Introduction
We live in a changing world. You would agree with that statement I’m sure. The evangelist J. John sums it up very memorably: “If you were born before the war a ‘big mac’ was an oversized raincoat, ‘crumpet’ was what you had for tea, a ‘stud’ was something you fastened to your wrist, ‘going all the way’ meant staying on the bus until it reached the depot, smoking a ‘joint’ only meant burning the Sunday roast and ‘grass’ was something you cut with a lawnmower. Change is inevitable,” he concluded, “except from a vending machine.”
Change is not only inevitable – it is also healthy. Someone once said that politicians and nappies have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly - and for the same reason.
We’re going to be looking together this morning at the changes that come about after 37 years, not 67, which is the time that has now elapsed since the end of World War II.
But first, I just want to set the teaching we’ve been doing in Numbers in the context of the whole book.
If you’ve read through Numbers as we’ve gone through our series you’ll have noticed that we have only focused on selected passages. Why is that?
Well, you can divide the book of Numbers into three main sections or headings if you like; census records, legislation and historical narrative.
We’ve only really looked the third of those three, the stories, so I want to say a little about the other two as we approach the end of our series.
The Censuses
The reason why the book of Numbers is called the book of Numbers is because it contains several censuses, in particular one at the beginning and one at the end. In each case, it is not an exhaustive population count; it is a military census, listing only men in their prime, able to fight.
You may have come across these long lists and wondered why on earth the Bible contains such, let’s be honest, monotonous data. Well, it’s the word of God too and there’s a reason for it.
It tells you that the stories in Numbers are authentic and describe what really happened to actual people. Surely no one inventing a story about a national exodus from Egypt would bother to make up pages and pages of names for all those people.
Interestingly, the sum total of men counted at the end is about 1,800 men fewer than at the beginning – that tells you something. It tells you that God wasn’t blessing them during those 40 years in the desert and we’ve been discovering why. Basically, in a word, it’s a matter of obedience.
By the same token, you can look around the world today and see where God is blessing his people - and where he isn’t. There is tremendous church growth in Africa, in parts of Asia (especially China, South Korea and more recently in Cambodia), and in South America (notably in Brazil and Argentina).
But, generally, we have to say that God is not blessing his people in Europe or North America where church growth has either plateaued or is now in decline.
Revivals and regressions are cycles that always accompany God’s people. They did in Old Testament times as well – with golden eras under good kings like David and dark ages under wicked kings like Manasseh.
In 18th Century Britain there was great decadence and godlessness. Churches were empty and nominalism was common. Then the Wesley revival transformed the spiritual landscape once again. Obedience is a key issue and one we’re going to look at in depth this morning.
Interestingly, a new book by David Goodhew at Cranmer Hall has noted that the church in the UK is in decline everywhere – except London, where the trends have been reversed and God is starting a new thing.
G. K. Chesterton once said “Five times the church went to the dogs and each time it was the dog who died.”
Let’s pray that God exports that blessing and growth in London wider afield in our nation. So that’s the statistics.
Legislation
The second main heading in Numbers is legislation; God’s laws, which you find interspersed between sections of narrative, or story.
They are commandments, not comments, from God. J. John (again) always says that “The Ten Commandments, God’s top ten, are not obsolete, there are absolute.” But there are not just 10 Commandments, there are 613, and many of them are found in the book of Numbers.
The question we have to ask is “Are these laws relevant to us? “Are all these laws relevant to our lives, under the New Covenant of grace?”
The answer to that question is yes… and no.
The laws tell you what God likes. And God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Many of the laws concern sacrifices. Because Jesus shed his blood on the cross he fulfilled all sacrifices forever. You don’t need to bring a lamb or a goat so it can be slain on an altar on a Sunday morning. Jesus’ offering of himself is perfect, sufficient and final.
But you do need to bring a sacrifice. “Through Jesus,” says Hebrews 13, “let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.”
