2 Timothy 1:12
Yet I am not ashamed,
because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard
what I have entrusted to him for that day.
How Do You Know That You Know?
Twenty five years ago our family packed up all we
had and moved from New Orleans to
Northern California. It was a dreadfully long trip but on the way
we decided to take some educational side trips.
One of our stops was at the world famous Carlsbad Caverns. As a child I had looked seen pictures of it
in National Geographic and had dreamed of one day going to it. I had been to a number of caves before; seen
stalactites and stalagmites, explored creepy caves and stood in caves with all
the lights out deep below the earth.
What intrigued me most about the Carlsbad Caverns were the stories I had
read of all the bats in the cave. I had
seen pictures of bats flooding out of the cave but I couldn’t imagine so many
bats coming all at once. When we had the
opportunity to stand at the entrance to the cave when the bats all came out to
feed in the evening, I was not prepared for what took place. As if shot from a cannon, just as the sun was
setting, without warning, millions of bats in a great cloud of flapping fury
exploded out of the cave, covering the sky as if a thunderstorm had come upon
us. For several minutes it was nothing
but bats whizzing past until the great host was gone. It was far more bats than I imagined existed
in the entire world came out of that cave and I was struck by how inadequate
were the descriptions I had read of the bat exodus from Carlsbad Cavern. The experience of it went far beyond my
imagining. I was no longer a “doubting
Thomas” that something so spectacular was possible as millions of bats flooding
out of a cave all at once was possible.
Have you ever had a hard time believing something
you were told could be true? Perhaps a
movie everyone is talking about can’t possibly be as good as they say. Maybe a book your friend is raving about
won’t live up to the expectations. It
could be a TV show that you have been told is “so funny” won’t be. A speaker you have been told to catch on a
podcast won’t keep your attention. A
college that has been recommended to you is not going to be as good as you have
been told. It could be that someone told
you to move to a certain town because it is such a wonderful place but you
don’t think you will like living there.
Maybe you don’t believe that someone’s story about what they did is
true. Have you been skeptical of the
hype about a political candidate or of a religious teacher or perhaps all that
is promised about Christianity? Do you
have some doubts about what you believe?
Of all the people described in the Old Testament, I
am most intrigued by Moses. He was one
of only two people who met with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and he is
known by many as the “Great Deliverer” because of his role in Israel being
freed from slavery. He was a man of
great passions and yet described as a very humble man, more humble than
anyone else on the face of the earth. (Numbers 12:3 NIV) He most likely had a troubled marriage, was a
bit self-righteous and like many of us, blamed others for some of his biggest
mistakes. Most importantly, for the sake
of our discussion, Moses was not always certain he could trust God.
We are not sure how he came to this conclusion but
Moses at some point, before he turned forty, believed God would use him to help
his fellow Israelites escape the bondage they were under in Egypt. His childhood was unusual. He was born during a tempestuous time in his
nation’s history. The Israelites had
settled in Egypt some four hundred years earlier and now were a persecuted
people in their adopted land. The king of Egypt became afraid the Israelites
would revolt if they continued to increase in number so he ordered that all
male Israelite babies be killed. Moses’s
mother put her baby boy in a water-tight basket to try and keep him from being discovered
by the Egyptian soldiers and the daughter of the king of Egypt found him
floating in the Nile River while she was bathing. As soon as she saw baby Moses, the Egyptian
princess decided to adopt the boy, thus saving him. Now was this a coincidence that Moses
survived the pogrom of Hebrew babies this way?
Was it just luck Pharaoh’s daughter found Moses floating in the basket
and when she saw him, loved him and wanted to save him, raising him in her own
house and making sure he was educated by the best teachers of the land? Or was this a miracle and it was God who
saved him through Pharaoh’s daughter?
Your interpretation of this fortunate circumstance depends on your point
of view. Those who don’t believe in God
would call it a random fluke of life; those who believe in a personal God who
operates within our world might say it was God who rescued Moses and prepared
him for leadership.
Certainly Moses had decided something about his
survival as a baby and how it came about and by the time he was forty, he had
an opinion about God’s existence. We
know he believed God was working through people in normal circumstances of life
because when he was forty he was convinced that God wanted him to kill an
Egyptian who was beating an Israelite.
