Red Sea Moments

The Bible is a book of stories.  It is like a family get-together once the children have grown up, where everyone sits around saying, "Remember when....."   

That is how the collection of stories were finally stitched together.  The stories that stood out in the memories of a family first, then of a tribe, then of a nation were told and re-told.  These were the dramatic and memorable moments --- the moments when they finally realized once and for all that God-is -with-us and that He is faithful to act on our behalf. 

Their faith came not from philosophy, but from experience -- experience so dramatic as never to be forgotten.  When I was about 36, someone asked me who God was to me.  On thinking about it, I said that He was the God of my past; that is, I could look back on my life and see where He had helped me before -- but He was not then the God of my future.  I could not trust Him for the next day, or the next ten years, and I had many fears about the future.  I was afraid of what might come next.

There was a reason why I could not trust God for the future at that point.  One reason was probably that I had not yet had enough adult experience on which to base my trust.  But the second, and most important reason, was that, even though I prayed on a regular basis, I did not remember what God had done for me in the past.  Every moment was a new moment, and the past had no bearing on what might come next. 

At that time, I did not have a biblical viewpoint to guide my thinking.  Looking back now from a biblical perspective, I realize that we were not taught as children to have what is essentially a Jewish mentality:  their faith is wholly based on remembrance of what God had done for them as a family, as a people, as a nation.  Their book is a book of remembrance.

When David went out against Goliath, Saul looked at this youth and said, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth" (I Sam. 17:33).  Now, let me say that that is exactly the way most of us think:  we are realists; we see things "as they are," and we do not want to be "fools" in believing something that is not real.  After all, we have brains for a reason, and eyes in our heads; we can see "what's what!"

David's reply was based not on philosophy, but on reality:  He had had experience, and so he told his story -- what he remembered -- about God's help:

Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.  When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.  The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine (I Sam.17:34-37).

David's faith in God's help was based not on something he read or something someone told him, but on his personal experience of God's deliverance of him in that past.  That is the Bible!  That is why these stories were told and re-told, and why "stones of remembrance" were erected all over the land.  That is why we have altars in our churches today -- these are "stones of remembrance" of all that God has done for us.

Today, I would love to gather a group of people for "Rocking Chair Stories" of how and when God had helped them. [More about this tomorrow.] These are the stories on which we can base our faith in the future: moments when our backs were up against the Red Sea and the Egyptian army was bearing down on us with vengeance, moments when a path, an escape route, were suddenly opened to us, and we were delivered after all!  When we recall these moments, our response is "Thank God He.....!"  In other words, our response is always praise, worship, thanksgiving -- this is the praise of a pure heart of gratitude, and it forms the basis of our trust in the future, that God will still be with us when the time comes.

Psalm 106 is too long to introduce here, but it sums up what happens when people forget what God has done for them.  Maybe tomorrow, we'll look at it.  In the meantime, if we can all recall a moment of deliverance from our past, we have something on which to base our faith in the future.