You do need to come to this place with reverent fear. It’s in the New Testament, not the Old, that it says “let us… worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”
Many of the laws are about being careful to come into God’s presence, not casually, but cleansed and ready. They had to wear clean linen, they had to wash thoroughly and so on. Now, the precise stipulations are not important – but God does expect you to come to church prepared.
1 Corinthians 14 says “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”
Many of the laws were given so that God’s people would be distinctive from the pagan nations around them. Take, for example the commandment that says “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” That one law has given rise to centuries of meticulous kitchen arrangements in Jewish households.
There is a passionate debate about how long you must wait between consuming meat and dairy courses and what to do about meat stuck between the teeth that might not degrade for several hours and that could conceivably come into contact with dairy products later.
You have to admire their enthusiasm for the observance of God’s word in such minute detail, but it misses the point entirely.
That law was given to set God’s people apart from a known pagan superstition, in which young goats were cooked in their mothers’ milk because it was believed to increase the fertility of the herd.
God was saying “I don’t want superstition, I don’t want fertility rites, I don’t want you to be like them – you are to be different, you are to be holy.
Now, again, under the New Covenant we don’t need to fuss about with elaborate kitchen arrangements – but we do need to stand apart from superstition and not mix our faith in Christ with other religions.
So much then for the censuses and the legislation; we’ve concentrated mostly on the narrative so let’s get back to that now.
37 Years On – Still Grumbling
I’d like you to think back in time a little bit. The story in Numbers 20 finds God’s people 37 years on from where we found them last Sunday morning. 37 years.
I want you to think back 37 years ago. Some of you may not have been born. Just to remind you of what life was like then, Margaret Thatcher became Conservative Party leader that year. The Birmingham Six were wrongfully sentenced to life imprisonment for an IRA bombing.
Manchester United were playing in the second tier of English football after relegation from the top flight. Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was at the top of the charts. And I was a teenager – just – in secondary school. It’s a long time ago isn’t it?
Well, that’s the length of time that has elapsed between the sending out of the 12 spies in chapter 14 and what we read this morning; the water from the rock. The Bible is virtually silent about those 37 years of aimless wandering.
But we know this: the generation that had lived as forced labour in Egypt had almost completely died off, Miriam was one of the very last, and the new generation, virtually all under 40 years old, would soon be ready to finally enter the land of promise.
Once again they camped at Kadesh, where they were last week, the site of the reconnaissance mission that had ended in such disaster.
Moses, I’m sure, was hoping that the people were at last ready for a fresh start as they prepared to enter the land.
In fact, I’m sorry to say that this new generation were little better than their parents and grandparents had been.
Verse 2-5: “Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarrelled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord! Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!’”
What’s wrong with this picture? Five things.
Party spirit. “They gathered in opposition to Moses.”
Negativity. “If only we had died.”
Faithlessness. “Why did you bring us into this wilderness?” (As if it was all Moses’ idea and God had nothing to do with it).
Finger pointing. “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place?”
And, once again, grumbling. “No grain, no figs, no grapes, no pomegranates, no water.”
I said it last week; every time we grumble we are basically saying that we think God is doing a rubbish job of running the universe.
A dentist’s patient had to have a tooth extracted. After it was over, he went to reception and got the bill; £166 + VAT. So he started grumbling and complaining about the charge. “£200 for pulling out a tooth! It’s only about a minute’s work.”
“Well,” said the receptionist, “if you prefer, I’ll ask Doctor White to pull it out slowly next time!”
I bet that’s what Moses felt like – pulling teeth slowly. 40 years of daily provision, now within touching distance of the Promised Land, and they’re still moaning.
After all that time wandering about in the wilderness, maybe the Israelites forgot that their wanderings were a direct consequence of their parents’ own sin.
They couldn’t accept the fact that they, as a community, brought their own problems upon themselves, so they blamed Moses.
