9/27/53

Scripture: Exodus 3: 1-12

Hosts of people have been so familiar with the Christian hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," that it is a well-known favorite with many. It was the last bit of music played by the ship’s musicians on the stricken Titanic, as the mighty liner sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Nearer, My God, to Thee, nearer to Thee,

E’en though it be a cross, That raiseth me......

Though like a wanderer, The sun goes down,

Darkness be over me, my rest a stone.

Still all my song shall be, Nearer, My God, to Thee......

So by my woes to be, Nearer, my God, to Thee."

Well, is that the place to find God? In trouble or suffering? Some folk wince at that hymn, and some avoid it. I do, myself, when it is sung with a mournful drag. We prefer to sing, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." And the blessings we think of are health, prosperity, joyous sounds and occasions, friendliness of people, sunlight and fair weather.

We hardly expect to "Praise God" for clouds and storms, illness, pain, depressions, wars, atomic blasts, hunger and starvation, slavery and tyranny. Among those who have experienced a great deal of what we call adversity, there are those who bluntly say that all the stuff about God as loving Father is no help. Did you ever feel like that?

Well, let us look, from both the comforts and the deep troubles of our own lives, in 1953, to a situation distant in time and space. The place was in the Near East, not far from Egypt, in a spot that was wild and lonely. The time, long before Jesus appeared on earth. Moses, facing a desperate situation, heard a Divine Voice say to his soul, "The place on which you are standing is holy ground."

Moses was a refugee. He had lived a comfortable life. Of course his natural parents were slaves and, like all the others of his race and nationality, they suffered physical deprivation, spiritual frustration, and fear of violence and cruelty. It was during a murderous purge of babies by Egyptian order, that he was put adrift in a basket on the river in the desperate hope he would be saved, and was found, adopted, and raised by the Egyptian royal princess. And so he knew the liberty and the luxury of the palace. It might have been his for all of his life.

But he had been forced to flee out of Egypt. For he had killed a man in anger. The murdered man had been an Egyptian task master who brutally beat one of the Hebrew slaves, and Moses saw him do it. That rash and impetuous act, even though born of righteous anger, so endangered his own life that he dared not stay around! So he left his good living behind and escaped to the land of Midian, married the daughter of Jethro, a kind of priest and sheep rancher, and resigned himself to the monotony of tending sheep in the rocky wilds.

Moses was not in a promising spot. The public evils of the time cried out for violent reform. The suffering of his enslaved people in Egypt was increasingly grievous. His own fall from living in the royal household to the niggardly life on a sheep range was humiliating. And so, great was his surprise to learn that where he stood, out there one day, was holy ground. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick says that that scene is no remote occurrence of 32 centuries ago, east of the Mediterranean Ocean. It is here, in our communities, and now.

We find God in lovely things, now. For God is in his holy temple, is in the sunrise and the symphony, is in fair weather and in freedom. But sooner or later we go through a wilderness. And then, if we are to find Him at all, we must find Him there. [Huron sermon; Mother’s trust]. For people do find God in the wilderness! Helen Keller, almost totally cut off from any reasonable or lovely world by absolute blindness and total deafness says: "I thank God for my handicaps, for through them I have found myself, my work, and my God." That is something that calls for insight - the kind of insight we need in our unpromising situations.

Our whole era is filled with tragedy. Yet some of the most momentous discoveries of God in history have been made in just such a situation.

In the "low" year of the American Revolution, 1754, George Washington faced very serious odds. He was only about 22 years of age! He had been defeated at Fort Necessity. He was accused of trying to take glory for himself, with disastrous results for his troops. Some called his officers debauched and drunken. His plans found little approval. A biographer of Washington [Douglas Freeman] says this: "Just when one is about to exclaim about such treatment, ‘What an outrage!’ one reflects and says instead, ‘What a preparation!’" So it was with Moses -- a preparation in a wilderness of testing! What went on within him? What made possible his discovery of holy ground there?

1) For one thing, he found something to be angry about! He had been brought up in the ease of Pharaoh’s court; adopted son of the sovereign’s daughter. He had a soft life; a kind of playboy at the court! But as his maturity came on, he began to be angry. How disturbing this must have been, this indignation at the slavery and intolerable abuse of his people. But why should he ask for trouble? He had everything to lose and no advantage to gain by interfering. Surely it was tough for the Hebrews; but he was doing all right for himself. Why not let slaves do their own revolting? But the more he grew up, the more he hated their slavery, until one day, seeing a slave being beaten by an Egyptian taskmaster, he was so mad that he killed the taskmaster.

That was foolish and wrong. It did no good. It only created further trouble. But at least this much can be said of the incident; Moses was no longer a playboy; he was angry at something very wrong. And that was the beginning of the real Moses. His anger needed harnessing, but it was basic in what followed. Something like righteous wrath, controlled and directed and used, has been basic with many that have followed in time.

Martin Luther, centuries later, remarked: "When I am angry, I preach well and pray better." A great Unitarian minister of New England, William Ellery Channing, said of himself: "Ordinarily, I weigh 120 pounds. But when I’m mad, I weigh a ton!"

