Meribah

 

“Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” Hebrews 4:1

 

There I was, minding my own business, skipping along, tackling my substantial 2019 to-do list, whistling while I worked.  When all of a sudden from out of nowhere, this guy came up, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.  Then, with this crazed look in his eyes and an urgency in his voice, he insisted that I do everything— EVERYTHING— in my power to hold fast and enter God’s rest.

He was the book of Hebrews.  

Hebrews was a letter of warning to Jewish Christians facing persecution. The audience knew the Law well, revered Moses and the prophets, held the old ways in high regard, and had come to find and accept Jesus.  But despite their being well positioned from a theological standpoint, the writer believed them to be seriously at risk.

I’m a planner.  And a doer.  I love lists.  I am so preoccupied with my agenda that daily time with the Lord is, in my mind’s eye, asterisked.  It’s the item that’s not really an item.  It’s a squishy item.  It’s in the “Self Care” column, in the category “Intangible Benefits.” 

And it isn’t a task I ever cross off.  Which I find very unsatisfying.  It’s not ever done.  It’s still on the list tomorrow.  Which means that if I don’t do it today then, oh well, it will still be there when I wake up. 

I usually read that particular item on my list and think “if the other tasks get done,” “if there’s time,” or “if I need to get off my feet for a minute.”  Just think how much better I’ll feel in my bed tonight if I knock off some real, concrete, un-asterisked items?  Won’t that be restful?

I’m pretty happy with my ratio of spinning plates to shattered plates.  Besides, the plate that spins the best is my God plate.  I’m a believer.   I encourage others.  I’m in Bible study.  And God talks to me.  He and I, we’re good. 

(Did you believe that?)  

Because when Hebrews listened to my spiel, it gave me a thumbs down and didn’t buy it for a minute.

See, the Israelites of the Exodus knew God, too.  God talked to them, and they heard Him.   They also saw His many miracles.  He fed them with manna from heaven, and personally led them around.  

Believing He existed and that He was very powerful was never at issue.  And yet, they all dropped dead in the wilderness, and none of them entered His rest.  Even Moses— God’s chosen leader and prophet, the receiver of the Law, the one “faithful in all God’s house as a servant,” the one who talked with God, face to face, like a friend— didn’t enter it. 

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:

Now I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, and all were baptized with Moses in the the cloud and in the sea.  They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.  For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.  But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness. 

Not pleased with most of them.  With those baptized, who ate and drank spiritual food, sourced in Christ.  NOT pleased.

As to what they did wrong, 1 Corinthians goes on to say that the Israelites desired evil things.  Some of them became idolaters.  They ate and drank, and played.  Some of them committed sexual immorality.  Some of them tested Christ.  And some of them complained.  Psalms 78 called them all stubborn and rebellious, with unloyal hearts and an unfaithful spirit.  Psalms 95 said they went astray in their hearts, and did not know God’s ways.  Meanwhile, Hebrews called their collective sin by three names: disobedience, hardness of heart, and unbelief.    

But it wasn’t the kind of unbelief that we think of as unbelief.  Their sin wasn’t an outright rejection of God.  Rather it was something much more subtle and sneaky, something they tried on one day, and then again the next, and then continued to put on.  It infected an entire generation, and it went on for forty years.  It was an ingrained, practiced sin.  It poked at God, provoked and tested Him.

It was neglect.  Each day, they picked something else over Him.  They quarrelled before they considered.  They grumbled rather than hoped.  They played rather than listened.  They preferred the here-and-now over the promise.  If He took too long to answer, they fashioned something else to worship.  They clung to the past, rather than fought for the future.  They easily recognized their hardships, but didn’t easily recognize His dominion over those hardships.  They took the easier path, the grooves of fear well worn and deep, rather than carving out a new one in faith.  Their memory of what He’d already done for them never really influenced what they thought He’d do next.     

It cost them rest.  

The rest wasn’t the same as salvation, though there is a salvation rest.  And it wasn’t the same as heaven, though there is an eternal rest.  And it wasn’t just about settling into the Promised Land, though that was certainly a type of rest.  It was another, more transcendent rest— it was God’s Sabbath rest.  

