Introduction
Three boy scouts are telling their Scoutmaster about their good deed for the day. “We helped an old lady across the street on our way here.”
The scoutmaster looks at them a bit suspiciously.
“And did it actually take all three of you to do that?”
“Yes, it did” they all reply. Then the smallest one adds, “To be honest, it wasn’t easy - she didn’t really want to go!”
The Israelites in Numbers 14, like that poor old lady, didn’t really want to go either.
Just to rewind the tape a bit, in case you’ve been away over the summer, we’ve been going through the Book of Numbers, which describes the journey of the Israelites from slavery and oppression in Egypt to freedom and blessing in he Promised Land. It should have taken them about three weeks. It took them 40 years - so if you think Virgin trains are unreliable…
Sometimes people think this is ancient history and it doesn’t really have much to say to us today.
But this particular episode of history is referred to in the New Testament, in 1 Corinthians 10, where it says “God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples [and warnings] to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.”
That’s why it’s so important to read and study history; if you don’t learn from it, you're condemned to repeat it.
Up until this point, basically God has been doing a lot of liberating and no small amount of providing – and the Israelites have been doing much moaning and copious complaining.
As they say in Yorkshire, “It was neither nowt nor sommat” - they were no longer in Egypt but they weren’t yet in the Promised Land.
A bit like an engagement really, you no longer quite have the independence of singleness but you don’t yet have the advantages of marriage either. Engagement is a testing time and, as I said to you last week, this time in the wilderness was a test – which most of them failed quite spectacularly.
So all the way up to chapter 14 they’ve been grumbling. They grumbled about their food, they grumbled about the lack of water, they grumbled about Moses’ leadership, they grumbled about their conditions. It says “they grumbled in their tents.” Now, if I’d been camping for as long as they had been I think I’d have been moaning and murmuring as well. I hate camping. I find it unfathomable that anyone actually spends money on camping holidays. You’d honestly have to pay me handsomely to even contemplate it.
But, even considering the Israelites haven’t been able to wash properly for two months and are having to eat off paper plates with disposable knives and forks, on a scale of 1-10, their whinging is off the scale.
Golda Meir, who, in 1969 became the fourth leader of the reborn state of Israel, once muttered that “Moses sent the children of Israel to the only piece of real estate in the Middle East that had no oil!” So even in the 20th Century there was still an echo of this complaining. Or perhaps she was smiling at the irony of it.
The truth is this: Our grumbling and moaning about our lot is really a comment on what we actually think of God. Listen, if you mutter about the weather, as I confess I did this week, you’re actually finding fault with the way God is running the universe.
And poor old Moses, all this time up to chapter 14, has been like an exasperated parent at the wheel with several hundred thousand noisy kids in the back squabbling among themselves and asking “Are we there yet?”
Last week, in chapter 13, twelve spies went on a reconnaissance mission into the Promised Land. All 12 reported back that it was a land flowing with milk and honey, just as God had promised.
But despite the fact that God also promised that they would definitely enter and take possession of it, 10 of the 12 felt that God must have got his facts wrong, that the land was unconquerable, and that entering it was, in fact, in their opinion not possible.
At the end of chapter 13 the fainthearted ten decide to share their market research with the whole community. Now, in chapter 14 (v1-4) the people give their considered response.
Rebellion against God (v1-4)
How do they take the news? Let’s say their response is… not as enthusiastic as it could have been. They raise their voices and weep aloud. They protest against their leaders. They express regret that God had ever miraculously saved them from Pharaoh’s onrushing army, when he opened up the Red Sea.
“If only we had died in Egypt!” they say. Then they say that if they try to get into the Promised Land, you know, that place that God has sworn to give them, if they try to get there they will be like lambs to the slaughter - so it would be better if they just die of thirst in the desert. And then they say they want to choose another leader and go back to Egypt and be enslaved by Pharaoh again.
I think it’s fair to say that the report was not quite everything they had hoped for!
Talk about pessimism. If there was an Olympic sport of pessimism they would imagine they would just miss out on the podium. I think they’d win the gold medal.
But I want to say that this is more than just pessimism about the future. It’s rebellion against God. The whole nation is turning its back on God and rejecting his ways.
