...I won't blame God...

“1 From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ 3 But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ 5 The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not’” Exodus 17:1-7?

Dear friends, why do we blame God or quarrel against God, or protest what God has permitted to happen in life?

I ask these questions not just because the Israelites did this in the desert, but because I recently buried my son, Andy, who died at age 33, leaving behind his wife, Nina, who is pregnant with their only child, a son. To me, I could easily blame God, just as Israel did repeatedly in the desert. We all could all do this. But blaming God gets me nowhere. It gets me no where because I believe God is the creator of life, and we have no one to blame for our death except ourselves. As I have said before, the God I know and love is a God who creates life and sustains life. The God I know doesn’t walk around pushing people to their death. God doesn’t sit on the sidelines taking life-sustaining water away from the Israelites.

Our physical death is a natural consequence of human biology, but death became the penalty for sin after the fall of humanity when we chose sin over grace, while God’s place in death is as the ultimate judge, redeemer, and restorer of life. When we die, our soul is separated from our body and sees its own moral state clearly and recognizes God’s judgement as completely true and just. 

But this tells me that our soul without a body is incomplete. God will overcome our death on the last day, when God will raise the dead by reuniting our human soul with our newly restored physical bodies. For me, our suffering and death is connected to Christ’s death on the cross, where God provided the ultimate sacrifice to satisfy the debt of our human sin, defeated the spiritual power of death, and offered to all of us the hope of eternal life.

Look, when we look at the history of Israel being freed from Pharaoh, we see our own history. Human suffering is never fair, but neither was the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. Yet Christ chose to die — for us. He was also risen from the dead by God, His Father in heaven. That is our hope for all of us. That is my hope! I think this is why the cross and the empty tomb are the sources of our hope in our own eternal life.

So that’s why I won’t complain. That’s why I don’t blame God. I believe God will bring water from the rock!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.