Wearing out Our Welcome in the Wilderness [A]

Listen Online:

Transcript:

We’re going to look at one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament, and I really am not sure why it’s one of my favorites, but it is. And before we start in at Numbers 13, where we find ourselves is the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness. It’s not during the 40 years, it’s before that even started.

We find that they had to go through the wilderness in order to get from Egypt to Canaan. God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey. He had been promising them this long before they ever left Egypt.

He promised Abraham before Abraham even was Abraham, that he would send him to a land and a country of his own. I mean, the very promise that they would have this land set aside for God’s people, we find in the earliest chapters of Genesis. And so they already knew where they were headed when they left Egypt.

And I grew up thinking, and I think a lot of people think this way, that they wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years because they were lost. I seem to remember even hearing a joke, you know, how do we know that Moses was a man? 40 years he never stopped for directions. I seem to remember somebody telling that when I was a kid.

No, they weren’t lost. They knew exactly where they were going. Before they ever left Egypt, they knew where they were going. And they crossed the Red Sea.

They crossed into, my thinking on it is that they crossed into what’s now Saudi Arabia. I tend to think that that’s where Mount Sinai was, but it’s not that big a deal, I guess. I always loved the story of the people who say that it was a textual, it was a scribal error in the text, and they actually crossed the Reed Sea, which the Reed Sea is three feet deep.

And so they say it wasn’t a miracle that they were able to cross the Reed Sea, But it seems pretty miraculous to me that God drowned Pharaoh’s entire army in three feet of water. So however you look at it, God did a miracle. I tend to think, though, that they went across the Red Sea, and instead of going across the Red Sea to the Sinai Peninsula, that they went to Saudi Arabia to where Mount Sinai would be.

But regardless, they were in the wilderness, but they knew where they were going. It’s just that God wouldn’t let them in. And tonight’s story that we’re going to look at in the Bible explains why God wouldn’t let them go in.

And they were already in the wilderness just by necessity of having to go through the wilderness to get to where they were going. And then God said, I’m going to leave you in the wilderness a little while longer. And I’ve thought about this concept of the wilderness.

The wilderness can be a wonderful place. I love going down to the Wichita Mountains to the wildlife refuge where you can hike around and you can only be there for so long. or you have to have a permit to go in specific areas.

They don’t just let people come and congregate in there. It’s essentially as close to untouched wilderness as you can get in this area. And it’s just beautiful, and it’s peaceful.

Unless you come up on a buffalo unexpectedly up in the mountain. I don’t know how they get up in the rocks, but they get up there. I love that area.

I love going to the wilderness sometimes. But then there are other times you don’t want to be in the wilderness. You’re thinking, how do I get back to civilization?

So the wilderness can, you know, I’ve watched the documentaries about the Andes plane crash. I forget if they were going from Chile to Argentina or vice versa. Their only desire was to get out of that wilderness, those snow-covered mountains.

So depending on why you’re there and how long you’re there, the wilderness either can be a refreshing experience or it can be a terrifying experience. But we all go through wilderness experiences, if not literally, then figuratively. We all go through wilderness experiences, and I think that applies spiritually as well.

We go through wilderness experiences where we go through what we would call times of adversity in our spiritual life. And it may be that we’re in times of adversity because God is trying to teach us something. God is trying to prepare us for something.

The wilderness can be a place of preparation. It can be a learning experience that’s going to benefit us later. That was the case with Moses.

He was sent off for 40 years. Think about this. He was the prince of Egypt, and yet he was sent out of the royal courts of Egypt and was sent out for 40 years to tend sheep in the wilderness until God finally spoke to him.

40 years he spent in the wilderness until God spoke to him through the burning bush and told him, go back to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. Now, do we know everything God had in mind for Moses during that 40 years? Probably not.

There’s probably a lot that God taught Moses through that experience that prepared him for later on that the scriptures don’t record. But one that just stands out to me like it’s got flashing lights around it is he was having to deal with the Israelites. Dealing with a bunch of stubborn sheep would have been good preparation for that.

I love the story that they are. I love that Brother Hodges funeral back in April. They were talking about his his degree, his study at OSU being in was it cattle ranching and sanitation.

both of which come in handy pastoring a church. Cleaning up other people’s messes and dealing with stubborn herds, both can come in handy. And I can say that not only as one who’s been a pastor but one who’s been a church member and been pastor.