Does that sound familiar? You can trace legislation and court rulings in the UK in my lifetime and see a similar pattern; the legalisation of abortion on demand, the promotion of Sunday trading, the repeal of the blasphemy law, the extension of licencing hours, the outlawing of wearing a cross at work, the prohibition of public prayers and soon no doubt, the introduction of so-called same-sex marriage.
However well-intentioned all this might be, it reflects a mood in our nation that wants to cut ties with our Christian heritage. “We want to go back to Egypt!” No matter that our rejection of God has coincided with a catastrophic disintegration of family life and prisons that are fuller than ever.
Now look what’s going on here in Numbers as the nation rebels against God –they listen to the ten fainthearted spies and they ignore the 2 wholehearted ones. The basic issue, the root cause if you like, is that they are giving more credit to the opinions of men than they are to the word of God.
The pressure on us to do the same is relentless. I’ve given you some examples from the statute book.
Here’s another example. We are subjected 24/7 by our media to a purely naturalistic explanation for the origins of the universe. We are told that the Big Bang must have just happened all by itself.
In an Oxford debate between two of their distinguished Professors, atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and Christian mathematician John Lennox, Dawkins admitted that he does not know what caused the origin of the universe, but that he believed that there will one day be a naturalistic explanation and that he did not need to resort to magic to explain it.
However, in the press conference after the debate Professor Dawkins responded to a question from journalist Melanie Phillips by saying that he believed that the universe could have just appeared from nothing. ‘Magic!’ she said.
So first there was nothing and then nothing caused everything that exists to come into being. That is what we are being told happened. Or alternatively, first there was nothing, and then someone caused everything to exist, as the Bible claims.
The question is, are we going to give more credit to the ideas of man than to the word of God?
Hebrews 11.3 says “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
Every day we face the same choice – we either put our faith in human wisdom or we hold that God’s word is dependable and worthy of informing and guiding our thinking at every level.
Back in Numbers 14, the whole community is in open revolt against Moses and against God. In fact, they are on the point of abandoning the Lord altogether, rejecting his salvation, refusing his guidance, snubbing his promises and running back to Egypt.
We call that apostasy from the Greek “apo” meaning apart or away and “stasis” meaning to stand. You make the choice to stand apart from all that you held true, you step away from salvation. It was called shipwrecking your faith in New Testament times.
Obviously, a vessel only becomes shipwrecked when it sails too close to rocks or icebergs. Ships don’t sink in clear, deep water. When we delight in the wisdom of men whilst becoming lukewarm towards the word of God we’re navigating in shallow waters.
Standing Up in Faith (v5-9)
I said just now “the whole community was in open revolt against Moses” – in fact two men, Joshua and Caleb, who were among the 12 spies, stood out and said “No, this isn’t right.” Two positive voices against a national chorus of boos.
No wonder Winston Churchill once said, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter.”
By majority vote, Caleb and Joshua were dismissed as if they were representing the Monster Raving Looney Party. But only they held on to God’s perspective and refused to be swayed by fine-sounding arguments.
“The land we passed through and explored” they say in v7-9 “is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”
Battling Unbelief (v10-19)
But I’m afraid the people didn’t listen to them or reconsider. In fact, in v10 we are told that the whole assembly seriously contemplated stoning them to death.
Can you credit it? After experiencing the extraordinary plagues on Egypt, the miraculous deliverance through the Red Sea, fearsome signs and wonders at Sinai, a column of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, daily manna from heaven and quail till it came out of their ears – why, after seeing so much of God’s amazing power, did the Israelites stop trusting God now?
God asked the same question in v11-12.
“How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them?”
Actually, don’t we sometimes do the same thing? We trust God to take care of the smaller issues but we doubt his ability or willingness to handle the big problems, the tough decisions, the frightening situations.
Don’t stop trusting God just as you are ready to reach your goal. Has he, or has he not, brought you this far? Are you, or are you not, still in one piece? Has he, or has he not, blessed you in your life?
Bottom line; you can trust God for the future because he has already shown you how good he is when you trusted him in the past.
