Last week, we started looking at the Israelites as they came up to the edge of the Promised Land. God told Moses to send spies into the Promised Land to check things out and to see what was needed to take over the new inheritance.
When the spies went in, they all saw the same things. However, 10 of the spies said it was impossible to take the land that was flowing with milk and honey and huge clusters of grapes. They suffered from the “yea but” syndrome of saying that they knew that God was giving them the land, BUT they were afraid of the giants in the land!
The good news was that Caleb stood up and reminded them that they needed to follow the Lord’s command.
Then, we pick the story up this morning in verse 1 of chapter 14:
Num. 14:1 Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. 2 And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! 3 Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 4 And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
So, the griping and the complaining of the ten spies turned the people against Moses and Aaron…and by extension, Joshua and Caleb. One of the interesting things here is that the majority of the spies 10 to 2, and the incredible majority of the people…a couple million or so vs. the leadership that God had appointed. As we’ll see, this is one instance where congregational, democratic rule didn’t work out so well for God’s people!
It’s also ironic, as we’ll see later, that the very things they complained about happening do happen. They wish they would have died in Egypt or in the wilderness…and God obliges them will allow each and every one of them over twenty to die in the wilderness!
Another sad commentary here is that despite all of the work that Moses had done as God’s servant to go through the plagues, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, etc…, the people decide they want a different leader! They don’t want to follow God’s appointed leader, and they threaten to toss Moses aside in order to get a new guy to take them straight back to making bricks and serving as slaves to Pharaoh!
At this point, the tiny minority fall on their faces as they beg the people to reconsider “their vote” to go back to the past, to the slavery, to the way things used to be, to the dysfunction that they called life.
Num. 14:5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel. 6 And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes 7 and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, “The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. 8 If the LORD delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. 9 Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the LORD is with us; do not fear them.”
Thankfully, there was a remnant who stood up for what God had told them and encouraged their country to obey Him. However, standing with God was not a very safe position for these men! As they were begging people to follow God’s plan, the people started picking up stones to kill them with.
BUT, then God showed up! God came in time to rescue His faithful servants and in time to tell the Israelites how it was going to be!
10 Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the LORD appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel.
Num. 14:11 And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?
In verses 12-19, God lays out His plans to kill all of the disobedient Israelites and then rebuild His chosen people through Moses (and maybe the other three guys too). But, Moses argues for his people and argues that it would really look bad to all of the nations around them if God had to come down and kill all of His people after He just brought them out of Egypt! Moses “reminds” the Lord about many of His attributes such as love, forgiveness, being slow to anger, and so on.
Then, as we saw in the book of Jonah, God relents from wiping everyone off the earth at that moment, but he explains that there are still consequences for their rebellion and disobedience.
I’m sure that you’ve seen that happen in your family or at work or somewhere else. Somebody does something wrong, they apologize, but there is still a consequence for that.
We see that often at our school. It’s a rare week when we don’t get threatened as staff by students. It can be everything from a student calling us a name and threatening to throw a chair or desk at us or even as much as credible threats to stab or shoot us. When the situation calms down, the student is usually forgiven, but one of the consequences of threats is that you don’t get to earn the fun activity on Friday afternoon. The situation is put behind us, but there is still a penalty.
In this particular case in the Scriptures, the penalty for rebelling against God is stiff! It’s a death sentence:
Num. 14:20 Then the LORD said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. 21 But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD, 22 none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, 23 shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. 24 But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. 25 Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.”
WOW! They were complaining all night that by following God and going into the Promised Land that they would become Giant food. Now, they are going to die while they wonder around the desert for the next forty years! Can you imagine the “griper’s remorse” they had?
They were complaining against Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb, and by defect, God Himself. But now, I can just hear them backtracking quickly!
In case they didn’t get it the first time, the Lord tells Moses and Aaron his gripes with the Israelites again:
Num. 14:26 And the LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, 27 “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. 28 Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the LORD, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: 29 your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, 30 not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. 31 But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. 32 But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. 33 And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. 34 According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’ 35 I, the LORD, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.”
Man, God doesn’t take kindly to griping and second-guessing His commands does He? Are you thankful that God typically shows more grace to us now than He did to the people of Israel? Think about it. Have you ever complained about what God was doing? Have you ever heard the pastor or the deacon board say, “this is the direction we believe God is calling us to go as a church”, and you griped about it?
Things get worse for the ten spies who incited the people to riot. They thought they were doing the right thing in their own eyes, but they forgot that they were on a spying mission to see how to most effectively carry out God’s plan instead of evaluating whether or not God’s plan was good enough.
Num. 14:36 And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land— 37 the men who brought up a bad report of the land—died by plague before the LORD. 38 Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive.
WOAH! The ten negative, gripe inciting, anti-God’s plans, rebellion leading, spies dropped dead on the spot by some kind of plague.
Now, God has the peoples’ attention. They were griping and complaining, and refusing to follow God and His leaders all night after hearing the spies scouting report. They plan on killing God’s leaders, but God shows up and sets them straight and lets them know that all of the adults are going to die in the desert instead of going into the Promised Land. To cap things off, the leaders of the rebellion drop dead that same day.
