Would you please stand for reading of God's word this
morning? I'll be reading from the Book of
Numbers, chapters 13 and 14, beginning with 13 verse one.
The Lord spoke to Moses saying, send men to spy out the land of
Canaan, which I'm giving to the people of Israel.
From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, everyone,
a chief among them, and verse 25 At the end of 40 days they
returned from spying out the land, and they came to Moses and
errand into all the congregation of the people of Israel in the
wilderness of Peran and Kadesh. They brought back the word to
them, and to all the congregation, and showed them
the fruit of the land. And they told him, We came to
this land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey,
and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell,
the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very
large, and besides we saw the descendants of a knock there.
The Malachites dwell in the land of the Negam, the Hiptites, the
Jebbie sites, the Emirites dwell in the Hill Country, and the
Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan.
But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, let us go
up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.
Then the men who had gone up with them said, we are not able
to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.
So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land
that they had spied out, saying the land through which we have
gone to spy it out as a land that devours its inhabitants.
And all the people we saw in it are of great height.
And there we saw the Nephylene, the sons of Anak who come from
the Nephylene, and we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers.
So we seem to them chapter 14, verse one.
Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept
that night, 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? 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? And they said to one another,
let us choose a leader, and go back to Egypt.
Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the
assembly of the congregation of the people of Israel.
And Joshua the son of none, and Caleb, the son of Jafuna, were
with those among those who had spied out the land.
And they tore their clothes. And they said, all the
congregation of the people of Israel, the land which we passed
through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land.
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 only.
Do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of
the land, for they are bred for us, their protection is removed
from them, and the Lord is with us.
Do not fear them. Then all the congregations said
to stone them with stones, But the glory of the Lord appeared
at the 10th of meeting to all the people of Israel.
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
As we continue our sermon series through the life of Moses.
We're turning from the Book of Exodus to the Book of Numbers.
And you might be wondering, well, what does the Book of
Numbers have to do with me? What relevance could it actually
have in my life? I don't know if you've actually
ever read the Book of Numbers. Maybe you've just kind of
skimmed it or speed through it in a Bible reading plan.
But I want you to know this morning that the Book of Numbers
has great application to our lives today in the original
Hebrew, The title for the Book of Numbers is In the Wilderness.
It's a much better title, you see, because the Book of Numbers
tells the story of the people of Israel as they wandered in the
wilderness between Mount Sinai and the Promised Land.
And in many ways, it's a cautionary tale about what
happens to an entire generation who failed to believe and trust
in the promises of God, a generation who didn't listen to
God and his promises and instead trusted in the lies and slanders
of an unbelieving culture. And just like Israel, we are
prone, prone to walk in a wilderness.
This part of our lives, in between what God has already
done and sending Jesus his death and resurrection for our
salvation and what he has not yet fulfilled in the last days,
we too Now we find ourselves in a wilderness.
And if we're honest, we spend most of our lives trying to
insulate ourselves from that wilderness, seeking comfort and
seeking ways to distract ourselves, trying to pretend
that life is not as difficult as it truly is.
But every once in a while, every once in a while, we are
confronted with the wilderness that we live in.
When we experience heartache and grief and loss and shame and
guilt and difficulty and strife, we are reminded that we too are
a wilderness people. And just like the people of
Israel, when we find ourselves and the wilderness, it is so
easy to become disoriented and to become lost.
And just like them, we are prone to believe the slanders of our
unbelieving age rather than trust and the promises of God.
And so this morning, as we continue our sermon series, The
Life of Moses, and we look at the Book of Numbers, this is
what I want you to know, that God has called us to a
dissenting hope. I want you to see what it looks
like to trust in His promises as we live life in the wilderness.
First wet thing I want to look at this morning, I want you to
look at the slander of unbelief, and I want you to look with me
at numbers 13, verse one. This is the central point to the
book of Numbers. This is the climax, Numbers 13
and 14. And verse one.
We're told that the Lord came to Moses and told him to send out
12 spies to go in to the promised land.
One spy representing each and every one of the 12 tribes.
And the people of Israel are now on the brink of entering the
promised Land. They are on the verge.
And I want you to consider all that has happened to bring them
this point. This is the same land that was
promised to Abraham when God made a covenant with him in
Genesis chapter 17. This is Genesis 17 verse 8.
Or God promised Abraham, I will give to you into your offspring
after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of
Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be there.
