Josh Benner

Tag: exodus

  • Why we need to pursue God everyday

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    Do you have an area in your life today where you’re tempted to doubt God’s goodness?
    Life is hard. There are challenges we face.
    For some of us, it’s health. For some of us, it’s in the relationships we have. Maybe there’s a lot of conflict either with a friend or a neighbor or a family member. But things are just really tough. And maybe you’re in a situation that you just don’t like.
    In the Exodus, the Israelites constantly complain about not having enough, things not being good enough, life not being easy enough.
    For the Israelites, God works all of these signs and wonders. Miraculously redeems them.
    Brings them to the edge of the Red Sea.
    They complain. “Why are we going to die out here?”
    Miraculously God parts the waters. Brings them across. Wipes out the greatest army the world had ever known.
    They get into the wilderness and they don’t have food.
    “Why were brought out here to die?”
    God provides food.
    They don’t have water.
    “Why were we brought here to die?”
    God gives them water.
    Blessing after blessing after blessing. And continually losing sight of all of that.
    They send out scouts who SEE the land and they’re like “Woah, this place is even better than advertised. This place is amazing!” But the people hear about the people in the land, “we can’t beat them. We can’t do it. It’s too much, it’s too hard.”
    It’s easy to judge them. To think, “Wow, the Israelites just didn’t get it.”
    But we often have more in common with the Israelites than we like to admit to ourselves. Their responses are so…human.
    What is your view of the Lord’s blessing? Is it gratitude and thankfulness?
    Or are you never happy because it’s never enough, never close enough to what you want? Never what you think you need?
    Eye on the prize.
    It’s what the Israelites never figured out during their wanderings. They didn’t learn how to enjoy God.
    God can be enjoyed in all circumstances and situations.
    We don’t have to wait until we get through a certain challenge. We don’t need to wait until we get to a certain level of Chrristian maturity. We don’t need to wait to enjoy God. We can rejoice in his goodness and majesty and dominion and holiness today.
    We can and we must.
    Or else, we’ll be like the Israelites. Continually seeing the blessings of God and never enjoying any of it because we always have something else to look at to worry about.
    They were walking in the wilderness but were so often not really walking with God.
    Let me ask you: how’s your Spiritual life today?
    For the Israelites on their wanderings, they had such little joy in God, trust in God, and love for God.
    That’s not the life God wants us to live.
    In time where you’re struggling and not finding joy and delight in God, and when God seems distant to you, how are you doing, Spiritually?
    How’s your devotional life?
    I’ll go out on a limb that it’s struggling, that you’re probably not taking it as seriously.
    Am I wrong?
    If you look back on times where you Spiritually snuggled, were those also the times when you were most serious about pursuing God daily?
    It takes a daily pursuit.
    You can’t take your foot off the gas.
    But it can be hard sometimes. It’s hard for me sometimes.
    It needs to be part of our daily life. Spending time in God’s word, spending time in prayer, having a worshipful heart towards God. And it needs to be part of our life to have a mind that is set on the things above, a mind that is devoted to God, the things of God, meditating on God, rejoicing in God and in his goodness.
    Clearly the Israelites struggled with that on their wanderings. Always finding reasons to complain about what they had been given. Never happy.
    That’s not saying it’ll all become easy.
    But we can experience all of that with God or without God. Rejoicing in God or complaining about God.
    How are you doing today?
    God needs to be the focal point of your day.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • Gratitude to God in times of difficulty

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    After spending a year at Mt. Sinai, the Israelites head back into the desert in Numbers 11.
    In the first ten chapters of the Book of Numbers, things are going pretty smoothly for the Israelites.
    They celebrate the Passover, they dedicate the Tabernacle. We don’t really see any major sin issues. But nearly as soon as the Israelites hit the road, they’ll start complaining, a common theme during the Israelite wanderings.
    God had saved, redeemed, and sustained the Israelites.
    But the Israelites struggled with gratitude to God for all that he had done for them.
    We don’t have control over the circumstances that we face in life. But we do always have control over how we respond.
    We can respond by complaining and grumbling or we can respond in faith and confidence in God.
    Viktor Frankel was a psychiatrist who endured the horrors of the Holocaust at Auschwitz.
    After surviving the Holocaust, he wrote a very influential book called “Man’s Search for Meaning.” And part of the thesis of that book is that the most fundamental of human freedoms is the freedom to control how one responds.
    Even in difficult situations, even in broken relationships, even in financial hardships, even in the face of sickness, you still have a choice in how you respond.
    You can despair, you can feel like it’s all pointless and futile. You can get mad at God, question his goodness and love. You can get bitter.
    You can be cynical, you can become self-centered.
    Or you can continue to grow. You can be selfless. You can take the focus solely off of yourself.
    You can still walk with God in the struggle. In the desert.
    You can still trust in God when you’re tired and warn down.
    Our contentment and joy must be found in God.
    God is leading all of his people to greater places. And if we lose sight of that on the journey, we can make the mistakes that the Israelites made of losing sight of the goodness of God.
    Numbers 11:4-6 features the Israelites continuing to complain, while they look back at their time in Egypt (in slavery) longingly.
    Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.6 But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” 
    They might be complaining about food. But the underlying issues are so much bigger than the divine meal plan.
    “Oh when we were in Egypt, the food was so much better!”
    Verse 20 summarizes the scene well: you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?” ’
    It was wicked and sinful after all that God had done for the people: freeing them, sustaining them, forgiving them when they had fallen into idolatry and sin.
    And yet they have the audacity to say “Oh Egypt. Those were the good old days.”
    Sometimes in life, it can be easy when we’re in a season when things are generally good to go to church, maybe read your Bible sometimes.
    But the moment there’s some adversity and challenge, there’s this temptation to want to complain against God.
    Just like the Israelites, we have many great blessings from the Lord.
    Most importantly, the gift of eternal life that God has promised through Jesus Christ.
    We were slaves to sin. And God redeemed us. God gives his Spirit. God invites us into a relationship to know him. And God is bringing us to a new land too. To a New Heaven, and a New Earth, and a New Jerusalem.
    But sometimes we have to spend some time in the desert to get to the promised land.
    How will we respond when we’re there though?
    Will we criticize God and forget his goodness? Or will we trust him?
    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Grumbling: when we forget God’s goodness

