Exodus 15:22-18:27, Matthew 17:24-18:3

Okay so yesterday's blog didn't post for some reason and I was rushing so I didn't notice until now. So here it is.

So today and tomorrow will both be short because Dean has testing for an autism study we’ve been doing for the last 6 months. Please pray that he shows the improvement he’s been making. Today’s reading is about what they Israelites did after they escaped Egypt. This is a good time to share a little basic allegory stuff. Many teachers liken our walk to the journey the Israelites had. Egypt is our life without God. When they were there, they had lost their closeness with God, they were slaves and they did all sorts of things that were against God’s teachings. Basically it was a life apart from God, which is sin. Then Moses came and showed them the power of God. They accepted God’s blessings and obeyed what he said. That is what we do when we begin to follow God. He saved them and now they are going to really learn what this journey means. Often we start following Jesus and we tell him we’re his yet we don’t really understand what that means. We are immature in our walk with God. The Israelites just saw God do one of the most amazing miracles that ever was and suddenly they doubt him again. How like that are we? We face a little challenge and suddenly God is not taking care of us. We whine and complain and we fail to just ask for a solution. All Moses had to do was ask God about water and God fixed it. We lack the faith to do the same a lot of the time I think.
I love verse 26. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all people who suffer from diseases and those sorts of things are guilty of the sin that leads to them. I believe that God is referring to us as a society here. If we keep his commandments, these things will not enter. Many of the dietary laws that God gave the Israelites were probably because of the lack of food preservation and so forth. Science wasn’t far enough for us to be able to eat those things and not have a high chance of getting sick.
In chapter 18 Moses learns something that we don’t do well in my opinion. We are an independent society and we often try to do it all ourselves. Moses couldn’t be in charge of everything for that many people. Yet he was trying. The great part is that God used someone else to point out to Moses that what he was doing wasn’t good. His father in law was the one to discuss it with him. He was spending so much time solving disputes that he could not do what God had really called him to do. I think that a lot of pastors end up having to do this. It is unfortunate because we should be able to solve our disputes ourselves by being loving to one another. I think that we often fail to delegate tasks to others because we are afraid we are not being responsible. The truth is that we are just trying to exert control over the situation. I am going to work hard to release control of some things this week.
Now, there was a typo here. We were supposed to read all of chapter 18 in Matthew. It is interesting that this is where the typo was since I think it is one of the passages we ignore the most. Matthew 18:15-20 tells us exactly how to do what I was talking about above in terms of dealing with our own conflicts. We are a Church of gossip. I use a capital C because I mean the church as a whole. We talk to our friends about what has hurt us, or to others, or we just let it fester. That is a large part of why our witness to the world is so negative in their eyes. If we would just follow the guidelines that Jesus set out in Matthew 18 we would be able to love one another better. I try my best to go to the person who has upset me first and foremost. I do have a couple friends that I run things by to make sure I’m not being selfish or irrational in my feelings but I do my best to approach the person I am concerned about quickly. If I feel the need to bring someone else into the situation, I make sure that other party is present when I do. We spend way too much time talking about one another behind backs, and telling our pastors what we think they should do to “help” those around us. If we have a problem, it is our responsibility to be completely open with that person. If we don’t like what they say, we need to go as a pair to someone else, not just tell someone else that we need their help bringing someone around to our side. It’s not about winning or being right, it’s about reconciling and living in harmony.
Tomorrow’s reading is Exodus 19-21 and Matthew 19-20:16.