Those both come in handy. And so God can prepare us in ways that we don’t understand. God sent Moses to the wilderness to deal with a bunch of stubborn sheep for 40 years to prepare him for dealing with the people of Israel who were going to whine and complain and turn back and get lost and waver from the way they were supposed to go.

Wilderness experience, these times of adversity that we go through, God can use them to prepare us. God can also use them to punish us. We don’t like to think about that, but God does punish us.

And when it’s God’s people getting punished, the punishment is not always to have revenge on us for what we deserve, but is a disciplinary punishment to get our attention and to bring us back to him. And sometimes God has to spank us to get our attention, doesn’t he? And I had to explain this to my class a couple times.

They’d say, why does such and such child get off so easily and you’re sending this one to the principal? It’s a difference in what it takes to get your attention. You know, there are some kids you can look at and they straighten up and there are some kids that just are not going to straighten up no matter what you do.

It’s the same with my kids. Benjamin, I can whoop his little behind and he does not care. It does not faze him.

Madeline, I can look at her. I can look at her funny and she falls all to pieces and I’ve got her attention. And sometimes, you know, God sends us through times of adversity as a time of punishment to get our attention, to remind us, hey, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do.

You go be in time out for a little bit or you go, you know, or he’s spanking us. So the wilderness can be a time of preparation, it can be a time of punishment, or it can be a time of purification. Sometimes there’s just something beneficial about going through times of adversity when our priority list gets very short and we remember what really matters.

And we see this a lot of times when we get bad news from the doctor. It’s cancer. Suddenly, the priority list of our life gets very short, or a loved one dies.

Suddenly, what’s on TV doesn’t matter so much anymore. Suddenly, the plans I could make for next week don’t matter so much anymore. And sometimes we go through times of adversity so God can remind us of what’s really important.

He can purify us and get out of our lives the things that aren’t necessarily bad in and of themselves, but they distract from what the most important thing is. And so I say all that to set up what I’m talking about tonight with the wilderness experience. As we talk about what happened with the Israelites, I don’t want you to think because I’m making spiritual application with it that I think it’s just an allegory that it didn’t really happen.

A lot of people will do that with the Bible and say, well, that didn’t really happen. We’re just supposed to learn from it. Well, you know, there are stories in the Bible that Jesus uses that we can learn from and doesn’t say they really happen.

He says the kingdom of heaven is light or he doesn’t say that the story actually happened. For God to say the story happened, I believe the story happened, but I also believe that there’s more to it than just historical information that we can glean. There’s also spiritual truth to be found there anytime God interacts with his people.

So we’re going to look at Numbers chapter 13 tonight and look at their time in the wilderness. And I’m just going to tell you up front, I’ve got enough material here. I may not finish tonight.

We may go into next Sunday night with this. But in Numbers chapter 13, starting in verse 1, it says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men that they may search the land of Canaan, which I gave unto the children of Israel, of every tribe of their father, shall you send a man, every one a ruler among them. So God tells Moses, as they’re on the verge of coming into Canaan, God tells Moses, I want you to send a group of men, I want you to send 12 men, pick one from each tribe, and I want you to send them in there to search the land of Canaan.

He says, and notice this, which I give unto the children of Israel. He doesn’t say, search it out and see whether I might give it to you. Search it out and see whether you can take it.

Search it out and see whether you think this is possible. He said, send them in there just to do reconnaissance over the land that I’ve already given you. It’s yours.

I said so. When God says so, that settles it. He says, send 12 men in there to spy it out.

And I say this because if you’re familiar with the story at all, you already know what happens. They send the spies in there and they start bringing back this report of whether or not they think it’s possible to take the land. And that is not at all what God asked them.

God didn’t need their opinion on that. He’d already told them it was their land. And so Moses in verse three, by the commandment of the Lord sent them from the wilderness of Paran, all those men were heads of the children of Israel.

And now from verse four on to verse 15, he names the 12 men. And I could go through there and attempt to pronounce the names and maybe get close, but you all are welcome to read that for yourselves later on. In this case, I will tell you, take my word for it, he sent 12.

Two of them were Joshua and Caleb. And you know what I say, take my word for it? I never tell you to do that.

Go back and check for yourselves later that he sent 12, but it’s in there. I’m not going to try to pronounce all the names because for tonight, it’s not important that we know all the names. But starting in verse 16, he said, these are the names, the ones he just said, are the names of the men which Moses sent out to spy out the land.

And Moses called Oshah the son of Nun, Jehoshua. And that’s referring to the man we know of as Joshua. And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said unto them, get you up this way southward and go up into the mountain and see the land, what it is, and the people that dwell therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many, and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad, and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds, and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not, and be ye of good courage, and bring of the first of the land.

