The Failing
of Faith
by Sam Renfro
Before I get started, I wanted us to come to an agreement, because if we don’t start off at the same place, we won’t end up in the same place. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” We need to come to an agreement on that, because God’s Word teaches us that in order to please Him we must to have faith in our lives. Faith is more than just a word, it’s more than just a good Bible teaching – it’s real.
Let me share with you a little bit about the failing of faith. If we know we need to have faith to please God, why is it that sometimes we don’t have the faith that we need? Why is it that we know the principle and premise that we need faith to please God, yet sometimes it’s just not active in our lives?
I have a red van. Right now it looks like somebody took a baseball bat and
beat it up really bad. When you have 6 or 8 children in your family, it doesn’t
take long for your vehicle to look like that on it’s own. When we were
still living in Houston, I took this van and drove it to Home Depot. I love
Home Depot.
I think it’s the only manly man store there is. I went to Home Depot
one day, bought my things and went back to my van. I reached up to turn the
key, and nothing happened. Have you ever had a vehicle like that? Up to that
time, my van had never had any problems. But this time, it wouldn’t start.
I’m not a very good auto mechanic, and those types of things sort of
defy me. I didn’t know what was wrong. I was sitting there, the van wouldn’t
start, and so what did I immediately do? What did I immediately think? My van
had started thousands of times before, and yet all of a sudden, just like that,
I lost faith in my van. After that point, every time I went to start my vehicle,
I would wonder, if it was going to start. I didn’t trust it. Just like
that there was a failing of faith.
Number 20:1-12 tells the story of another failing of faith:
"In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried. Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! Why did you bring the LORD's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!’ Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell face down, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.’ So Moses took the staff from the LORD's presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.’"
I see a failing of faith in these few verses. I want to share with you several observations of some things that cause us to have a failing of faith. We bring God down to our process of evaluation. When you look back in verse 2, there was no water for the people so they came together against Moses and Aaron and they argued with Moses. Then there's this big evaluation that takes place. Why are we here? Why didn't we die back there in Egypt with our brothers? There's no pomegranates or figs or grapevines. There is nothing out here in this desert. They immediately began to evaluate the situation.
The problem is that we do the same thing. We look at where we are apart from faith, instead of where we could be with faith. That's what the Israelite were looking at. They looked at their immediate circumstance instead of seeing it as part of the journey – we're on our way, God has provided water before, He'll provide water again. He'll meet our needs, He'll supply, we'll be fine. What did they need to do? They needed to continue to have faith in God. But instead, they began to evaluate the whole situation. We bring God down to our process of evaluating instead of being where He would want us to be. Back to the van, my first thought was, “Great! Now I've got to get it fixed. I don't even know what's broken. To even get home I've got to have the thing towed. It costs at least a $100 just to have someone look at your vehicle, let alone tow it. We have to walk back to the house, I forgot my cell phone . . .” I was evaluating the situation and it was horrible. That's what we do sometimes, we bring God down to our process of evaluating the situation. That's exactly what Moses and Aaron did. They lost their faith. Instead of simply speaking to the rock, Moses got angry and hit the rock. And there was the failing of faith.
Not only do we bring God down to our process of evaluation, we bring God down to our plane of existence. We bring Him down to where we are. What is the one thing God is always trying to do in our lives? Isn't it to lift us up to where He is? Because it's a different plane of existence. But sometimes when we get into a situation, the first thing we want to do is bring God down to where we exist. The Israelites said in verses 3-5, "only if we had died back there . . . God look at this existence you put us in, we're in the desert, we're thirsty, we don't have any water. Why in this desert?"
We do the exact same thing. We bring God down to our plane of existence. We want to bring God down to where we are instead of letting Him take us to where He wants us to be. Isn't this simply a story of a process where the Israelites are going from one place to another? Instead of looking where God was taking them, they were looking at where they were. Don't we do the same thing? We find ourselves in a bad situation, a difficult situation and we say, “God, look at where we are.” By the way, God always knows where you’re at! You don't have to remind Him. God wants to get us to a better place. Don't let your faith fail. But we try to bring God down.
