Have you ever been in a situation when you didn’t know what to do? Maybe you felt like you only had one or two options and you didn’t like either of them? We will all run into obstacles in our lives that we don’t know how to handle. With almost certainty, this will happen with your faith. You will probably at one time or another be questioned about your faith or pushed on what you believe. Jesus himself experienced multiple situations like this in his ministry. We read about one of those situations in Mark 11:27-33. In this passage, Jesus is confronted by the religious leaders in the temple. They asked him by what authority is he doing and saying these things. If Jesus said that he was doing these thing by the authority of being the Messiah, the son of God, he probably would have been attacked. If he said that that we was doing it by his own authority, he might have lost credibility. Either way, answering this question, at this particular time, would have disrupted the plans God had made for Jesus. This isn’t the only time Jesus was seemingly trapped with a difficult question.
In John 8:1-11, the Pharisees brought a women, caught in the act of adultery, to Jesus. They asked him if they should stone her according to the Law of Moses or let her go? This lands Jesus in another difficult to answer situation. If he says to stone her, then he is condemning this women. If he let her go, then the Pharisees’ trap would have worked and they could have accused Jesus of denying the authority of the Law. In both passages, what we read in Mark 11 and John 8, Jesus is in a tricky spot and seemingly only has a couple of options. However, Jesus, in the wisdom given to him by the Spirit, comes up with the third option. In Mark 11, he asks the religious leaders a question they can’t answer, effectively ending the conversation. In John 8, Jesus defuses the situation by saying, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). After that, everyone leaves. The point is, God provides us with other options.
In the book of Mark, chapter 10, we read this story about a devoted Jew, who understands that Jesus is someone special. He comes to Jesus and asks a really good question, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). We know, having the luxury of being able to look back on all of Jesus’ teachings, that following Jesus and devoting our lives to him is what gives us the right to become children of God and heirs to eternal life. This is exactly what Jesus wants this unnamed man to do.
Jesus asks this man to sell everything he had and give it to the poor, and then to come and follow him. Imagine being this man. Imagine owning 1,000 acres of land, filled with livestock, fields, barns and equipment. All of which would be worth millions of dollars. I mean, this is everything you have, maybe you inherited it from your father and plan on passing it to your children. This could have been in the family for generations, and with what we know of inheritance of Jewish property in the time of Jesus, it most likely was. Then Jesus asks you to sell all of it and give the money to the poor! Imagine what you would have done in his situation? Better yet, imagine what you have to lose?
I don’t want you to miss Jesus by an acre. By that I mean, I don’t want you to miss following Jesus because of something that you’re holding onto in your life. The sad and ironic things is, later in the chapter Jesus says these words, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for my sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). There is nothing this unnamed man could have given up that he wouldn’t have received multiplied back to him in kingdom. The same goes for us, anything this world can offer, anything we have, is not even worth being compared to the riches of the kingdom.
In Exodus 23 and 24 God continues to lay out the laws that will help provide a stable foundation for Israelite society, and there are a couple that really catch my eye.
Exodus 23
“You must not pass along false rumors. You must not cooperate with evil people by lying on the witness stand.
2 “You must not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you are called to testify in a dispute, do not be swayed by the crowd to twist justice. 3 And do not slant your testimony in favor of a person just because that person is poor.
I really think that this can speak to us today in a powerful way, and maybe convict many of us. I have heard it said that we are living in a “post truth era”, a time when objective facts are not as impactful to people as appeals to emotion and personal beliefs. Many times these emotional appeals are used to push a political agenda or the narrative of a social movement.
Every day our society is making judgements on people, and these opinions can move at the speed of light on the internet, and it can be very easy to follow the crowd and help spread a narrative about a person, but we need to be very careful. If we are passing on unresearched false claims, or choose to ignore facts because they do not fit with the narrative of a movement that we like then we are only spreading lies.
Proverbs 12:22
The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth.
