Do Me A Favor

Numbers 12:1-16

April 11, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Over the last several years, I have noticed that a certain word has become more and more prominent in Christian circles, and when I hear people use this word, I want to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

The word, as you can probably guess from the video and the series title, is “favor,” and I’ve heard people use it to describe all sorts of things. I got a parking spot close to the building—God gave me favor! They had my favorite ice cream flavor on the menu—God gave me favor! I didn’t get a speeding ticket when the officer stopped me—God gave me favor! Or, even darker: other people died in the disaster that killed others—God gave me favor (and then you have to ask—but God ignored them?). I could go on and on, but most often I hear people using “favor” to describe “getting my way” or “getting special attention from God.” In everyday conversation, we use this word to ask someone for something, as in, “Can you do me a favor?” I don’t know about you, but that question always makes me nervous. What am I going to have to give up? What is this “favor” going to cost me? But it’s different with God. God owns everything, God has all power and so, we think, if I can just get God to “do me a favor” or “show me favor,” I can get what I want.

There’s also this idea that certain people have more favor from God than others. The list of “super-Christians” usually includes pastors and missionaries, anyone in “full-time Christian ministry,” Christian celebrities and well-known authors or even musicians. Somehow, we think, these people are on some sort of higher spiritual plane than “average Jane or Joe Christian” and that they have a better chance of getting God’s attention than we do. I think I’ve told you before about the woman who called me out in front of her small group because as a pastor, I should have prayed better for her husband. She actually told me that she believed God listens to me more, therefore I was more likely to get God’s favor. Let me say it again: you keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Think about people who “found favor with God” in the Bible. Jacob—got to wrestle with God and limped for the rest of his life. Daniel—was forcibly taken away from his home and spent the rest of his life in exile (and he almost ended up as lion chow). Esther—risked her life trying to save her people and could have very easily died doing so. Jeremiah—watched his beloved Jerusalem burn and then was carted away to live out his remaining years in Egypt. Hosea—forced to marry a prostitute who continued to be unfaithful to him, so much so that he ultimately had to buy her back from the slave market. And that’s just the Old Testament. In the New we have Mary, mother of Jesus, an unwed pregnant teenager who undoubtedly became the source of small town gossip and eventually got to watch her son be murdered by the Romans. Paul, who had some sort of debilitating physical condition, and when he asked God to take it away, God said no—repeatedly. Peter, crucified upside down. And John, exiled to a lonely island far from his friends and family. These people were recipients of God’s favor. Think about them the next time you pray and ask God for “favor.” Is that really what you want? Because I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

The series we’re starting today is called “Finding Favor,” and over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at stories from the Bible trying to learn what “favor” means beyond the typical health, wealth and happiness. God’s work in people is much deeper than that, so as we start today, I want to give you a working definition of “favor.” You might want to write this down because we’ll come back to it in the weeks to come as we weigh what we learn in the Scriptures against it. Here’s the definition: “God’s favor is his supernatural intervention to bring a blessing into your life” (Jones, Finding Favor, pg. 14). Along the way, we’re going to have to redefine what we usually think of that word “blessing,” because in the case of many Biblical characters, as well as many historical figures, “blessing” is not synonymous with “only good things” or “health and wealth.” Sometimes, blessing is found in brokenness because, as A. W. Tozer once wrote, “The Lord cannot fully bless [you] until He has first conquered [you]” (qtd. in Jones 31). So, as we begin to unpack what this little word “favor” means, let’s turn to the book of Numbers and look at an incident from the life of Moses.

