Grace That Endures — Dennis Kinlaw

Moses at the Waters of Meribah

Turn with me in your Old Testament to the book of Numbers, not a very well-known passage. Chapter 20, reading from the beginning of that chapter. In the first month, the whole Israelite community arrived at the desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh.

There Miriam died and was buried. Now, there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord!

Why did you bring the Lord's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or fig, grapevines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.

Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell face down, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron, gather the assembly together.

Speak to that rock before their eyes, and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community, so they and their livestock can drink. So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence, just as he commanded him.

He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels, must we bring water out of this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff.

Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.

These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord, and where he showed himself holy among them. That passage ought to be enough to intrigue you. Let's bow our heads together for prayer.

Our Father, we want to thank you tonight for bringing us together and giving to us the chance to meet in your presence to worship you. We thank you for friendships that are renewed in a moment like this.

We thank you for associations that have been sacred to us in the years past that we treasure and cherish. But, Father, our main purpose for coming is that we might hear your voice, that your word might come to us with freshness, because it is your word that we need.

So somehow tonight, through a human voice, or maybe in spite of a human voice, we pray that you will speak to every one of us here and give us the word from you which we need, and we will give you praise in Christ's name.

Amen. Across the years there have been numbers of passages in the Bible that if it had been left to me, I would have never included. I remember when I was a pastor and was trying to get my young people introduced to the Scripture, and I was looking for sections that would be meaningful to them and inspirational.

I can remember saying to a group of my teenagers, Now I want you to read the story of Joseph. And then when I looked at it, I read chapter 37 of Genesis, which introduces a story, and then to my horror I found chapter 38.

And if you remember chapter 38, it is a brutal story of adultery, in which the person who is adulterous is Judah, the one whose name was given to the tribe from which came David and from which came Jesus himself.

And then chapter 39 picks up that story again of a very pure and noble young man, Joseph. I have wondered for years why God didn't put chapter 38 as chapter 37, so that my young people could start with the beginning of the Joseph story and not have that horrible insertion in the middle of it.

But now there are other passages in the Bible that I have, if it had been left to me, I would have not included. But one of the interesting things is that as the years have passed, many of those passages that embarrassed me and that I would have left out have become signal means of grace and spiritual understanding to my own heart.

Now, after finding that I was comfortable with many other difficult portions in scripture, I found there was one, though, that stuck out across the years that I didn't like, and it's the passage that we read just a moment ago.

Because this is a story of what I think is the greatest man that ever lived. And God himself said about him, He is the meekest of all men. And you will remember that meekness is the qualification for entrance into the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit not only the kingdom, but they are the ones that are going to inherit the earth. And you will remember at the end of his life, because now Miriam has just died, and Aaron and Moses are left, and Israel is grumbling.

And Moses turns and speaks to them and asks them, Is he going to have to pull water out of a rock for them? And God says, Moses, because of that, you will never get into the promised land. Now, I don't know about you, but my sympathies have always been with Moses.

But there is something irreverent and something irreligious about having your sympathies with the creature instead of with the Creator, isn't it? So I found myself coming back to this story again and again, saying, Lord, I know that you're not unjust.

You have no favorites, and you treat all people alike, and you give everybody a chance. Why was it that you were so tough on this great man? And as the years have passed and as I've wrestled with it, I think maybe I've begun to see something that I need to see and that is very pertinent to me.

And if it is to me, to you. Because the one thing I know is that you're exactly like me, and I am exactly like you, and that's what makes it safe for one human being to preach to another. Now, let me talk to you for a few minutes about Moses, because the Scripture is very clear.

Moses as Nation-Builder and Servant

What an incredible person he was. As I said, I think I can make a case that he's the greatest man that has walked this planet, other than our Lord himself. You will remember that he was the nation-builder.

Not only the nation-builder, but the nation-builder of the very people of God, because it was he who led these slaves out of Egypt and made them Israel in the Promised Land. He was the one who gave them their national birth.

