Third Sunday in Lent
February 24, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

Yes, it’s been almost a week since I have last written anything here.  When Monday morning rolled around I took a look at these passages and started getting ready for a sermon.  I have a rough idea of where I am going with this.  The picture I chose shows Moses getting water from the rock.  This all happened because the people God called him to lead were whining (again!)  God had proved himself over and over and yet these people were now complaining that God was going to let them die in the desert without any water.  We are just like that — God shows us his grace and mercy and forgiveness and then we whine because we don’t get our way.  The past few weeks have been incredibly difficult and yet I sense God’s love, God’s grace, and God’s mercy more than I ever have before.  This is what Paul is talking about in Romans.   3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.  What Paul is getting at comes in the next few verses.  Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (all of us, including me.)  Would we die for someone who deserved to die?  In most cases, no.  But that is what Christ did for us.  So, what is the cure for such self-pity?  The short answer is found in Psalm 95: 

 1 Come, let us sing to the Lord!
      Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
 2 Let us come to him with thanksgiving.
      Let us sing psalms of praise to him.
 3 For the Lord is a great God,
      a great King above all gods.
 4 He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
      and the mightiest mountains.
 5 The sea belongs to him, for he made it.
      His hands formed the dry land, too.

 6 Come, let us worship and bow down.
      Let us kneel before the Lord our maker,
    7 for he is our God.
   We are the people he watches over,
      the flock under his care.

   If only you would listen to his voice today!
 8 The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah,
      as they did at Massah in the wilderness.
 9 For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
      even though they saw everything I did.
 10 For forty years I was angry with them, and I said,
   ‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me.
      They refuse to do what I tell them.’
 11 So in my anger I took an oath:
      ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”

The remedy is to give God the praise for what He has done through Christ his son.  We don’t want hard hearts like the children of Israel — My desire is for a soft heart that has compassion and love for others and a heart that is filled with love for my God and Savior