The People Want Proof by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

We are physical people. And we are immediate people. When we want something we want it now. Professional advertisers have pinpoint accuracy when it comes to playing into our desires for physical and immediate satisfaction.

SLIDE ONE –  Satisfy your thirst    

SLIDE TWO – Drink Evian

 

Quoted on Seth Godin’s blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/all_marketers_are_liars/2005/03/the-billion-dol.html).

Chris Busch writes:

“Take Evian ?? origins in the French Alps, mountain aquifer, special bottling process.  Feel fresh, young, and beautiful with Evian, the original beauty product.  The story tells of the Cachat Springs located in the quaint town of Evian-les-Bains on the southern shore of Lake Geneva in the Haute Savoie region of the French Alps.  Suddenly I'm having a European experience through the bottle of chilled water I just procured at the c-store with the filthy floors.  I feel healthier.  I've redefined cool.  It's not just water, but water from the French Alps.  It's superb water.  Beyond all other waters.  I feel smarter.  I look better.  You've lifted me out of my mundane, middle-class existence.  Thank you, Evian.  I love you.  I need you.”

Seth Godin writes: “And for those that are missing the point: hey, it's just water.”

You can get it out of the bathroom tap. “You buy bottled water because of the way it makes you feel, because of the impact the story has on your mood, not because you need the fluid.”

Advertisers play into our insecurities. We feel stupid, unattractive and unpopular. So they sell us products with promises of feeling smart, attractive, and popular. We will be successful if we drink Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Evian, and everything else they are trying to sell.

The problem here is that a good life has been turned into a product. We’ve become a transactional society; we trade something for something else.  When we buy into this way of life, paying for products, we are promised companionship, wealth, peace, joy, longevity, health, energy, passion, contentment.

When we view life like this, and then bring God into the picture, we believe God gives us what we want and need as long as we are basically good people. God gives us the products we want in order to give us all these things, these resources. We expect God to bless us with all of those things. When we don’t get them, we blame God.

This is what happened to the people of Israel.  They were freed from slavery by God and going to the land He promised. On the way, they got really impatient.  They were in the desert, the wilderness. They started demanding some products. Some proof. “Okay God, you said we are your people. Let’s see some stuff to prove that you are going to take care of us.”

Interaction in Exodus 17 is quite telling.

There wasn’t a drop of water for the people to drink. The people took Moses to task: “Give us water to drink.” But Moses said, “Why pester me? Why are you testing God?”

[Just like last week with the Manna], they complained to Moses, “Why did you take us from Egypt and drag us out here with our children and animals to die of thirst?”
⁴ Moses cried out in prayer to God, “What can I do with these people? Any minute now they’ll kill me!”
^5-6 God said to Moses, “Go on out ahead of the people… Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”
^6-7 Moses did what he said, with the elders of Israel right there watching. 

Here is the fascinating thing. The scripture does not even record that the water came out. Walter Bruggemann writes that the narrator does not tell us if the people drink. (Source: New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994, p. 817). 

Of course they drank. Over and over again Old Testament stories have the pattern of problem and resolution. Just like a 30 second TV ad. We know that God is not going to bring the people out of slavery just to let them die from dehydration. Of course, we know Moses hit the rock and water comes out.

The significance of this story comes in the last verse. We learn that Moses names the place:  Massah (Testing-Place) and Meribah (Quarreling) because of the quarreling of the Israelites and because of their testing of God when they said, “Is God here with us, or not?”

The story is not about whether or not God will give them water. It is about them testing God and quarreling. 

Walter Bruggemann says that what we are seeing here is “Israel’s inappropriate and remarkable lack of faith” (ibid, p 818). They are “stubborn and arrogant.” They are demanding concrete action from God. God had made this wonderful sweeping promise of a relationship with them. I will be your God and you will be my people. I will love you and you will love me with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. 

These small-minded people have turned God into someone who will dispense products to them like a drive-through carry out. This is why the place is called quarrel and test because the people had completely inverted the relationship. They think they are in charge. They think they can make demands of God. 

The reason they wander for 40 years is because that is how long it takes to mend their relationship with God. 

The passage ends with the question that sums up their testing: “Is God here with us or not?” These people make me crazy!! How could they not know that God is with them? God brought them out of slavery, killed all the first born in Egypt but spared them. God used Moses to convince Pharaoh to release them, then brought them through the sea in a dramatic escape. These are God’s people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. 

We look back on this story, and we know that God is with them. But their faith was weak. They wanted signs and miracles. They wanted water from a rock. They wanted Evian, the best water from the French Alps. That would prove that they were still God’s people, because God gave them what they asked for. But God wanted so much more.

Friends, let’s ask ourselves: are we like them?  Just a little bit? We want signs from God that we are blessed. We want the good life. We are physical people. And we are immediate people. We want it now. We get caught up in the idea that if we are good, then we will get what we want from God: companionship, wealth, peace, joy, longevity, health, energy, passion, contentment. And if bad things happen, and we are lacking any of those things, then we start complaining. Why has God abandoned us? How could God let me get cancer? Or let my child go through a divorce? How could God let me lose my job or get old? 

We want God to make things right, and do it now. God does give us a world where our basic needs can be met, when we learn to share with one another. There is enough food, water and shelter to go around. God has provided what we need. All that other material stuff, it is just extra. We don’t need nearly so much of it.

This is what we do need, and this is what God has to offer. Jesus called it “living water.” Living water is the stuff you drink and then you never get thirsty. It will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. You see, when we have a relationship with God, when we love God, and let God’s love fill us, then we will have joy. That does not mean we won’t have hard times. It means that with God walking with us through hard times, we will have a sense of deep contentment.  We won’t be worried about physical things like water, because we will trust that God is with us. This is what the people in the story did not understand.

But we can. God wants to walk with us through life, to carry us when we are weak, and to dance with us when we are joyful. God does not want to be an ATM that we go to when we need some cash. God wants to be a best friend who weeps with us and who loves with us. God wants our trust. God never leaves us. God is the living water. God is with us. God’s love never fails.