And now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes. And so Moses calls these men out, as God has already told him to do, calls the twelve, and gives them their instructions. And now he gives them a little bit more instruction than what is recorded for us.

God may have told him word for word all these things to tell him. But as far as what’s recorded for us, this is more than we hear God telling Moses. And at first it seems like, well, it’s Moses’ fault that they come back with this report.

But as I read it again, Moses really doesn’t tell them, go see whether we can take it or not. The closest Moses comes is, tell us how big they are. Tell us where their cities are.

I mean, that’s not the same as tell us whether you think it’s doable or not. He just says, you know, on second reading, that is fully within the scope of go check out the land, which is what God told Moses they needed to do. Tell us whether they’re big is not the same as tell us whether you think we can whoop them.

And so he tells them, go check out the land, go check out the people, go check out the cities, go whatever information you can bring us back. And this for Moses is not a source of concern. It’s not a question whether they can take it or not, because he says to them, be of good courage.

Moses isn’t worried. Moses knows that God has already said, God has already promised that this land is going to be theirs anyway. God has given it to them.

It’s a done deal. For that matter, they knew. It wasn’t just in Numbers 13, God suddenly reveals in verse 2, when he says, which I give unto the children of Israel. It’s not that suddenly in Numbers 13, too, God reveals his plan that they’re supposed to have the land of Canaan.

As I said earlier, they have been told this since the days of Abraham, that they would have a land. When God told Abraham, get up and go to a land which I will show you, God began promising right then that they would have a land of their own. And incredibly, that takes a lot of faith, when God says, get up and I’ll tell you where you’re going, but just go to do it.

And that’s exactly what Abraham did, to his credit. He believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Verse 21 says, so they went up and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rahab, as men came to Haman.

And they ascended by the south and came unto Hebron, where Ahimon, Shishai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. Now Hebron was built seven years before Zohan in Egypt. And here we are again with the Hebrew, or not the Hebrew, but the foreign names.

Those may not be Hebrew. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing those right or not. But there are names in this state that I don’t know if I pronounced right.

It was only a couple years ago that I found out that they pronounced it Elic. Why in the world do you spell it Alex? You can tell me later.

But there are names here within an hour of me that I can’t pronounce. So I’m just getting as close as I can. And they came unto the brook of Eshcol and cut down from thence a branch with a cluster of grapes.

And they bear it between two upon a staff. That is a big bunch of grapes. I mean, we can get lost in the early modern English here and not realize what they’re saying.

They’re saying they cut down a bunch of grapes and they had to stick it on a pole carried by men at either end. That is a big bunch of grapes. And they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs.

The place was called the Brook Eshkol, because the cluster of grapes from which the children cut down from this. And they returned from searching of the land after 40 days. So they were gone for 40 days.

These 12 men were there checking out the land of Israel, or the land of Canaan at that point. And clearly it’s an incredible land. They’re bringing back pomegranates.

They’re bringing back figs, both of which are delicious and kind of pricey. And they’re bringing back these massive grapes that it takes multiple men to carry. And they came back with, if they had stopped at one point in the report, they come back with a great report about what God has promised.

And they went and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the children of Israel and to the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh, and brought back word unto them, unto all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey. And this is the fruit of it.

So what they’re telling Moses is, We’ve gone and checked out the land just like God told you to tell us, and it is exactly as it was advertised. God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, and sure enough, that’s exactly what God had delivered. He said, And this is the fruit of it.

Can you imagine being there the day where they stand before the children of Israel with Moses and Aaron, And they bring out these grapes the size of your head. Now, the Bible doesn’t say they’re the size of your head. That’s just the picture I have in my mind.

But these massive clusters of grapes, they bring them out. And I can just imagine the people, look at that. I’ve never done it, but farming is hard work.

Some of you in here know that. I know growing a little garden is hard work. I can only imagine trying to grow or produce enough produce or livestock, not only to support yourself, I mean, not only to feed yourself, but to sell and support your family, that’s got to be hard work.

And the idea of, especially for an agricultural society like theirs, to be able to move into a land that was so fertile, you’re producing things like this. That would be, I mean, it would be like winning the lottery today without gambling. We couldn’t imagine anything better than that.

And they’re looking at these grapes and this produce, and it’s got to be incredible. Nevertheless, they say, oh, here we go. Verse 28, there’s always the nevertheless.

or as we would say more often today, the but, the B-U-T. God, I believe you can do this, but. .

