Testing Times
This article is based on a talk first given by David Couchman at Above Bar Church, Southampton, on Sunday 3rd April 2005. It may be reproduced in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.
Do you want to grow spiritually? Do you want to be all you can be as a person? I expect most of us would say 'yes' to that. But how do you grow spiritually? We could come up with many different answers to this:
You grow through prayer
Well, this is certainly true.
You grow through spending time with other followers of Christ
This is true, too. How about:
You grow through reading the Bible and reflecting on what it says
All these things are true. But the Bible itself gives another answer: one that we do not hear so often. It says that we grow spiritually through the difficult times we face. So, for example, James says:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James chapter 1 verses 2-4)
He does not mean that we should celebrate the trials themselves, as if we enjoy the pain, and think there is something good about pain in and of itself. No. Rather, we are to look beyond the trials, to what they are achieving for us. Paul says, in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 17, that our
light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
The idea is not just that here we have troubles and one day we will have glory, but that the troubles are actually doing something to accomplish the glory.
The Bible is clear that when we go through difficult times, this is not just an accident. It is not just something that God lets happen. But at least sometimes, it is something that God sends our way, so that we will have the opportunity to grow spiritually.
This is what is happening in Exodus chapter 15 verse 22 to chapter 17 verse 7.
People today often talk about life being a spiritual journey. This may sound a bit New Age-y, but actually, it is a good picture. In this part of Exodus, God has rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Now, they are heading out into the Sinai desert. Their journey through the desert is a picture of the follower of Christ's spiritual journey through life. It begins when we are rescued through Christ. God rescuing the Israelites from Egypt is a picture of what he has done for his people today through Jesus.
On our journey through life, we go through very serious testing times. These often revolve around illness, or difficulties in relationships, or problems in our work. Perhaps you are going through some kind of testing time right now.
In this part of Exodus, there are three incidents where the Israelites go through testing times.
Marah (chapter 15 verses 22-27)
Just a few weeks after their dramatic escape from Egypt, things begin to go badly wrong. They have crossed the Red Sea. They have turned south, with the sea on their right hand side, and a range of mountains in the distance on the left. They have been three days without water, and they come to the oasis of Marah. But when they get there, the water is poisoned and undrinkable.
This is not a trivial annoyance. It is a life and death issue. In the desert, without water, you die. How do the people respond?
The people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'What are we to drink?' (verse 24)
When we have these testing times, we naturally ask questions, and we are likely to grumble. One of the questions we are most likely to ask is: 'What is God doing?'
The Bible says here that God is testing them, to see whether they will obey him:
There the Lord made a decree and a law for them, and there he tested them... (verse 25)
What was in question was whether they would listen to what he said, and whether they would obey him:
If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you. (verse 26)
And God provides for them. In verse 25, the Lord shows Moses a piece of wood, which he throws into the water, and the water becomes drinkable. And in verse 27, they come to Elim, where there are twelve springs - in other words, there is more water than they know what to do with.
It was not that God provided because they grumbled - it was always his plan to provide. They were quite safe, even when it looked like the times were very tough. But God is testing them through these events, and he is giving them opportunities to grow spiritually.
When we go through testing times, it is an opportunity for us to grow spiritually. But this growth does not just happen. It does not happen automatically just because we are going through difficulties. How we respond makes all the difference. And one of the key themes in these incidents is how the Israelites respond. Will they listen to God? Will they obey him?
Manna and Quail (chapter 16 verses 1-36)
From Elim, they turn inland, in chapter 16, and set out into the desert of Sin. (There is no significance to the name Sin. It is just a place name. It does not mean 'sin.')
Verse 1 tells us that this is exactly a month after they left Egypt. They do not have any food. Again, the people grumble:
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.' (Verses 2-3)
They start looking back to how wonderful Egypt was! It is a bit rich! Less than a year ago, they had been crying out to the Lord to rescue them. He has done that, and now they are looking back and saying that life in Egypt was marvelous.
Looking back on how wonderful things were in the past is a curse! It is always dishonest, and it never helps us grow spiritually. It is dishonest because things never were as good as we like to remember them, and it does not help us spiritually because it leads us into grumbling and discontent in the present. In the New Testament, Paul said,
Forgetting those things that are behind, I press on towards the goal, to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus. (Philippians chapter 3 verses 13-14)
If you want to win the prize, you have to forget the things that are behind. You do not see runners looking back down the track! They are looking ahead, towards the finishing line! You have to keep your eye on the finishing line if you want to win the prize spiritually.
And if you are in the habit of looking back on how wonderful things used to be - whether it is in your church, or in our country, or in some other area of life, please, for your own spiritual health, 'get over it.' Looking back is a curse.
On the face of it, the people are grumbling about Moses and his leadership, but they are actually complaining about God:
So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, 'In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?' Moses also said, 'You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.' (Verses 7-8)
In verses 9-10, when the people see the glory of the Lord, this is a serious reminder of who they are grumbling about. It is not just a human leader. It is God himself - the one who has just rescued them from Egypt.
When we go through testing times, do we grumble about God? We can grumble, or we can grow. But we can not do both.
Once again, God rescues them, and provides for their needs. In verse 4, he says,
I will rain down bread from heaven.
Remember that what is happening here is a picture of our spiritual journey through life. Let's look for a moment at something Jesus said in John 6. He is in the middle of an argument with some Jews. John chapter 6 verses 30-35:
So they asked him, 'What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' 'Sir,' they said, 'from now on give us this bread.' Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.'