Not only that, he was the one who gave to them their legal system. One of the greatest, no question, one of the greatest juridical minds in human history. And he is the one who gave to them their faith and gave to them their religion.

Because anywhere you see a Jewish synagogue, it is there because Moses gave to the people of God what we know as Jewish faith. But in spite of the fact he was all of that, there was another characteristic which we mentioned a moment ago, that so often times does not come with great national, great international leaders and heroes.

As we said, he was the meekest of men. You will find him in those early days, you will find him submitting himself to all sorts of indignities, and across his life that was basically a characteristic, that he was willing for God's sake to sacrifice himself and submit himself to indignities that I would not relish having coming in my direction.

You will remember that he was the one that God called to challenge Pharaoh. That meant that he laid his life on the line, took far more than courage. It took a daring that few of us will ever have an opportunity to exercise or to demonstrate.

You will remember that he led the people of God, and he was, as it were, the patriarch, the father of the very people of God. And as he walked with them, he suffered them. He suffered the people of God because that's what he had to do.

Israel's Grumbling from the Red Sea to Rephidim

Now let me illustrate. If you will go back in the story, you will remember when they came out of Egyptian bondage, God delivered them through the Red Sea. In the early chapters of the book of Exodus, you get to chapter 15.

And now they are across the Red Sea. They are set free, and Miriam, his sister, lifts her voice and begins to sing about how the Egyptian horse and the Egyptian rider were cast into the sea, and God has delivered his people.

That's chapter 15. And then chapter 16, the people of God, the chosen nation, the predestined elect people, they are now out of Egyptian bondage and on their way to the Promised Land, and there is a problem about food and water.

And so the people in chapter 16 begin to grumble. Having seen the power of God at the Red Sea, the deliverance there, they say, If only we had died in Egypt, why did we let Moses bring us out into this dismal place?

Now that's chapter 16 of Exodus. Chapter 17 tells us they came to a place called Rephidim, and when they got there, the water supply ran out. And so the people began to grumble. They began to turn again against Moses, and they said, Why did we listen to him, and why did we let you, Moses, bring us out here?

And you will remember that Moses had to bring water out of the rock that day, but he did. But that day he did it in such a way that God was not unhappy with him. You will remember that Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and gets the tables of the law, and after he has received the Ten Commandments, the covenant symbol, now he comes down to the people of God.

But before he does, God says, You need to go down, because they have begun to lust after manifestations of the divine, and they have built them a golden calf, and they are worshiping an idol. And so when Moses comes down, he finds them worshiping a golden calf and lusting, and as he does, as he sees them, God says to Moses, Moses, just step to one side and let me wipe the whole rebellious bunch out, and we'll start this whole process all over again, and I'll make you the father of the faithful.

And Moses falls on his face and says, Wait, Lord, you can't afford to do that. Do you know what those Egyptians are going to say if I let you do that? Those Egyptians are going to say that you were fully able to get them through the Red Sea and out into the wilderness, but you couldn't feed them and take care of them after you got them out here, and you wiped them out, and it will be a reflection on you.

And God says, All right, I will give them another chance. Now that's at Sinai. You have to jump to Numbers 11 to get the story, the next chapter, because in chapter 11 of Numbers, Israel leaves Sinai and they come to a place which is to be named Taborah.

You will remember that when they got there, they began to grumble again and complain. And as they grumbled and complained, God set fire loose in their midst and people began to be consumed. And Moses falls on his face before God and says, God, you cannot do this to these people, and his intercession stops the fire.

Now, that's chapter 11 of Numbers. Chapter 12 gets even more interesting, because through all of this he has two helpers. One is his brother Aaron, and the other is his sister Miriam. And when they get to chapter 12, Miriam and Aaron get their heads together and says, Our brother's sort of up at this.

Our brother thinks he's the only one that God can speak through. God can speak through us as well as he can through Moses. And so you will remember that God says, Get out of the way, Moses. And when Moses looks, his sister Miriam is covered with leprosy in judgment for her sins.

