Psalms Of Faith And Doubt In Ancient Times
17 But they continued to sin against him,
rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
18 They willfully put God to the test
by demanding the food they craved.
19 They spoke against God, saying,
“Can God spread a table in the desert?
20 When he struck the rock, water gushed out,
and streams flowed abundantly.
But can he also give us food?
Can he supply meat for his people?”
How many ways do we dare to test God? St. Augustine said, “It is one thing to ask out of believing, another thing in tempting.” The Psalm takes us back in time into the desert with Moses. The sin there was asking God, “You gave us water from a stone, but what about something to eat?” as if God were nothing more than a magician.
James said, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). That’s the way we should ask God: by trusting that he will do everything for us that we need, and by showing our faith and our eagerness to serve him by also doing everything we can in his service. We don’t earn answers to our prayers, but we want to be good stewards with what we have been given.
21 When the LORD heard them,
he was very angry;
his fire broke out against Jacob,
and his wrath rose against Israel,
22 for they did not believe in God
or trust in his deliverance. (NIV)
What do we deserve for our sins? We deserve the kind of wrath that broke out against the people in the desert. Sins of doubt are still sins, and still cause God’s wrath. But we have a Savior, a rescue from our sins, even our sins of doubt. We look to him for strength and for guidance and for relief from our burdens, but most of all we look to him for forgiveness, and we see in his Word that he has indeed forgiven us, and that he has also given us strength, and guidance, and relief.
Luther points us back to our baptism:
Baptism with its blessings and promises remains efficacious, though we may have fallen into sin and guilt, if we return from our error and do not continue in our wickedness. It will never do to seek forgiveness of sins and yet persistently to abide in them; we must repent and in true faith say: My Lord God has assured me of all mercy, when I was baptized in the Baptism of his Son, and now I will turn back to this grace of God, being convinced that my sins are removed, not, indeed, for my own sake or that of any other creature, but solely for Christ’s sake, who has instituted and ordained baptism, and who was himself baptized, as though he had been a sinner.” (Sermon on Mathew 3:13-17).
Remembering that we are sinners should never be a problem for us. But never forget that you are also a forgiven, baptized child of God.
Augustine quote is from his sermon on this text, probably written between 418 and 430, in Hippo, North Africa.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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