God. This is God's covenant with
Abraham, and I want you to think about all that has happened
between then and this point. All that God had done to bring
them to the edge of the Promised Land, the promise he gave to
Abraham, the call he gave to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and
then providing a ram to die in his place.
All that the Lord did through Moses and rescuing the people of
Israel out of slavery and bondage in Egypt, sending the 10
plagues, rescuing them through the Passover, parting the Red
Sea, giving them the Law, forgiving them, and renewing His
covenant with him. Even after they worship the
golden calf, God has now brought them from that place of Mount
Sinai, now to the edge of the promised Land.
They're finally there, and so the Lord instructs them go and
spied out, go on a reconnaissance mission for 40
days and come back and report all that you see.
Verse 25. We're told at the end of 40
days, the spies return. Verse 26, they come to Moses and
Aaron and all the congregation, the people of Israel.
And they brought back a word to them, to all the congregation
and showed them the fruit of the land.
Now I want you to put yourself in their place.
If you are among the people of Israel that day, you've been
waiting for 40 days. With all that you've been
through, you're finally to the edge of the promised land.
You've been waiting for 40 days to hear what's it like?
Is it all that we hoped for? Is it a good land?
They're finally ready to hear what they've had to say.
Verse 27 And the spies tell them we came to the land which you
sent us, and it flows with milk and honey.
And this is its fruit. Can you imagine their
excitement? The land is good.
But then notice what they say in verse 28.
However, the people who dwell in the land are strong and the
cities are fortified and very large.
There's a couple things I want you to notice about their
report. First, I want you to notice what
the report says. The land is good and the people
are large. The land is good.
It's a good land. It offers a lot for us, but the
people are too large for us to be able to go in.
That's the other thing I want you to notice about the report
is what's not in it. Not once do they mention the
name of the Lord. Not once they say this is the
land that God promised to us. No, this is the land that Moses
you've brought us to. Not once they say the Lord is
with us and He will help us enter the land.
No, they say the the people are too large.
There's no the way that we can enter in.
Imagine the crowd, the people of Israel, what they must have now
thought from excitement to complete chaos and fear.
Evidently this is what happened because of what happens next.
In verse 30, we're told that Caleb quieted the people before
Moses and he said let us go up at once and occupy it, for we
are able to overcome it. Now this is what's going on
here. 12 spies go out on a reconnaissance mission to report
back about the land. 10 spies give a report that the land is
good, but the people are large. And now we're told Caleb, and
later we're told Joshua. Two of the 12 spies say no, no,
don't listen to them, The land is both good and the Lord is
with us. Listen to what Caleb says.
Again, verse 30. Let us go up at once and occupy
it, for we are well able to overcome it.
And what we see unfold is this debate between two sides.
A majority report, 10 spies saying the land is good but the
people are too large and we can't go in, we cannot go into
the promised land, we'll never make it.
And a minority report, a dissenting voice of just two
spies, Caleb and Joshua, saying no, don't listen to them.
We can go in, we are able to overcome it.
Verse 31 we're told. Then the men, that's the other
10 spies who had gone up with them said, we are not able to go
up against this people, for they are stronger than we are.
And then the report begins to take on a life of its own.
It almost becomes the stuff of legend.
Listen to what they say. Verse 32 So they brought the
people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied,
saying the land through which we had gone to spy it out as a land
that devours its inhabitants. And all the people that we saw
are of great height. And there we saw the Nephylene,
and we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers.
And so we seem to them. Now we have a lot of ground to
cover this morning. I wish we had a lot of time to
just park here. Let me just say a few things
about what's going on. Maybe you've heard this word
before. The Nephylene.
You're wondering, what on earth is this talking about?
Let me tell you why it matters. See the Nephelene we're told
about? Really.
An obscure spot in the Book of Genesis, Genesis 6 and the word.
Nephelene could be loosely translated.
Giants, men of great height. They were known as the men of
renown. The Bible tells us in Genesis 6
that they're the offspring of the sons of God and the
daughters of man. Now, what on earth does that
mean? Well, two basic theories.
One is that this is the offspring of angels and humans
that have produced giants. Have you never heard that
before? You're like, wow, the Bible is
amazing. And it is.
But there's another theory. Theory that says, no, the sons
of God, the daughters of man, is simply talking about believers
intermarring with unbelievers. And that's the nephleme.