And Aaron turns, who had been party to it, to Moses and says, Moses, intercede for us. Plead with God for us, because we cannot let him destroy us like this. We have sinned. We confess our sin. Plead with him to forgive us.

And so Moses has to plead not only for the ordinary people of Israel. Moses has to plead for the guy who is the father of the priesthood and Miriam, who is the prophet, is in their midst. You will remember, and it's unhappy enough this time that it says, We need to settle this one and get back to Egypt where it will be safe for us.

So let's just stone Moses and Aaron, kill them, and get them out of the way. And you will remember that Moses falls on his face again and he prays for the very people that want to kill him that they will be saved.

That is chapter 14. You get to chapter 16, and in chapter 16 you have a man by the name of Korah and a man by the name of Dathan and a man by the name of Abram. And Dathan and Abram, you will remember, were Levite representatives of the people who provide the religious leadership in the temple.

And so they turned and they said, Moses and Aaron, they're sort of uppity. They think they're the holy ones, but all of us are holy. We're just as holy as they are. And so they grumbled against Moses and Aaron, the ones whom God had chosen to lead.

And you will remember God says, Step out of the way. And the earth opened up and 250 people, including Korah, Dathan, and Abram, disappeared. That's the story at the beginning of the chapter. You get to verse 41 of chapter 16, and Israel is saying, Look what you are responsible for, Moses.

And they laid all of the blame for what had happened on Moses. And fire again, judgment breaks out, and Moses turns to Aaron and says, Go there and get your censer, move as fast as you can among the people, do what you can, stand between these people and God, and make atonement for them and for their sins.

And as he moved, the judgment is stopped. And then after that, you come to chapter 20, and there's no water. And so Israel is grumbling again. And Moses says, Lord, what do we do? And he says, Take the staff, bring the people before the rock, look at the rock, raise the staff, and speak to the rock, and out of the rock I will bring water the way I did it before.

Moses and the Hallowing of God's Name

And you will remember Moses turned and started just as if he were going to do it, exactly the way God told him to. But somewhere between the time God spoke and he obeyed, something began to take place inside Moses that God found very unacceptable.

Now, you know, up to this point, I have to say all of my sympathy is with Moses. But you will remember that at this point, God says, Moses, you did not sanctify my name before these people. Now, what did he do?

Let me just examine the passage for a few moments. He turned to them, and he looked at these people and said, You rebels. Now, that wasn't you. God had already said that. And Moses was the one who let them know that God had said to Israel, You are a bunch of rebels.

But the interesting thing now is that Moses doesn't say, Do you know how God feels about this? God feels that you are rebelling against him. But rather he spun on them and said, You rebels. Now, what was it that made God so unhappy about that?

Do you know God can say some things about people that you can't say? Did you know that he can say some things about people that I can't say? And when I begin to say what he only has the right to say, he begins to say, Wait a minute, Ken Law, you're shutting the promised land to yourself.

You let me do the judging here. Now, you're my boy, and you must say what I tell you to say, but you don't have the right to move into the position of judgment. Now, he looked at them and said, Must we bring water out of this rock for you?

And you notice the preposition. He now links himself very carefully with God, and he says, Do God and I have to bring water out of this? And do you know, you don't have to think about that long before you know that that is not the way it's supposed to be said.

If water's going to come out of that rock, Moses won't have anything to do with it. And now Moses is injecting himself into the very role that God and God alone can play. So he says, Do we have to bring water out of this rock for you?

Now, it's very interesting what a contrast this is to an earlier day in Moses' life, because if you go back to that first scene of grumbling which we heard about in Exodus 16, you will find that when they grumbled and Moses knew that they were under judgment, Moses stood and looked at the people of Israel and said, I'm not your problem, and when you complain, you're not complaining against me because it was God who brought us out here.

And when you grumble and grumble against me, you really are grumbling against the God who brought us here. Back at that time, he kept it depersonalized and kept himself out. But now when we get to chapter 20 of Numbers, he is not separating himself, but he is including himself in saying, Do we?