The kind He established by example at the very beginning, at creation.  The kind for which we must intentionally set apart, practice, fight, and preserve.  The kind that can, once it’s honored, become routine and habitual, an act of worship.  The kind that can’t live alonside us struggling in our own strength.  The kind that, when entered into, feels like lying down in a green pasture beside a Shepherd who will fight your every battle, provide for every meal and every thirst, and speak to you in a kind voice to tell you that everything besides Him is meaningless.  The kind we enter into when we really, truly, let God have it all.  It is the kind that dumps upon us the full benefits of anchoring in Him, pressed down and shaken together.  The kind that makes us the head and not the tail, that stills our inner turmoil and shifts the trembling onto our enemies.

1.  But ironically, we must work to rest.  

Hebrews 4:11 says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.”  When God offered the Israelites the Promised Land, He still required that they fight their way into it.  And Jesus, our Promised Land, requires that we move: “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). And the Sabbath Day is a commandment. Something we do, we prioritize; it isn’t done for us.

2.  And we must do it Today.  

The timing is crucial.  Hebrews urges, “While it is still called today (3:13),” “Today, if you hear His voice,” (3:7), and again, “He specified a certain day— today” (4:7). 

The warning has not changed.  It was the same one, just as urgent, delivered to the Israelites those many years ago: “Look, today I have set before you a blessing and a curse… choose life, and hold fast to Him” (Deut 30:15-20).  And again, “Only be on your guard and diligently watch yourselves, so that you don’t forget the things your eyes have seen and so that they don’t slip from your mind as long as you live.” (Deut 4:9). 

They lost their moment.  Their Today became Yesterday, and it happened while they were on the clock. They fell short. 

We— us— have only Today. 

3. It’s done not just once, but every day. 

A continued work.  Committed to over and over again. We are to “hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start” (Hebrews 3:14), and to “run with endurance the race that is set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2).   

4. It’s not accomplished alone. 

We “encourage each other daily” (Hebrews 3:13), we are “united with those who heard it in faith” (Hebrews 4:2), and we remain “concerned about one another in order to promote love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24), spurring one another on.  Not “staying away” (Hebrews 10:25) from one another, but joining in.

Thousands of years ago He called us an assembly.  He still does Today. 

5.  Worship is a good place to start.

“Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord, shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation!  Let us enter His presence with thanksgiving; let us shout triumphantly to Him in song… Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care.  Today, if you hear His voice: Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah…” (Psalms 95).

6. The Word is the only thing that can reveal our self deceit. 

Not the one-verse-a-day, flowery and inspirational kind of Word that we get when we let our daily bread be nothing more than a spoonful dosed out by someone else, but the Word in its context, studied and meditated on, sought after and hungered for, with a heart laid bare. 

“For the Word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  It is able to judge the ideas and thoughts of the heart.  No creature is hidden from Him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.” (Hebrews 4:12).

This verse, the one we have memorized and out of context, is the one that follows, “Let us strive, therefore, to enter that rest.” It is meant to be the answer to how we avoid a pattern of disobedience.

7.  It’s all about Jesus. 

Not just the book of Hebrews, but all of it.  It’s Him or bust. 

I may put Him in my “Intangible Benefits” column, but He is the only tangible benefit.  Anything else is a lie. And I may consider my un-asterisked items to be the path to rest. But He is the only true rest.  Anything else is a lie.

So whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12.

We have one go at this.  It’s Today.  And it’s Jesus.  Our confidence and our hope.  Our salvation. Our rest. It is not enough to receive, acknowledge, agree with, or even support. In His words, we must hold fast, be careful, pay closer attention to, and love with all our mind and all our heart and all our soul.

When…you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and all your soul by doing everything I am giving you today, then He will restore your fortunes, have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you… This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach.  It is not in heaven so that you have to ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’ And it is not across the sea so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’ But the message is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may follow it.

Deuteronomy 30:1-4, 12-14

Meribah means “strife.” It was the place where Moses fell short of God’s rest.

In that moment, the people were thirsty and complaining. And God asked Moses to talk to the rock to get water. But instead of talking to it, he struck it, like he’d done the last time he was in a similar situation. And this time he did it twice. And then he yelled to the people, “Must we bring water from this rock for you?”

Was it falling back on the past, relying on what worked before? Was it self-reliance, giving himself too much credit? I don’t know. But it was strife, and it was sin, and God said, “Because you did not trust Me to show my holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land I have given them.”

And a private wink didn’t follow it. Moses died, and was gathered to his fathers short of the finish line, having only looked out from a desert mountaintop into a place of promise, filled with milk and honey he’d never taste.

Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. Psalms 90:12