From the victory of the Red Sea where they didn’t do anything—you know, I can’t remember when God’s been that nice to me—“Stand still,” Moses said, “and see the salvation of the Lord.”  He parted the Red Sea and killed all their enemies. 

And you’ve heard me on the Gulf War.  You know, I hear all these Christians praying for their enemy.  Man, I ain’t praying for them.  I’m praying for them to be deader than a hammer and I got good Bible.  I mean the saints of the Old Testament stood by the Red Sea after all Pharaoh’s army sank like a stone.  God’s got a sense of humor—He ripped the wheels off of their wagons before He turned the water loose on them; they’re bouncing along and drown. And they danced and rejoiced: “Look what our God has done for us!  He sank old Pharaoh in the sea like a stone.” 

Then God marched them 3 days into a wilderness where they were thirsty and murmuring to the waters of Marah that were bitter.  They went from the wilderness of Shur to another place of blessing, then from the place of blessing, Elim with 12 wells and 70 palm trees.  When you think about it, wasn’t really that hot a spot for them because they had three and a quarter million people to fight over 12 wells and 70 palm trees.  But then He led them into the wilderness of ‘sin,’ translated ‘clay,’ where He fed them manna from heaven and taught them to learn that He was their provider day by day. 

Then they went to Sinai which means ‘the God of Sinai,’ or the ‘God of sin’ rather, which is ‘the God of the place of clay’ where they learned the lessons.  It was in the wilderness spots, in short, that they learned God’s ways and learned His capacities to provide.  They didn’t learn much rejoicing by the sea where they saw God’s victory hand.  They didn’t learn much at the wells of Elim.  They didn’t even learn much at Sinai when God was talking on the mountain—they

were jigging around the golden calf down at the bottom having a party. 

It’s in the trying times that the test of Christianity sorts out those who really have it and those who don’t.  And this ‘valley of weeping’ like the ‘wilderness of sin,’ or if we follow them next week they’re led to a place called Rephidim which means in the original ‘place of rest,’ and all it was was spiny cactus, dirt, and rocks….  So God’s ways are not our ways.  All I want to get across, and then I’ll leave it, is that contrary to a lot of traditional preaching that makes Christianity compete on some kind of smorgasbord of immediate success and good life, thereafter the blessed man of Scripture finds that his journey goes through valleys of weeping. 

I’ve had to remind myself of that this past year.  The weepings are different than they used to be.  I can remember the kinds of valleys that I went through when I preached this as a missionary traveling for 18 years around the world.  Now the valleys of weeping are considerably different.  There are times that I wish this Cathedral didn’t exist.  There are times that the weight and the pressure of God’s blessing that has made us grow beyond the abilities of those that God has provided to help get the job done, or if not the abilities beyond their energies and beyond mine—the valleys take on a different tone.  But there is still that reality to the Christian experience that as you move ever forward following God, these people that sit on TV and grin at you and act like there’s never a cloud in the sky are either full of crap and lying or they don’t know God.  They’re serving the prince of this world.  And since God’s not a bully, He doesn’t try to push those people around.  It’s the ones that belong to God that Satan’s constantly trying to grab. 

I have not yet escaped the valleys of weeping.  I’m not just