Do we have to bring water out of this rock? And then instead of speaking to the rock, he struck it twice, injecting himself again the way God did not tell him to inject himself. And so God spoke and said, You didn't sanctify me before the people.

Now, what's the essence of that? If I understand what's being said here, what God is objecting to is the injection of Moses himself into a relationship between God and the people who have sinned. And God wants it very clear that Moses is not really a part of that problem.

He and he alone is. And so he says, Moses, you are now including yourself in a relationship that basically really is only a relationship between me and these sinful people. Now, let me see if I can say something here that is not easy for me to verbalize because I've never done this one before.

Self-Pity, Anger, and Self-Defense

But I think there is something here. Let me see if I can communicate it. Do you know it is very easy when you find yourself in a problem of conflict or controversy or difference where there is a difference between us and other people, where we find that our reputation is involved or maybe our appearance or our face, how we are going to look.

If circumstances are not exactly the way we want them, it's very easy for us to begin to pity ourselves. Now, I want to say if anybody in human history ever deserved a right to self-pity, I think Moses did.

When you've got all these thousands of people grumbling about you and complaining and it was not his problem, it was simply God. If anybody ever had a right to self-pity, I think Moses did. But it's interesting, God does not permit self-pity to be legitimated even in a Moses.

Because you see, when he begins to say, poor me, he automatically is incriminating the God whom he represents. Because it was God that put Moses in the leadership of these people. And if Moses has got any problems, he needs to be talking to God, not to the people who are such a pain in the neck to him.

And now Moses has mixed the signals. Now, that's the problem with anger, isn't it? You're aware and I'm aware that anger is a legitimate emotion. Because the scripture is crystal clear that God gets angry when he sees a rich person take advantage of a poor person, or a person in a power position take advantage of a helpless person, or the one who has take advantage of the one who doesn't have.

The Old Testament, as many of you know, you've heard me say it before, the Old Testament simply says when God sees one person take advantage of another, his nose gets hot, his nose turns red. And our translation is, he gets angry.

He is angry at injustice. Now, you know, I'm not sorry he is, because I'm glad he cares about justice and righteousness. But you know, it's one thing for God to get angry, and it's another thing for you and me.

Because it's so easy for you and me when we're involved. Even if the issue is a very serious and clear one, it's easy for the anger at the injustice in us to be tempered a bit with us. And what we think, what we want, and how we look in our interest, it takes an incredibly clean heart to have divine anger comparable to the divine.

Now, self-pity is a dangerous thing, and self-defense. Where, you know, Moses said, You don't have a right to do this to me. And he begins to defend himself. But you see, that's not the question. The question is not my right, or my being a part of right.

It is whether what is right, what is God's will, and what is God's glory. And when Moses began to get himself in that mix, God says, This, Moses, is sin, and it will keep you out of the promised land.

Now, it's interesting that God never budged on that. And if you will read the rest of the Pentateuch, if you will read the rest of Numbers, if you will read the book of Deuteronomy, you will find there was more than one occasion when Moses looked at God and said, God, can't you take another look at that?

Wouldn't you really now review this case and give me another chance? And you will remember God said to Moses, No, go up on the mountain, look across the distance, see the land I've got for my people that I'm going to give to them.

But you did not hallow my name, you did not sanctify me in the midst of the people, and so you will not be a part of that journey across the Jordan. Now, you know, it is very easy when things go wrong for the context of the wrongness to creep into my spirit.

And when I respond to the wrongness, it's very easy for me to mix up a little self in that. And when I do, I've done exactly the same thing that Moses did. Now, somebody says, well, that's what it means to be human.

We're fallen creatures, we're sinful creatures, and so there's no way that when we get into these sticky, tricky places, maybe a fight with your wife, maybe a relationship with a child, it may be a relationship with a boss, it may be a relationship with an enemy, it's very easy for it to get up, you know.

The conflict comes and we get captured by the psychology of the thing. And when we respond, we're responding partially out of self-interest as well as we're justifying and saying, this is right and we can be very pharisaical at that point.