How are some ways we bring God down? We do it through complaining, (“they gathered against Moses and Aaron”). We do it by comparing (“we were better off in Egypt.” Really? How was it better? They were slaves! They were making bricks. As soon as they were born, their children belonged to the Pharaoh. Egypt was so much better?) We do it by criticizing (Moses and Aaron’s leadership was criticized). The children of Israel wanted to get to the end of the journey before it had even really started. We do the same thing. We don't like where we are, so we don't want anybody else to be happy either. Isn't that the truth? Man, if I'm miserable, I want everyone around me to be miserable, so we can all be miserable together. We complain, we compare, we criticize. Let me say, having been a pastor for 11 years, be careful about criticism in your church. You get unhappy, you get a little bit off center, a little bit down, and the next thing you know you are going around saying, man things aren't so hot here. We start complaining, comparing, and criticizing. We have a tendency to bring God down to our plane of existence.
We bring God down to our power of explanation. In verses 10-11, Moses is standing before the people, having asked God what he's supposed to do. God tells him what to do. Moses and Aaron gathered the people in front of the rock and Moses said, “Now listen to me, you who turn against God, do you want us to bring water out of this rock?” The people had seen Moses strike the rock before to get water. He didn't tell the people that this time God had told him to speak to the rock. He tried to explain it differently to the people. The process was not his to explain. By faith, he was to accept and carry out the direction of God.
That's what faith is in our lives. We don't need to explain it. If God has directed you to do a certain thing, or something a certain way, you don't have to explain it. You just by faith do it. But Moses is trying to explain it. Faith defies explanation. You don't have to explain faith. Faith is. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen. You don't explain faith, you just live faith. You practice faith. Faith doesn't need an explanation.
Faith demands exploration. Faith is when we say, “Lord, is that what You want?” We don't argue. We simply say, “If that's what you want, let's go that direction.” If God tells you to do something by faith, you can't get there without exploring the process of getting there. God had taken the children of Israel though a process of getting them to where he wanted them to be.
Faith dwarfs expectations. Ephesians 3:20 says, “With
God's power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can
ask or imagine." If
we are asking or imagining something, that means we have expectations. I can
image God doing this with our church. I can imagine God doing this with our
family.
I can imagine God doing this with the lost people who live around me. Whatever
it is, there is some expectation there. What is that you expect? Faith dwarfs
our expectations. We expect something, but God can do much, much more. So whatever
you can ask or imagine, let faith take over in your life, and faith will dwarf
the expectations you have and go beyond that to what God has for you. God wants
to do so much more in our lives than we allow Him to do.
In my opinion, Moses didn't know that he was destroying the
picture and the type of what God meant for man's redemption and salvation.
God's means for redemption and salvation was that Jesus was going to be crucified
on the cross, was going to be "struck." Once that was accomplished,
all we have to do is call on the name of the Lord and we will be saved. Why?
Because He was stricken once, He was broken once and now redemption for mankind
is there for the asking. What Moses did, by bringing God down to his plane
of existence, by bringing God down to his explanation of the process, what
He did was to destroy that picture of God's plan for salvation. I think that
by striking the rock the second time, he was saying Jesus had to be crucified
again. That was never God's plan. God's plan was for Christ to be crucified
once and after that the free plan of salvation was in place. Moses, at this
weak moment, this failing of faith, destroyed that picture and type. Because
of that Moses wasn't able to fulfill the whole plan and purpose God had intended
for him. When it came down to it, that failing of faith cost him not being
able to fulfill the very purpose God had for his life.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. What we need to be so careful of, so concerned about, is that at those times when it is difficult, those times when it's rough, those times that we're struggling with things, we need to make sure we don't begin to bring God down to our process of evaluating the situation. We need to be careful that we don't bring God down to our plane of existence, or our explanation. God knows exactly where we are. He knows exactly what we need. And He knows exactly how to move us from this spot to the next. I trust that in those difficult situations you won't try to bring God down, but instead say, “God, lift me up to where you want me to be. Lift me up to your plane of existence. Help me to go beyond my imagination and my desire for what can be in my life to what it is you want for me in my life.
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