Wearing out Our Welcome in the Wilderness [B]

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I started about two weeks ago on a Sunday night talking about the wilderness. And I told you then that I had more than one message on the subject and that I’d come back and finish it the next week, which was supposed to be last Sunday night. But God intervened and we had snow.

And evidently you all weren’t blessed with as much snow as we were, but we got to make snow ice cream and that made it all worth it. But we had snow and so we were not here. So I figured I’d just do it now before we get into Christmas time and I forget about it.

And so we’re in Numbers chapter 13 this morning and talking about the wilderness. And if you’ll recall from two weeks ago, if you were here, we talked about the wilderness not only being something that literally happened. I mean, this is history.

It’s not just symbolism. It literally happened. They walked in the wilderness for 40 years after this.

They went through the wilderness to get, you know, on one side of the Red Sea was the wilderness. On the other side was Egypt. God parted the waters for them to cross the Red Sea on dry land.

And all around Mount Sinai was wilderness that they wandered around in. But also we can learn from this and take spiritual applications. I’m not one of these people who looks at the history in the Bible and says, well, that’s just supposed to teach a spiritual truth.

I believe it literally happened. But there’s also spiritual application from it. Because, folks, we can read through the Bible and see how things literally happen.

and yet God used them to teach spiritual truth to the people. God didn’t waste, you know, I keep hearing on the radio them talking about people in government. They talk about the Bush administration and the Obama administration and people in both who say never let a crisis go to waste, which I think is a really awful and cynical way to look at the world.

But if we can get away from that a little bit and look at God and use the same terminology but understand that we serve a loving and also just God who never uses things in the wrong way and always does them for his glory and for our good, we can say God never lets a crisis go to waste. God is always using teachable moments just through everyday life. And so as they were wandering through the wilderness, they were supposed to learn from that their reliance on God.

We can learn from that our need to rely on God. We can also, when God tells them, okay, you’ve come to the end of the wilderness and you’re supposed to go into the promised land, we can learn from that that we have wilderness moments in our own lives where we go through times of drought and struggle and suffering, and the wilderness is never a pleasant experience. The wilderness is never a pleasant experience, and it’s not meant to be, but the wilderness is not necessarily a bad thing either because the Bible says that God chastens whom he loves.

And as somebody pointed out this week in a conversation, sometimes the Lord loves us a lot. like I tell my children I love you too much to let you act that way and so because if I didn’t love you I just let you act like a little holy terror in the middle of hobby lobby but because I love you and don’t want you to grow up to be a sociopath we’re going to deal with this and you’re not going to like it and it’s not going to be pleasant but it’s not a bad thing either and we go through times of struggle in our in our everyday life we struggle with family we struggle with finances. Sometimes we struggle spiritually and we go through these wilderness experiences and they are not pleasant.

That’s what makes them the wilderness experience. And yet they’re not a bad place to be either because God uses those things to bring us in line with where he wants us to be. As we talked about two weeks ago, sometimes he uses the wilderness to punish us for something we’ve done wrong.

He disciplines us. Sometimes he uses the wilderness to prepare us for the next thing. Sometimes he uses the wilderness to purify us, to get rid of things that aren’t necessarily bad in our lives, but they’re taking the place of what’s best. I look at this preparation, and I have struggled for a couple weeks now trying to understand.

You all know that I changed teaching jobs, and I’ve tried to understand, God, I heard you so clearly to tell me to go to that first school that I went to. And then I was there a little over two months, and God, I heard you so clearly tell me to leave. God, why was it so important that I go there for just two months?

God, what was the purpose in that? What was I supposed to learn from that? Because I went in with these grandiose dreams that I was going to be able to make a big difference in the school, not just with the students, but in the school, and that didn’t happen.

All that happened was I got frustrated and annoyed. God, what was the purpose? And then I started at the other school this week, And Sister Shank was asking me how I like it.

I love it. Outside of pastoring, I have never had, now we’ll see how week two goes, but outside of pastoring, I have never had a job that I’ve loved so much. The students, my coworkers, the environment in the school.

And I told a coworker on Friday, I said, it occurs to me that I would not love this so much if I had not seen the previous. And I still may not have all of it figured out, but I think God sent me through a wilderness experience. I didn’t even realize it was the wilderness until I was halfway through it.