Grace for Contentment in Every Circumstance

Now, is it possible for a person, is there a grace that can bring a person to where he can go through life's most difficult moments and keep clean from self-interest, self-pity, self-defense, these manifestations of concern for us?

You know, I ran across, and one of the things that backed me into this passage, most of the things I ever discover in Scripture I back into, I found, first of all, that text, you know, in Philippians, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

I've always loved that verse. That ought to give a person courage. No matter what you face, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. And then there's nothing wrong, you know, it's sort of nice, that personal pronoun at the beginning, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

But you know, I think I was 60 before I noticed the context of that. Do you know what it is? Paul is in prison. He's in chains. And he says, I know how to be abased, chained, and I know how to abound.

I know what it means to be full, and I know what it means to be hungry. You'll notice that Israel was grumbling because they were hungry. I know what it means to be full. I know what it means to be hungry.

I know what it means to abound, and I know what it means to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. Now when I saw that, I suddenly realized the meaning of that text, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me, is not glorious, exploited.

But what it means is, if they throw me in prison and I'm in chains, it won't disturb my peace of mind, and I can be victorious. If I'm hungry, there is a resource that can keep me content. If I abound, I don't have to let it corrupt me.

I can keep clean. That's what Paul's saying God's grace did for him. When I thought of that, I found myself backing up to this passage and looking at it. Is this the thing that Moses at this moment, late in his life, weary, weary, weary, begins to think about himself?

And when he does, the flow of grace begins to stop. And then he personalizes the issue, and when he personalizes it, the issue gets fuzzy, and what is right and wrong gets fuzzy, and God's glory is damaged.

Witnesses Who Endured Through Grace

Now, you know, as I thought about that, I realized that there are people in human history who have been in moments of greatest difficulty, greatest trauma, conflict, and when they have been there, they have found that there was a grace that could keep them.

I thought of a number of illustrations. I remembered when Hugh Latimer and Bishop Ridley were being burned in the square, you will remember, at Oxford. You will remember that Ridley, as they were lighting the fire, turned to his friend, Bishop Ridley, and said, Brother Ridley, be of good cheer.

Play the man. We will light a fire today that will brighten all of England. And as the flames came up, he took them and washed his face. I ran across a story the other day in the New York Times, which sort of brought this to mind.

It was the story of book reviews, a review of a book on the insurrection in the country of El Salvador, between the leftists and the rightists. Our government supported their government, the rightists, and financed them, and the leftists led a rebellion, an insurrection against the government.

The man who wrote the book was rather sympathetic to the ones, the leftists, but it was a relatively objective account, the New York Times said. But there was one story that intrigued the author, and he chased down all the information he could get.

It was the story of a massive slaughter, because they had found a grave that had 437 bodies in it, men, women, children, babies, brutally slaughtered. The author began looking for anybody who could tell him anything about that, and he found some people who knew some detail.

And then he told some of the details of that. There was one thing that I will never forget, never get over. You do not expect a Christian witness in the New York Times, but the New York Times reported one girl when they were raping all of the women and raping the multiple.

One girl that the New York Times said was an evangelical Christian, apparently a young virgin. And the soldiers grabbed her and began to rape her multiple. And as they threw her to the ground and as they raped her, she responded differently from the others with their screaming.

She quietly began to sing hymns of praise to God. And as man after man raped her, she just kept on singing. And when they had had their fill, brutalized, she just kept on singing. One of the soldiers, irritated by this, took his gun and shot her, and she just kept on singing.

And then another soldier took his gun and shot her, and she just kept on singing. And then they turned and chopped her head off to stop the singing. Now, when I read that, I remembered Helen Roosevelt's story.

In Africa, when she was raped like that, and she said, the blackness of hell covered me. Why does this have to happen to me? She was out there to help these people. She was the doctor who cared for some of these people.

Now they're doing this to her. When she said, suddenly I heard an inner voice that said, Helen, it is not you they raped, it is I. And there came some freedom to her spirit in that. Now, those are the dramatic stories, aren't they?