I’m willing to bet you haven’t heard many sermons from the book of Numbers; I know I haven’t preached very many from this book! It’s usually either in Numbers or Leviticus where people get bogged down when they are trying to read through the Bible in a year. It’s not exciting stuff, but tucked in between all the, well, numbers and the legal stuff are some fascinating stories, like the one we read this morning in Numbers 12. This story takes place in the midst of some conflict between Moses and the people. If you’re familiar with the Exodus story, you probably know that the people became very cranky very easily and usually took their crankiness out on their leaders. I’m certainly glad times have changed a lot and that we don’t do that anymore! Anyway, in Numbers 12, Moses’ own sister and brother get in on the action. Miriam, Moses’ sister, seems to be leading the complaining against Moses, and the issue is Moses’ wife. Well, that’s what the complaining and gossiping is about, anyway. Moses has married a Cushite woman. “Cush,” in case you don’t know your ancient geography, is usually identified with modern Ethiopia, and so let’s just be honest about what’s really going on here: Miriam is showing her racism. She probably wouldn’t admit to that, but it is what it is. Here’s the reality: Moses has brought in “someone from the outside,” someone who is not one of them, someone who is not part of their tribe (Goldingay, Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone, pg. 32). Maybe Miriam is saying this new wife is not good enough for Moses, or she’s not the right kind of person to be married to their leader, or that this new wife takes Moses’ attention away from more important issues. The truth is, whatever her stated objection, she’s not that different from us today. We find all sorts of creative ways to dress up our racism and make it look “respectable.” Read on in the passage and you see how God saw right through that. God shows us that what Miriam is saying and doing is unacceptable to him. Racism is not part of the kingdom of God—not then and not now.

But then, in case that isn’t getting enough attention, Miriam and Aaron begin to criticize Moses’ leadership abilities, and more to the point, his unique relationship with God. Basically, they’re saying, “Where does he get off claiming this special relationship with God? Hasn’t God spoken through us, too? Why are we not as important as he is?” Don’t they sound like little children at this point? “I want to be noticed, too! Why does Moses always get all the good toys? I’m just as important as he is!” Not too long before, back in chapter 11, Moses prayed a prayer that might be important to insert here. When the people were complaining about not liking the food God had provided (that he didn’t have to provide, but did anyway, but that’s a whole other sermon), Moses had prayed these words: “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you are going to treat me, please go ahead and kill me—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin” (11:14-15). Moses, great prophet of God, rescuer of Israel, defeater of Pharaoh, friend of God—that Moses says, “If you love me, God, you’ll kill me. I don’t want to be a failure.” It wasn’t the threats of Pharaoh’s army that made Moses want to die. It wasn't being trapped between the sea and the chariots, certain death either way. It wasn’t the sound of the soldiers pulling their bows and aiming their arrows. It’s the people. It's the constant complaining. “Their words were a constant dripping in the background of his daily routine” (Jones 29). Constant complaining will still wear a person down! And then, just verses later, Moses is facing more of the same: an uprising against him, led by his own family. This is what being favored by God looks like.

Miriam and Aaron have stirred the people up (which apparently didn’t take much work, since it happens often) and the essence of their complaint against Moses is that they want an easier way. Following Moses has led them out into the desert, into a place where there doesn’t seem to be enough food or water, into a place where they have no permanent home and no luxuries whatsoever. They want options; they don’t want to have to follow what Moses says. Besides, why does he think he has a corner on the market for hearing from God? (We’ll talk about that in a few weeks, about how people today use the phrase, “God told me” to justify nearly anything.) But in this story, the people, and Miriam in particular, are rejecting God’s plan and demanding their own (cf. Philip, Communicator’s Commentary: Numbers, pg. 150) because God’s plan, through Moses’ word, is hard. And we don’t like to do hard.

Centuries later, in the midst of one of Jesus’ most cryptic teachings (about “eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man”), some of those who were following him said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Today people would complain because they don’t like it and demand a public apology from Jesus. But Jesus didn’t back down on his teaching; instead, he insisted that God blesses those who do the hard work of following him. And John, the author of the Gospel, says, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (cf. John 6:41-66). And the trend continues. It’s common still today that, when we don’t like what God through his Scriptures has to say, for us to say, “This is hard, God. I don’t like it.” Unfortunately, God doesn’t change his mind just because we don’t like it or because we find it hard to live out. And many turn away, or they begin to pick and choose which parts of the Scriptures they like and which ones they don’t, or they create their own piecemeal faith, or they stay in the church but grumble all the time. Finding God’s favor is hard. It’s hard. It is not the easy way.