. Sometimes we need to strike that word from our vocabulary. Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great, and moreover, we saw the children of Anak there.

They’re still okay. I mean, they’re just reporting on what they saw, not really giving any commentary on it yet. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are able to overcome it. So the men are giving a report and saying, you know, they show the incredible produce, but they say not only is there big produce there, but there are big people and big societies there. And obviously the implication there for most of them is this is going to be tough, Because it says Caleb has to still the people.

Caleb has to calm everybody down. The people began, as they did so many times, to murmur. The people began to complain and to fret.

And it says Caleb stilled the people before Moses. And Caleb says, so let’s go take it. Let’s go do this.

But the men that went up with him said, we be not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. Hello, that’s not what God asked you. That’s not what God asked you to report back on.

answer the question you were asked. Yet another phrase I think they’re going to put on my headstone one day. Answer the question you were asked.

I’m so tired of doing math and doing fractions and trying to explain at the whiteboard to some of the kids how you do this step by step, and some kids blurting out the answer at the end. Well, I’m great that you can, I’m so thrilled for you that you can do 17 steps in your head at once, but I’m trying to teach everybody the process, and I asked you the answer to the first question. Just answer the question you were asked.

I don’t want to know the end yet. Well, that’s exactly what they were doing. Just answer the question you were asked.

God didn’t ask you if you thought you could take over the land or not. He just asked you to tell the people what it looked like. And they said, well, we’re not able.

We don’t think we’re able to take the country because they’re stronger than we are. Well, you know what? That’s entirely possible that they were stronger than the Israelites.

And you know what? The God of Israel was stronger than all of them. And it was never in question for him whether it was their land or not.

And it says in verse 32, and they brought up an evil report. They brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched under the children of Israel, saying, the land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof. And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants. And we were in their own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. So then they really get to the heart of the matter.

It’s not just, well, there are big cities. I mean, if they had stopped at that point, yeah, the nevertheless kind of takes things negative in verse 28. But if they just stopped there, they’re still just answering the question God asked.

Tell the people about the land. But when Caleb interrupts that, when Caleb interrupts the negativity and says, let’s go take it, let’s do it now. And they begin to argue with him and say, we can’t.

They are demonstrating a massive lack of faith in God. So they’re going to be content to just stick around in the wilderness for however long it takes until who knows what happens. We’re not strong enough to go against the people.

They brought not just a negative report about the land, they brought an evil report. And I think it was evil because it was not only an evil report saying the land is bad, this is not going to be good. The report itself, I believe, was evil because they were leading, they were inducing people to lack faith in God.

They said, when we’ve gone to search the land, in verse 32, it’s a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof. I’ve heard people describe other areas of land similarly Siberia, Alaska, northern Canada people go in there all the time and don’t come out people climb Mount Everest all the time and don’t ever come down the land swallows up the inhabitants you know what though God had already promised them this is your land this is the land that I’m giving you God wasn’t asking them to go on their own and tame Siberia without his help God said it’s a little plot of land that I have said that the most powerful entity in the universe has set aside specifically for you and is going to help you take it. As a matter of fact, can take it for you without your help.

And yet we’re afraid because the land swallows up the inhabitants. And there are giants in the land. And compared to them, we’re like grasshoppers.

Well, that may be. You know what? I can squash a grasshopper.

Squish a grasshopper. There’s a big grasshopper out here on the way up the steps and it went to fly and looked. .

. I’ve never seen one like that. It looked like a butterfly until it landed.

Weird. I could have stepped on that thing and squished it. You know, you get 30 or 40,000 of them though, they might be able to fight back.

They might be able to send me running for my car, swatting them away with my Bible. And you know what? They didn’t even need to fight back as a flock of grasshoppers or swarm, I guess, they come in.

God had already given them the land. Who cares if they were like grasshoppers in contrast to the people? Well, they hear this message and all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried.

And the people wept that night. They’d been so looking forward to going in and taking possession of all that God had promised them. And yet 10 men with a lack of faith were able to turn the entire millions of the nation of Israel away from what God had promised them.

And their hopes were dashed and they cried and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron. And the whole congregation said unto them, would God that we had died in the land of Egypt or would God that we had died in this wilderness.

And wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land to fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey? Were it not better for us to return to Egypt? And they said one to another, let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt.

And I think at this point, we probably will finish the story next week, but I want to talk to you before we close tonight about a few things that kept them in the wilderness. And when we talk about the spiritual application of this, a few things that keep us in the wilderness today. That sometimes we sit around and we wait for God to open a door for us.