And I started not to tell those, because you and I don't live under those dramatic circumstances. But you and I do live under circumstances like Moses, where there are things that just wear us down and wear us down and wear us down, until one day we react.

Receiving Grace in the Midst of Trauma

Now is there a grace that can come to me so that I don't fuzz the issues? And where his name is not dishonored, but where it is glorified, because I've given myself to him, to be wholly his, and he can put me wherever he pleases.

But more than that, he can bring whatever he pleases into my life, and whatever he brings to my life, I can look it in the face and say, My life is yours, and if my life is yours and your God's, then if it's here, it's here because you've permitted it, and I accept it as from you.

And I look to you for grace to give me victory in that. Now when I got to that point in my thinking, I remembered a story which a number of you have heard me tell, and you may have told it yourself or you may have heard it yourself.

The story of Joseph Zahn, who told about when the Communists were persecuting him, harassing him so mercilessly. He said he came into his study, fell on his face, sobbing his heart out and said, God, they're destroying me.

I cannot take any more. And he said, Ken Lloyd said, I think I heard a voice. It said quietly, Get up and read the book. And I opened E. Stanley Jones' Abundant Living, and it was on Christ Facing the Cross, and that he faced it with equanimity.

In fact, he embraced it. And he said, God, you don't mean I'm supposed to embrace these interrogations and these men who are destroying me. And God said, Yes. Well, he said, If I'm to do that, and quit screaming at them, if I'm to do that, you've got to do something in my heart you haven't done before.

And he said, Ken Lloyd, he did. And I walked back into those interrogations embracing my circumstances in the interrogatory. He said it was astounding change in atmosphere, almost ludicrous. Before that, he said, I was the one in trauma.

He said after that, the chief interrogator was the one in trauma because he lost control of me. Now, you see, what happened was a man got free from the control of circumstances at this level and found the power from above that enabled him to live in the midst of those circumstances but not be victimized by them or captive to them.

Living as a Clean Witness for God

Now, I don't know who this was for tonight. Maybe for me. But I know enough about you and me to know that there are people in this audience that are in the midst of all sorts of trauma, tension, conflict, some of them brutal.

I know enough about you to look over the audience and I can name some of you. If I can name some of you, how many more are there? But I know enough about life in this world to know that there is no way to escape this.

We live in a wilderness that's loaded with the fearful, never safe, and enemies all about ready to consume. Now, how do you get through? Is it possible to get through victorious? I think God never asks anybody to do anything.

He doesn't have grace to enable us to do it. And no matter where you are or what your circumstance is, He has a grace that can come in and set you free from self-interest that causes us to be victimized by self-pity, that causes us to build up our defenses, our self-defenses, because it's when we do that that we shut off our hearts from His grace.

Well, you say that's a high standard of Christian living. Well, let me ask you about the alternative. Do you want to get in the promised land? Now, I'm not talking about heaven because the promised land, Canaan, is not heaven.

It's life in this world, the way God wants His people to live it. You don't need to worry about Moses. God didn't let him get into Canaan. He took him straight home to heaven where he was all right. But he never found in this life the thing he yearned for, that land of promise.

Now, what difference does it make whether you and I move to that kind of level of freedom in Christ? Do you know that not even a Moses can sin without consequences? And if God's going to hold Moses' feet to the fire because He doesn't avail Himself of the fullness of grace, what's He going to do with a Kenloss?

And after all, who wouldn't like to be free from the control of your circumstances? Who wouldn't like to have a grace that could keep you in the midst of the worst and keep you not only free, but keep you clean so that there is something about your life that hallows His name.

And the only way it can hallow His name is for you to be out of the way and for Him to be glorified centrally. Now, that's what I felt I ought to share. I wrestled a lot on that. I wrestled a lot on that, what I should say tonight.

But you know what the beauty about days like this is? Why does God give us four days together? I think He gives us four days together so if we come in at this level, when we walk out of these four days, we can walk out in another way.