Thinking they can outsmart God, they decide that now they’ll obey. Hopefully, if they follow through with delayed obedience, they won’t drop dead like the leaders of each of their tribes just did!
Parents, have you ever told your kids to do or not do something, they disobey, you ground them or keep them from something special, and then all of the sudden, they’re ready to mow the yard, clean the kitchen, take out the trash, wash the car, or whatever it was that you wanted them to do? That’s what happens here:
Num. 14:39 When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly. 40 And they rose early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, “Here we are. We will go up to the place that the LORD has promised, for we have sinned.” 41 But Moses said, “Why now are you transgressing the command of the LORD, when that will not succeed? 42 Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies. 43 For there the Amalekites and the Canaanites are facing you, and you shall fall by the sword. Because you have turned back from following the LORD, the LORD will not be with you.” 44 But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, although neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed out of the camp. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah.
Moses told them that it was too late, and they wouldn’t have God’s blessing to go out to fight the people and to try and take the land by force without God’s power. Like our stubborn teenagers, they didn’t listen, and went out to do it on their own. They got beat, and this ends the initial thrust of the Exodus and now they are going to be stuck going in circles out in the desert for the rest of their lives!
I find this a story that on one hand has such incredible promise…really…literally…the Promised Land.
However, due to the failure of most of the spies to follow God’s plan, the failure of the people to listen to Joshua and Caleb and keep following God’s plan, the willingness of the people to listen to the majority vote by the spies, the people being more prone to gripe and complain, they end up getting what one commentator stated as “their just deserts”. Instead of the milk and honey covered desserts they desired, they get death in the desert. Quite a contrast!
This passage has caused me to think a lot over the last several weeks as I’ve been working on these messages prior to preaching them.
I think there are some good parallels for us. NO not that you’re going to wander around in the fields of Woodford County for the next forty years…although for some of you the promise of being able to walk around for that time might be a good thing!
Let’s thinks some about the spiritual heritage we have the opportunity to leave.
What will it take for your children and grandchildren to want to enter into the Promised Land of a vibrant church in Goodfield?
Those Israelites twenty and older complained about wanting to go back to Egypt and back to how things used to be. The result was that they ended up dying in the wilderness. But, their children and grandchildren were able to experience the joy and yes the work of entering the land that they had so desperately desired to go into themselves.
It took some time for the children to enter into the Promised Land! Because of the attitudes and actions of the adults, people like Paige, Shelby, Caleb, Elizabeth, Jenny, Jake, Eli, Zeke, Claire, Kelsey, Rachel, and others had to walk around the desert for FORTY more years! Instead of going into the land as kids and being able to grow up in the great land flowing with milk and honey, they were 45, 50 or even 59 before they were able to exit the walk to nowhere.
How does that apply to us?
Over the past year, I’ve heard from many of you that it feels like you’ve been walking in circles for a couple of years. Many of us, myself included, had hoped that with the right energy from a new pastor, and the goal of moving forward that things would be different and that we would enter the Promised Land and everything would be flowing with milk and honey!
However, that hasn’t happened, has it?
It feels somewhat like we’re walking around in circles hoping that things will change, and while we’re walking, people are dying off. Sure, they’re not literally dying off, but practically speaking, in the last six months, things haven’t been exactly increasing!
Tonight, we have the opportunity to hear from people at the Bethany Baptist Fellowship of Churches. In my discussions with them, I know that one of the issues they will bring up is shutting the church for a year or two to let things rest and to let them put together a strong and healthy team to come and re-launch the church for the sake of our kids and grandkids. While that seems like an incredibly long time, compared with 40 years in the wilderness, it’s not much of a wait.
I think these last verses of this chapter show the kinds of things that can happen when we rush in and try to do something too quickly…especially if God isn’t in it. So, I want to encourage us to listen to what these guys have to say and then evaluate if it’s from the Lord and if it makes sense for the sake of the long-term future of our congregation.
I think this passage also provides a super clear warning and reminder that at times spiritual leaders may be in the minority with what they believe God is saying, and yet we need to listen to them. Also, complaining against the Lord and His plans isn’t a good plan. Just like we saw Jonah going the other way in a fish, the people of Israel end up going the other way due to their attempts to avoid following God.
I regularly pray for God to show up in a special way as we get together to worship. BUT, we sure don’t want God to show up like He did in this passage to execute judgment for arguing and griping!
I’ve mentioned several times that I don’t like waiting. I want things to happen right now! However, this time of determining where God is leading us as a congregation is taking time…a lot longer time than I anticipated! One of the songs I’ve been listening to a lot is by John Waller. It’s called “While I’m Waiting”. In fact, I have the lyrics for this printed off and they’re on the bulletin board in front of my desk at work. I stop and read them every time the song plays on WCIC…and usually another time or two each day. I encourage you to listen…and maybe put these lyrics up at home or in your car or somewhere that you’ll see them often.
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