on the pathway of RESTORE, and yesterday I gave you four important reasons why.
I live in Florida, about 90 miles or so from a place called Cape Canaveral, famous of course for the US Space program. Would you believe it was in July 1950 that the first rocket launched from there? Hundreds of launches have taken place and each has been a learning experience. Remembering with accuracy is vital at Cape Canaveral. Disregarding or distorting the past could cost lives and huge amounts of wasted money. It’s the same in your life and mine, my friends.
Today let’s consider why it’s so important to remember honestly and accurately, because isn’t it true that as you and I remember, time has a way of distorting the past? The Old Testament books of Exodus and Numbers have the record of the greatest, most miraculous migration of people in all of human history. More than 1 million Hebrew slaves were set free by the Egyptian Pharaoh when Moses and Aaron confronted him and his court with 10 powerful plagues of God. His heart increasingly hardened with each, until the death cry was heard all across Egypt, as in every home where they had not put blood on the doorpost, the angel of death killed the firstborn. The annual Passover festival calls Jews the world over to celebrate this great deliverance of God and their uniqueness as a people of God (Exodus 12). I wonder if you’ve ever been privileged to attend a Passover Sedar?
As these 1 million or more people rushed out of Egypt in the middle of the night, we can hardly imagine what they felt. But their euphoria turned to hysteria in short order as Pharaoh sent his army and chariots after them, trapping them against the Red Sea. Of course you remember one of the greatest miracles of all time, as God opened the Red Sea for His people to escape, and then closed the walls of water over Pharaoh’s army. (Exodus 14)
A few days later, as this huge mass of humanity was walking through the desert, they began to run out of food. May I ask, what’s the hungriest you’ve ever been? Exodus 16:2,3 reports this sad scene: “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
Remembering has great power, both helpful and hurtful. Distorted remembering can be very dangerous. These were slaves, and usually slaves had only slave food to eat and often not much of it. Do you see what’s happening here? Only a few days removed from the plagues and great Red Sea miracle, their hunger is distorting their remembering, which is leading them to both complaint against God and accusation against Moses! God’s response in Exodus 16 is the miracle of a daily bread delivery which fell from heaven, called ‘Manna’. They ate of this God provided daily miracle for 40 years!
About one year later, after they’d been at Mount Sinai for several months, received the 10 Commandments from God, built the Tabernacle, and experience daily provision from God for all that they needed, they set out from Sinai, heading toward the Promised Land, led by the miraculous cloud of God’s Presence by day, and the pillar of fire by night. Numbers 11 occurs only a few days later, and listen to how familiar this sounds: “Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD… The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost – also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now, we have lost our appetite and never see anything but this Manna!” (Numbers 11:1-6)
What do you hear my friends, in the grumbling of 1 million people who were kept alive everyday by God’s provision? Sounds very similar to Exodus 16 doesn’t it? Is their remembering accurate and honest? Was it at no cost that they ate food in Egypt as whipped slaves? Once again do we see the danger of distorted remembering? If you’ll take the time to read Numbers 11, it’s a remarkable miracle of God’s provision of meat for more than 1 million people in the desert, but they paid a terrible price for their distorted remembering.
There’s something very significant that was happening here. Did you notice there are some agitators called “rabble” in the crowd? We don’t know exactly who they were but Exodus 12:38 says “Many other people went up with the Israelites” as they fled Egypt. Perhaps these are some of them. Distorted remembering of a few is contagious and can bring disaster for many people. Moses was learning how difficult it was to lead ungrateful, complaining, grumbling people who distorted the past in their remembering. The people looked at the pain of today not through the lenses of God’s miracles of yesterday but through their distortions of yesterday, and it caused grumbling and discontent to spread like wildfire!
It’s an important lesson for us, my friends. God has designed our minds to remember… but as we look back, what we see will lead our hearts to find either strength and hope from our remembering or discouragement and fear! Our remembering can either draw us closer to Jesus, or lead us further away from Him!
It is also important that as we remember the past we see that God was there and thus we see our past from God’s Perspective! Listen to Isaiah 46:9 God says: “Remember the former things, those of long ago, I am God and there is NO other; I am God and there is none like Me. I make known the end from the beginning…and I say “My Purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.”
Remembering should draw God’s people TO God, to seeing how God was present and active in our past! The more we see the evidence of God’s supremacy, God’s sovereignty, God’s power at work in our past, the more we will begin to see God’s PURPOSES at work in our past!
God’s presence and power was undeniable for these 1 million traveling, freed, slaves! But rather than focusing on the past miracles and even the bread delivery from heaven that morning, they craved other things. God was proving to those 1 million Hebrew slaves that HE was faithful, reliable, trustworthy and He knew their need even better than they did and that God was more than able to fully supply their great and desperate need in the desert! Have you and I learned that as we look back in our past, remembering God’s faithfulness? Have we taught our children and grandchildren how to see God’s Presence and Power and His faithfulness in their past?
I invite you to take your Bible, your journal, and worship with this great old song of God’s faithfulness, and as you worship, write down some of the times in your life that God has been powerful in your past! Don’t allow distorted remembering. See God’s Presence accurately in your past my friends, and praise Him!
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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