Whatever the case may be, what we know is that they were of
great height, they were known as the men of renown, and they were
legendary. And so here we see the 10 spies
giving this majority report saying that's what we saw,
literally saying we can't go to the promised land because it's
filled with giants. That's going to make us feel
like grasshoppers. What I want you to see this
morning is how much they're beginning to allow their fear to
overtake them, are now exaggerating.
Surely they saw probably people bigger than them, and perhaps
they saw fortified cities, lots of people in them.
But now their fear has overcome them, you see, because the other
thing we know about the Nephilim is that they would have died at
the flood. They would have completely died
out. So what is it that they saw?
They saw fear, you see, and this is what fear does to us.
Fear is so closely associated with what we worship.
We tend to fear the things that we worship.
You think, well how could that be?
Well, the reason that we worship money is because we we also, we
are afraid of being uncomfortable and afraid of
having lack or or the reason that we worship other people
because we're afraid of what they think of us and how we are
seen in all these ways. When we fear other people or we
fear things, we fear these things, we fear these people and
we fail to fear and worship God. And that's exactly what happens
here. Ed Welch in a great titled book,
When people are big and God is small, it's literally what's
happening here. He says that fear of man is
always part of a triad that includes unbelief in
disobedience. And that's exactly what we see
happen here. Their fear becomes unbelief,
which gives rise to disobedience.
Look with me, Numbers 14, verse one.
Then all the congregation raised a loud cry.
The people wept that night, and the people of Israel grumbled
against Moses and Aaron. We've seen this word grumbled
over and over it again in the book of Exodus.
Here it is once more in the book of Numbers, they grumbled.
The word here is like a vote of no confidence against Moses and
against God. Once again they are denying that
God can take care of them and they are presupposing that they
know better. Look with me, verse 2.
The cold congregation said would that we had died in the land of
Egypt. How often have we heard the
people say this throughout the book of Exodus?
Every time they were hungry, every time they were thirsty in
the desert, they would grumble and complain and question God
and say, wouldn't it would have been better if we had just
stayed in Egypt? Wouldn't it be better if we go
back to slavery now? Notice they're adding on to
that, They say. Would it would be better if we
just died in this wilderness? It would be better for us to die
in the wilderness than to go into the Promised Land.
You hear? How deceived, how confused the
people of Israel are, how long they've been waiting to enter
the promised Land. And now they think it would be
better to die in the wilderness than they go in.
They continue verse 4. They say to one another, let us
choose a leader and go back to Egypt.
Make no mistake, this is mutiny. And at its core that's what
every single sin is. It's mutiny.
High treason against the king. This is outright rebellion.
Fear that became unbelief, that became disobedience that has
become rebellion. They've rejected God's covenant.
They've rejected the promised land.
The thing that I find most frightening about this passage
is not simply that they rebelled against God.
It's why do you notice they rebelled against the Lord?
Based on the report of 10 people, not one of them saw the
land for themselves. Not one of them saw that it was
good. Not one of them saw one of the
socalled giants. They had launched A rebellion
against Moses and against God based on the false testimony of
10 people. In chapter 13, verse 32, we're
told that it was a bad report. In Hebrew, the word for bad
report is the word for slander. In other words, it wasn't just a
bad report because it was inaccurate.
It was a bad report because it was slander.
It was 1/2 truth that become a lie.
Sure, maybe there were large people in big cities that were
all fortified, but their complete conclusion was
completely wrong. Good land, large people.
We can't go in. It was a lie.
They slandered the promises of God.
And what I want you to understand this morning is that
it took 40 days for that slander to reach the people of Israel.
It takes 40 seconds for us to be slandered today.
How many slanderous statements do we hear each and every day?
Bad reports about the world we live in.
Half truths that become a lie. So this morning I want to ask
you what lies are you believing? What slanderous reports are you
prone to believe? Half truths that become a lie?
Lies like the culture is winning, therefore the Church
must be losing. Lies like our country is falling
apart. Therefore the Kingdom of God
must be failing all forgetting the promise that Jesus said he
would build his church, the gates of hell will not prevail
against it, and that the Kingdom of God is here and now.
Perhaps for you it's the lie that you're worthless.
You don't amount to anything that because you continue to
fall into that besetting sin that you can't seem to shake,
that God is no longer with you and he will not equip you to
overcome the temptation that you face.
Perhaps others. For you is to lie that there is
nothing in this life except for disease and grief and cancer and
depression and anxiety and so why bother fighting anymore?
Each and every day we are inundated with slander and lies.
