February 10

Watch out for the Small Stuff

So many times we think that the big sins are the ones that are going impact our lives. And there are plenty of times when that is true, but for every big sin failure there are 100 small sin failures that shipwreck our lives. Today we read of one of the saddest days in the life of Moses. He was appointed by God to rescue the nation of Israel. He went through a 40 year training period. He endured repeated crises of mammoth proportions. He is portrayed as faultless in his guidance of an army of 3-5 million whiners and in the end he blows it by mixing up his pronouns and letting his anger get the best of him. If there was ever a WOW moment in the Bible, here it is.

The incident begins most innocently enough with the standard whining and complaining of the nation. I don’t know the longest you have gone without water but the lack of water can certainly put an edge on your life. Yet even after witnessing at least 20 undeniable God sightings the people have not learned to trust God and they default back to whining.
God gives some pretty clear instructions on how “HE” is going to solve the problem.
Numbers 20:7-8 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."
Let’s go over the instructions again .... Step one is “take” the staff. Step two is “speak” to the rock.
Something happened on the way to the rock that day. The previous verses talk about the community quarreling with Moses. It takes two to quarrel so Moses must have been fighting back and his resources must have been empty. When he addresses the crowd, that fateful day, he calls them “rebels.”
Now Moses starts running on his default mode, which is anger. Remember the Egyptian that Moses rubbed out in a quarrel a few decades before and the throwing of the 10 commandments? Ever get to that Popeye moment when you say, “I can’t stands no more!!!” Well Moses put up with this mind numbing complaining long enough and today he is going to let them have it.
So in a moment of rage, you can see his neck thickening, his voice being raised, his eyes bulging. Moses mixes up a pronoun. Instead of saying “HE” referring to God, he says “WE” referring to God and himself. And then he strikes the rock twice. And in that moment the dream is lost and the “what have I done” regrets start to be repeated. God spoke just a few words that day but those words must have hurt him deeply. "You will not bring this community into the land I give them." Wow! After all he did, God would take away his leadership before the work was finished. He did all the work to bring them here and now another would bring them into the Promised Land. It did not seem fair. He would not see or taste the fruits of his labors.
Listen; there is a huge lesson here. Sin is not something to be taken lightly. What seems minor and unimportant was, in reality, cosmic treason to God. Remember he makes the rules in the game. So the warning to us is clear. Watch out for the small stuff and keep your spiritual resources high. Anger, misspoken words, loudly spoken words, harsh words are not tools God wants us to use in our problem solving. Do you have a problem with anger? Don’t allow this small area of your life to steal the greater blessing of God. Learn a lesson from Moses.