But God sent me through a wilderness experience, a time of struggle in my life so that I could be prepared for the next thing to come. And so sometimes God uses those things and they’re not pleasant and they’re not necessarily a happy experience, but God uses it to prepare us for the next point that he has set for us. And the Israelites were not meant to stay in the wilderness for 40 years.

They were supposed to pass through the wilderness. God was supposed to speak to Moses. He was supposed to give them the law.

He was supposed to use the manna and the finding water in the rock to teach them reliance on God so that they would be prepared for when they moved into the promised land. I say they were never meant to stay in the wilderness for 40 years. It also didn’t catch God by surprise when they did.

Just because I say, well, it was never supposed to be this way mean God was ever confused and went, I didn’t know that was going to happen like I do on a regular basis. God is never surprised. God is never caught off guard.

Now he has his plan of what he desires to happen, but he also knows I’ve created them with that pesky free will and here’s what’s going to happen. So he already knew, but his best for them was not in the wilderness. God was merely trying to use that to prepare them for the promised land.

But we start in verse 1 of chapter 13 again, and I’m going to read through this again just because it’s been two weeks. I don’t want to forget what we’re talking about. It says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel.

Of every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them. And Moses, by the commandment of the Lord, sent them from the wilderness of Paran. All of those men were heads of the children of Israel.

Now, if you want to go through verses 4 through 16 and try to pronounce all those names, you are more than welcome to do so. As I said two weeks ago, just take my word for it. There are 12 of them.

Take my word for it for now. Go home and check and make sure there really are 12. But there are 12 in there, and I can’t pronounce their names, and they probably couldn’t pronounce mine, but there are 12 men, one from each tribe.

And it says in verse 17, the fruit of the land. Now the time was of the first ripe grapes. So they’ve been given their marching orders.

God told Moses and then Moses told the 12, go into the land and scope it out. He doesn’t ever tell them. God doesn’t ever tell Moses.

And as far as is recorded here, Moses doesn’t ever tell the 12, go see whether we can take it or not. Go and see whether you think this is possible for us to take the land. God had already given them the land.

He merely said, to go and scope it out. Check out the land. See what route you might take.

See where the cities are. See where the strongholds are. You know, I’ve watched quite a few documentaries about how they, you know, how the U.

S. forces have dealt with the Taliban or they’ve dealt with Saddam Hussein. Never once did I hear any of the military brass talk about their intelligence and say, yeah, we sent these people in to see whether we could take out the Taliban or not, or whether or not we could take out Saddam Hussein.

Now, I don’t want to draw too strong of a parallel between God and the United States Armed Forces, because as much as we like to think the United States Armed Forces are omnipotent, there really is a being in our universe who is omnipotent, and that’s God and God alone. And yet, the difference in strength was so much, there was never really a doubt. You know, I didn’t even hear the anti-war crowd question whether or not we could win a war with Iraq or Afghanistan.

It was always whether we could hold on to it or not, whether or not we’d be facing insurgencies and things like that. But the question never was asked, to my recollection, has never been prominently asked, could we beat Saddam Hussein? Could we beat Moa Omar?

No, no, there’s a foregone conclusion. Normally, if the U. S.

military wants to win something and is given the backing by the politicians to win it, they’re going to win it. They’re going to win. But there’s still the idea of the need for reconnaissance.

Okay, we know we’re going to win this. How do we get in there? Which is the best route to take?

Where are the strongholds? Where are the enemy forces located? It was that same kind of thing going on here.

It was a foregone conclusion. God had already given them the land. And they knew this.

It wasn’t just that God told Moses that the land was theirs. God had been telling them since the days of Abraham that this land was going to be theirs. And as the spiritual and physical descendants of Abraham, they would have been familiar with that whole narrative.

And they would have understood that God has given us this land. And so there’s a real lack of faith if God says, I have already given you this. Yeah, you don’t possess it yet.

You’ve not gone in and taken it. But I’ve already signed off on the deed and title. You own this.

I’ve given it to you. And then we have to make up our minds whether or not we think we can take it. Now, God’s already given it.

He tells them, go in and spy out the land. He says, see where the cities are. see what kind of cities they are.

Are they big strongholds with walls or are they tent cities? Go check out the produce of the land. Go check out the people.

