Today’s reading: Numbers 20; James 1
God, by his own choice, partners with others to accomplish His work. This is not out of need or lack on His part, but purely because He desires to do it. We see multiple times in the Old Testament where He leaves it to His divine council to decide how to enact His will, and then to carry it out (e.g. 1 Kings 22). We also see, throughout the Scriptures, that God empowers and uses people to enact His will and purposes on earth. This was the case right from the very beginning when we are told that God created the earth, but then created Adam and Eve and gave them the task of being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and subduing it. God created the world, He was certainly capable of subduing it and turning the entire world into the Edenic vision from the outset, but He delights instead to leave that meaningful work to His image bearers as partners with Him in the work.
What’s fascinating to me about this is that we don’t always know what is His part and what is our part. A story that I have always felt exemplifies this tension so well is the story of Chuck Smith deciding where to move to start a church. Rather than counting the number of non-Christians in various cities, or interviewing people to try to gauge receptivity and openness to a new church, or any of a hundred other ways that churches and ministries try to decide where to plant next, Chuck Smith moved to California because he loved to surf. And God used that decision massively, starting, not just a church, but really a movement that has hugely impacted multiple generations for Christ. God didn’t send him an angel or give him a dream telling him where to go, He left it up to His human partner in the work and then He honored what he chose to do in trying to serve Him and blessed his efforts.
And we see this same divine/human interplay in the wilderness wanderings, and expressly here in our chapter this morning in a way that bothers me a little bit because I have trouble wrapping my head around it logistically. But we know that during the wilderness wanderings Israel was led around by the presence of Yahweh as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and when the cloud lifted up from the tabernacle they would pack up camp and follow. But then, while we have that going on, we also have a few instances like this one in Numbers 20 where Israel comes to the border to Edom and asks permission to pass through their land, then heads out in a different direction when Edom refuses them. In my head, I go straight to the logistics of that, like was the cloud in Edom’s territory, waiting for Israel to follow, but they were hesitating at the border? What about when they changed directions? Did the cloud keep going and they met back up on the other side of Edom, or did the cloud come back and meet them? How much was it Israel following the cloud verses the cloud out in front with the choices Moses was making? It honestly makes my head hurt a bit…
But here’s the important thing I try to remind myself when I start down a rabbit hole like this one: Sending me down a rabbit hole is not why they author put this here.
Now, that said, there is nothing wrong with noodling things like this to try to understand better how things did or didn’t work, but we can’t let that distract us from the point the author was trying to make. And here, I think one of the reasons that the author includes this is to show us that God is, in fact, honoring His people’s choices and letting Moses partner with Him in leading Israel and deciding what happens next. We aren’t told here what would have happened if Moses had pushed through Edom despite the army, maybe God would have honored that and moved Edom to back down, we simply don’t know. But what we do know is that God put Moses and the other leaders of Israel in a position to make a choice in how to accomplish what He had before them, and then He honored their choice and continued to guide Israel through the wilderness along the new route around Edom.
So here in Numbers 20 we see this interplay between God’s divine hand leading Israel, and His using/allowing Moses to lead Israel as he sees fit. And this is still the way God tends to operate with the church today. But as we enjoy the privilege of getting to partner with God in the work He is doing in this world, this chapter also has a warning for us about that partnership…
Moses and Aaron receive a severe consequence for not leading the people the way God tells them to when the people are complaining about not having water. God tells them to go and speak to a rock and bring forth water for the congregation, but instead they chastise the people for being rebels, ask if they (Moses and Aaron) should bring forth water for them, and then strike the rock with the staff. Neither Aaron nor Moses gets to enter the promised land as a result of failing to uphold God as holy before the people.
I think the problem here is that Moses lost sight of the partnership and started to think he was the one accomplishing these great things for Israel, rather than it being God accomplishing these great things through him. We see it somewhat in the fact that he strikes the rock rather than speaking to it like God told him to, but we see it more in him seemingly taking credit as the one providing them the water. And this is a very real danger as we seek to step out and pursue the Lord’s work.
Generally, the more we step out in faith, the more opportunities the Lord will entrust to us, and if we show ourselves faithful in those, we will be entrusted with even more. It can sometimes be easier early on in this process to recognize that it is God behind it all as we are simply in awe that we get to be used in these ways at all. But over time, as the newness of the opportunities to serve fades, the awe starts to slip away, and we can easily start, more and more, to think we have these opportunities because we are just so good at them, rather than seeing them as a gift from the Lord. When this happens and we start to take credit for the Lord’s work in and through us, He will still, at times, honor the work we are doing, just as He still brought forth water for the people when Moses arrogantly struck the rock, but it will not be as fruitful if we are doing it under our own power or for our own glory, and if we don’t repent and hand His glory back over to Him, we will very likely find ourselves ultimately removed by God from those very roles and opportunities we have grown prideful about.
Getting to partner with God in His work is the greatest privilege we can experience. The right response from us to this privilege should be gratitude and a humbling sense of amazement and wonder that God would partner with and use even someone as broken and insufficient for the work as me. And then we need to guard that response so that it doesn’t fade with time and experience into self-sufficient pride that loses track of the partnership and starts to think the sufficiency and ability are coming from me.
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