Jesus is saying that he himself is the real bread from heaven. He is the reality to which the manna in Exodus 16 is pointing. What does he mean by this? Well, surely that he himself is the food we need for our spiritual journey through life. All the resources that we need are found in him.
So God provides for us, as he did for the Israelites in the desert. But he is also testing them again:
In this way I will test them... (verse 4)
The middle section of chapter 16 (verses 13-30) is all about God testing them. God provided food for them - and then he told them that they were only to collect as much as they needed each day. (See verse 19). This tested whether they would rely on God to keep on providing what they needed. Verse 20 tells us that some of them did not trust God, and collected more than they needed. But overnight, it went bad.
But on the sixth day God told them to collect twice as much, and they were not to go looking at all on the seventh day. This tested whether they would obey God enough to stop working. Some did not, and they went looking - but there was no manna on the seventh day (verses 27-30).
So we see that God is providing for them, but he is also testing them, to see whether they will believe what he promises, and whether they will obey what he commands.
When God sends us testing times, they are opportunities for us to grow. But we do not just grow automatically. How we respond makes all the difference. So what can we learn from how the Israelites responded?
We need to resolve to obey God in the present.
- We have seen that this was the issue at Marah (chapter 15) - would they listen to God and obey him?
- And we have seen how this is the issue in chapter 16 - will they trust God and obey him when it comes to collecting the manna?
There is a practical dynamic at work here: when we face testing times, we sometimes do things that we know are wrong, but we excuse them because of the difficulties we face. 'If you only knew what I'm going through, you'd understand,' we say.
We know what God wants us to do. We just do not do it. But testing times are not an excuse to disobey God. They are an opportunity to obey him.
Then we need to remember what God has done for us in the past.
God has just rescued the Israelites from Egypt, through a series of dramatic deliverances. This was only about a month ago. But when the going gets tough, they quickly forget all that, and start to grumble, and to look back on how wonderful Egypt was.
In verses 32-36, there is an emphasis on deliberately remembering what God has done for them, by storing up some of the manna as a reminder:
Moses said, 'This is what the Lord has commanded: 'Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the desert when I brought you out of Egypt.'' (verse 32)
We need to take deliberate steps to remind ourselves of what God has done for us. That is the purpose of the Communion. It is given to remind us what God has done for us through Christ, and by reminding us to equip us to face whatever comes to us during the week ahead.
So if we want to grow in the testing times, we have to resolve to obey God in the present, and we have to remember what he has done for us in the past.
Massah Meribah (chapter 17 verses 1-7)
In chapter 17 verses 1-7, they come to Rephidim (also called Massah and Meribah). At Rephidim they do not have any water at all. Again, the people grumble and quarrel with Moses:
The people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, 'Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?' (Verse 3)
There is really no excuse for them to doubt God this time: as well as rescuing them from Egypt, he has rescued them again twice, very recently. Not only that, but right from the start, God has promised that he is going to bring them into a good land. Back in Exodus chapter 3, he told Moses:
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land - a land flowing with milk and honey.
But when they face the testing times, the Israelites do not really believe God's promises:
So in chapter 16 verse 3, they say,
You have brought us out into this desert to starve all of us to death.
And in chapter 17 verse 3 they ask Moses,
Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us... die of thirst?
So as well as forgetting what God has done for them in the past, they also doubt his promise for the future.
But God is still faithful, and in verses 5-6, he provides water for them from the rock at Horeb.
In the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 1-4, Paul says:
I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
So the rock in Exodus 17 is a real rock, but it is also a picture of Christ. Once again, this draws our attention to the parallel between their journey and ours. Just as God provided water from the rock for them, he intends to provide for us, through Jesus Christ. All the resources that we need for our journey are found in Christ - and only in Christ. There is no alternative to him. There is nothing to add to him. We never grow out of needing to rely on him.
Back to Exodus chapter 17:
Moses called the place Massah (which means 'testing') and Meribah (which means 'rebellion'), because the Israelites quarreled, and because they tested the Lord saying, 'Is the Lord among us or not? (Verse 7)
This is the crucial question. Not whether God is really with them - he certainly is. But the question is whether they will believe that he is with them, and whether they will trust his promises for the future.
Conclusion
We have seen from these chapters in Exodus that when God puts us through testing times, they are opportunities to grow spiritually. But we do not grow automatically. The way we respond makes all the difference.
We have to make a deliberate decision to respond in a way that honours God. Your spiritual growth will not just happen! You have to decide to honour God in how you respond to testing times.
And this is not just a one-off decision, which you can make, and then forget about. Many testing situations are prolonged battles with illness, or relational difficulties, or unemployment. You have to keep on deciding to honour God - maybe many times each day. So how do we do that? Three ways, coming out of the chapters of Exodus that we have been looking at:
(1) Resolve to obey God in the present
This was how God tested the Israelites over the manna - whether they would listen to him and obey him. We can use testing times as an excuse to disobey, or as an opportunity to obey.
(2) Remember what God did in the past
God had rescued the Israelites from Egypt. He rescued them again and again in the desert. But they were quick to forget what he had done for them. If we are his people, he has rescued us from sin, death, and dark powers, through Jesus Christ - through his life, his death, and his resurrection. When we face testing times, we need to remember what God has done for us.
(3) Rely on his promises for the future
The Israelites failed because they did not trust God to do what he had promised. They told Moses, 'You've brought us out here to die!' Of course he hadn't. God had promised to bring them into a good land.
In the Bible, God has given his people great promises for the future. He has promised that he will bring us safely through our trials, and to bring us safe home with him for ever. The question is whether we will remember what he has done in the past, and rely on him for the future, when we face testing times in the present.
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