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    In the Book of Exodus, God had worked in mighty ways for the Israelites. He had brought a series of plagues against the Egyptians. He dramatically parted the waters of the Red Sea. Once the Israelites were in the desert, God continued to lead. But through a series of uncertain events, the Israelites continued to respond by grumbling.

    They ran low on water. Israel grumbled. God provided water. They didn’t have food. Israel grumbled. God provided food. After all that the Lord had done, the people should have trusted that God would provide.

    But their struggle is one that we too can have. In spite of all of the ways how God has provided for us, blessed us, sustained us, in a time of adversity, it can be easy to fall into grumbling and doubt.

    But this isn’t God’s desire for us. He wants us to live in faith.

    We can be so quick to forget what God has done, how he’s blessed us.
    Forgetting can lead to unbelief and faithlessness.
    Let us actively remember the blessings of the Lord in our lives.
    We forget about his past blessings and forget about his future promises.
    And so we grumble.
    God is the Lord of our past, present, and future.
    God has promise all of his children a wonderful and glorious future.
    And between now and then, he has not abandoned us in the desert.
    God is God of your life today.
    If you’ve placed faith in Jesus, you know that you’re a sinner, saved by grace, and know that Jesus saved you, you have that to thank God for.
    Ad that’s the most important thing of all.
    He redeemed you. He saved you from the penalty of sin. To remember that the Lord is good. The Israelites lose sight of that.
    To remember that God made everything and that everything belongs to him.
    You’re here today. Which means that God has provided for you up to this point in your life. For some of us, it might not have always been easy.
    There might have been times of real hardship.
    But we’ve made it to this moment.
    It’s easy to forget.
    For some of us, when a blessing gets answered, we might celebrate for a moment, but it can be easy to just move on to the next thing to stress about.
    And we can go through so much of our lives grumbling, complaining to God, feeling like he hasn’t given us enough.
    For the Israelites, they’ve seen God act in mighty ways, but then they go right back to worrying.
    The Israelites face difficult situations. And they choose to grumble instead of trust.
    Part of the root of a grumbling heart is one that loses sight of the sovereignty of God.
    I mentioned earlier that it was God who had led Israel to their circumstance between the Egyptians and the sea. It was no accident.
    It was God who was leading the Israelites in the desert. It’s so easy to lose sight of the divine hand of God at work in our lives. Israel did. In our passages, they actually don’t even grumble directly to God. They actually grumble to Moses and his brother Aaron.
    As if it was their fault.
    Nothing happens outside of the sovereign will of God.
    And while they might have directed their complaints to Moses and Aaron, the real displeasure of the people was with God.
    God is God of all circumstances.
    Job 12:10 refers to God and says:
    In his hand is the life of every living thing
    and the breath of all mankind.
    Grumbling is a lack of trust in God. Grumbling is feeling like God hasn’t give us enough. It’s a sense that perhaps God isn’t good.
    Grumbling is turning away from God. It’s complaining to others, it’s ignoring the goodness of God, and is not rooted in the truth of the character of the Lord.
    We don’t like the unknown.
    Israel didn’t know how they’d get water, they didn’t know how they’d get food. And even with the promises and presence of God, they didn’t know how it was all going to work out.
    At a certain point, you need to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
    I think we sometimes look at the Old Testament. We see the things God did there and think “well yeah, it’d be easy to believe back then.” But people still often struggled, even when seeing incredible signs and miracles that the Lord was doing.
    Because it’s not constant wonderment and awe. We live in the real world and it’s really imperfect.
    But when we don’t know what’s going to happen, when we don’t see the clearest path of how we’re going to get to a destination, let me challenge you today.
    Instead of doubting or being a catastrophist, instead look to God and see how he’s going to work.
    Do you have a situation in your life right now? That’s causing you stress? That’s robbing you of joy? That’s distracting you from God and where you’re tempted to grumble?
    Let me challenge you in that situation to consider that the same God who’s blessed your life, the same Lord who came into the world and died so that you be reconciled to him, the same God who has made you eternal and glorious promises is also your God for today.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Not taking the Lord’s name in vain – more to it than just bad words