As followers of God we need to value the truth very highly, because God is the God of truth, and in the end it does not matter how society judges something because God is the great judge and we will be judged by God. It is important to remember that the ends do not justify the means, even if a group has a good message, if they spread it with lies and misrepresentations of events they completely undermine any impact their message would have had.
I have heard a lot of people saying things like “you have to go find the right facts”, and usually they say that because the facts do not match their opinion of how something should have gone, and they are searching for somebody who will confirm their feelings. This is called confirmation bias when we look for information and interpret facts to all agree with what we already think. Fundamentally this mindset assumes that we are right about everything and do not need to learn anything new. We need to be humble and realize that we can easily be wrong about things and look forward to searching out the truth. As a person who loves knowledge and being right I can tell you that it is not easy to learn that you are wrong about something, but I have had many mentors in my life that have told me many thousands of times that I am wrong about things, but at this point I am ok with that, because accepting that you are wrong is the first step to learning new things and growing.
In Exodus and Mark we have seen God at work in a mighty way to change his people from the broken people they used to be into his followers. Moses brought them out of Egypt where they turned from God and worshiped the gods of Egypt, and gave them the law of God that would define their society and customs around a worship of God alone. Jesus broke the Israelites out of their wooden and heartless following of the laws of Moses and taught them to change their hearts and love the way God loves. We need that message just as much today since we live in a very broken world, and lots of people are pointing out those issues and trying to tackle them, but these social movements will not bring ultimate peace, they may improve some things, but they can also be deeply flawed and do not have an emphasis on truth that God values and we should value as well.
If we wish to remain in a peaceful and stable society, then we need to put truth first and be quick to listen and slow to judge. We need to learn to see people the way God sees them and humbly submit ourselves to his judgement and not worry about how the world will judge us.
Thank you for reading along with me this week. I hope that these scriptures spoke to you and I hope you will stick around for the rest of the year in this series, because if you do there is a ton you can learn.
In Exodus 21 and 22 God lays down many laws for the Israelites to follow in order to try and establish them as a functioning and stable nation. There is a lot in there about how to judge between two people when somebody is injured, or commandments to respect parents and authorities, or punishments for thieves. Some of the laws, like the ones about how to deal with slaves, are quite outdated, but I think some of them can be very beneficial to us even today.
Exodus 22
21 “You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.
I think this is a good message today for how to treat foreigners and to help us realize that every person is a child of God and has value in his eyes, and that Jesus died for them as well. But I think it also can apply to us when we look at unsaved people, because at some point in our lives we were all wandering away from God, and so we really cannot judge others who are currently living outside of God’s will too harshly, we need to humbly chase after them with love in hopes of helping them to find the grace of God that we have, not hit them over the head with a Bible so that we can let them know how wrong they are.
Meanwhile during Jesus’ ministry he is healing people and miraculously feeding thousands of people and is starting to get through to his disciples.
Mark 8
15 As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.”
16 At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread. 17 Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? 18 ‘You have eyes—can’t you see? You have ears—can’t you hear?’ Don’t you remember anything at all? 19 When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?”
“Twelve,” they said.
20 “And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?”
“Seven,” they said.
21 “Don’t you understand yet?” he asked them.
Even after he had produced food out of nothing they were still thinking about physical food, not the deeper meanings of Jesus’ messages, but just a few verses later we see a breakthrough with Peter.
Mark 8
27 Jesus and his disciples left Galilee and went up to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along, he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets.”
29 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.”
I can imagine the relief that Jesus must have felt knowing that finally these think-headed, hard-hearted, best friends of his were starting to understand that he was doing something much deeper than just feeding people. He was changing their hard hearts to love others the way he loved them. He feels that same joy when we spend time studying his word and spending time with other believers and start to understand and reflect him more.
After being taken out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea on dry ground, grumbling their way through the Desert of Sin and failing many tests, the people of Israel have made it to Mount Sinai where God is going to meet with them and establish the rules for them.