The prophet Stephen, in his last sermon lets us in on Moses’s thinking
when he came upon the maltreatment of the Israelite. "When Moses was forty years old, he
decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an
Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the
Egyptian. Moses thought that his own
people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. (Acts
7:23-26 NIV) It did not turn out well
for Moses though. The Israelites did not
rally to Moses as their deliverer; in fact they rejected him and it was
reported to Pharaoh what he had done.
Pharaoh was furious and word got back to Moses that he would be executed
for his crime. Moses escaped to Midian
where he lived forty years as a fugitive.
What is intriguing about this biographical account
is the shift in Moses’s thinking about God and God’s presence in the
world. We can understand how Moses could
have thought God wanted him to kill the Egyptian. It was just as sensible for Moses to think
the Lord wanted to use him to lead a rebellion against Egyptian domination as
it was for him to decide that God saved him as a baby from the fate suffered by
other baby boys of his generation. An
atheist might come to another conclusion.
The fact that Moses lived when other’s died was just a quirk of chance
and his belief that he was to lead Israel was something he concocted himself or
through the influence of friends or family members but there was no God
involved in any of it. This may very
well have been the evolution of Moses’s thinking as he developed a new life far
from his fellow Israelites and the Egyptian oppressors. He fell into a very ordinary existence. He got married. He had children. He raised sheep. He watched his children move through the
normal stages of growth. He looked for
watering spots for his sheep and fought off bears or lions that tried to attack
the flock. Moses kept moving his flocks
about in search of pastures. He fought
with his wife and made love to her, had interesting conversations with his
father-in-law and the other men of the village.
Slowly he gave up on the idea that God wanted him to help rescue his
fellow Israelites from slavery. Thoughts
of God may have continued and he might have even led his family in prayers but
any vibrant expectancy that the Lord was personally involved in his life
gradually faded. He had bills to pay and
mouths to feed and you can’t look to God to do those things for you. Forty years without any sign of God makes you
more of an atheist than you might care to admit. Not all atheism is created equal. Some forms of it are casual and incidental;
not a well thought through view of life…more a developed disregard for anything
personal about God. Atheism can be a way
of life; it doesn’t have to be a philosophy.
As the silence of God continues, our faith in Him
wanes and we pay less attention to Him operating in our world. Disappointment may be the biggest cause of
atheism. Why didn’t God help me with
this problem? How come God doesn’t
change my circumstances? I thought God
would get me a job, make my daughter well, save my marriage, stop me from
drinking, grant me a pardon. We don’t
intend to stop believing in God. It just
happens as our disappointments and busy lifestyles deconstruct our faith in a
personal and interactive Lord. I am
pretty certain it happened with Moses.
His reaction to the burning bush is a snapshot of practical
atheism. God let him down back in Egypt,
why should he trust the Lord now forty years later when God clearly was meeting
him out in the hills of Midian.
Imagine if Moses continued to sulk when he met God
at the burning bush. What if he had
turned around and walked away when the first sign of God appeared to him? How different our history would be. How different would have been everything for
Moses? It is a most amazing moment when
God comes to us and it really is God. We
can’t perhaps put our finger on how we are so certain it is God but it is God
and the moment we know it is God we are either going to respond with anger and
disgust over all the wrong we feel He has done us or we are going to awaken,
like a child opening her eyes to the morning light, and recognize the love in
His call to us.
The Lord told us to watch for Him to come to
us. He means for us to be ready to see
Him. He won’t prepare us for His
entrance. There will be no trumpets
blaring to warn us He is near. He will
simply come. And when He comes it will
be as certain to you as a friend entering into your house that He is there. His entrance may not be logical…it may make
no sense to you at all but He will be with you and you will know He is with you
and nothing will be the same from then onward.
Micah the prophet recognized that no one else may watch and wait for the
Lord to come to them but he would. But
as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will
hear me. Do not gloat over me, my
enemy! Though I have fallen, I will
rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord
will be my light. (Micah 7: 7-8 NIV) When the Lord comes, you will
be surprised by Him and you won’t be prepared for what He does next with
you. He might speak through you or love
someone through you or heal through you.
His presence will be most wonderful and although you may have fallen,
like Micah, you will rise. You will rise
above your sin and rise above your hurt and rise above your disappointment and
rise above your failure and the Great God of All will be there with you. Nothing can stop the Lord from coming to you. You will be amazed and in your heart cry,
“That is the Lord.” Watch for Him! Look for Him.
Listen for Him. The Lord will
come to you. Be prepared to meet Him!