Please now hear the reading of the word of God.
We're in the book of numbers now.
We've been in the book of Exodus for a while.
We're studying the life of, or some facets of the life of
Moses. And the story of Exodus took us
all the way from the land of Egypt to Mount Sinai.
And now the book of Numbers takes us further than that.
It's actually in the Hebrew called in the Wilderness.
Which is the opening phrase of the book in the language instead
of the book of numbers. Something about the book of
Numbers makes you think it's an oldfashioned mobile telephone
book or something, but but it's really in the wilderness and it
tells the story of what all happened in the wilderness,
including the episode we find today.
So hear now the word of the Lord Numbers, Chapter 13.
The Lord said to Moses send men to spy out the land of Canaan,
which I am giving. To the people of Israel, from
each tribe of their fathers you shall sin to man everyone, a
chief among them. And so Moses sent them to spy
out the land of Canaan. At the end of 40 years they
returned from spying out the land, and they came to Moses and
Erin, and to all the congregation of the people of
Israel by the wilderness of Quran at Kadish.
They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and
showed them the fruit of the land.
And they said to them, We came to the land to which you sent
us. It flows with milk and honey,
and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in
the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very
large. And besides we saw the
descendants of Anak there in the Amylokites dwell in the Negevs,
the Hittites, and the Jebusites and the Amorites 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 occupied, for
we are well able to overcome it. Then the men who had gone with
him 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 out is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the
people that we saw in it are of great height.
And there we saw the Nepheline, the son of Anak, who from the
land of Nepheline, and we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers,
and so we seem to them. 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 have died in the land of Egypt, or would that
we have died in the wilderness? Why is the Lord bringing into
this land to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones
will become 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.
And 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 says, who were among
those who have spied out the land, tore their clothes, and
said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, the land
which we passed through to spy 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 in 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 congregation said to stone them with stones.
But the glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of meeting
to haul the people of Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, How
long will this people despise me, and how long will they not
believe in me? The word of the Lord.
You may be seated. Well, did you find the drama in
the passage? Here we have an amazing thing.
This is the second great provocation.
Israel provoked the Lord at the foot of Mount Sinai with the
worship of the golden calf. That was a denial of who God is.
They worship that. Pagan Bale idol instead of the
true and living God that had just delivered them out of
Egyptian bondage, this is the second provocation.
They have moved from Sinai over to the very southern edge of the
land of Canaan. They're in that S country.
They're right there on the edge at this beautiful Oasis there in
the desert by the name of Kadish.
And from there the Lord tells Moses to send spies into the
land. And I believe the reason the
Lord told him to send spies into the land is he wanted them to
just have a little bit of a preview of what it was worth.
In fact, the spies went about 220 miles.
They went all the way to the north, north of Damascus, the
modern city of Damascus, since in.
Syria, they went all the way north and then they came back
and then they took side trips. And you noticed in the report
they told about who was living, the nations that were living in
the north, the nations that were living in the Hill Country.
They're in the southern central part of the land.
And then the nations that were living on the coastal plains of
the Mediterranean and the nations that were living on the
side of the Jordan in the Jordan River Valley, which are roughly
the the borders of the great land of promise, the land that
God said. It's full of milk and honey.
I promised it to Abraham. When Abraham was camped there at
Hebron, the Lord promised him the land.
And now, several 100 years later, generations later, they
are now going into the land to possess it as the Lord had
promised it to them. And really, I can see that the
Lord wanted them to just have a preview.
So they selected. Leaders from each tribe, each of
the 12 tribes, a a a young man who was vigorous enough to be
able to make that that long journey and they launched out
into this investigation and it took him about 40 days.
It's interesting the number of things that take 40 days in the
Bible. Isn't it there 40 years or 40
something. It's interesting when you come
to the life of Christ. When he launched his ministry he
was in the wilderness 40 days and he is assuming.
The identity and the life and the and the the the feelings and
the empathy of his people in his lifely experiences, our Lord
did. But back here in the story we
find that they've come to the land and the spies go in and the
spies look it over and the spies come back and the spies have a
report that they're going to give and they report honestly,
the majority report 10 spies said.
Well, they all said it's a land of flowing with milk and honey.
It's a wonderful land. The orders that Moses gave them,
which we didn't read there in Chapter 13, was go into the land
and find out if the people are strong or weak.