Exodus 19
3 Then Moses climbed the mountain to appear before God. The Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “Give these instructions to the family of Jacob; announce it to the descendants of Israel: 4 ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. You know how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples on earth; for all the earth belongs to me. 6 And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”
Then, after Moses runs up and down the mountain several times, God gives the ten commandments to the people, and it was completely overwhelming.
Exodus 20
18 When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear.
19 And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!” 20 “Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!”
21 As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.
When the Israelites saw the pure raw power of God displayed before them they were terrified and realized that they had been disobeying and testing the one true God. But this encounter was very impactful and the Israelites stuck to the ten commandments and the rest of the law until the time of Jesus, but we do see that their teachers had really perverted the commandments by then.
In today’s New Testament chapter (Mark 7) Jesus is talking to some of the religious leaders, and they are mad because his disciples are not washing their hands before a meal, which is an old religious tradition from the time of Moses. Jesus is disgusted with them because of the cleanliness of their hands contrasted with the perversion in their hearts.
Mark 7
9 Then he said, “You skillfully sidestep God’s law in order to hold on to your own tradition. 10 For instance, Moses gave you this law from God: ‘Honor your father and mother,’and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ 11 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ 12 In this way, you let them disregard their needy parents. 13 And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition. And this is only one example among many others.”
14 Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said, “and try to understand. 15 It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.
We have talked a bit about remembering what God has done for us, and having it in as obvious of a place as possible to remind us so that we do not forget about what God did for us, and this often leads to traditions, which can be very good to remind us. For instance we have Christmas as a time to remind us to celebrate and thank God for sending Jesus, but it has turned mostly into a celebration of consumerism and credit card debt. In all of this we need to remember that it is what comes out of our heart that is the most important.
In Exodus 17 the Israelites again ran out of water and are ready to stone Moses if he didn’t give them water right away, and again God gives them water miraculously, but again the location gets a telling name, it was called “test” and “arguing”. I really wonder what the names of some of the locations in our lives would be called? Would your living room be named “disobedient”, or would your kitchen be named “hateful”? Would your office be named “gossip”? Would our churches be called “whitewashed tombs” if God was in charge of putting the letters in the sign on the road? The way that we treat others can be a test, and every time we fail those tests, or do not trust in God, or grumble and complain about things it puts up big red signs all over the place and those outside of the church can see them.
Luckily in Mark 5 we have examples of extraordinary faith and the blessings that followed.
Mark 5
25 A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. 28 For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
30 Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
31 His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
32 But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
I am sure many of you are familiar with my Mom, Beth Mattison, and her battle with cancer from 2016 to 2020. She had faith in God completely and we all prayed hard for her, and I firmly believe that God answered our prayers and helped reduce her cancer in 2016 when things did not look good, and he gave us four extra years with her and let her meet her children’s spouses and see her first grandchild. God honors faith in this life, and ultimately he will reward our faith in him during his Kingdom.
Later we see several examples of people not seeing God at work around them, with Jesus’ neighbors not believing in him because they knew his family. We then have another incident on water.
Mark 6
47 Late that night, the disciples were in their boat in the middle of the lake, and Jesus was alone on land. 48 He saw that they were in serious trouble, rowing hard and struggling against the wind and waves. About three o’clock in the morning[i] Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. He intended to go past them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the water, they cried out in terror, thinking he was a ghost. 50 They were all terrified when they saw him.
But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage! I am here![j]” 51 Then he climbed into the boat, and the wind stopped. They were totally amazed, 52 for they still didn’t understand the significance of the miracle of the loaves. Their hearts were too hard to take it in.
During my Mom’s fight with cancer it would have been very easy for us to grumble or complain, or not see God at work, but it is important to soften our hearts and trust in God and see him at work around us.
So after the amazing events of Exodus 14 and the crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground and the waters swallowing up the armies of Pharaoh the Israelites spend some time praising God and we have the text of their praises in the beginning of Chapter 15, and then they set out on the road.