The question for us this morning is what report are you going to
believe? Because they're in the middle of
this majority report that slandered the promises of God.
There was a voice crying out in the wilderness, a dissenting
voice of hope that said God can be trusted.
So the second thing I want you to look at this morning, I want
you to see the dissension of hope.
Look with me at Numbers 14, verse five.
We're told that after the people rebel, Moses and Aaron fall on
their face, Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes.
This is an act of mourning. It's as if they are witnessing a
death before their eyes, and so they are grieving.
And in the midst of their grief, verse 7, Joshua and Caleb
courageously deliver a dissenting message that cut
right through the slander of the 10 spies.
They contradict everything they say, and they say in verse 7.
The land which we passed through to spy it out is an exceedingly
good land, and if the Lord delights in us, He will bring us
into the land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and
honey. Notice where they begin, not
simply with the land, but with the Lord.
Why is the land good? Because the Lord has brought us
to it, and he will lead us in verse nine they continue.
Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people
of the land, for they are bred for us, their protection is
removed from them, and the Lord is with us.
Do not fear them. Notice now the conclusion.
Yes, maybe the people are large, but the Lord is with us.
And where you say that the land will devour us, know this, that
with the Lord on our side, these giants that you speak of will
become bred for us. The Lord is with us.
He will lead us into the promised land.
He will be with us just as He is always been, because he is a
covenant, keeping promise, fulfilling God.
It's a dissenting message, a minority report, just two among
the 12. How would the people respond?
And hearing this dissenting message, this dissenting message
of hope, how will they respond? Verse 10, we're told.
Then the congregation said to stone them with stones.
So this is the question for you and me this morning.
Whose report are you going to trust as you walk through the
wilderness of life and you face griefs of many kinds and
difficulty and strife as you're confronted with the brokenness
and the wilderness of our world, and you hear half truths, lies
that slander, the promises of God.
What report will you believe? Because I want you to notice
something. Where did the slander come from?
Did it come from out there? No, it came from within the
camp. It came from among the people.
What report will you believe? We believe the majority that
slanders the promises of God and says we can't overcome because
it's all up to us and we'll fail.
We trust in the voice of the dissenting minority, the voice
of dissenting hope that says God is who he says He is.
His promises are true and they find their yes and Amen in Jesus
Christ. That's where I want to end this
morning. The power of God's promise to
look at this final section. I want you to get your Bible or
you can turn to a Pew Bible. You'll find them there in front
of you. You don't have a Bible this
morning. That's our gift.
You would love for you to take it with you.
This section is not printed in our bulletin.
I want you to see with your own eyes what happens next.
An incredible interchange between Moses and God.
Just as we're told that the people are about to stone Caleb
and Joshua, we're told that the glory of the Lord comes down.
And verse 11 we're told that the Lord says 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've done among them?
I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them.
I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.
If you've been with us in our serious life of Moses, this
should sound familiar, because once again the people have
rebelled against God. And once again God has said, I
must pour out my judgment on unbelief.
And he said, well, does that make him cold and vindictive?
Know what makes him good and righteous?
He must judge sin. And the truth is, if we're
honest this morning, every single one of us fall into this
camp, prone to unbelief, prone to believe the slanders of our
unbelieving age. And so here it is God saying, I
must pour out my judgment. But then here comes Moses, the
great mediator of the people, the one whom God is called to be
a priest, to come and pray on the people's behalf.
Verse 17 Moses prays Now please let the power of the Lord be
great as you have promised. Notice what he says, Lord, Let
your power. Let your glory be great, just as
you promised, just as you said it would, he continues, praying.
Verse 18 The Lord is slow to anger and abounding and
steadfast love for giving iniquity and transgression, but
he will by no means clear the guilty.
Visiting the iniquity of the fathers and on the children to
the 3rd and the 4th generation, Moses praise the promises of God
back to him. The same promises we looked at
last week in Exodus 34. God's covenant promise to be
slow to anger in a bounding and steadfast love, but by no means
clear the guilty. And then in verse 19, Moses,
praise, please pardon the iniquity of this people
according to greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have
forgiven this people from Egypt until now.
And then notice what God says next.
Verse 20. Then the Lord said, I have
pardoned, according to your word, what just happened.
God seized the unbelief and rebellion of this people, and as
a holy and righteous judge says, I must pour out my judgment.
Then Moses praise the promises of God back to him, and notice
what God says. Then the Lord said, I have
pardoned according to your word, What is going on here?
