Pastoral Letter 155
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and Peace to you all.
This is the third Sunday in Lent. As I said in my last week’s letter, Lent is a time to prepare for Easter and to renew our life in its mystery. In this holy season we acknowledge our need for repentance, and for the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. By self-examination and repentance, by prayer and fasting, by self-denial and acts of generosity and by reading and meditating on the word of God, let us keep a holy Lent.
Let us pray for the Armenian Missionary Association of Australia as they get ready to welcome their guests from Armenia/Artsakh to be with them at their 2023 Annual events in the coming two weeks. Pray for the guests that will take the long trip to arrive to Australia to spent some time with the Armenian community in Sydney and Melbourne, meet with Federal members in Canberra and be at the lunch organised and hosted in the Parliament House by Jerome Laxale, member for Bennelong.
Sunday 19 March we will join the Willoughby Armenian Evangelical Uniting Church for the AMAA Sunday bilingual Worship Service with overseas guests. I am glad to let you know that the following Sunday 26 March the guests will worship here at Longueville, with some people from the Armenian community.
If you will not be able to join us for worship tomorrow, please light a candle and worship with us from home following the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love and let me know if any member of the congregation that you know of needs our help and prayers.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the victims of the devastating earthquake of Türkiye and Syria.
- Pray for the people of Ukraine, Armenia and Artsakh.
- Pray for Taiwan as requested above.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are unwell and struggling with different kinds of medical issues.
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for our church services and activities, as we are back to our normal programs.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
What Am I to Do with These People?
Exodus 17:1-7
I have hoped and prayed not to go like Moses to God with this question for the people I am called to serve.
“What am I to do with these People?”
In my 40 long years of ministry, I was tempted to ask this question, when things didn’t look good and had stressful days. It is well known that working with and for people is not easy, you have to have the patience to bear the hurts and the pain, the courage to speak the truth and the guts to take action, but with great responsibility.
The good news for you, St. Andrew’s folks is that, in the last 11 years I didn’t have to go to God with this or a similar question. We’ve been always doing things together, listening to each other, even if we have different opinions and doing our best for the glory of God.
In today’s reading we see that Moses, the one whom God had called and instructed to get the people of Israel out of Egypt and out of their bondage, reluctantly went to God.
It is clear that the duty of the leaders is to do the best they can to lead the people who have been entrusted to their leadership in the right path.
In the case of a spiritual leaders the challenge is to make the people listen to God and obey His commandments, as was the case with the people of Israel.
In the passage that Wendy read today we saw that the whole Israelite community set out from the desert of Sin and travelled from place to place. We are sure that the journey was not an easy journey. They did not have traveling facilities of modern times, no internet and GPS, easy accommodation, many means to cater the people with food and drinks stopping at rest areas. On the contrary, we see here that there was no water for the people to drink.
Water is one of our basic needs, we have to satisfy our thirst and not get dehydrated. The need for water by the people of Israel was a genuine request. But the issue here is the way they tried to handle the situation.
We see that the first thing they did was to quarrel with their leader Moses and demand saying: “Give us water to drink”.
Quarrelling and blaming others, when the problem was a matter of trusting or not trusting the Lord God, who had done so many things for them before the Pharaoh let them go. They had seen what God did to the Egyptians with the plagues and in particular with the Passover when God literally spared the first born of Israelites and killed the first born of the Egyptians, including the Pharaoh’s.
In this short passage we see four things:
1. Quarrel and demand
In verse two, we see strange behaviour from the people, they quarrel, in other words, they argue and express their demand. Instead of being thankful for all the things that God had done to them, they want to have more. By arguing with Moses, they were in reality questioning God and testing him. Moses said: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” People have acted in a similar way at all times. Regardless of what God does, people are not satisfied and demand more and more. The situation has not changed much since that time. Sometimes people do the same, they demand more and more. They do not have a grateful heart to all God has done to them during the years, as individuals and as a community.
2. Grumble
After they quarrelled with Moses, they grumbled against Moses, God’s chosen, who had accepted the difficult task of leading the people of Israel, first out of Egypt and then through the desert. God chooses leaders to take care of His people; and the chosen ones, struggle until they are ready to accept the challenging task of leading the people, but the people grumble and question the service rendered under the instructions given by God. In this case even they question Moses saying: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
God does incredible things in peoples, lives but they still are not satisfied. Just as they face difficulty and a new challenge they grumble and question Him.
I am reminded of a good song we used to sing in youth group many years ago. The chorus starts: “Oh, they grumble on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, grumble on Thursday, too!”
Grumbling is not a laughing matter to God. The Israelites were wandering through the desert for forty years, because they did not trust God enough and yet, God still provided for them. He supplied them with Manna for food, their clothes did not wear out, and their feet did not swell.
It is so easy for people to shake their heads in disgust at their response to God’s provision. But they must confess, they often grumble about their circumstances, too. If they are not careful, the grumble song could become a reality for them. They might easily miss God’s blessings if they concentrate on their problems. Instead of following the bad example of the Israelites, they need to follow Paul’s teaching in I Thess. 5:18 “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
3. Moses goes to God
“What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Moses seeks God’s help. He goes to Him with the question. He was desperate and tired of the complaints, so he goes to God. He even believes that they were planning to kill him, because they were not happy with the situation. Some years ago, I was speaking with a couple who were here from overseas. They had a situation in the church where they are members and they said: “We are good at sending ministers away when we are not happy with them”. The story is the same at the time of Moses, when the church was established in the first century and now at present.
Moses, God’s servant goes to God seeking advice and help.
4. God’s solution
As Moses seeks God’s help; God resolves the matter. When the servant of the Lord goes to God seeking help, usually God handles the matter. As long as we are ready to go to God and ask for help, He will act and solve the problem. As we read earlier, Paul said: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe… God makes things grow”. Similarly, we don’t have the ability to resolve the issues. Only God holds the keys and has the answers. In this situation, God commanded, Moses obeyed, and the people got the water they needed.
If we read the Old Testament carefully, we see that God’s people were not ready to follow the commandments and always questioned God and chose other gods. They sinned and alienated themselves from God.
Paul says: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.
To regain the righteous status, we need to reconcile.
And this reconciliation happens only with a sacrifice, which was done through Christ our Lord and Saviour.
We should be faithful people.
We should follow His commands.
We should put all our trust in Him.
We should not put God to the test.
We should do what He says.
We should not question God and listen to what He says.
Otherwise, we will be like the Israelites for whom Moses said: “What am I to do with these people”.
We should be God’s people who trust and obey Him.
Amen!