And they do these things. They do what God tells them to do. It’s just the problem is not only do they do reconnaissance on those things and scope out where are the cities, where are the strongholds, what kind of land is it, what kind of people live there, and they come back and report on that, but they add their little opinion commentary about whether or not they think the Israelites can take it.

And that was never within the scope of what God asked them. So they went up, verse 21, and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin and to Rahab as men come to Hamath. 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 they came unto the brook of Eshcol and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes and they bare it between two on a staff. And I’m still amazed by that because when I talked about this two weeks ago, I thought they cut down a bunch of grapes.

They cut down a bunch of grapes and had to carry it between two people. But as I reread that, it was one cluster. It wasn’t a bunch in the sense that we think several bushels are a bunch.

This was one cluster of grapes and it was so big they had to use two men to carry it. I have never seen anything like that. I go to Crest, I go to Walmart, I even go to the natural grocers.

Nobody has anything that big. One cluster of grapes, and it took two men to carry it on a staff. They put it basically on a, you know, you’ll see people string things over a board or a stick and carry it one on one guy’s shoulder and one on the shoulder of the man in front, and they carry it on the, that’s what they were having to do with this big cluster of grapes.

That’s incredible. And they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs. Now, it doesn’t say whether they were giant pomegranates and figs, but you can draw your own conclusions on that.

The place was called the brook Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. So they went and they named it after the grapes. The notes in my Bible say that that name refers to a cluster of grapes, Eshkol.

If you saw a cluster of grapes the size of your car, would you not name the place you found it? It’s Grape Land. So that’s what they named it.

And they returned from searching of the land after 40 days. Now to me, that would say, I know I’m talking a lot about the grapes this morning, but that is just impressive to me. And that tells you that the land is not only every bit as good as God said it would be, but even more so.

This land that God promised them was incredible. And they returned from searching of the land after 40 days. Now verse 26 says, And they went and came to Moses and to 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 and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.

And they told them and said, We came unto the land, whether thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey. And this is the fruit of it. 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 are still reporting on what they saw, but getting a little bit negative there. 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. So basically they’re reporting back to the people that it’s full of all sorts of nasty characters.

You say, well, that’s not fair. We see later on in their dealings with some of these people, some of these people are involved in child sacrifice. Some of these people are involved in ritualized prostitution as part of their worship.

I mean, you name it. You think of all of the abominable behaviors that go on in our world today, and they were doing those things back then. And these were not nice people that dwell in the land.

So the people, I’m sure, were fearful at that point. And we can read between the lines and see that the people were starting to murmur about it. It doesn’t say that, but it says Caleb stilled the people in verse 30.

Well, he didn’t need to still them if they weren’t running amok. We have a saying at home, don’t poke the bear. If the kids are being good, leave them alone.

If it gets quiet in the other room, you might go check, but if they’re just sitting there watching cartoons, leave them alone. You don’t need to still them or do anything with them unless they’re running wild. Well, it says Caleb stilled the people because the people weren’t being still.

and he stilled the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and possess it for we are able to overcome it. We see Caleb here being one of the cheerleaders for let’s go and do what God told us we could do. So before things even really get out of hand too badly, the people are starting to murmur a little bit, let’s just nip it in the bud.

Let’s go do it. We can do this. God has already given it to us.

But the men that went up with him, they stop him right there. They said, we be not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we. Okay, the second part of that, they’re right.

Yeah, those people are definitely stronger than the Israelites. We be not able to go up against them. If God before us, who can be against us?

And they brought up an evil report of the land, which they had searched unto the children of Israel. The report they gave was evil. It was evil of the land.

It was evil in and of itself, because it came from a place of doubting the word of God. They brought up this report saying, the land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof. It swallows men whole.

And I think I told you about the way people used to refer to the Old West or Alaska or Siberia. You know, just these vast, formidable, unsearchable areas of the world that people go in and don’t come out all the time. It swallows people whole.

Well, they said the land eateth up the inhabitants thereof. And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. and there we saw giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants.

You know what? I don’t care how big the stature is. I don’t care how big the giants are.

God is bigger. Now I can say that forcefully now, understanding fully, and I need you to understand that even as I say that, I have times in my life where I look at the giants and say, oh, we be not able to go up against them. But whether I always keep this in mind or not, it’s true this morning.