And that’s a good thing. I’ve mentioned in the last couple of weeks, I am so tired of hearing my mother and others tell me, be still, be still, quoting the verse from Psalms, be still and know that I’m God. If I get any more still, I’m going to be going in reverse.

I am not moving. I have not moved for however long. I can only be still for so long.

And we come into these times of adversity where things are not going the way we want. And we’re just waiting for God to do something and move us to the next spiritual mountaintop. And we feel like we’re subsisting.

We feel like we’re just existing and not really thriving. And then we wait for God to open a door for us. And God finally comes along and says the time is now for whatever it is.

Whether we’re talking about just our spiritual life feels like it’s lacking something. then God wakes everything. There’s an awakening and God begins to illuminate things for us.

Or we’re talking about an area of ministry where we think, God, I just don’t feel like I’m doing anything. What do you want me to be doing? And God finally says, there, now do that.

Or whatever it could be, we come through times of adversity in life where God is either preparing us for the next thing he intends for us to do, or God is trying to discipline us for something that we’ve been doing, or God is trying to purify us and get rid of the idols and the things that distract us by these times of adversity. And we go through these times of adversity, and then God says, now, there, move. Go on out of the wilderness and do this.

And a lot of times we are too scared to move. A lot of times we are too scared, we are too fearful, lack the faith necessary to follow through when God tells us, okay, now the time comes to come out of the wilderness. And that’s That’s the first reason why we stay in the wilderness is that we fear the dangers that lie outside.

Now for them, the wilderness was not a nice place. I mean, they were so thirsty that they were having to cry out to God. It wasn’t just that it was hot out there.

There was no water. God did something miraculous, though. He took care of them.

Moses was able, by God’s power, Moses was able to get water out of a rock. That’s pretty incredible. Even in this wilderness experience, they got to see God do things that we may never see in physical form, things like them in our lives.

God was sending them food on a daily basis. But what I’m saying is the wilderness itself was not pleasant because they didn’t just have food all around them. They didn’t just have water all around them.

They didn’t have a life of ease. They trudged through the wilderness. And yes, God took care of them, but it was still a harrowing experience.

And yet God finally brings them to the point and says, now it’s time for you to go in and take everything I’ve promised you that you would have. Everything good that I have planned for you, now is the time to take the next step. And they panicked because they saw giants, because they saw strong cities, as though God’s plan could be thwarted by giants and strong cities.

But they were afraid. In verses 31 and 32, they said, we be not able to go up against the people for they’re stronger than we. And they said, the land eats the inhabitants alive.

They were scared to death. You know what From our finite human standpoint, there’s some risk involved in stepping out in faith and trusting God and going into the next thing. When we don’t know what’s going to be on the other side of the river.

I say from our human finite standpoint. Because really when God’s in control, he’s in charge. What are we risking?

What is there to be afraid of? Whom shall I fear? The Bible says so many times.

And yet it looks like a risk because even though we know who’s in control of what’s on the other side of the river, we don’t know what’s over there. So I’m afraid that all too often we let our fear and our lack of faith convince us not to take steps that God calls us to do, not to step out on faith when he calls us to. Because as unpleasant as the wilderness is, we’re too afraid of the dangers that lie outside of it.

Second of all, we may come to believe that we’re only good enough for the wilderness, that the wilderness is what we deserve. And I’ve met people, even Christians, even Christians who are saved and understand that God loved them enough to die for them, who understand what forgiveness and what the cross was all about. But when it comes to spiritual growth and when it comes to times of adversity and when it comes to times where they feel they lack spiritual growth, and God says, but I have something else available for you here, they get beaten down and defeated and think that, well, this is all I deserve.

Well, you know what? It probably is what we deserve, just the life of adversity, but thank God He doesn’t give us what we deserve. Thank God He gives us more than we deserve.

That’s what mercy and grace are all about, that we don’t deserve any good thing from God. And yet because He’s good, He gives us what we don’t deserve. But in verse 33, they compare themselves to the sons of Anak, and they say, compared to them, we’re grasshoppers.

We can’t go in and take this land. This land will swallow us whole. No, we’re fine just right here in the wilderness.

We’ll just stay here. Sometimes God calls us to step out on faith. We think, well, I’m not good enough to do whatever He’s called us to do.

I’m fine just here in the wilderness. That’s all I deserve. Well, you know what?

It is what we deserve. But it’s not what He’s