Well, Moses goes off and pours all this out to God. Hearing the Lord say “I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them…” just pushes Moses to cry out for God’s mercy in one of his great intercessory prayers (v13-19).
“If you destroy this people the Egyptians will hear about it. Think of your reputation, think of your honour, your renown, the stain on your good name Lord! People are going to go around saying ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath.’ So please forgive them.”
The Glory of the Lord (v10)
And the Bible says this; “The glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites.”
I was reading a book by Canon Andrew White this summer. Andrew is the vicar of Baghdad, a ministry he exercises with a price on his head - you may have seen him on TV. And he witnesses appalling suffering. He once baptized, in secret, a Muslim family who had come to faith in Christ. He said to them “You know the risks don’t you?” They said “Yes. But we cannot deny Jesus.” Within a week news of their conversion had leaked and all were shot and killed.
In one particularly bad year, most of Andrew White’s staff team were assassinated. But the people of Saint George’s Bagdad often see the cloud of the Lord’s glory. Here are a couple of pictures taken when it appeared; the first is at a large funeral when many Christians were killed in a suicide bomb in a nearby Catholic church.
But even with the manifestation of the Lord’s glory among them, I’m afraid their hearts were hard.
In John’s gospel, in the chapter when Jesus walks on water and feeds the 5,000 he says to the people “You have seen me and still you do not believe.”
I’ve seen God do extraordinary things in my time as a believer – amazing guidance, astonishing answers to prayer, incredible healings, one case of protection of a small child that Kathie and I can only attribute to angels and several startlingly accurate prophecies that revealed detailed information that can only have been divinely inspired… many of you have similar testimonies – and yet we find ourselves doubting God’s power when it comes to the crunch.
The Outcome (v20-25)
Anyway, because of Moses’ prayer, the Lord doesn’t wipe them out there and then. For the sake of his honour he waits till all the contemporaries of that generation die off, 40 years, before he leads them into the Promised Land. Only Joshua and Caleb and the younger generation made it. Unbelief gets you nowhere – literally in this case.
Here’s what God said about Caleb; “Because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.”
The old limerick sums it up well:
Now Joshua, son of Nun
And Caleb, son of Jephunneh
Were the only two
Who ever got through
To the land of milk and honey.
Conclusion
As I sum up, let me try and bring this down to earth.
Here at All Saints’ we are facing a challenge of faith. We have a roof to repair. Just this Thursday we were reminded of the urgency of the situation. When heavy rain fell, there were drips falling on the piano. Which is the right project to opt for? If we go for project one, a like-for-like replacement, I hope it’s because we genuinely feel, under God, that it’s the right thing to do and not because we are fainthearted when we look at the cost. If project two is the right thing to do, as God provided manna and quail from heaven and water from the rock, he will provide for the insulation.
Again, Andrew White in Baghdad; when he first went there about a decade ago, it cost $2,000 a month to run that church. Now they have a medical clinic, they give out tons of food, they provide for widows and orphans and they have to pay for security - and it costs $165,000 a month, 80 times more than ten years ago. They live by faith and every month, God provides – just enough. Canon White says in his book, “God is never late - but he rarely takes the opportunity to be early!” The difference between project 1 and project 2 is half a month’s running costs at Saint George’s Baghdad – no big deal for God.
We want to employ someone, from January, to take hold of the Sunday children’s ministry, to develop a midweek club, to expand our school assembly team, to explore Messy Church (which is specifically aimed at unchurched families) with Jan, who has a real vision for it. We feel this is right under God. That’s a step of faith as well. Are we wholehearted or fainthearted?
This week I received a newsletter from my previous church in Paris. I quote from it word for word: “Last time I wrote to you I shared news about our Thanksgiving Day. I told you that we had received around 80,000€ of the total for which we were praying for 95,000€. But God honours his promises and hears our prayers and in the next few days in a most miraculous way the money continued to flow in so we ended up with over 97,000€!”
So as I close, are you fainthearted, like the Israelites in the desert who look at the challenges in your own life and as a church and say “We’re doomed!”?
Or are you wholehearted, like Caleb and Joshua who entered the land? Do you have faith to say “With God, whatever the challenge, we can certainly do it!”?
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 2nd September 2012
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