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    The Third Commandment
    “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
    -Exodus 20:7
    The third commandment involves more than just not using God’s name in profanities. That’s part of it but it’s not the whole picture.
    In its historical context, it seems that part of the meaning of the third commandment involved swearing oaths in the Lord’s name. A person could make such an oath and yet fail to follow through, and God doesn’t want his name invoked with falsity.
    However this commandment is more broad than only applying to oaths.
    It also involves misusing the Lord’s title.
    Psalm 29:2: “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.”
    In the beginning of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus addresses God the Father and says:
    “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (Matthew 6:9).
    God’s name is to be hallowed. It is to be spoken in reverence.
    There are still Orthodox Jews who won’t say the word God out of concern that they’ll never say his name with due reverence.
    We must keep in mind the awesome holiness of the Lord when we invoke his name.
    The Westminister Confession of Faith puts it well:
    The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works.
    But another way how people speak the name of the Lord in vain is by misrepresenting God theologically.
    People often attempt to speak for God. People will say what God’s standards are for love but it can misrepresent God’s holiness and justice.
    People speak for God in comparison to other religions.
    People who don’t seek to honor God speak for what God does or doesn’t accept.
    This is a terrible blasphemy against the Lord.
    We misuse the name of the Lord when we speak for God in ways that are not true to how God has revealed himself in scripture.
    We see that at the heart of the original sin.
    God originally gave one commandment.
     “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17).
    But his words were twisted.
    Genesis 3:1: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
    He never said such a thing.
    But then Eve responded by further misrepresenting the words of the Lord.
    Genesis 3:2-3
    2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
    And the serpent undermines the consequences that God had spoken.
    Genesis 3:5: “You will not surely die.”
    Listen to the ways people talk about God. It’s a pattern that constantly happens.
    Twisting his words. Speaking on his behalf in false ways.
    Terrible sins.
    In undermining the consequences of God’s word, we make God out to be a lair and there is no deceit in the Lord. He is true to his word.
    This is part of the reason why it’s so important to have such reverence for the scripture.
    Because people are imperfect but God’s word is perfect.
    2 Timothy 3:16-17 says: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
    Unfortunately, our society has little Biblical literacy today.
    As we continue to study the Israelites, we will see that it had consequences for them and we suffer consequences in our world for a lack of reverence and training in God’s word.
    So in the first three commands, we get glimpses of the position where God is to be in our lives: first. We see glimpses of the reverence for how God wants us to approach him.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • The gospel in the exodus journey

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    The exodus journey is the seminal event of the Old Testament. It’s the story of God miraculously delivering the Israelites from slavery for the purpose of bringing them to the promised land.
    The Old Testament constantly calls upon the Israelites to remember what God had done.
    For Christians today, there are a number of parallels between the exodus and the gospel.
    The Israelites were in slavery in Egypt. We were enslaved to sin and Christ redeemed us.
    During the wanderings in the desert, the Israelites complain and rebel. For Christians,  we continue to struggle and rebel.
    God redeemed Israel to bring them to the Promised Land. And Jesus is bringing us into a land too. To a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem.
    Both the exodus and the new covenant of the gospel are commemorated with meals. The passover meal was celebrated annually, as a reminder for God’s deliverance in the exodus event and for him sparing the Israelites. With the gospel, we celebrate the Lord’ Supper, communion which is a reminder of Jesus body that was broken for our sin and his blood that was shed for our sin.
    Exodus was in fulfillment of the promises of God to Abraham for land and to Moses for deliverance from slavery. The gospel is fulfillment of God’s promise of providing a Messiah, a king from the Davidic line, a perfect and spotless lamb to be sacrificed.
    In both stories, we see victory in a place where it appeared to be defeat. Israel was caught between the Egyptian army and the sea. It seemed there was no way out. In the gospel, Jesus died on the cross, where it looked like that was the end of Jesus’ ministry. In both stories, what appeared to be the end was just the beginning.
    It was entirely the work of God in freeing his people from slavery in Egypt. And the gospel is entirely the work of the Lord in redeeming us from the penalty of sin.
    Both events are undeniable, indisputable, irrefutable, unimpeachable proof of God’s love. God loved Israel. And God loves you. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have enteral life (John 3:16). God shows his love that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
    This event, Israel was constantly called to remember. Because it showed God’s love, it showed his goodness, it showed that he was for his people.
    We see that in the gospel.
    We sin, we have struggles, we have baggage. And everyday, we have opportunities to sin, to respond without faith, to question the goodness of God.
    But instead what we must do is to remember his goodness through the gospel. To remember that Jesus saved us, that he redeemed us.
    To remember that God delivers his people from slavery to freedom. For Christians, because of what Jesus did on the cross, that we have the promise of eternal life. We serve a good God.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.