The Bible is a messy story. And I don’t just mean in the ways that are inherent to ancient texts composed by numerous authors over hundreds of years: the ambiguous timelines, the conflicting narratives, the missing details. I mean that the Bible is a story of mess. Pretty uniquely among the sacred texts of the world’s religions, the Bible places the flaws of its characters front and center. Even the ones that play important roles as models of faithfulness, like Abraham last week or Moses this week, aren’t actually consistently admirable people, or even slightly-flawed human beings who are on a steady trajectory of moral improvement. They screw up—sometimes quite spectacularly—again and again.
And that goes for God’s people as a whole, too. Throughout the Old Testament, the nation of Israel never quite grasps or develops the manner of living God wants for them. The same is true for the apostles, who follow Jesus, but they don’t seem to “get” his mission before his Crucifixion. And they’re far from perfect stewards of that mission after his Resurrection. The characters in the Bible are a mess! They are the People of God. But they’re repeatedly backsliding. They succumb to temptation and testing and wander away from the path God has set for them—and they reap the consequences.
Paul today references quite a few of these failings, reviewing a highlight reel of some of the biggest screw-ups in Israelite history. They fall into idolatry, worshipping a golden calf—ignoring the fact that they owe their allegiance to God, not the creations of their own minds and hands. They imitate the sexual immorality of their neighbors, treating each other as objects and rejecting their vocation to live differently than the pagan nations around them. They complain about God’s sustenance in the desert, denying that God was accompanying them, providing for them in their need through the wonders of Creation.
And this consistently ends in calamity, as they reap the natural consequences of going astray. Thousands die from plague, pestilence, and poisonous serpents, as the Israelites repeatedly fall prey to temptation and distort their relationship with God, each other, and the world around them. It can be easy for us to look back on this failure with a hint of condescension: “Cmon, guys! You’re a mess! Get it together.” The pattern is so obvious when you have the whole arc of Scripture in front of you! Surely if we were in their shoes we wouldn’t be so dense. Surely we’d realize what’s at stake in our obedience to God and stand firm against these temptations.
“But don’t get smug,” the Apostle Paul warns us. The Israelites were not uniquely foolish. They fell prey to the same temptations that are “common to everyone.” And we have fallen prey to them too in our own ways. We pledge our allegiance to human inventions, forgetting that worldly powers have not and cannot save us. We abandon our vocation to honor the image of God in each other, instead treating other human beings as disposable objects. We deny that it is God who provides for us, not our own willful domination and industrious control of Creation. We have blithely succumbed to the same temptations that the people of Israel fell for again and again. And we are reaping the consequences of the damage we’ve inflicted on ourselves, on each other, and on the world around us.
So what are we to do about it? How are we to break this cycle and resist these pitfalls—these perennial temptations that are common to everyone? Right on the tail of cautioning them about temptation, Paul assures the Corinthians that “with the testing [God] will also provide the way out, so that you may be able to endure it.” So what’s that way out from the cycle of mess? What is the key to withstanding temptation?
Well, if you were here a couple weeks ago, you heard Rachel reflect that the key to withstanding temptation is remembering—remembering who we are—remembering whose we are. That’s why remembering is just as prominent a theme in the Bible as the messiness of the characters. As often as the people in the Scripture fall prey to temptation, God is there calling them to remember who and whose they are—to remember their fundamental identity.
And we see this fundamental identity revealed in a particularly spectacular way today through Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Horeb (another name for Mount Sinai). When Moses is commissioned to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, he asks God for some credentials to back up his message. God responds by proclaiming that this commission comes from “I AM—I AM WHO I AM, AND I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.” This is God’s Name. It’s a name too transcendent to be fully comprehended or translated. It’s a name considered too holy to be uttered aloud in casual speech. But it is a Name—an identity: “I AM.”
And what’s more, this “I AM” is not a distant, far off God, floating above, safe from relationship with our messiness. Moses is reminded that “I AM” is the “God of [his] ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” This “I AM” has claimed Moses’ people through a covenant with them. And hearing their cries of distress, “I AM” is coming to deliver them. This is not just the revelation of God’s Name—God’s identity. It is also the revelation of Israel’s fundamental identity—of who and whose they are. “I AM” is the God of Israel, and the people of Israel belong to “I AM.”
Most of us here are not members of this covenant by our birth. We were not born into Israel or “baptized into Moses” by observing the Law. But we are members of God’s people because of our Baptism into Jesus. “I AM WHO I AM” took on our human nature and came to live and die as one of us. In the person of Jesus, “I AM” entered the mess in a whole new way, and extended to us the same fundamental identity that God reveals anew to Moses on Mount Horeb. We have been “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” God—the “I AM—has claimed us through an everlasting covenant. This is who and whose we are.
In the end, we are no better or wiser than the people of ancient Israel whose messy story we share. They were not greater sinners than we are. Throughout the story of Scripture, they face temptation and fail—again and again. And so do we. No testing—no temptation—has overtaken us that is not common to everyone. We share the same struggle that runs throughout the Bible. We’re a mess.
But we also share the same hope in the mess. We share the same God—the “I AM”—who provides the way out—the key to standing firm in the face of temptation—by calling us again and again to repent and remember our fundamental identity. So when temptation and trials arise, remember who you are—remember whose you are: You’re a mess. So am I. But we’re God’s mess. Thanks be to God.