It’s true then. it’ll be true from now to the end of time that no matter the size of the giants they faced or that I faced or that you faced, God is bigger. The sons of Anak, which come of the giants, and we were in their own, excuse me, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

They said the way they saw us and the way we saw ourselves in comparison and contrast to them, we were like grasshoppers. That’s no big deal because to God they’re ants. The giants were like ants.

And all the congregation, chapter 14, verse 1, and all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt, or would God we had died in this wilderness. Instead of going and fighting these people and trying to take this land, which God’s already given us, they had their hearts set on that land.

I believe that’s why they were weeping. But instead of going in to possess what God has already promised, and God said, you already own it. just go and possess it.

They wept and said, why don’t we just stay here in the wilderness and die? Or we could have gone back to Egypt and lived out our lives as slaves until we die. And wherefore hath the Lord brought us into 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? So they begin to, they have gone from doubting their strength to now doubting God and saying, did God, why did God just bring us out here to the wilderness so that we could all be killed and enslaved. It’d be better for us to return to Egypt.

It’d be better to return to Egypt than to die here in the wilderness. Well, first of all, I disagree with that just on the face of it. Even if God were going to leave them to languish in the wilderness, it’s better to die free than live as slaves, I would venture to guess.

And they said one to another, let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt. So now they’ve begun to doubt their own strength, they’ve begun to doubt God’s strength, and because of that, they are now formulating a plan to do exactly the opposite of what God has told them to do. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. You’ve got Joshua and Caleb out of the 12 men who were sent to spy out the land of Canaan. You’ve got two who still were faithful and believed what God said about possessing the land.

And they were so distraught over what was taking place in the nation of Israel that they rent their clothes. They tore their clothes. Now, we don’t see this a whole lot, but you can think of people who are in such, you know, we talk all the time about, I’m just, I’m so overcome, I’m ripping my hair out.

Those of you who can get a hold of your hair. Tearing my hair out. Well, they would get so overcome and so despondent that they would tear their garments.

And they spake unto the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land which we passed through to search it is an exceeding good land. They’re trying to talk the people into understanding. But God has told us how good it was.

And it exceeded even our expectations as a reminder that God knows what’s going on in this land. And they said in verse 8, If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land. and give it us a land which floweth with milk and honey.

He said, if the Lord delights in it, he’ll make it happen. If the Lord chooses, he will bring us into this land. But they said in verse 9, only rebel not ye against the Lord.

Bingo. That is exactly what they were doing. And God can tell us to do something, and we get so wrapped up in our own fears and our own insecurities, and we decline to do it because of self-preservation or whatever else, and we forget about the fact that God has given us a direct order, and exactly what we’re doing is rebelling against the order that our Lord has given us.

He says, Rebele not ye against the Lord. They probably weren’t even thinking of it in those terms. Neither fear ye the people of the land, for they are bred for us. Their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us.

Fear them not. A great statement. Their defense is departed from them.

Now, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t fully understand what they mean by the statement, they are bred for us. I have what I think it means, but because I’m not certain, I’m not going to just throw out my opinion as though it’s fact.

But this statement, their defense has departed from them. That makes me think of Samson. Samson was, I can’t remember if the Bible said he’s the strongest man who ever lived, but if it does not, then he was certainly up there in the rankings.

And the secret to Samson’s strength, we say is in his hair, really it was in God giving him the power because of this vow that took place that involved his hair. It’s not like the hair was, it’s not like his hair had magical powers, guys. But God strengthened him and part of the vow that was the reason that God strengthened him was this Nazarite vow that he wouldn’t cut his hair.

But the Bible talks about when that hair was cut, when that vow was violated, his strength departed him. And he was just this harmless teddy bear of a man. that they easily led around.

Well, I think the same thing, I think of that when I see it says their defense has departed from them. Their strength is gone. It has left them.

Elvis has left the building. They are without defense. Who will stand before the Almighty?

See, it wasn’t the Israelites who were going to do battle on their own behalf. It was God. If you want to know how that works out, read the book of Nahum.

Read chapter 1 and see how God can melt mountains and throw down everything. And who can stand before the Almighty? Their defense has departed from them and the Lord is with us.

So fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. Really?

That’s the response. We don’t like what you have to say, so we’re going to throw rocks at you until you die. This is not a rational way of looking at the world.