Find out if there are many of them, or few of them, if they're
rich or they're poor. Find out if the land is good
land or bad land. And good land, by the way, is
land that can that can accommodate just about any kind.
Of agricultural enterprise. You've got to have fertile land
for fields. You've got to have arid land for
vineyards. You have to have beautiful
pasture land for flocks. So a good land will have that
whole array of variety of types of land and topography that will
sustain A thriving, prosperous nation. the United States of
America has that. God Bless America, Israel.
Found that when they got to Canaan, that's the way Canaan
was laid out. Canaan was a was a beautiful
land with a variety. Had rivers all flowing off of
large mountains all accumulating into the Jordan River Valley and
it bringing forth a good stream, free springs, cool springs at
various places all over the place, water table such that
when Jacob had dug wells, those wells were still in existence.
When God's people go back into the land or when they're going
back into the land, I mean, it's wonderful.
They've been out of Egypt now for maybe about two years, and
they've come through Sinai and they've done all of that.
They've organized and they've learned to fight.
Joshua, their generalist, taught him to fight.
He, he led him in the first battle they had when they got
out of Egypt. And so there's just a lot of
things that's already in prime to go.
I mean, God's will is ready to be done, but this is the second
provocation. And the second provocation is
disobedience. The first one is when people
don't believe that God is who he is.
And the second great provocation is when we don't obey the Lord's
will and do what he tells us to do.
And Israel provoked God in both ways.
This is the second provocation. This is a provocation of
rebellion, A provocation of disobedience and.
Caleb and Joshua gave a minority report, and the minority report
was kind of interesting. They said in the report, God's
promise, this land, he's already given it to us.
It's not like the Lord saying go up and fight it.
If you win, you get it. If you don't win, you lose it or
you don't conquer it. That wasn't the proposition.
God had already given them the land.
This is what God's grace is. It goes beforehand and provides
everything we need for salvation and everything else.
The good grace of God had already given him the land.
All they had to do was to believe it and seize it and obey
the Lord and watch the Lord just hand it over to him.
Lot by lot, allotment by allotment, territory by
territory, province by province. But they said it's a good land,
but it's just too well fortified.
The cities are fortified. The cities are strong.
The people are big. They're tough.
In fact, it's interesting how they exaggerated a little bit.
They said this land devours itself.
No, it didn't. That land was a very prosperous
land. That land was on the the road of
the Great Fertile Crescent that led from Mesopotamia to Egypt.
It was a prosperous land. It already had a highway on the
West Coast. That was an incredible
thoroughfare. These people were in a position
to be middle men. This was a land that was
wealthy, and I did have some pretty savages, savage tribes
there. But then again, all the ancient
tribes were savage and the Lord had promised it to them.
But the thing that Caleb said is do not rebel against the Lord.
Don't say we can't go. Don't say we want go.
In fact, the people, it was worse than that.
They said we wish we'd have never even come this far.
We wish we'd have stayed in the land of of of Egypt.
That's what they said last time they provoked God.
There's something about going back to the pleasures of sin for
a season. That's what the book of Hebrew
says Egypt was. It was the day where Moses
rejected the pleasures of sin for a season.
Sin is pleasurable for a season. And when that season up, it is
bitter and we face the judgment of God for our sins.
And the people had forgotten the whole delivery.
Notice the complex that's that's involved here.
The people listen to the reports.
They can believe either report they want and they believed the
bad report. They believed the report from
the majority. They did not believe the
dissenting report, the minority report, which was the one that
was in line with the purposes of God.
God has a purpose and a plan, and when you're in line with
that, through a yielded heart and obedience, that God's ready
to give you the land, to give you that which He has set out
for you, and to fulfill all of His promises.
That the people were spiritually so downgraded that they didn't
recognize any of this. There's an interesting thing in
here. It said that when Joshua and
Caleb were pleading with them over here in the latter part of
our text in chapter 14, he says do not rebel against the Lord.
The Lord will give it to us. In other words, it wasn't.
He was calling for obedience. He was crying out against
disobedience. And this was an emotional time.
You noticed how the people grieved and they wept, and Moses
and and Aaron rent their clothes.
This is grief. This is this was a horrible low
point in the moral and spiritual life of Israel.