Did Moses just change God's mind?
Can we, when we pray, change the mind of God?
It's one of the great questions of the Bible, one of the great
questions, The book of numbers, the book of X's The Great
Questions of Prayer. There's a couple answers to that
question. The first, I think, is good.
Good to a point. And the first says, well, what
we are seeing here is an anthropomorphism.
It's a good big Scrabble type word, right?
It It it simply means that what we're reading here is an
interchange from a human perspective of a human being
with God. And so it's ascribing to God
human language that we can understand what goes on in
prayer. And I think that's hopeful, but
only to a point, because it doesn't enable us to really
wrestle with what's really going on here.
I want you to notice what God says to Moses.
I have pardoned, according to your word, Whose word did Moses
pray? Was it really Moses's word?
No, no. He prayed God's word, Word for
word. Moses prayed the promises of God
back to him. In other words, what we are
seeing here is Moses being conformed to God's covenant
promise. We're seeing Moses trust fully
in the promises of God. CS Lewis put it this way.
Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in
response to the suggestions of men?
For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best.
Infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.
But neither does God need any of those things that are done by
finite agents, whether living or an animate He goes on to stay.
Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the
muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of
His will. Or to put it more simply, and
I've always loved this from RC Sproul.
Prayer does change things, all kinds of things, but the most
important thing it changes is us.
So did Moses change God's mind? No.
Because Moses prayed his promise
and in response God carried out his promises to the very end.
God promises to be slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love
and mercy and by no means clear the guilty.
And that's exactly what happens. In verse 21, we read the
unbelieving people of God are now condemned to go back towards
Egypt and to now wander in the desert for 40 years before they
die in the wilderness, having never entered the promised land.
In other words, they got exactly what they asked for.
They asked to go back to Egypt, they asked to die in the
wilderness, and that's exactly what they got.
They refused God's covenant promise.
They refused to go into the promised land, and they wandered
in the desert for 40 years until they all died.
The 10 spies who delivered a slanderous report all died by a
plague. We're told to the end of chapter
14 that some of them decide to go into the promised land now
anyways, even on their own, even though God's not with them.
And they all die because they tried to do it on their own.
And you hear that and you say, okay, I hear that.
But where's the loving kindness? Where's the mercy?
Where's the pardon in that? I want you to look with me at
verse 24. God says, But my servant Caleb,
because he has a different spirit and has followed me
fully, I will bring into the land and to which he went, and
his descendants shall possess it.
The name Caleb means faithful. The name Joshua means savior,
even as God promised to pour out his judgment, as we've seen time
and time again that God saves through judgment.
He did it in Egypt and sending the Passover.
He's doing it here as he's sending his people to wander in
the wilderness for a generation, only now to save a remnant
through Caleb and Joshua, and the next generation to go into
the land and to inherit God's promises once and for all.
And many years later, he would send his own Son, Jesus Christ
to come and to bear the weight of all God's judgment for our
sin of unbelief, so that all who are faithful, all who believe in
God's promises fulfilled, and His death and resurrection,
might enter the promised Land forever.
So this morning, what report are you going to believe?
You're going to believe the slanderous report of our
unbelieving age, Or are you going to place your hope and a
dissenting message? It says God is who he says He
is. And reflecting on this passage,
preacher of Hebrews wrote that for we are to come to share in
Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the
end, as it is said today, if you hear His voice, do not harden
your hearts as in the rebellion. Brothers and sisters, Do you
hear His voice this morning? Can you hear His voice?
In the midst of the chaos and confusion and slander of our
unbelieving age, can you hear His voice today?
If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, but hear the
voice of the One who is crying out in the wilderness, The one
who's proclaiming A dissenting message of hope that God is who
He says He is and His promises are true.
The voice of Caleb and Joshua calling us to enter into the
promised land. The voice of the prophets
promising the coming Messiah. The voice of John the Baptist,
who said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the
sin of the world, and the voice of Jesus who bore the judgment
of God on the cross for you and for me today.
If you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, but trust
and the dissenting hope of the one who died and rose and is
coming again for you. Let's pray.
Father in heaven, would you set our eyes on the promised Land
that is to come? And in looking and believing and
trusting and that future promise, would you now reorient
our present? Would you change the way that we
look at life in the wilderness and able us to trust you to hear
your voice until you come again? In Jesus name we pray.
Amen. Let's stand.
Let's sing together.