Anger is not usually represented as a Christian virtue. And very much of the anger that explodes with disastrous effect is not Christian. But remember that it has had a proper place in Christian experience. Our Lord, according to the earliest Gospel, saw a deed of mercy being blocked by a ceremonial triviality and "he looked round about on them with anger." [Mark 3: 5]. When Jesus saw little children being roughly shoved aside, "he was moved with indignation." [Mark 10: 14]. And his anger erupted into a display of force and spiritual authority when he literally chased the merchandisers away from the outer courts of the temple where the noise of their livestock, their haggling and their exchange had become an offense against the desire of people to worship in silent reverence. [Matthew 21: 12; Mark 11: 15; Luke 19: 45; John 2: 14-15].

Paul wrote the magnificent 13th chapter of First Corinthians on love, but he also said, "Be ye angry, and sin not." [Ephesians 4: 26]. That is to say, "harness your anger, control it for good."

Great character is not soft. When it encounters intolerable wrong, it is indignant to the core.

Moses had been mad in Egypt. He was angry again after the children of Israel had followed him out of Egypt but had made a golden idol for themselves while he had gone to the mountains to meditate on the guidance of Jehovah. It was out of deep and sternly solid ethical conviction that he was able to bring to them the commandments of God. "You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbors, you shall not covet."

Do you ever say, "It is hard to find God in this world?" Well, try looking to the things that ought to rouse our indignation! Maybe God will seem near if we get roused from our moral apathy! That’s where Moses started. That is a basic reason why he found God in a wilderness.

Lest we let our religion, and our whole life, be sentimentalized, we had better be well aware of the austere aspect of living; get it into the picture. To confront oneself in the wilderness, is to be told that there is divine opportunity in hardship. "Tackle yourself!" said God to Moses.

Of course Moses backed off from the divine demand. "Who, me? I can’t do that. I’m slow of speech. I’m not even in Egypt any more. In fact I’m a refugee." Moses was genuinely humble. We have a saying, "Meek as Moses." But Moses was not meek in any weak or soft sense. All great character is humble. One of the really great characters of Christian history, William Carey, who was a major pioneer in opening India to the gospel, reminisced in his later years: "If God could use me, he can use anybody." Probably Moses could have said that! But, while he shrank back at first, he did not do so finally. He dedicated himself to this new vocation to which he was called. With God’s help, he would "be Moses."

Often this has been the case in history. A man named Wilfred Grenfell, trained in medicine and anticipating a very comfortable practice in England, took a pleasure trip to Labrador. Traveling for fun, and going ashore there in gala mood, he found people who had never been to a physician and who critically needed a doctor. Before he left that inhospitable shore, he had treated at least 900 persons who would never have seen a doctor had he not visited there. Grenfell could never get over it! He just had to come back. The place whereon he had stood became holy ground.

Nearly 20 years ago, I met a man who had been well known for years to my wife’s family in Korea. He, too, when a young doctor, took a trip around the world with a gentleman of wealth. He became fascinated with the need of people, and the limitless opportunity for service in Korea. Unable to escape the fascination of work with those people, he went back to Korea as a Christian missionary doctor, supported by the very man who had taken him along on the initial trip. Then, Dr. A. I. Ludlow trained Korean doctors, while his wife trained Korean nurses. He founded a large hospital. He practiced surgery and internal medicine; talked freely with the Korean doctors and patients about God, in daily chapels; he became a recognized authority on certain diseases of the Orient -- and kept at it until an operation for cancer of the throat deprived him of the power to teach at an age when he could no longer practice surgery. He still lives, with zest of a Cleveland baseball fan, in that Ohio city. Happy in a history of having met and walked with God in a tough situation!

Some folk cry out, when tragedy strikes, "Where is God now?" Others find God in that place. Jesus found God in the temple and on the hillside. But he also found God vividly in a Gethsemane and on a cross! A cross is not a nice place for a rendezvous with divinity. Crucifixion is a nasty business, where cruelty reigns in a retaliatory sort of way. But the Lord of our life found God there, as did the martyrs of the first century who followed him.

It is no accident that God is found by some in the sternest, darkest, cruelest circumstances, as well as in the situations of peace, and forgiveness and joy.

Dr. Fosdick admits that he seriously wanted his life to end during a critical nervous breakdown in his youth. But in that terrifying experience, he made discoveries of the presence and power of God that alone enabled him to write his little book "The Meaning of Prayer" which has so helped millions of other folk.

So it is that God is where you find Him. And that can be anywhere you will look for Him! And in any condition or circumstance.

Just one more observation, this time. When anyone finds God in such unlikely places, it usually follows from having known Him in the likely places as well -- at worship in the house of God; during a morning watch by a lakeside; in the prayers of the family at table; in those moments when it is easy to believe that God is good and that beauty and loveliness, and gentle strength, and unselfish courage are His voice, full of grace and truth.

Find God here, regularly, in this likely, holy place; and you may find him in the difficult and unlikely holy places as well.

(end)

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, September 27, 1953.

Faith Reformed Church (Wisconsin Rapids), October 4, 1953.

Wisconsin Rapids, November 25, 1956.