From Grumbling to the Mind of Christ- Exodus 17 & Philippians 2

Exodus 17:1–7; Philippians 2:1–13

Over the past few Sundays we have watched the Hebrew people be rescued from slavery through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.

We read about the Passover and how the blood of the unblemished lamb was put over the doors to mark the people of God to protect them from the final plague (Ex 12).

We read about the angel of God and the pillar of cloud standing guard, protecting God's people from Pharaoh's army. And we read about Moses stretching his hand out and God driving the sea back so that the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. We read about the waters covering Pharaoh's army. The Hebrew people were miraculously saved from through God's miraculous intervention (Ex 14).

You'd think that after being saved in such miraculous ways, your trust in God would be unshakable. But then we read in Exodus 16 that 

“the whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” 

They said, 

"If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." 

So then God miraculously rains bread down on the people, heavenly bread, manna. And in the evening quail covered the camp and they had their fill of meat.

And in Exodus 17, our reading for today, we find that the people are once again quarreling with Moses, asking for water to drink, saying, 

"Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?" 

When this happens Moses clarifies who they're actually quarrelling with, which is God. This is not about Israel versus Moses. This is about Israel testing God. Moses cries out to God on their behalf, saying, 

"What shall I do with this people? They're almost ready to stone me”. 

The people are ready to turn violent, it seems.

God gives Moses some unusual directions here. We would think that if bread rained down from heaven in the form of manna, and meat rained down in the form of quail, that a consistent way to give the people water would be in the form of rain. Instead, God tells Moses to do something unusual. God says to pass before the people, taking with him some of the elders of Israel. The elders are the heads of the tribes of Israel. They are who you would go to in order to resolve a dispute with a neighbor, and that elder would make a judgment and restore justice. God says for Moses to take the staff with which he struck the Nile, when the plaques were being used to judge Egypt. God says, 

"Behold I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb." 

This is a part we don't usually focus on, and we don't usually even notice it when we read the Bible, but there is a visible manifestation of God that is a part of the story. God is visible, standing on the rock. Moses is to strike the rock, and water comes out of it and the people drink.

1 Corinthians 10:4, St. Paul will connect this rock to Christ. It's very interesting that here we have a God manifesting in a visible way to the people and St. Paul connects that visible manifestation of God to Jesus. (This is maybe something to go a little bit deeper into another day.)

So, God directs Moses to strike the rock so that water will come out of it for the people to drink, and Moses names the place Massah and Meribah. Massah means testing. Meribah means quarreling.

So, Israel faces these new challenges and each time their instinct is grumbling, quarreling, and suspicion. When the pressure rises, God's people seem to lose trust in God. This is a pattern that becomes very repetitive, and we will see later on that this first generation will not pass the test. They will not withstand the refinement. This whole time in the wilderness, God is trying to refine the people so that they learn to trust in Him. And this first generation will need to pass away before their community is able to pass into the Promised Land.

The people are overwhelmed by anxiety, and their fear turns into accusations against God. Their trust in God is unraveling. Even after everything they’ve witnessed, they still respond as though God might abandon them. He has rescued them again and again- bringing judgment against Egypt with plagues, delivering them through the sea, shielding them from Pharaoh’s army, feeding them with bread and meat in the wilderness, and now providing water from the rock - yet they struggle to believe that God will continue to care for them.

And we don't want to be too hard on them because, in some ways, they are us. Think of the things that we worry about on a daily basis, and when we think through our life, we can remember the many times that we have faced things and come through them. Our anxieties usually don't describe reality.  This is maybe a silly example, but I remember when I stopped being afraid of the dark at bedtime when I was a little kid. I would often be afraid that something was going to come and get me. This realization came to me: I had had this fear many times before and I was always okay and woke up the next morning. It was this trust in the way I had been okay before that allowed me to face the fear of the present and allowed me to trust that I would be okay. It seems so easy for us to forget the ways in which we have been taken care of and the way we have come through difficult things. We seem to face each new challenge with a kind of strange amnesia.

Our reading from Philippians chapter 2 is an interesting response to this Old Testament reading. Paul is asking the Philippians to complete his joy by adopting the same disposition towards one another, which is the Christ-like way of humility. He encourages the Philippians to share the same disposition, to share the same affection, to have deep spiritual harmony, and to have a shared direction and intention. The idea here is to describe a unity that encompasses the whole person.