In fact, this was when Israel had walked away from God.
It was back on the edge of the pits of hell.
They had moved away from their God.
They had lost their faith. They were absolutely about.
To just completely lose everything and but for the grace
of God they would have. But you know, our God is a
gracious God and he we don't have it in this text today.
But he did the same thing he did back in the golden calf.
He restored, He forgave. He tempered his punishment and
he said I'm still going to accomplish my purpose.
Which by the way, you know the whole story of the Old Testament
he did. He brought them into the land.
He established the great Kingdom.
He did all those things. He brought the Messiah, their
king, out of that great land. That is the determination of the
purpose of God. Our problems are not with God.
Our problems are with ourselves, isn't it?
Here's our whole problem. We see ourselves the way these
poor Israelites did, and I'll give it to you kind of vividly.
We seem to ourselves like grasshoppers.
We seem puny and pathetic. And how big is a grasshopper's
brain? You know we seem like
grasshoppers and that happens to us when we lose sight of our
great God and his great provision.
We get a low self esteem. At least we get down to where we
can't even see the mercies of God.
And here's the mercies of God in this passage.
It's found here in what Caitlin was said.
Caleb when he and and Joshua when they were talking to the
people they said do not rebel against the Lord said do not
fear for their protection is down, their protection is taken
away. Well if I was a preacher I'd
stop right here and preach. This is exactly this is exactly
the key they were looking at this whole situation.
Through the eyes of the flesh they were walking by sight and
not by faith. Caleb and Joshua could see not
just what they could see with their eyes.
They could see the big old tall Anac giants.
They could see the fortified cities.
They could see the same thing that the other men could see,
but they could see something better, something different,
something more. They could see the spiritual
condition and they could see where God was in this program.
And they knew that there was no hedge of protection.
These men were godly warriors. They were spiritual warriors.
They could see beyond the natural and that which is seen,
and they could see to that which was unseen.
And they could see that this people was weak as they could
possibly be, because God was not going to protect them, and they
were vulnerable. In fact, it looked like an easy
take to them. And these strong warriors,
Joshua and Caleb, knew they had them.
They could see it. But the others couldn't see it.
And So what they did was they provoked the Lord.
They refused to go in. They rose up against Moses and
Aaron, and they rebelled. You know, the Bible references
back. We saw one reference to it in
the 95th Psalm that we all recited as the call to worship
this morning. But then there's another
reference to it in the New Testament, and let me read it
and make the application there, and then I'm done.
It's comes from the book of Hebrews, chapter 3.
And this is. A quotation.
The writer of Hebrews says the Holy Spirit says he didn't say.
David says he didn't say. Moses said he didn't say.
Isaiah said or Jeremiah said it. It is a it comes out of David
and he comes out of Moses. But it's the Holy Spirit
speaking. That's just a little side note
there that all scriptures given by inspiration of God and that
men wrote as they were born along by the Spirit.
The Spirit of God blew upon their sails and moved the vessel
where it needed to be so that what got written was what God
wanted said. That's how God's inspiration
works upon the human authorship. That's that's free this, this is
the text. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit
says today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts
as in the rebellion. And it's referring to this
rebellion we just had. As our story this morning on the
day of testing in the wilderness, when your father's
put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years, therefore I
provoked with that generate. I was provoked with that
generation and said they shall the always go astray in their
heart. They have not known my ways and
so I swore in my wrath. They shall not enter my rest.
And then? The writer makes the application
take care of brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil,
unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
God, But exhort one another every day, as long as it is
called today, that none of you may be hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin. The word to us in the Christian
community continues. For we share in Christ, if
indeed we hold to our original confidence, firm to the end as
it is written today. If you hear His voice, do not
harden your hearts as in the rebellion, and listen to these
questions. For who were those who heard and
yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left
Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He provoked
for 40 years? Was it not with those who
sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom did He swear that he would not enter his rest, but to
those who were disobedient? So we see that they are unable
to enter in because of unbelief, If you don't enter into the
Kingdom of God, if you don't enter into salvation.
If you don't enter into Christ, if you don't enter into heaven
one day and enjoy the bless of an eternal state with him, if
you don't enter into it, it's because of unbelief.
It's because of unbelief. Dear folks here and obey.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.