There’s this marvelous verse we read this morning in the chapter from Numbers, and it’s marvelous for a couple of reasons. First, let’s hear the verse again; it’s verse 3, and in your English translations it might be in parentheses. Remember, the punctuation is not in the original text, but this is the translators’ way of telling us this is a side comment the author is making. Here it is: “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (12:3). This verse is marvelous because, for one, how did the author know? How did he know Moses was more humble than anyone else on the whole earth? Was there a humility contest which Moses won? And was he proud of his humility, is that why it’s mentioned? That brings us to the second reason I love this verse: tradition says Moses wrote the book of Numbers. The humblest person in the world is telling us he is the humblest person. Um…okay. Some scholars think this was inserted by a later editor, and that’s possible (cf. Jones 30-31), but it’s also true that “humble” is a somewhat misleading translation. The original Hebrew word refers to someone in real poverty, someone who is weak and in danger of being exploited. It refers to someone who has to completely rely on God for help, and if God doesn't show up, they will very likely be hurt or destroyed (cf. Wenham, Numbers [Tyndale OT], pg. 111). It might be better to translate is as “afflicted” or, as one scholar suggests, “the most unpopular person in the world” (Goldingay 32)—someone against whom it seems the whole world has turned. Moses is being rejected by the people he has led thus far, the people he was instrumental in rescuing from slavey, and if God doesn’t show up, Moses is going down. It will all be over. This, my friends, is a picture of what it means to find God’s favor. And it’s not a pretty picture, is it?

When people you thought you knew turn against you, it can be a one of the most painful human experiences. I remember very clearly exactly where I was sitting in our family room the first time I opened the want ads to see if there were any other jobs I could do. It had been a rough patch in the church. I’ve never really figured out exactly what happened, but like in Moses’ situation, it seemed to center around one man. Funny thing was, a few months before, I had sat with his father as he died, officiated at the father’s funeral, and was labeled a “saint” by this man. Now, he was arranging secret meetings and calling my superintendent regularly to have me removed from the church. I am not saying I did everything right, not by a long shot, but we did try to follow Matthew 18, Jesus’ instructions for managing conflict, and a small group of us went to his house to talk it out. At the end of the night, supposedly, everything was “fine,” but it didn’t stop. And so, like Moses, there came a day when I wanted out. And so I scanned the want ads, desperately hoping there was something there I else do. And do you know what I learned? Two things, really. First of all, seminary education prepares you for nothing other than full-time ministry. I have no marketable skills! And second, I learned that sometimes experiencing the favor of God means sitting in a meeting with the superintendent, hearing horrible things said about you, and watching as a man who was once a friend storms out and slam dunks his Diet Coke in the trash can. Sometimes God’s favor looks like affliction, hurt, pain. Favor will lead you to afflictions; you can pretty much count on it.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” But her life shows us what can happen when a life is submitted to the leading and the will of God. I doubt anyone other than God really knows the extent of her reach or the number of lives changed because of Mother Teresa’s willingness to go wherever God sent her. But her journal reveals just how much she suffered through all of that. Her life was not easy, and yet her life, Moses’ life, and the life of countless saints throughout history show us again and again that it’s always better to submit our lives to God’s plan rather than insisting on our own. God’s plan for our lives will always be better. It may not feel better in the short term, but looking back, we will be able to see his kindness, his grace, his mercy and his love flowing over every step we took. And it may not be—in fact, it probably will not be because of the things that we do or the achievements we make. No, the greatest part of God’s plan for us is the way he shapes us, the people he makes us into. At that church so many years ago, God did incredible things in my life, in my character, and in our family’s life that we would not have experienced had we not gone through the tough times. And, as sort of the icing on the cake, the best years of our ministry there were the next couple after the big blow-up. God’s favor is often experienced in affliction, in hard times, in the times when it seems it would just be easier to open the wants ads and give up (cf. Jones 34).