And sometimes our fear and our lack of faith keeps us from behaving rationally. Now the world looks at us and says, people of faith, there’s no reason, there’s no logic in that. And the world assumes that to believe in God and to believe that you hear from God and to follow God, you’re behaving illogically.

You’re behaving stupidly. The world believes that faith and reason cannot coexist. But I contend that the further we get away from God, the more depraved we become in our thinking and the less clearly we think and the less realistic we are in the way we see the world. So in their doubt, in their rebellion against God, they started behaving irrationally.

I’d say almost like animals at this point. The congregation, they’d stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.

And it’s at that exact moment, when it looks like Joshua and Caleb are about to die, and maybe Aaron and Moses too, God shows up. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? And how long will it be ere they believe me for all the signs which I have shown among them?

Now God asks these questions. They’re rhetorical questions. Moses is not going to have an answer that God doesn’t already know.

But it’s interesting that sometimes we see people in the Bible asking these same questions of God. Sometimes we ask these same questions of God. God, how long are you going to let people in this country get away with the things that they’re doing?

You fill in the blank, whatever it is. How long, God, are you going to let people get by with this? Well, God says the same thing.

How long are these people going to reject me after everything that they’ve seen? And he says, I will smite them with the pestilence disinherit them and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. So God is ready to wipe out Israel and start over again from Moses and say, now we’re going to make of your descendants a mighty nation.

And Moses said unto the Lord, then the Egyptians shall hear it, for thou broughtest up this thy people in thy might from among them. And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land, for they have heard that thou, Lord, art among this people, that thou, Lord, art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them by daytime in a pillar of cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

And now I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great according as thou hast spoken, saying, the Lord is long suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word.

And we see many instances throughout this portion of scripture where God was ready to kill Israel. And I’m not, guys, I’m not, this is not hyperbole. This is not exaggeration.

You know, when your child does something wrong, I’m going to kill you. That’s not what I’m talking about. God was ready to, literally, dead, gone.

God was going to kill Israel. And Moses said, please don’t kill Israel. There were times that Moses wanted to kill Israel.

Literally, everyone dead. There were times that Moses wanted Israel wiped out, and God said, calm down. And it’s a good thing for Israel’s sake that God and Moses never got on the same page.

I can’t help but feel that way. It’s a good thing that God and Moses never got on the same page as far as whether or not to kill Israel. Not that God needed Moses’ approval either.

And Moses doesn’t tell God here anything that he didn’t know, But God tells Moses, I am beyond frustrated with this people. And I could kill them as one man. And that’s true.

You know what? I’ve seen signs on church marquees that say, God is not mad at you. You know what?

He might be. God gets frustrated. He’s not frustrated like we do where we’re sinful.

God is, if God gets frustrated, God is always justified in being frustrated. Everything he does and feels and thinks is right. But we can frustrate God.

now if you’re a child of his today even if he gets frustrated with you he loves you but God gets angry and gets frustrated justly and you know what just like with the Israelites he could kill them God could have wiped out the nation of Israel as easily as he could have wiped out one man God could wipe out all of us as easily as he could one man and for lack of a better word I say Moses reminded God it wasn’t as though God forgot honestly I think God was having this conversation with Moses for Moses’ benefit because Moses was going to get frustrated in just a few minutes and start asking God to kill him. And we see Moses interceding on behalf of the people and saying, God, what about your mercy? Now, did God forget that he was merciful for just a minute?

No. But Moses cries out for mercy. And when God’s people cry out for mercy, mercy is always there.

Not because we deserve it. Just by the fact that we need mercy means we can’t deserve it and don’t. that God’s mercy is there because he’s merciful.

And Moses says to God, again, God already knew this, but Moses needed to hear himself say it, says, if you wipe out these people, then the Egyptians and all the other pagan countries around are going to look at it and they know that you’re their God. They know that you’ve delivered them from Egypt. They know that you lead them by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.

And they know the promise that you have said to the people of Israel. And if you kill them and wipe them out in the wilderness, us, people are going to say, well, where was God? Where was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

Was he not able? Was he not able to bring them into the land that he promised? And that the pagan nations around them were going to mock God.

Now, God knew that, but Moses needed to say it. The people needed to hear it from Moses, and Moses needed to hear