It’s human nature to blame the leader when things go wrong – even when we know deep down that our difficulties are our own fault.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. But often our troubles and tribulations come from our own disobedience and lack of faith.
We can ask God why he allows what he allows (there’s plenty of that in the Psalms). But we cannot blame God or anyone else for our sins. And until we accept our own responsibilities we will have little peace and no spiritual growth.
The American author and Christian leader John Ortberg was once part of a survey on spiritual formation. Thousands of people were asked when they had grown most spiritually, and what contributed to their growth.
The response was humbling. The survey found that the main contributor to spiritual growth was not transformational teaching. It was not being part of a small group. It was not reading deep theological books. It was not energetic worship experiences, nor finding meaningful ways to serve.
The surprising conclusion was that suffering was the key to spiritual growth. Respondents noticed that they grew more during times of loss, pain and crisis than at any other time. And I would certainly have to agree with that from personal experience.
All right, the Israelites were wrong about all their complaining and unbelief.
But perhaps one of the reasons why God allow us to go through so much is that he wants to see depth and strength and maturity and spiritual growth in us.
Maybe at All Saints’ we need to work out how to create more pain per member for maximum spiritual growth! Or perhaps not…
40 Years On – No Water Again
We’re 37 years on from the spies’ mission, but we’re 40 years on from the first time God gave water from a rock. In Exodus 17 there’s a similar event.
In both accounts, the people grumble and dispute with Moses and in both accounts the place is renamed Meribah to commemorate that quarrel. So people have naturally concluded that the same story has been told twice.
But there are differences which show that they are in fact separate incidents. The first time the place in which the miracle occurred was called Rephidim; this time it was about 150 miles north-east of there, in a place called Kadesh.
The first time God said to Moses to strike the rock with is staff; this time (v8) he told Moses to speak to it.
“Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.”
Verse 11 says “Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.”
But in v12 there’s a late and perhaps surprising twist. “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.’”
Isn’t that a bit harsh? Isn’t that a bit like getting a red card and penalty for an accidental handball?!
All the way through Numbers it’s the people who have been like a nappy that needs changing while Moses has been an exemplary leader. Now he’s like a politician who is soon to be voted out of office.
There are four things wrong with it – and these four things are a danger for any leader.
First of all, it shows Moses’ lack of faith. That is the specific charge that God makes against it. “Because you did not trust in me enough…” Leaders in the church need to be men and women of faith who trust in the sufficiency of God’s word.
Lack of faith leads to disobedience. God tells Moses to do something that doesn’t sound reasonable to him; speak to the rock to get water out of it.
So he decides “no, that won’t work” so he does something instead that he thinks is much wiser, such as hitting the rock with his staff. Leaders in the church need to be men and women of obedience take God at his word and act consistently with it.
At the root of Moses’ action is laziness. He just mechanically expected God to act in the same way as he had before in Exodus 17. He’s become stale and is going through the motions.
He never noticed that God wanted to reveal his power in a new way. Leaders in the church need to be men and women of freshness who refuse to just trot out the same old methods that worked before.
Finally, Moses had developed an arrogant and self-important attitude. In v10 instead of saying “God will bring water out of this rock for you.” he says “Listen, you rebels, must we (Aaron and I) bring you water out of this rock?”
Moses had forgotten God and was taking control. He assumed the place of God and it was all about him. Leaders in the church need to be men and women of humility who inspire and give God the glory for success but don’t control.
Ending
That’s a tall order! But God sets high standards.
He wants a carefully prepared sacrifice of praise from his people, not a thoughtless going through the motions that costs us nothing.
He wants leadership with integrity and faith, not unbelief and self-importance.
So, as we begin this new academic year, those of us who are leaders (small group leaders, preachers, lunch club, children’s and youth leaders, PCC members…) let’s commit to being leaders of faith and integrity. Would you stand please if you are a leader.
And let’s commit to giving God the absolute best in worship. If you feel God has challenged you about that today I’m going to ask you to stand as well.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 9th September 2012
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