Messages from Pastor Raddatz

September 26, 2021, Mount Olive Houston, 18^th S after Pentecost, also James 5:13-20 and Mark 9:38-50

“I’ve had enough, but THE LORD IS ENOUGH”

Our heartfelt prayers and God’s sincere providing

Numbers 11

Dear People of God,

Grace mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I’VE HAD ENOUGH

I think you have been where Moses has been.  He has had enough.  He is the reluctant leader.  God calls him to free the Children of Israel from slavery.  While he is leading the children of Israel out of slavery he had enough of leading.  He does not want to bear the burden anymore.  He asks the Lord to end his suffering by killing him.  God answers him with enough to keep Moses going.  He provides help through others who share the burden, and he gives them meat to eat.

Now when the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and when Moses prayed to the LORD, the fire was quenched. So he called the name of the place Taberah because the fire of the LORD had burned among them. -David Guzik, Blue Letter Bible

A year earlier they were freed from slavery in Egypt.  They were delivered from the pursuing Egyptians at the Red Sea.  Now they complained about God giving them Manna, a sticky substance that they were able to make into a type of bread.  It was a unique food never seen before.  Its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil: In fact, manna was excellent provision. Seemingly, it could taste like donuts, yet provided all necessary nutrition for a long journey through the wilderness.   Who doesn’t like donuts?  They eventually forgot what the Lord had done and are focused only upon their current discomfort.  It is almost like they became “bored” with God.  They fantasized about their life in Egypt where they had fish, melons, leeks and garlic.  Actually, slaves only had meat on rare occasions.  They romanticized their past life because they did not like their current life.

How easy it is to forget what God has done in our life.  Our own circumstances should not dictate our attitude.  For we can always choose our response.  God would not allow them away in the wilderness. In fact, God provided their every need - though not every desire.

"They could never be satisfied; even God himself could not please them, because they were ever preferring their own wisdom to his. God will save us in his own way, or not at all; because that way, being the plan of infinite wisdom, it is impossible that we can be saved in any other." (Clarke)

GOD IS ENOUGH

          Why does God allow trouble and frustration in our life?  The thought here in our text is that, wants us to realize that OUR STRENGTH is NOT ENOUGH.  Moses prays to God

          God gave Moses a TWO-FOLD SOLUTION to Moses’ problem: (The Lutheran Study Bible. p. 233, notes)

1. Moses task of administration was lightened by the appointment of 70 Elders, v. 25.
2. God also gave them a supply of meat, v. 18-20, which was a response to their irritating complaining. 

God wants us to communicate with him.  The Bible calls it praying, which is just talking to God.  God wants to hear our praise and our every complaint.  

DO YOUR TROUBLES PUSH YOU CLOSER TO GOD OR DO THEY DRIVE YOU AWAY FROM GOD?

Our trials and temptations can be rudders to steer us closer to God.  He wants to hear our “soul’s complaint”.  The Psalms is a prayer book.  A number of the psalms are imprecatory psalms.  Imprecatory psalms express anguish before God about the injustices and unfairness of life.  

In these prayers of complaint, “the psalmists hold these discrepancies up to God’s nose.  They tell hm exactly how they experience His current actions and inactivity towards them.  They complain and protest and ask God to be the one he has told the people he is and the one he has revealed in the past.  They firmly believe, in total disregard of present evidence, that God is still rich in steadfast love and compassion, he is still the one who forgives sin, that his promise and his covenant are still valid and unchangeable, and that his former actions when he made Israel into his people are still characteristic of the way he deals with his people…”  Literally God is “stuck with them” …The psalmists do not explain away their suffering either by pretending that it is not real or by seeing it as what one simply has to expect in this world.  They do not grant that anything is beyond their God’s control.” -Ingar Floysvik, When God Becomes My Enemy: The Theology of the Complaint Psalms

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” -2 Corinthians 12:9.

GOD WILL SUPPLY ENOUGH

• ENOUGH FOR OUR NEEDS: Philippians 4:19 ESV, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
• ENOUGH TO SAVE US: John 3:16 ESV, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
• ENOUGH TO GET US THROUGH: Zephaniah 3:17 ESV, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

          Moses felt his own discomfort.  Instead of asking the Lord to understand the substance of their complaint, Moses asked the Lord why he was given such an ungrateful people to lead.  -Concordia Study Bible, p. 205 Notes 

          God is always merciful, but like a good earthly father he will discipline his people.  His anger burned against the people. God would give Moses help through the seventy Elders, but God would give the people so much meat to eat that it would make them physically ill, see verse 20.

          Moses see’s his problem as monumental and impossible.  He has about 600,000 mouths to feed.  God sees this problem as minor and manageable.  He intervenes because he wants to maintain a relationship with us.  What about human relationships.  

BE WISE ENOUGH TO SHARE AND BOLD ENOUGH TO CARRY ONE ANOTHERS BURDENS, it may just be enough to get along.

You have probably heard these phrases:

A PROBLEM SHARE IS A PROBLEM HALVED.  A JOY SHARED IS A JOY DOUBLED -Unknown

LIFE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO BE BEAUTIFUL, -Unknown

          God calls us to share our problems with him and with one another.  

God’s love is perfect, but our love for each other is imperfect.  God wants us to grow closer to him so we can grow close to each other.   He calls us to share our burdens.   “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” -Romans 12:15

          I learned this from two roommates I had in seminary.  It had to do with how they watched their parents share the responsibilities of providing for each other as they raised their family. 

• One friend said that his Dad always called Mom when he left the shop to see if she needed him to pick up anything from the store on the way home.  Often she would tell him they needed something like bread and milk or something else.  As soon as he got in his car he wrote the list down: ON HIS WINDSHIELD.   He rarely cleaned his windshield.  It was always grimy, but that was his note board.  He would simply write his wife’s list with his finger on the windshield.   This helped share the needs of the family.  This way when he got home his wife had what she needed.
• Another roommate said that his Dad worked as a lineman out in the weather all day.   Whenever he came home he would enter through the back porch where he would yell, “I’m home”.  Before he took off his boots he would take his hat and throw it from the porch into the kitchen like a frisbee.  If the hat came flying back at him on the porch he knew that his wife had enough and now that he was home he was on duty, and she was off duty.   This helped share the challenge of raising the kids.

We do not have to be perfect, to get along.  God calls us to “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” James 5:16

          We praise and thank God that he has saved us through sending his one and only son to die for us and he calls us to walk together as his people. We thank him for the ability to share our burdens and help carry the burdens of each other.  We don’t have to be perfect, but we have to be willing.  

Your fellow servant, 

Pastor John Raddatz