Faith and the Real World

As the saying goes, “When it rains, it pours.”  When we experience difficult times, the worries and the problems seem to stack up and compound; leaving us feeling helpless and confused.  The Holy Spirit wants you to know that even when all hope seems gone, the Lord still cares.

Maybe you lost your job, or a loved one, or something you thought was stable is no crashing and burning.  What happened?  Why did it happen?  Where is God?  Aren’t we supposed to be blessed?  Suddenly there seems to be a harsh dichotomy between what you hear on Sunday at church and what you experience during the week.  You’re not alone.  The writer of Lamentations 3:7-11 wrote,

He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
He has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help,
He shuts out my prayer.
He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
He has made my paths crooked.
Like a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in hiding,
He dragged me from the path and mangled me
And left me without help.

Sounds pretty familiar, right?  So what is actually going on?  Have we fallen out of God’s blessing, or is there more at work here?

When Moses returned to Egypt from his self-exile, he brought hope for his people.  He was going to free them from slavery!  The Israelites were reminded that they were God’s people- and they are.  Moses would later remind the new generation, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.  The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession” (Deuteronomy 7:6).  Likewise, when we were saved we were told, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).  And we learned that, like Israel, those who are saved are special:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10).

But then life decided to remind you of another truth: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

It got real bad for the Israelites real fast after Moses showed up.  History records,

Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us.  Now let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.”
            But the king of Egypt said, “Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labor?  Get back to your work!”  Then Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working.”
            That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw.  But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota.  They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God’” (Exodus 5:3-8).

Yeah, things tend to go like that.  You feel called by the Lord toward holy things, but life has other ideas.  There’s a passage in the Gospel in which Jesus compared faith and how it germinates in our lives.  He noted,

The one who received the seed that feel among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.  But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it.  He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown (Matthew 13:22-23).

That’s easy for you to say, Lord!  But we try to keep our faith alive, after all, we’re promised an exponential return, right?  But the hits just keep coming.  The story of Israel continues,

Then the Israelite foremen went and appealed to Pharaoh: “Why have you treated your servants this way?  Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’  Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”
            Pharaoh said, “Lazy, that’s what you are – lazy!  That is why you keep saying, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’  Now get to work.  You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”
            The Israelite foremen realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.”  When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, “May the Lord look upon you and judge you!  You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us” (Exodus 5:15-21).

It was easy to see that somewhere between faith and reality something wasn’t matching up.  Even Moses was shaken;

Moses returned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people?  Is this why you sent me?  Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all” (Exodus 5:22-23).

Where’s the freedom, blessing, and a new life we were promised?

It is tempting to stop right there.  Quite honestly I’ve felt a lot of the despair of Lamentations in my life.  And the length of this series only serves to highlight how long and dark things can get.  But “life sucks and then you die” isn’t the end.  God was listening to Moses,

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”
            God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord.  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them.  I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.  Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
            “Therefore, say to the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.  Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.  I will give it to you as a possession.  I am the Lord’” (Exodus 6:1-8).

The Lord knows our plight and he is sympathetic to our situation.  Indeed he has more ready for us than misery- your pastor on Sunday is trying to remind you of that.  As bleak as things may seem, God is on the throne and as it is written,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (Romans 8:28-30).

God is not blind to your troubles, my friend.

But a fat lot of good some words do, right?  The Bible tells us, “Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9).  And maybe that’s where you’re at right now.  Well I still have good news:

Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him,
We will also live with him;
If we endure,
We will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
He will also disown us;
If we are faithless,
He will remain faithful,
For he cannot disown himself (2 Timothy 2:11-13).

Even when we lose faith, the Lord’s unchanging nature means that he will remain faithful.  And sure enough history reminds us, “He led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert” (Acts 7:36).  Maybe today you can’t feel it, maybe the walls just keep closing in.  But our God is mighty, and the greater the troubles we face now, the greater the miracles we will see.  Let’s keep our faith and hope alive.  As it is written, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).