So, we don’t talk to God face to face (literally) like Moses did. How do we find out which direction to go? How do we move toward God’s favor, toward God’s will for us? Three things i want to suggest this morning, and none of these are rocket science. They’re not hard. We just don’t do them, especially the first one, which is prayer. Prayer as an avenue to discovering God’s will should be a big “duh,” of course. Why wouldn’t that be first on the list? If you want to know what your spouse or your friend wants, you would ask them, right? So why does prayer usually come last, often at the moment when we are out of our own options? Because in our culture, we’re taught to “do it yourself,” figure it out yourself. And so we have books and workshops and seminars and online tests that are supposed to help us figure out what God wants, what God desires, how to find that ever-elusive “favor.” It sounds cliche, but why don’t we just pray about it? Why don’t we talk directly to the one whose will we are seeking? I think I know why. When we talk to a friend or a spouse, we get immediate feedback. We hear back from them. We can see facial expressions. They tell us what they want or what we should do—sometimes whether we like it or not! When we talk to God—well, it’s not as easy. We want the booming, James Earl Jones voice to come out of the clouds, or we’d even settle for handwriting across the sky. But we don’t get that. Instead, we get whispers (which is, by the way, how God communicated with prophets like Elijah, 1 Kings 19:12) or we get inward impressions. Sometimes I get a verse from the Bible that pops into my mind, or sometimes I have a strong feeling that I need to this or that. But it’s all so vague and easy to question. Sometimes we avoid prayer because we don’t get the immediate response we want—sort of like the people who confronted Moses.

I think we also avoid prayer sometimes because we already know the answer; we just don’t like it. There is a place in the Scriptures where we are told what God’s will is for us. Paul wrote these words: “God’s will is for you to be holy” (1 Thessalonians 4:3, NLT). You can’t get much clearer than that. God wants you to be like him; he wants you to be like Jesus. In another place, we read, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16). So we don’t pray because if we did, we couldn’t do a lot of what we already have decided we want to do. A lot of you know, we have a new puppy at our house—Barnabas. He’s about 3 months old right now, so that’s why I look so tired. it’s from chasing him. But he is a master of being told “no,” then doing it anyway. I was working on some of this sermon at home and he kept chewing on some books I had laid out, even after repeatedly being told “no.” It’s like having a toddler at the house again! And that’s the way a lot of us treat God. We know that this or that will not make us more holy, more like Jesus, and yet we do it anyway and then dare to complain that God has not blessed us with his favor. How can he if we won’t listen to him? The first piece in experiencing that favor, in finding the place he wants us, is prayer.

But because the answers in prayer are not always clear, the next piece is what John Wesley called “Christian Conferencing.” In Wesley’s day, a “conference” was conversing with other believers in order to discern God’s leading, or to tackle theological questions, or to encourage one another. Today, we’re reduced “conferencing” largely to a business meeting. But conferencing can be as simple as meeting with a friend for coffee and sharing what you think God is saying to you, then asking, “What do you think? What do you hear?” God made us for community; there should not be any “lone ranger” Christians. The body of Christ is better when we are relying on each other. Conferencing might even include—here’s a crazy idea—praying together over the matter and seeing what you hear together. Prayer, then conferencing.

Then the one that really gets back into Moses’ story. Several years ago, I heard Adam Hamilton talk about “discernment by nausea.” Adam is the pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the country, Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, a church he planted some 30 years ago. They first met in a funeral home, which is where the church name came from: resurrection. And then, he said, they had an opportunity to go two different directions. They could either buy a pre-existing church building that would seat about 200, or they could buy land on which to build a brand new church. Everything in him wanted to buy the pre-existing building, and just as they got ready to move in that direction, he got a queasy feeling in his stomach. Discernment by nausea. Buying the land would be much harder. It would take so much more work, and he said he really didn’t want to do it. It would be much easier and faster to just move into the building. But, he said, like the story of Moses, God very often leads us to do the hard things. God’s favor is not the promise of an easy life. And so they passed on the building and bought the land. He said he believes if they had bought the building that today they would still be a congregation of around 200. Instead, Church of the Resurrection currently has over 10,000 in worship weekly and a membership of over 21,000. God’s favor is most often found in doing the difficult thing, the thing that makes you sick to your stomach to think about doing—that’s discernment by nausea. And I have to think that Moses felt much the same way in Numbers 12.

So let’s return to our definition of “favor.” Did you write it down? It’s “God’s…supernatural intervention to bring a blessing into your life.” Blessings do not come on the road of ease and leisure. They often come through the hard times. Oswald Chambers once said, “When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship—when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.” I don’t know where you’re stuck right now, or who might be aggravating you. I don’t know what you’d like to get out of but can’t or what answers you’re waiting on. But I do know the God who is faithful, the God who was with Moses and will be with you, the God who will teach you more about yourself in the storms and the difficult places than he is able to in days of sunshine and ease. God’s favor is funny like that; it’s often found in the difficult places (cf. Jones 34). Let’s pray.