Exodus 15
“22 Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without finding any water. 23 When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means “bitter”).
24 Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded. 25 So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and this made the water good to drink.”
It was there at Marah that the Lord set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to him. 26 He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.”
27 After leaving Marah, the Israelites traveled on to the oasis of Elim, where they found twelve springs and seventy palm trees. They camped there beside the water.
Right after God showed them that he is capable of providing everything for them he gives them a test and they instantly fail the test. God is showing them that they have bitter hearts and no faith, but they will have to have faith in God in order to survive. After this they continue on.
Exodus 16
“1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt.
2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
3 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.”
They do not look forward to the glory to come. They have been promised a land of their own and that they will become a great nation, but all they can see is the pain of the moment. They also do not see the past and the many ways that God has come through for them. Again all they can see is their momentary pain. We know from Hebrews 12:2 that Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him, and that is what we need to do as well.
One thing I notice is that a lot of the locations they went to got their names changed after something big happened there, I wonder how this desert got the name “the desert of sin”.
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.
5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
God’s responses are not just a handout, they are a test. God does not provide for us just to fill a little need, it is to help us to grow, and to see our response. After an encounter with God we are not supposed to go back to how things were, but continue growing.
You have to wonder, if they would just handle one of these situations well, would the rest of the trip have gone easily? They are very impatient, kind of like how Moses was when he was younger, and killed the Egyptian and tried to get things started. The Israelites just want to be there, but the journey and the growing is very important. God wants his people to inhabit the lands of Canaan, not just some group of people that doesn’t know him.
Right after the passover God wants to make sure that the Israelites will remember what He did for all time.
Exodus 13
14 “And in the future, your children will ask you, ‘What does all this mean?’ Then you will tell them, ‘With the power of his mighty hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt, the place of our slavery. 15 Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, so the Lord killed all the firstborn males throughout the land of Egypt, both people and animals. That is why I now sacrifice all the firstborn males to the Lord—except that the firstborn sons are always bought back.’ 16 This ceremony will be like a mark branded on your hand or your forehead. It is a reminder that the power of the Lord’s mighty hand brought us out of Egypt.”
In our lives God has worked a lot, and maybe when you were less spiritually mature God did a work in your life and you forgot about it, well as you grow older maybe God will remind you of that time in your past that He has been with you. As you grow you should realize that those times are important, and that you need to pass them on to help the faith of others.
Sometimes we need something to be so obvious and in our face, as a symbol on our hand in order to remember what God has done, and He understands that.
Then right after telling the Israelites to never forget about what He does for them and to pass it down for generations He leads them to the Red Sea and then leads them across it, which had to have been one of the most amazing events to see ever.
Exodus 14
19 Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, 20 coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, 22 and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
I’m sure this cements their faith in God….
Meanwhile in Mark 4 we see another example of God’s power over the water.
Mark 4
35 As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” 36 So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). 37 But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.
38 Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”
39 When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. 40 Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”
The disciples would have known the story of the Exodus inside and out, and this showed them very clearly that God was working, and that Jesus must be serving God to have these abilities. Through the rest of the book, and in the other Gospels we see their lives changed by the message of God, and in the rest of the Exodus we will see how many of the Israelites receive God’s instructions, and I think Jesus summarizes the different responses we can have really well in Mark 4.
14 The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others. 15 The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message, only to have Satan come at once and take it away. 16 The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. 17 But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word. 18 The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, 19 but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced. 20 And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”
The disciples will take a little while to catch on, but by their example that we see later in the New Testament we see that they were the good soil in this parable, and in Exodus we will start to see that many in the Israelite community represent the footpath or the rocky soil in this parable. It is important for us to maintain our connection to other strong Christians and continue to read God’s word so that we can grow deep roots and weather the storms of life, so that we can be a good witness to others and keep the faith.
Seek Grow Love 