And then to help make the point he talks about the opposite of this kind of disposition. He says, 

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit," 

and then he talks about focusing on others in humility. He says, 

"But in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you not look only to his own interests but also to the interests of others." 

 Here he's not talking about thinking badly of yourself, because that in itself would be another way of focusing on yourself. The whole idea is to not be focused on oneself. He's talking about focusing outward on others. He's saying to not only focus on your own interests, and that doesn't mean putting all your interests aside. It means including the interests of others. Don't ignore the interests of others in your planning of your life.

As an example of what he's talking about, he points to Christ. Many scholars believe that Paul is quoting a hymn or a poem. The letter to the Philippians was probably written sometime between the mid-50s to 62 AD. And that means this hymn or poem predates that. The significance of when this was written is that it has a very high understanding of who Jesus is. It had been a popular belief among many scholars that Jesus became understood as divine over time. At the beginning he was thought to be more human and then by the time John's gospel gets written, he's considered more divine. Here we will see something different. This hymn disrupts that whole way of thinking. Let's take a look at this hymn.

He says, 

"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped." 

So here he's saying that Jesus is in the form of God but his equality with God was not something he clung to in order to use as an advantage for himself. Some translations will say he 

“did not count equality with God as a thing to be exploited.” 

So, if he's going to use this to his advantage or to exploit this, it has to be something he has. The thing that he has, which he could exploit, is equality with God.

The hymn goes on, 

"but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." 

So here what's being referred to is that Christ emptied Himself of His position and took on the position of a servant. He took on human nature. That's what it means to be 

“born in the likeness of men”. 

It's not like a disguise because he also takes on the ability to die, so he has really become a human being. We read in verse 8, 

"And being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." 

 He didn't just take on any kind of death. He took on an incredibly painful and humiliating form of death, which is death by crucifixion. It's a selfless death he submits to for our benefit. So he went from the highest place in the universe to the lowest place among human beings. From equality with God, to servanthood and a humiliating and painful death.

The hymn goes on to say, 

"Therefore God has highly exalted him." 

This is again a reference to his position. Just as he emptied himself of his former position, taking a new position as a human being, now he is exalted again to the position he had before.

And here the hymn seems to be quoting Isaiah 45:23. There, we read God saying, 

"To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance [or "take an oath"; LXX "confess to God" or "acknowledge God"]." 

The hymn in Philippians says that God has 

“exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” 

This is a very strong echo of Isaiah 45:23 and it puts the name of Jesus in the place of God. What was said of God in Isaiah is now being said of Jesus Christ. And at the very end it says that this is all 

“to the glory of God the Father," 

so this is not Jesus replacing God the Father, like Zeus defeating his father. This is Jesus in unity with God the Father. Jesus being exalted in this way glorifies God the Father.  

And this is a pattern that is being pointed to by Paul: if we are willing to humble ourselves like Jesus, we will have a kind of exultation, which is a reference to our resurrection and glorification through Christ. Paul is using the example of Christ for how to live with each other, who was willing to become a servant for our benefit.

We follow the Israelites as they wander in the wilderness and we see what fear produces in them, which is a pattern of division in the community, attacks on leadership, and grumbling against God. Philippians shows us that the way of Christ produces a wholehearted unity in the community, where each person is not just working for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of others. They don't use one another to ambitiously gain authoritative positions, but instead are willing to empty themselves of their position to be able to serve one another. And this is not a half-hearted dedication. This is a dedication even to death, which is not something to be feared because Christ has conquered death.

Fear makes us turn inward in self-protection. We fear we're being mistreated so we attack leadership and ultimately our fear leads us to not even trust God. We repeat the pattern we see in the Garden of Eden, where a lack of trust in God opened the door to the serpent’s temptations. Fear leaves us grumbling against God as if He is not for us. When Israel forgets God's presence, it leads to division.

The way of Christ frees us to turn outward in service and love for others, not needing to fear the loss of our position because we know that ultimately being in Christ will always leave us safe (in the ultimate sense). We don't even ultimately need to fear death because it has been overcome. So then, we are ultimately free to love, because we trust God will care for us and give us everything we need to be the people He wants us to be and to be at home in the kingdom. AMEN